By Matzke:
That stinks. We'll have to wait and see how the data and arguments pan out. Also see his update to the original post. I'm a little skeptical that it could've made it through peer-review if it is so poor as Matzke says, and I made a comment which is a little critical as to his method of rejecting the BLAST homologies on structure maps alone:I am not talking about minor issues, like the fact that the authors endorse the “flagellum first, type 3 secretion derived” position, which is currently debated by the experts. I am talking about things like the conclusion of the paper...Today the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) put out an Advanced Online Publication paper on flagellum evolution entitled, “Stepwise formation of the bacterial flagellar system.” The paper is freely available via Open Access. I was initially excited that PNAS had published a paper on this topic, and furthermore that it cited the Pallen/Matzke essay on flagellum evolution, and Ian Musgrave’s excellent book chapter in Why Intelligent Design Fails.
Unfortunately, as I read the paper, my delight turned to concern, and then dismay. The paper makes some potentially useful points and explores new territory in a few areas. But much of it ranges from dubious to just irremediably wrong.
We all know that protein structure and protein homology are notoriously difficult to correlate – elsewise, Pande wouldn’t have a gazillion PCs crunching the folding data. I, for one, would rather see the sequence data than the structural maps.Matzke has a double B.S. Biology and Chemistry, although I don't know how hardcore his biochemistry and protein science knowledge is. This is definitely a very interesting paper and I am sure it will become fodder for ev/cre arguments for a while to come. I'll be following this closely.
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Technorati tags: Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism
