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I am Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. I received my Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. My current research involves delineation of design and natural selection in protein structures. In addition to teaching and research I work as a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.
In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, I have also written editorial features in Boston Review, American Spectator, and The New York Times. My book, Darwin's Black Box, discusses the implications for neo-Darwinism of what I call "irreducibly complex" biochemical systems and has sold over 250,000 copies. The book was internationally reviewed in over one hundred publications and recently named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
I have presented and debated my work at major universities throughout North America and England.
Recent Entries on Uncommon DescentUniversity of California evolutionary biologist John Avise has penned a book, Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design, and gotten it published by a top academic publishing house, Oxford University Press. Avise, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, has for decades been a leading researcher in evolutionary and ecological genetics. He [...]
The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology recently published several papers from a workshop sponsored by the International Society of Protistologists entitled “Horizontal Gene Transfer and Phylogenetic Evolution Debunk Intelligent Design.” So here we have a respected scientific society, presumably planning a workshop months in advance, and finally laying out their considered case for why intelligent design [...]
The science writer Carl Zimmer posted an invited reply http://tinyurl.com/yhpm3t7 on his blog from Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon to my recent comments about Thornton’s work. This is the last of four posts addressing it. References appear at the bottom of this post.
At the end of his post Thornton waxes wroth.
Behe’s argument has [...]
The science writer Carl Zimmer posted an invited reply http://tinyurl.com/yhpm3t7 on his blog from Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon to my recent comments about Thornton’s work. This is the third of several posts addressing it. References will appear in the last post.
Now back to Thornton’s first point, the role of neutral mutations (which [...]
The science writer Carl Zimmer posted an invited reply http://tinyurl.com/yhpm3t7 on his blog from Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon to my recent comments about Thornton’s work. This is the second of several posts addressing it. References will appear in the last post.
Now to Professor Thornton’s reply. He writes at length but makes just [...]
The science writer Carl Zimmer posted an invited reply http://tinyurl.com/yhpm3t7 on his blog from Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon to my recent comments about Thornton’s work. This is the first of several posts addressing it. References will appear in the last post.
I must say, it never ceases to amaze me how otherwise-very-smart folks [...]
A new paper from Richard Lenski’s group has appeared in Nature http://tinyurl.com/ygtcflq and has garnered a fair amount of press attention (for example, here http://tinyurl.com/yh7nqht ). Some people asked me for my thoughts about it.
The new paper continues the grand experiment that Lenski has been publishing about lo these many years [...]
Nature has recently published an interesting paper which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution. The manuscript, from the laboratory of Joseph Thornton at the University of Oregon, is entitled “An epistatic ratchet constrains the direction of glucocorticoid receptor evolution”. ( http://tinyurl.com/yeq2cy8 ) The work is interpreted by its authors within a standard Darwinian framework, but [...]
Nature has recently published an interesting paper which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution. The manuscript, from the laboratory of Joseph Thornton at the University of Oregon, is entitled “An epistatic ratchet constrains the direction of glucocorticoid receptor evolution”. ( http://tinyurl.com/yeq2cy8 ) The work is interpreted by its authors within a standard Darwinian framework, but [...]
Nature has published an interesting paper recently which places severe limits on Darwinian evolution. This is the first of several posts discussing it.
The manuscript, from the laboratory of Joseph Thornton at the University of Oregon, is entitled “An epistatic ratchet constrains the direction of glucocorticoid receptor evolution”. ( http://tinyurl.com/yeq2cy8 ) The work is interpreted by [...]
