Saturday, July 5, 2014

#1107: John C. Sanford


John C. Sanford is a plant geneticist. He is also a young earth creationist, and as such one of the few creationists out there with real and even relevant credentials (and one of the few the Discovery Institute has found for their petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism). Indeed, Sanford has quite a number of real, peer reviewed publications – though none of them support creationism, of course – and was, in his time, assistant professor of Horticultural Sciences at Cornell (now retired, but still holds a position as a courtesy associate professor), something that also made him unsuitable for that shining example of cherrypicking, Expelled, of course.

His involvement in the creationist conference Biological Information: New Perspectives, which privately rented a room at the campus of Cornell but advertised itself in a manner that made it look like a Cornell-sponsored conference, is a bit unclear, but at least he was a coeditor of the Proceedings, gave an introductory comment and contributed to several presentations. The conference, and the subsequent brouhaha over the fact that Springer seemed willing to publish the proceedings (in the end they didn’t), is discussed here and here. Here is a discussion of Sanford’s own comments on the issues.

As a creationist Sanford is perhaps most famous for his arguments for devolution, for instance in his 2005 book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome, the idea being that mutations and natural selection do not account for the information in the human genome and that instead of evolution these mechanisms are causing devolution in accordance with the myth of the Fall (also here). Indeed, one of his main pieces of evidence for devolution is the decline in lifespans among Noah’s descendants, as described in the Bible – according to Sanford this “is one of the strongest, as a scientist, one of the strongest evidences for me that Scripture is telling us, not speaking figuratively, not speaking creatively, but telling us history. And it speaks of a decline.” Indeed. No paper promoting Sanford’s concept of “genetic entropy” has ever made it through peer review (though it made it into Don Batten’s 101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe).

His other usual talking points should be familiar, and include references to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (blithely avoiding addressing the standard responses from real scientists).

Sanford was a relatively central witness for the creationists during the Kansas Evolution hearings. A transcript of his contributions is here.

Diagnosis: A dangerously delusional fellow, Sanford is among the few in the religiously fundamentalist anti-science movement with real credentials (though apparently little real understanding), and as such he lends a little bit of credence to such denialism.

13 comments:

  1. We strive for accuracy. Since you evidently think that some of our statements are false or inaccurate, it would be helpful if you could point out exactly what.

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  2. Quiet down slow boy your hooting nonsense shows your lack of education.

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  3. I believe that papers from him and his colleagues have been published many times, around twenty or so. You should double-check your statements there.

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    2. Sanford has of course published scientific papers, but on genetic entropy as a driver of devolution (which is what we were referring to)? If you have any other information feel free to share it.

      Of course, in one sense the statement is obviously false: even Answers in Genesis's stuff is reviewed by the authors' *peers* before publication, but in the sense that we ordinarily associate with "peer reviewed publications" those articles don't qualify. So, I know that Sanford published some genetic entropy stuff in e.g. World Scientific's "Biological Information New Perspectives", and that wouldn't count any more than if it were published on the Answers in Genesis website. Feel free to add anything else, though.

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    3. If Sanford would apply his understanding of genetics, he would come to the conclusion that if the Biblical account of Noah were true, the human DNA would only be traced back to ≈ 4k yrs and not the ≈ 150k yrs that is traced back to the Mitochondrial Eve (mt-MRCA: Most Recent Common Ancestor)

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  4. In addition to Sandord's achievements is the featuring of his Gene Gun in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

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    1. What creation science did he use in developing the gene gun Anonymous?

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  5. Anyone here of the Thunderbolts project? Check them out on youtube.

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  6. Mixing personal & or religious beliefs with the facts of science & or the science of evolution is what's known as pseudo science & not taken seriously in the scientific community. Most religious scientists accept the science that fits their reality denying religious beliefs & reject the science that doesn't. That's pseudo science. Science & the science of evolution has already debunked numerous religious beliefs. No religious belief has ever debunked any fact of science or the science of evolution. Go figure. ��

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  7. Hello! I´m from Brazil, and I need John Sanford´s e-mail in order to exchange ideas. Does anybody know?I used jcs21@cornell.edu but it is returning.My e-mail is marciliorpc@gmail.com

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  8. “Biological (or organic) evolution is inherited change in the properties of groups of organisms throughout generations. As Darwin elegantly phrased it, evolution is descent with modification.” [1]

    ~ Evolution (4th Edition) pg 7

    Here Douglas J. Futuyma and Mark Kirkpatrick give the typical definition of evolution found in most current college textbooks. As a young-age creationist, I wholly embrace this definition. Evolution is not a process in itself but rather a word for the group of processes explaining the modern diversity of life.

    As it says on the next page, “[evolution is] … A body of ideas… including mutation, recombination, gene flow, isolation, random genetic drift, the several forms of natural selection, and other factors… [constituting] our current theory of evolution, or “evolutionary theory.” [1] We all agree on and observe these processes.

    Notice that the terms “theory of evolution” and “evolutionary theory” do not mean evolution. We’ve already seen the definition of evolution - descent with modification — so what is the “theory of evolution?” The theory of evolution is, in some aspects, still understood in the conventional paradigm how Darwin understood it back in 1859 in “The Origin of Species” when he stated,

    “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. “[2]

    The “theory of evolution” (Also referred to commonly as neo-Darwinism or Modern Synthesis) is the theory that life descended from a “last universal cellular ancestor“ (LUCA). If the theory of evolution is correct, we could trace all life on earth back to that initial lifeform. We have not seen the Modern Synthesis (MS) Hypothesis substantiated by experimental processes of evolution.

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