N.Wells
Posts: 1836
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote | [From Cordova's thread at Skeptical Zone] Steve Schaffner on July 12, 2015 at 2:41 am said:
| Quote | | [From Sal] You don’t think methylation marking and positioning of the is important to regulation? |
Of course I think it’s important. What I said was that methylation, like other regulatory systems, ultimately depends on DNA sequence. DNA methylation occurs at specific sites because of specific DNA sequence motifs; for example, see this paper on how the transcription factor Myc establishes methylation patterns by recruiting a methyltransferase. Transcription factors work by binding to specific DNA motifs, not to arbitrarily chosen and interchangeable pieces of DNA.
There is no known mechanism for picking out randomly chosen repeats for methylation and then using the results for regulating specific genes. Real epigenetic modification regulates a gene by interacting mechanistically with the DNA needed to transcribe that gene, not by carrying out computation in an arbitrary scratch space of repeats.
Why you’re appealing to ENCODE results is not clear to me, since their studies find epigenetic modifications that happen consistently at the same sequence location for particular cell types. That approach would never find the kind of RAM-like behavior you’re suggesting. |
Meanwhile, over at Sandwalk, http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2015.......nt-form , Gary throws a snit because John Avise defined ID as | Quote | | Intelligent design (ID)—the latest incarnation of religious creationism—posits that complex biological features did not accrue gradually via natural evolutionary forces but, instead, were crafted ex nihilo by a cognitive agent. |
rather than using the Gaulin / Luskin - favored vapid prose that | Quote | | The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. |
, which Gary has just promoted from a premise to a definition. Warren Johnson makes a point we've all heard (and said) before: | Quote | | I say that your definition of ID theory is too vague, and requires elaboration to even understand it, let alone use it. |
Gary then plugs his not-a-theory and his site: Larry bites, checks it out and is not impressed: "Oops! My apologies. This is the first time I've looked at your website. I won't be bothering you again." Gary thinks he's scored a point: | Quote | | At least you have the honesty to admit that after all these years you did not even look at what you claim to be an expert in. Your critical thinking score is now zero. |
Gary, your rubbish is not published, has not been presented at a meeting, and has not had any meaningful peer review. To all intents and purposes, it does not exist as serious science, and for a scientist not to know about is not a shortcoming. Until you follow scientific procedures and get your work formally presented, no one in science has any responsibility to take any notice of it. Effectively, it does not yet exist as something that requires being noticed. Scientists can pay attention to your rubbish if they wish, if they were to find any value in it and thought it might pan out, but until ideas, data, and theories have had formal presentation, taking them into account is strictly optional, and not knowing about them or ignoring them does not merit the label of "not knowing about the subject".
For example, you have yet to say anything about Edgar Postrado's stuff. His ideas are more recent, more expansive, and more voluminous than yours, and he has actually published them (well, self-published, without bothering with peer review). Applying what seem to be your standards, why doesn't your failing to address him mean that you don't know enough about ID to talk about it?
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