Creationism/intelligent design is not really an issue for me as I am a biologist working with mitochondria and stem cells, also a life extension supporter, whose angle on things and projections are based on the recent advancements in science and technology. As far as I know, creationism/ID neither suggests any new experiments or heuristic solutions in my research field, nor does it help to plan&build new technologies to extend healthy lifespan. From my point of view, thinking about creationism is a waste of valuable scientific/technological processor time.
But I am not used to encounter with explicit creationism and the fingerprints of a mighty creator as an explanatory force behind a natural phenomenon in scientific peer-review journals. That’s exactly what happened to me in a recent review published online by the Wiley journal, Proteomics (ISI Impact Factor 2006: 5.735) by Mohamad Warda and Jin Han, entitled Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul: Proteomic prospective evidence.
Last week when I wrote the post Can you tell a good article from a bad based on the abstract and the title alone? on the review I had only 10 minutes for figuring out the post between 2 experiments in the lab during lunchtime. The only thing that came into my mind reading the abstract – popped out of PubMed feeds – was that something stinks here. Now it’s Mardi Gras day and I have a couple of minutes more to address this issue and hopefully no more.
Myrmecologist and blogger Alex Wild picked one sentence from the paper in a comment, and here is the complete paragraph:
Alternatively, instead of sinking in a swamp of endless debates about the evolution of mitochondria, it is better to come up with a unified assumption that all living cells undergo a certain degree of convergence or divergence to or from each other to meet their survival in specific habitats. Proteomics data greatly assist this realistic assumption that connects all kinds of life. More logically, the points that show proteomics overlapping between different forms of life are more likely to be interpreted as a reflection of a single common fingerprint initiated by a mighty creator than relying on a single cell that is, in a doubtful way, surprisingly originating all other kinds of life.
This is the closing paragraph of the section Mitochondrial integrated function disproves endosymbiotic hypothesis of mitochondrial evolution. The mitochondrial part of the well established evolutionary endosymbiotic theory claims that ATP-producing mitochondria were ancient prokariotic invaders of host prokariotic cells eventually turned out to be the common ancestors of eukaryotic cells. I always found this hypothesis one of the most fruitful scientific concepts as it constantly suggest new ideas and warns that current eukaryotic cells are the products of an evolutionary, accidental and instable alliance between the mitos and their hosts. As the endosymbiotic theory is the mainstream academic theory of mitochondrial evolution it is a challenge for scientists to attack it with counterarguments and that’s what Warda and Han are aiming for in that section. What they are doing seems like a legitimate discussion of a scientific theory but ends with the logically unacceptable jump to the fingerprints of a mighty creator as an alternative explanation.
Before I cite the section in question in full length and recommend to my readers to analyze it, I also like to suggest the detailed comment of D. Spencer saying amongst others:
If Wiley and the journal Proteomics allow this into print (it is currently only “published” online) they can kiss goodbye to any hope that Proteomics will ever again be regarded as a serious scientific publication.
Here is the complete section by Warda and Han without references that could be found in the full text: Read the rest of this entry »
