Mike Gene has posted an interesting series on introns that's worthy of a few comments. His thesis is that "introns facilitated the evolution of multicellular life." A. The idea is interesting and rational but not novel.

Meyer's basic idea in chapters 4 and 5 is reasonably coherent. But I find further evidence in both chapters that Meyer is careless and underinformed on the subjects he addresses. (I explained before why I think this matters. If you think I'm not being nice enough to Meyer, consider providing me with the Rules of Engagement that apply when criticizing culture warriors who are proposing world-shifting new ideas.) Continue reading...

So Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute, a founder of the ID movement, wrote a book called Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. It came out last summer, and I ignored it. I ignored it because it didn't seem interesting or important or new, and there's always something interesting and important and new to read. (I recently finished The Road.

That's Tom de Kay, editor of the Home & Garden section of the New York Times. Last week Thursday, that section ran a story, "A Refugee from Gangland," describing the life of Margaret B. Jones, the author of a just-released "heart-wrenching memoir" set in gangland L.A. The Times piece is fascinating, and the memoir probably is too. One little problem: the memoir has just been revealed to be a fraud. It was wholly fabricated.

Can you tell which of the authors quoted above won a Pulitzer? Heh. Back to the big lie about "junk DNA" as told by anti-evolution propagandists. The first theme in this cesspool of creationist folk science, as I described in the first installment of this series on "junk DNA", is this: that "junk DNA" is functional and therefore that evolutionary claims regarding its origin are mistaken.

Several weeks ago, I started this series on "junk DNA" by noting that the shoddy nature of anti-evolution folk science is rarely more clearly displayed than in discussions of genomic and genetic findings that are aptly explained by common descent.

In another post in this ongoing series, we looked at creationist distortions of the nature of research into non-coding DNA, or "junk DNA." There I mention how creationists of all stripes are quite fond of the claim that "Darwinist" assumptions led to the labeling of all non-coding DNA as non-functional, and thereby to the neglect of research in the field for three decades.

"Junk DNA" is a very popular subject among anti-evolution commentators. At the Discovery Institute (DI) and Reasons To Believe (RTB), as well as other creationist outlets, you can find ample discussion of "junk DNA" and why it matters to Christians who don't like evolution.