Anne Dambricourt Malassé

Anne Dambricourt Malassé • ADM DM #0 – ADM DM #1 – ADM DM #2 – ADM DM #3

My recent interest on Intelligent Design and non-darwinian evolution hypothesis was triggered by the buzz made around a documentary presented by the franco-dutch TV channel, Arte; my favorite one. Then there was the Dover episode in the struggle of american IDers trying to be labeled “scientific” to gain credibility in front of the public opinion and access to public schools science curriculum.

I think that the best attitude of scientists, including darwinists, should be to keep it strict about what science is, per definition, and let the supernatural causations for religions; after all they were first in the place and this is their only way to do when it comes to explain the world: supernatural entities, gods or God.
Imagine the results of the appropriation of supernatural by some other then religions. Religions will lose their only competence and will become useless, and all faiths to supernatural should be unified. That would be great, I mean religions fall, but it isn’t work for scientists.

I would like to focus on the initial cause of existence of this blog, the documentary directed by Thomas Johnson, “Homo Sapiens, une nouvelle histoire de l’homme” [for translations hoover over the french texts], and consider three quite distinct layers:

1. The buzz concerning this documentary,
2. The debate that followed it’s diffusion,
3. The central element of the documentary.

The Buzz

If you take a look on TV channels programs you would find so much crap that, if the same kind of reactions, as the one against this particular documentary, was the rule, there should be a continuous buzz! Occasionally the introduction of a new kind of programs produce strong reactions, says, reality TV.
But this was a simple documentary, and documentaries are usual stuff, and would be happy to see them take a larger part in TV programs. Much more interesting usually then reality TV.
It was the content of the documentary that was disturbing. Why? Certainly because it presented the point of view of a Research Director, CNRS opposing darwinism. So what? One would expect that the diffusion of the documentary should be programed by demand of the darwinists! Personally I was quite interested by hearing Anne Dambricourt Malassé presenting her findings and making clear her arguments against darwinism.
It is mandatory for scientists to question the quality of their tools as often as possible, to be sure using the best and fittest available. And I expect that every single fellow darwinist do so with the theory of evolution of the species. If one have a question against darwinism, the best conduct is to hear it and answer it. As far as supernatural causation isn’t implied; in this case they may chose to hear it, but they doent’ have to answer it, at least as scientists. And if there is a possible confusion made possible due to the fact that a scientist presented a non scientific hypothesis (it isn’t forbidden as far as I know), a simple communicate, making that clear, should be sufficient.

The Debate

To calm down the buzz a debate was programmed following the diffusion of the documentary. Now, that was a really clever movement. A debate is a much more interesting stuff than a simple documentary.
As soon as the announcement was made I set up an alarm so to be sure to don’t lose this rare occasion.
But they certainly mistaken calling that a debate. It was a simple interview of two darwinists, by a journalist, Michel Alberganti. Anne Dambricourt Malassé (ADM) wasn’t there, neither any other supporter of her hypothesis, to reply to Pierre Henry Gouyon or Michel Morange’s critics.
You can call that a discussion or an interview, but certainly not a debate. And it wasn’t even a focused discussion. Once I seeing that only darwinists were present I was expecting a demonstration of how darwinism could account for ADM’s findings. Or, at least, why ADM’s hypothesis couldn’t be considered as scientific. Neither came. Just generalities about how wonderful and well accepted by the biologists the darwinism is. Nothing specific to destroy ADM’s hypothesis.
The result was what one could expect: more buzz.
It is probable that the two darwinists didn’t had enough time to study the particular case, both are busy people. In this case either they should asked for a week or two before addressing the question or ask to a colleague or even to their students to give it a try. You don’t go to a debate expecting to be accepted just because you said you where right. Evidence is the key, not just talking.

The element

In the documentary, ADM present her findings, and they are quite interesting and clearly presented.
Problems appear just at the moment she is trying to explain how this could have happened.
I didn’t recorded the documentary, not expecting what followed. So to study her claims I had to search for her publications. None in PubMed and just four hits otherwise and up to now. But I hope I’ll get the complete set soon. Two important points:

• The two papers opposing darwinism are in french. That’s important, it means that the international scientific community may not have access to these readings; usually biology is published in english.
  That means that the probability to find someone who could have opposed her point of view are low and personally I consider that unfair; both for darwinists and for her, as the findings are really interesting.
• ADM is a paleontologist, and seem to be praised by her colleagues, as such. But she isn’t neither geneticist or evolutionist. One would expect collaboration with one or the other discipline in the process to explain her findings. This is a quite common case, to consult and collaborate with specialists. And if for one or another reason you are willing to question a theory you better take all required steps to show that your approach was exhaustive. But here we simply don’t know what darwinian models where found incompetent to explain the facts.

ADM show data clearly indicate a directional and discontinuous phenotypic variation, that may be a key element for humans’ vertical position. Great!
The hiatus is that this doesn’t seem to be compatible with random (non directional), gradual (discontinuous) genetic variations selected by the environment (natural selection).

That doesn’t seem to be a darwinian process.
“Doesn’t seem” may be interpreted either as:

• it isn’t, or,
• apparently it isn’t but in fact it is

Before any other interpretation is attempted one expect that a thorough exploration of darwinian models was done. And the question can be formulated as : is there a darwinian model that may explain directional discontinuous phenotypic variations? Well, the answer is simpler than I expected from all this buzz: YES. And Jean Staune could categorize it as a strong darwinian one, nothing incompatible with Richard Dawkin’s approach of darwinism.

Keywords to build such a model are: cumulative and cooperative, to account for “apparently directional” and “apparently discontinuous” respectively. And one should keep in mind that every single natural selection factor should be considered and that it would be, as usual, counter productive to focus to a single one.

As I like building models I set up a few variations around my central idea which came during the debate: cumulative mutations in a single genetic spot progressively leading to a threshold over which phenotypic variations appears suddenly due to the intervention of a second genetic element. [as I'm expecting Jean Staune et al to answer the question "what is it?" I'll edit this part later to insert the known example]. It takes a little bit more complexity to make it appear discontinuous and accelerating over time, but is just a little bit more, nothing really complex.

Such models may be used as working hypothesis to unravel the mechanism explaining ADM’s findings, in association with gene expression data (GEO could be of some help here) in order to name the contributing genetic elements. That should be facilitated if the sequence of events is replicated during in utero development, because the molecular events would be directly observable.

Two questions arise spontaneously:

Why ADM failed to describe such models, alone or in collaboration with colleagues specialized in genetics or molecular biology, and

why her darwinist opponents failed to do so rather than discussing generalities?

Those two questions I can’t answer, otherwise than by speculating, so I’ll let them unanswered.

On the other hand, answering the question “is there a darwinian model that may explain directional discontinuous phenotypic variations?” by the simplest of affirmations, yes, should raise the question “which one?”, and that I can answer, in extenso.
So, I’m starting here a series ADM-DM#n which will finish by the display of a darwinian model, able to explain phenotypic, directional and discontinuous variations, by random and continuous genetic alterations (mutations). This isn’t for biology agnostics, I’ll suppose that whoever wish to comment these posts have a minimal knowledge of what a gene, a mutation, an allele, molecular cooperation, and selection factors, are.

But I will answer questions by anyone, trying to set things in the simplest manner, so even agnostics of biology should be able to understand.

Technorati tags: Anne Dambricourt, Jean Staune, Intelligent Design, Darwinism, genotype, phenotype