Changes

I tried to be polite, civil and respectful in my reply to your first email, despite its rude tone and uninformed content.  Given the continued rudeness of your second email, and the willfully ignorant and slanderous content on your website, my second response will be less polite.  I expect you to post my response in its entirety; if not, I will make sure that is made publicly available through other channels.

I tried to be polite, civil and respectful in my reply to your first email, despite its rude tone and uninformed content.  Given the continued rudeness of your second email, and the willfully ignorant and slanderous content on your website, my second response will be less polite.  I expect you to post my response in its entirety; if not, I will make sure that is made publicly available through other channels.

   

   

I offer this lengthy reply because I am an educator as well as a scientist.  It is my sincere hope that some readers might learn something from this exchange, even if you do not.  

'''I offer this lengthy reply because I am an educator as well as a scientist.  It is my sincere hope that some readers might learn something from this exchange, even if you do not.'''

   

   

First, it seems that reading might not be your strongest suit given your initial letter, which showed that you had not read our paper, and given subsequent conversations with your followers, in which you wrote that you still had not bothered to read our paper.  You wrote: “I did skim Lenski’s paper …”  If you have not even read the original paper, how do you have any basis of understanding from which to question, much less criticize, the data that are presented therein?

First, it seems that '''reading might not be your strongest suit''' given your initial letter, which showed that you had not read our paper, and given subsequent conversations with your followers, in which you wrote that you ''still'' had not bothered to read our paper.  You wrote: “I did skim Lenski’s paper …”  If you have not even read the original paper, how do you have any basis of understanding from which to question, much less criticize, the data that are presented therein?

   

   

Second, your capacity to misinterpret and/or misrepresent facts is plain in the third request in your first letter, where you said:  “In addition, there is skepticism that 3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000.”  That statement was followed by a link to a news article from NewScientist that briefly reported on our work.  I assumed you had simply misunderstood that article, because there is not even a  mention of proteins anywhere in the news article.  As I replied, “We make no such claim anywhere in our paper, nor do I think it is correct. Proteins do not ‘appear out of the blue’, in any case.”  So where did your confused assertion come from?  It appears to have come from one of your earlier discussions, in which an acoltye (Able806, who to his credit at least seems to have attempted to read our paper) wrote:

Second, '''your capacity to misinterpret and/or misrepresent facts is plain''' in the third request in your first letter, where you said:  “In addition, there is skepticism that 3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000.”  That statement was followed by a link to a news article from ''NewScientist'' that briefly reported on our work.  I assumed you had simply misunderstood that article, because there is not even a  mention of proteins anywhere in the news article.  As I replied, “We make no such claim anywhere in our paper, nor do I think it is correct. Proteins do not ‘appear out of the blue’, in any case.”  So where did your confused assertion come from?  It appears to have come from one of your earlier discussions, in which an acoltye (Able806, who to his credit at least seems to have attempted to read our paper) wrote:

:“I think it might be best to clarify some of Richard's work. He started his E.Coli project in 1988 and has been running the project for 20 years now; his protocols are available to the general public. The New Scientist article is not very technical but the paper at PNAS is. The change was based on one of his colonies developing the ability to absorb citrate, something not found in wild E.Coli. This occurred around 31,500 generations and is based on the development of 3 proteins in the E.Coli genome. What his future work will be is to look at what caused the development of these 3 proteins around generation 20,000 of that particular colony. ...”  

:“I think it might be best to clarify some of Richard's work. He started his ''E.Coli'' project in 1988 and has been running the project for 20 years now; his protocols are available to the general public. The ''New Scientist'' article is not very technical but the paper at ''PNAS'' is. The change was based on one of his colonies developing the ability to absorb citrate, something not found in wild ''E.Coli''. This occurred around 31,500 generations and is based on the development of 3 proteins in the ''E.Coli'' genome. What his future work will be is to look at what caused the development of these 3 proteins around generation 20,000 of that particular colony. ...”  

As further evidence of your inability to keep even a few simple facts straight, you later wrote the following: “It [my reply] did clarify that his claims are not as strong as some evolutionists have insisted.”  But no competent biologist would, after reading our paper with any care, insist (or even suggest) that “3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000” or any similar nonsense.  It is only in your letter, and in your acolyte’s confused interpretation of our paper, that I have ever seen such a claim.  Am I or the reporter for NewScientist somehow responsible for the confusion that reflects your own laziness and apparent inability to distinguish between a scientific paper, a news article, and a confused summary posted by an acolyte on your own website?   

As further evidence of your inability to keep even a few simple facts straight, you later wrote the following: “It [my reply] did clarify that his claims are not as strong as some evolutionists have insisted.”  But no competent biologist would, after reading our paper with any care, insist (or even suggest) that “3 new and useful proteins appeared in the colony around generation 20,000” or any similar nonsense.  It is only in your letter, and in your acolyte’s confused interpretation of our paper, that I have ever seen such a claim.  Am I or the reporter for ''NewScientist'' somehow responsible for the confusion that reflects your own laziness and apparent inability to distinguish between a scientific paper, a news article, and a confused summary posted by an acolyte on your own website?   

   

   

Third, it is apparent to me, and many others who have followed this exchange and your on-line discussions of how to proceed, that you are not acting in good faith in requests for data.  From the posted discussion on your web site, it is obvious that you lack any expertise in the relevant fields.  Several of your acolytes have pointed this out to you, and that your motives are unclear or questionable at best, but you and your cronies dismissed their concerns as rants and even expelled some of them from posting on your website. [Ed.: citation omitted due to spam filter] Several also pointed out that I had very quickly and straightforwardly responded that the methods and data supporting the evolution of the citrate-utilization capacity are already provided in our paper.  One poster in your discussions, Aaronp, wrote:

Third, it is apparent to me, and many others who have followed this exchange and your on-line discussions of how to proceed, that '''you are not acting in good faith''' in requests for data.  From the posted discussion on your web site, it is obvious that you lack any expertise in the relevant fields.  Several of your acolytes have pointed this out to you, and that your motives are unclear or questionable at best, but you and your cronies dismissed their concerns as rants and even expelled some of them from posting on your website. [Ed.: citation omitted due to spam filter] Several also pointed out that I had very quickly and straightforwardly responded that the methods and data supporting the evolution of the citrate-utilization capacity are already provided in our paper.  One poster in your discussions, Aaronp, wrote:

:“I read Lenski's paper, and as a trained microbiologist, I thought that it was both thorough and well done. His claims are backed by good data, namely that which was presented in the figures. I went through each of the figures after Aschlafly said that they were uninformative. Actually, they are basic figures that show the population explosion of the bacterial cultures after the Cit+ mutation occurred. These figures show that the cultures increased in size and mass at a given timepoint, being able to do so because they had evolved a mechanism to utilize a new nutrient, without the assistance of helper plasmids. ... Lenksi’s paper, while not the most definite I’ve seen, is still a very well-researched paper that supports its claims nicely.”  

:“I read Lenski's paper, and as a trained microbiologist, I thought that it was both thorough and well done. His claims are backed by good data, namely that which was presented in the figures. I went through each of the figures after Aschlafly said that they were uninformative. Actually, they are basic figures that show the population explosion of the bacterial cultures after the Cit+ mutation occurred. These figures show that the cultures increased in size and mass at a given timepoint, being able to do so because they had evolved a mechanism to utilize a new nutrient, without the assistance of helper plasmids. ... Lenksi’s paper, while not the most definite I’ve seen, is still a very well-researched paper that supports its claims nicely.”