Junk DNA is still a-happening. Ryan Gregory's blog Genomicron is the place to learn about it. He's especially adept at driving trucks through the gaps in ID claims about non-coding DNA. My gestating posts on the subject [sigh] will focus more on Reasons To Believe. Watch for a quote from Obi-Wan! So here are some things I've been munching on this week.

When I was in grad school, some of us figured out a basic rule of thumb regarding the titles of scientific research papers: if the title is in the form of a question, the answer is almost always "no." Here, I'll review a journal article with a question for a title, and its answer appears to be the same as the answer to the question that forms the title of this blog entry.

Like every other scientist I know, I'm a big believer in peer review. The self-checking mechanism that peer review represents is surely one big reason for the success of science. Accountability, error checking, "wisdom in many counselors," and enforcement of community standards -- those are some ways of expressing the benefits of peer review.

If you have only read the more superficial descriptions of intelligent design theory, and specifically the descriptions of irreducible complexity, you might (reasonably) conclude that Michael Behe and other devotees of ID have claimed that any precise interaction between two biological components (two parts of a flagellum, two enzymes in the blood clotting cascade, or a hormone and its receptor) cannot arise through standard Darwinian evolution.

The jaw-dropping diversity of life begs for explanation, but at the same time it defies description, so much so that it has inspired hyperbole, even hyperbole of the finest variety.

It’s easy to think of a genome as a collection of genes, perhaps because so many of the metaphors used to explain genes and genomes (blueprint, book of life, Rosetta Stone) can give one the impression that everything in a genome is useful or functional. But genomes are, in fact, packed with debris.