The tipping point (revisited): 81,000 publications (3)

I published The tipping point (revisited): 81,000 publications (2) at ~12pm on 12/18/18

Support for my claims followed at ~2pm from Dan Graur, who is the author of the book Molecular and Genome Evolution (2016).

This book describes the driving forces behind the evolutionary process at the molecular and genome levels, the effects of the various molecular mechanisms on the structure of genes, proteins, and genomes, the methodology and the analytical tools involved in dealing with molecular data from an evolutionary perspective, and the logic of evolutionary hypothesis testing. Evolutionary phenomena at the molecular level are detailed in a way that can be understood without much prerequisite knowledge of molecular biology, evolution, or mathematics. Numerous examples that support and clarify the theoretical arguments and methodological discussions are included.

See:  Enumeration is Not Science: An Asinine Multimillion Sequel Called @PsychENCODE

Studying gene expression in dead human tissue is akin to studying nerve impulses in sashimi or the mating behavior of roadkill.

What genomics currently needs are mechanistic hypotheses with clear predictions that can be tested. Anything else is not science. What ENCODE, PsychENCODE, and their descendants do is merely meaningless enumeration, or in the words of Lord Rutherford, “stamp collecting.” To put it bluntly, PsychENCODE is a colossal waste of time and money, albeit not as colossal as the original ENCODE.

Dan Graur claims he “…has a very low threshold for hooey, hype, hypocrisy, postmodernism, bad statistics, ignorance of population genetics and evolutionary biology, and hatred of any kind.”

Oddly, he seems to hate the works published in the context of PsychENCODE.

I took exception with this one: Using 3D epigenomic maps of primary olfactory neuronal cells from living individuals to understand gene regulation It was reported as: The science of “vibes” shows how everything is connected

I reiterate:

Serious scientists used 3D maps of primary olfactory neuronal cells to understand how the creation of the sense of smell in bacteria is linked to gene regulation in all living individuals. They placed their findings into the context of food energy-dependent pheromone-controlled transcriptome-wide changes in RNA-mediated amino acid substitutions.

I have a very low threshold for the pseudoscientific nonsense touted by population geneticists because most of them are neo-Darwinian evolutionary theorists.

See also: Human brain samples yield a genomic trove

Dan Graur, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Houston in Texas and one of the most outspoken critics of ENCODE, also finds fault with some of the initial PsychENCODE results. The project targets psychiatric disorders that are themselves poorly defined, he says. “If you take something vague and correlate it with millions of genetic and epigenetic variations, you are bound to get statistical significance that will have little biological significance.”

The biological significance of all epigenetic variations can be placed into the context of 81,000 publications that link light-activated microRNA biogenesis from natural selection for codon optimality to supercoiled DNA  and the physiology of reproduction via the requirement for a link from subatomic particles to energy-dependent RNA-mediated DNA repair.