The neutral theory was first proposed by Mootoo Kimura in 1968 (Kimura, 1968). The following year, a similar idea was published in a seminal paper by Jack King and Thomas Jukes (King and Jukes, 1969). King and Jukes emphasized the importance of non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution in order to explain protein based phylogenetic trees and the molecular clock. They made it clear that neutral alleles fixed by random genetic drift play an important part in evolution.

There appears to be considerable latitude at the molecular level for random genetic changes that have no effect upon the fitness of the organism. Selectively neutral mutations, if they occur, become passively fixed as evolutionary changes through the action of random genetic drift.

The idea of selectively neutral changes at the molecular level has not been readily accepted by many classical evolutionists, perhaps because of the pervasiveness of Darwinian thought (King and Jukes, 1969).

Can natural selection occur by chance or accident? No, with qualifications. Can evolution occur by chance or accident? Yes, definitely.

While tidying up my office I came across an anthology of articles by Richard Dawkins. It included a 2009 review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution Is True (2009) and one of Richard's comments caught my eye because it illustrates the difference between the Dawkins' view of evolution and the current mainstream view that was described by Jerry in his book.

I can illustrate this difference by first quoting from Jerry Coyne's book.

This brings up the most widespread misunderstanding about Darwinism: the idea that, in evolution, "everything happens by chance" (also stated as "everything happens by accident"). This common claim is flatly wrong. No evolutionist—and certainly not Darwin—ever argued that natural selection is based on chance ....

True, the raw materials for evolution—the variations between individuals—are indeed produced by chance mutations. These mutations occur willy-nilly, regardless of whether they are good or bad for the individual. But it is the filitering of that variation by natural selection that produces natural selection, and natural selection is manifestly not random. (p. 119)

It's extremely important to notice that Coyne is referring to NATURAL SELECTION (or Dawinism) in this passage. Natural selection is not random or accidental, according to Coyne. This passage is followed just a few pages later by a section titled "Evolution Without Selection."

Let's take a brief digression here, because it's important to appreciate that natural selection isn't the only process of evolutionary change. Most biologists define evolution as a change in the proportion of alleles (different forms of a gene) in the population.

[Coyne then describes an example of random genetic drift and continues ...] Both drift and selection produce the genetic change that we recognize as evolution. But there's an important difference. Drift is a random process, while selection is the antithesis of randomness. Genetic drift can change the frequencies of alleles regardless of how useful they are to their carrier. Selection, on the other hand, always gets rid of harmful alleles and raises the frequencies of beneficial ones. (pp. 122-123)

Now let's look at Richard Dawkins' review of Coyne's book as published in the Times Literary Supplement in 2009 and reprinted in Books Do Furnish a Life (2021). I picked out an interesting passage from that review in order to illustrate a point.

Coyne is right to identify the most widespread misunderstanding about Darwinism as 'the idea that, in evolution, 'everything happens by chance' ... This common claim is flatly wrong.' Not only is it flatly wrong, it is obviously wrong, transparently wrong, even to the meanest intelligence (a phrase that has me actively restraining myself). If evolution worked by chance, it obviously couldn't work at all. (p. 427)

That last sentence is jarring to many scientists, including me. I think that the Dawkins' statement is 'obviously wrong' and 'transparently wrong' because, as Coyne pointed out, evolution by random genetic drift can occur by chance. [Let's not quibble about the meanings of 'random' and 'chance." That's a red herring in this context.] Clearly, evolution can work by chance so why does Dawkins say it can't?

It's not because Dawkins is unaware of random genetic drift and Neutral Theory. The explanation (I think) is that Dawkins restricts his definition of evolution to evolution by natural selection. From his perspective, the fixation of alleles by random genetic drift doesn't count as real evolution because it doesn't produce adaptations. That's the view that he described in The Extended Phenotype back in 1982 and the view that he has implicitly supported over the past few decades [Richard Dawkins' View of Random Genetic Drift].

This is one of the reasons why we refer to Dawkins as an adaptationist and it's one of the reasons why so many of today's evolutionary biologists—especially those who study evolution at the molecular level—reject the Dawkins' view of evolution in favor of a more pluralistic approach.

Note: I wrote an earlier version of this post in 2009 [Dawkins on Chance] and I wrote a long essay on Evolution by Accident where I describe many other examples of evolution by chance.

The Modern Synthesis is the version of evolutionary theory popularized by Julian Huxley and supported by the leading evolutionary biologists of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

The general idea was to merge Dawrin's view of natural selection with the relatively new field of population genetics. Evolution was now defined as a change in allele frequencies in a population and the emphasis was on natural selection as the most important mechanism although, in the original version by Huxley, the fixation of alleles by random genetic drift can occur in small populations. By the early 1960s the most popular vesion of the Modern Synthesis focused almost exclusively on natural selection—an emphasis that's referred to as the hardening of the synthesis. It was this excessively adaptationist view of evolution that led to Gould and Lewontin's paper on "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme" (Gould and Lewontin, 1979).

In Gould's classic 1980 paper on "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" (Gould, 1980), he argues that the current view of the Modern Synthesis is defined by scientists like Ernst Mayr who says,

The proponents of the synthetic theory maintain that all evolution is due to the accumulation of small genetic changes, guided by natural selection, and that transspecific evolution is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within populations and species.

If this is the correct view of the Modern Synthesis then it is "effectivly dead" for several reasons. Those reasons are better explained in his Tanner Lecture at Cambridge University (UK) in 1984 (Gould, 1984). He lists three major challenges to the Modern Synthesis.

1. The role of chance. The development of Neutral Theory has revealed a much greater role for random genetic drift than the proponents of the Modern Synthesis recognize.
2. Hierarchical perspective. The individual is no longer the exclusive agent of evolution because evolution can also occur at the level of genes, demes, species, and monophyletic clades. This, in turn leads to the recognition that macroevolutionary change, including but not restricted to punctuated equilibria, cannot be fully explained by microevolution.
3. Critique of adaptation. The role of adaptation is constrained by non-adaptive features.

Jerry Coyne recently posted an attack on punctuated equilibria, which he believes is "effectively dead" [Punctuated equilibrium is dead; long live the Modern Synthesis]. He may or may not be correct about punctuated equilibria but it's only a part of the criticism of the Modern Synthesis and now is not the time to resurrect it. In my opinion, it wasn't Gould that killed the Modern Synthesis, it was King & Jukes and Kimura.

There are some scientists who think that the Modern Synthesis evolved in the late 1960s to incorporate the fact that random genetic drift is the most common mechanism of evolution. According to these scientists, Neutral Theory, Nearly-Neutral Theory, the Drift-Barrier Hypothesis, Mutationism, and a host of other concepts have been absorbed by the Modern Synthesis so it's still possible to refer to modern evolutionary theory as the Modern Synthesis. Douglas Futuyma is an important proponent of this idea (the ongoing evolution of the Modern Synthesis) and so, apparently, is Jerry Coyne although he doesn't mention the Modern Synthesis in his book "Why Evolution Is true." Other evolutionary biologists take a slightly different position; for example, Brian Charlesworth says that the "core tenet" of the Modern Synthesis is that adaptive evolution is due to natural selection and that's still as true today as it was in the 1930s and 1940s (Charlesworth et al., 2017).

I side with those who say that the Modern Synthesis was an adaptationist view of evolutionary theory (i.e. Darwinism) and we should abandon that term and talk about modern evolutionary theory instead of a particular version promoted by the likes of Ernst Mayr. In that sense, I align with textbook authors such as Michael Lynch and Dan Gaur who stopped using the term "Modern Synthesis" many decades ago and I agree with Eugene Koonin who says,

In the post genomic era, all major tenets of the modern synthesis have been, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex version of the key aspects of evolution. So, not to mince words, the modern synthesis is gone. (Koonin, 2009).

This is a complex issue made even more complex by the fact that Neutral Theory and the role of random genetic drift are not well-understood by most biologists, even by evolutionary biologists who deal mostly with living species. I like the way Austin Hughes describes the problem while taking a swipe at one of Stephen Jay Gould's most viscious opponents.

Given the importance of his contribution, it is not an exaggeration to say that Kimura was the most important evolutionary biologist since Darwin. What is perhaps surprising in Kimura’s case, given the impact of his work on the biological sciences, is that its significance has so far been little appreciated by the general educated public or by philosophers and historians of ideas. To take one example, a recent book entitled Evolution: the History of an Idea (Larson 2004) includes not a single mention of Kimura. To my mind, this is rather like writing a history of physics without mentioning Einstein.

The philosopher Daniel Dennett, in his book "Darwin’s Dangerous Idea," proposes that Darwin’s key (and “dangerous”) insight was that evolution is an “algorithmic process." By “algorithmic,” one gathers that Dennett means essentially deterministic. But determinism was hardly a bold or “dangerous” idea in Darwin’s time, having been a familiar concept in Western thought since at least the Stoics. Rather, one might suggest that the truly new idea in evolutionary biology is that of Kimura (building on the work of Sewall Wright), which along with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Gödel’s proof of the incompleteness of mathematics, formed part of a Twentieth Century revolution in thought that for the first time revealed the universe as non-algorithmic.

I've posted a lot on the death of the Modern Synthesis and so has Arlin Stoltzfus—who is much, much more knowledgeagable on the topic. Here's a list of posts over the past 14 years.

• On the importance of random genetic drift in modern evolutionary theory
• New Scientist doesn't understand modern evolutionary theory

• Reactionary fringe meets mutation-biased adaptation. 7. Going forward
• Debating philosophers: The Modern Synthesis
• Learning about modern evolutionary theory: the drift-barrier hypothesis
• Don't call it "The Theory of Evolution"
• A "synthetic" view of the Modern Synthesis
• Constructive Neutral Evolution (CNE)
• Rethinking evolutionary theory

• Arlin Stoltzfus explains evolutionary theory

  To know what the Modern Synthesis means, you actually have to do a research project that takes years. That sucks. In an ideal world, what the "Modern Synthesis" means would be clearer. But it isn't. I could explain it in a few sentences, but you wouldn't believe me because the explanation has to come with a huge justification.

  The reason that so much justification is needed is that there are droves of scientists who-- for reasons that I can't fathom-- imagine they are doing the right thing by defending the idea that the Modern Synthesis covers whatever we think today, without bothering to consider that proposition skeptically, as a hypothesis. In fact, the mainstream of evolutionary thinking today includes views that were considered "non-Darwinian" and "anti-Darwinian" a century ago, such as the view that evolution depends frequently on new mutations, or the view that selection is not creative but merely sorts out pre-existing genetic varieties.


• Is the "Modern Synthesis" effectively dead?
• Die, selfish gene, die!
• Learning About Evo-Devo
• What Is Evolution?
• Gould on Darwinism and Nonadaptive Change
• A New View of Evolution
• The Mutationism Myth, VI: Back to the Future
• Stephen Jay Gould Challenged the Modern Synthesis

  The modern synthesis, as an exclusive proposition, has broken down on both of its fundamental claims: extrapolationism (gradual allelic substitution as a model for all evolutionary change) and nearly exclusive reliance on selection leading to adaptation (Gould, 1980).

• The Modern Synthesis

James A. Shapiro is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago (Chicago, USA). He made signficant contributions to our understanding if the function and structure of transposons but in later years he has become a vocal opponent of evolution culminating in his 2011 book Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. He is one of the founding members of The Third Way of Evolution.

I wrote a critical review of Evolution: A View from the 21st Century for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) Reports but the issue is no longer visible on the web. Shapiro didn't like my review so NCSE published his rebutal and that's also unavailable. You can see my response at: James Shapiro Responds to My Review of His Book.

Shapiro promotes a view that he calls "Natural Genetic Engineering"—a view that emphasizes the role of moblie genetic elements in reshaping and reorganizing complex genomes. There's nothing wrong with that unless you try to elevate it to a theory that overthrows the standard view of evolution, which he does. But the most annoying thing about his writing is his consistent erection of strawman aguments that he then shoots down as a way of promoting his bizarre theories. One of them concerns the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology and that's what I want to talk about today.

Here's what I wrote ten years ago when I reviewed his book.

Speaking of strawmen, Shapiro's description of the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology contains errors of fact as well as error of omission. These days, there seems to be a class of evolution critics who are determined to overthrow the Central Dogma as part of their crusade to revolutionize biology. Shapior falls into that group. It's not a group that you really want to be associated with if you value your intellectual reputation because its members almost always misrepresent the correct view of the Central Dogma described by Francis Crick in 1958 and 1970. The correct version of the Central Dogma is that once information is transferred from nucleic acid to protein it can't flow back to nucleic acid. In other words, translation is unidirectional. The Central Dogma has never been overthrown or serioulsy challenged. If critics get that wrong, how can you believe anything they say?

I know that Shapiro read this review because he published a rebuttal. Normally people learn from their mistakes and they take steps to fix them in future writings but this doesn't seem to be a characteristic of people like James Shapiro [James Shapiro Never Learns]. Let's look at his latest article to see if he understands the Central Dogma any better now that several poeple have pointed out where he gets it wrong. I'm referring to the article he wrote in Biosemiotics in praise of Denis Noble's attack of evolution (see: The illusions of Denis Noble).

Shapiro, J.A. (2021) Response to Denis Noble’s Article “The Illusions of the Modern Synthesis,” Biosemiotics. Biosemiotics:1-6. [doi: 10.1007/s12304-021-09409-z]

Abstract:The Modern Synthesis (MS) was based on Darwin’s gradualist view of evolution and early twentieth Century Mendelian and population genetics. Although early results in microbial and molecular genetics seemed to solidify MS views through the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology, accepting their basic concepts as permanent truths blinded MS proponents to the importance of incompatible discoveries in the second half of the 20th and early 21st Centuries. Discoveries based largely on the DNA record have provided a radically different view of genome complexity and biologically-mediated evolutionary change.

Oops! This doen't look promising. Looks like he's still going on about the Central Dogma in spite of the fact that his errors have been pointed out to him. Here's what he writes,

Crick's 1958 paper was the initial statement of what he called "The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology"—DNA directs the synthesis of more DNA as well as messenger RNA that encoded the proteins, which are the molecules that do the basic work to determine the properties of cells and organisms.

That's false and Shapiro should know it. You don't have to take my word for it, you can read the original paper yourself at: On protein synthesis. The DNA --> RNA --> protein scheme is called "The Sequence Hypothesis" and the "Central Dogma" is "... once information has passed to protein it can't get out again." In other words, "... the transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to protein may be possible but that transfer from protein to protein or from protein to nucleic acid is impossible."

I'm not just quibbling over a strictly semantic issue. This is really important because Shapiro and his allies are building an entire anti-evolution argument based largely on their interpretation of the Central Dogma. There's no excuse for getting it wrong, especially if you actually quote Crick's 1958 paper and you have been told in the past that you got it wrong. I just don't understand why honorable scientists would do this.

Here's the next few sentences in Shapiro's article.

Although (as Noble points out) Crick later had to revise his scheme to accommodate the discovery that RNA can encode DNA by the action of reverse transcriptase (Temin and Mizutani 1970; Crick 1970) ...

That's also a lie. The whole point of Crick's 1970 Nature paper was to point out that the discovery of reverse transcriptase had nothing to do with the Central Dogma. You can read his paper for yourself at: Central Dogma of Molecular Biology or you can read Mathew Cobb's excellent historical account at: 60 years ago, Francis Crick changed the logic of biology. Here's how Mathew Cobb explains it.

In 1970, following the discovery by Howard Temin and David Baltimore of reverse transcriptase, which enables information to flow in the direction RNA → DNA, Nature published an editorial entitled ‘Central dogma reversed.' Crick wrote a slightly tetchy response, repeating what he had actually stated in 1957, and rightly insisting that he had never argued that RNA → DNA was impossible.

So, not only did Shapiro get the Central Dogma wrong, he blatently lied about Crick's 1970 paper (and so did Denis Noble). What's going on here? Both of these men are capable of reading papers that they reference, aren't they?

We know what Shapiro and his ilk are really upset about because they describe in in their publications. Here's what Shapiro says.

Crick’s use of the term “dogma” was meant quite literally to enshrine this genocentric viewpoint as a fundamental and permanent truth. Evolutionary novelty arose randomly through unavoidable copying errors in DNA replication, leading to gradual cumulative changes in protein structure and function.

Several problems with the reductionist Central Dogma view of genomes as vehicles to reproduce collections of protein-coding genes as basic units of heredity were apparent early on. Among these were the cytogenetical knowledge that chromosomes contained other kinds of functional genomic elements, such as centromeres, telomeres, and nucleolar organizing regions.

What they're upset about is the belief that everything in evolution is due to changes in protein-coding genes. They think that Crick's Central Dogma means that the ONLY pathway of information flow is from DNA to protein. There may be some people who think that's true but to attribute it the Modern Synthesis and Crick is just ridiculous. There are no serious evolutionary biologists who believed that in the 1960s or 1970s or at any time since. It's a strawman.

You can see from the above quote that Shapiro is going to destroy that strawman by pointing out other functional regions of the genome like centromeres and telomeres but why is that relevant? We all knew about noncoding information back in the 1960s.

Shapiro and the other cult members are fighing against the idea that protein-coding genes are the only functional elements in the genome and that mutations in these genes and subsequent selection for favorable alleles is the only way that evolution occurs. They use various labels to identify this belief including the "Modern Synthesis," the "Central Dogma," and "gene-centric evolution." None of the these labels are appropriate and all of the cult members should know this. More importantly, no knowledgeable evolutionary biologists believe such nonsense so Denis Noble, James Shapiro, and all the other members of the cult are tilting at windmills.

Shapiro ends his article by listing four items that caused the "breakdown" of the Modern Synthesis.

1. "The discovery of mobile genetic "controlling elements" in maize plants by McClintock in the late 1940s and early 1950s."
2. "The study of how genome expression is regulated."
3. "The discovery of repetitive and largely non-coding DNA in the genomes of humans and other complex eukaryotes." According to Shapiro, this led Modern Synthesis theoreticians to label them as "junk DNA" but it turns out they are essential elements in evolution.¹
4. "Finally, molecular genomc analysis by the encyclopedia of DNA elements (ENCODE) consortium has documented that the vast majority of the supposed non-coding DNA is transcirbed to produce non-coding ncRNAs with a wide range of functional properties."

This is what we're up against when we try to educate students and practising scientists. I gotta tell you that there are some days when I feel like the task is hopeless and I'm just wasting my time.

Denis Noble was a Professor of Physiology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom until he retired. He had a distinguished career as a physiologist making significant contributions to our undestanding of the heart and its relationship to the whole organism.

In recent years, Noble has dabbled in philosophy and evolution. He has become a vocal opponent modern evolution (sensu Noble) and the way science is currently conducted. Some of his criticisms have made it onto two popular books: The Music of Life and Dance to the Tune of Life. He is one of the leading proponents of the "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" (EES) and he is one of the founders of The Third Way of Evolution, a wishy-washy and scientifically inaccurate way of attacking a strawman version of evolution and providing a safe haven for religious scientists.

I have read Denis Noble's books and essays, I have been at one of his anti-evolution lectures and talked to him briefly, and I have blogged about him in the past [Denis Noble writes about junk DNA] [Extending evolutionary theory? - Denis Noble] [Physiologists fall for the Third Way] [A physiologist thinks about evolution].

You would think that if science is working properly then people like Denis Noble would be ignored and they would fade into the woodwork of the Senior Common Room at some college in Oxford. Instead, he seems to have a surprising following and has found a venue for publishing his nonsence in a journal called Biosmiotics. Here's the "Aims and Scope" of the journal. It will give you an idea of what you can expect below.

Biosemiotics is dedicated to building a bridge between biology, philosophy, linguistics, and the communication sciences. Biosemiotic research is concerned with the study of signs and meaning in living organisms and systems. Its main challenge is to naturalize biological meaning and information by building on the belief that signs are fundamental, constitutive components of the living world. The journal is affiliated with the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS). Biosemiotics has triggered rethinking of fundamental assumptions in both biology and semiotics. In this view, biology should recognize the semiotic nature of life and reshape its theories and methodology accordingly while semiotics and the humanities should acknowledge the existence of signs beyond the human realm. Biosemiotics is at the cutting edge of research on the fundamentals of life, and particularly encourages methodology development and application of biosemiotic theory in empirical case studies. By challenging traditional assumptions on the nature of life and suggesting alternative perspectives, it opens up exciting new research paths.

Noble's latest attempt to discredit evolution was published last month. There's nothing new in that article but I think it's important to continue explaining why he is so wrong about everything. I realize that some may think I'm beating a dead horse but, in my opinion, we have to stand up for honesty and intergity in science or all is lost.

Noble, D. (2021) The illusions of the modern synthesis. Biosemiotics:1-20. [ doi: 10.1007/s12304-021-09405-3]

The Modern Synthesis has dominated biology for 80 years. It was formulated in 1942, a decade before the major achievements of molecular biology, including the Double Helix and the Central Dogma. When first formulated in the 1950s these discoveries and concepts seemed initially to completely justify the central genetic assumptions of the Modern Synthesis. The Double Helix provided the basis for highly accurate DNA replication, while the Central Dogma was viewed as supporting the Weismann Barrier, so excluding the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This article examines the language of the Modern Synthesis and reveals that it is based on four important misinterpretations of what molecular biology had shown, so forming the basis of the four Illusions: 1. Natural Selection; 2. The Weismann Barrier; 3. The Rejection of Darwin’s Gemmules; 4. The Central Dogma. A multi-level organisation view of biology avoids these illusions through the principle of biological relativity. Molecular biology does not therefore confirm the assumptions of the Modern Synthesis.

In order to understand Denis Noble you have to first understand his illusions. The most important one is his continuing confusion about modern evolutionary theory. Noble thinks that the "Modern Synthesis" of Julian Huxley and his friends represents the current thinking in evolution and he thinks that his colleague at Oxford, Richard Dawkins, embodies that view in The Selfish Gene. You can see that illusion in the first sentence of the abstract where he says, "The Modern Synthesis has dominated biology for 80 years."

Now, you could argue that there's a sense in which this could be true because most biologists still believe in some form of evolutionary theory that resembles the old-fashioned Modern Synthesis, but that's irrelevant. If you are going to oppose evolution then you should be directing your fire at the real target and not some strawman version that the experts have left behind.

Given that illusion, Denis Noble directs his attack at the evolutionary biologists of 70 years ago and develops four criticisms of that old-fashioned view. Ironically, he calls them "illusions." Let's look at each one.

Illusion 1. The Different Forms and Meanings of ‘Selection’

This section is nearly incomprehensible. Noble thinks that everthing in evolution is due to selection and he believes that biologists are attributing "agency" to selection when they say that natural selection drives evolution. He believes this is wrong because conscious organisms, like us, can drive evolution. Whatever. The truly modern view of evolution is that there are multiple mechanisms and much of the history of evolution involves contingency and much of current evolution is due to chance, not agency of any sort. Strike one.

Illusion 2. The Weismann Barrier

This section is a little more comprehensible than the first one but, ultimately, just as silly. Noble argues that the Weismann barrier is a foundational feature of the Modern Synthesis but it has been discredited by recent advances. The Weismann Barrier says that you can only inherit change through the germ line and not through changes in somatic cells. It's one of the arguments against Lamarckism and that's probably why Denis Noble is so upset about it.

It's true that the founders of the Modern Synthesis were opposed to Lamarckism but so are proponents of modern evolutionary theory. If Noble wants to incorporate Lamarckian inheritance into an extended view of evolution, as he does, then it's up to him and his allies to convince the rest of us that he has the evidence to to back up his claim. It's not an "illusion" to think that there's no evidence showing any significant effect of Lamarckian inheritance. It is, however, an "illusion" to believe in something without evidence. Strike two.

Illusion 3. The Debunking of Darwin’s Theory of Gemmules

Pay close attention everyone because I'm going to tell you something that's very shocking: Darwin's theory of gemmules hasn't panned out and noblody believes it! There, I've said it ... in print!

When you recover from the shock you'll realize that Noble's rambling on this point is really quite embarrassing. Strike three.

Illusion 4. The Illusion of the Central Dogma

I bet you know where this one is going and you would be correct. Here's what Noble thinks of the Cental Dogma.

The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology has a claim to be the greatest illusion ever created in biology. It is so important and, as its name suggests, central to neo-Darwinist thought, that we need to take great care in revealing what creates the illusion.

What's truly ironic about that opening line is that there's an element of truth in there. It's true that the vast majority of biologists misunderstand the Central Dogma so, in that sense, it IS a great delusion. But you know, don't you, that Denis Noble isn't talking about the real Central Dogma; he's talking about his delusionary view of the Central Dogma?

Surprisingly, Noble actually quotes the Central Dogma correctly when he refers to Crick's 1958 paper. He seems to undertand that what Crick is referring to is the fact that information can't flow from protein back to nucleic acid. But in the next paragraph Noble blows it by saying that Crick had to revise the Central Dogma in 1970 when reverse transcriptase was discovered. This is blatently false, as anyone who has read Crick's 1970 paper would know. Crick wrote that paper to emphasize that the discovery of reverse transcriptase has nothing to do with whether information can be transferred from proteins to nucleic acids [The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology].

Noble then publishes the figure on the right with the following caption.

Central Dogma after discovery of Reverse Transcription. DNA codes for RNA which then codes for proteins (blue arrows). RNA can be reverse transcribed into DNA (upward red arrow). This kind of diagram is often described as defining the information flows in biological systems. But it omits information flows that control gene expression, i.e. transcription factors, methylation and interactions with histones, the nuclear proteins around which DNA is wound. It also omits the use of the molecular mechanism of reverse transcription to reorganise the genome (natural genetic engineering). The circular arrows represent the fact that DNA can also be involved in cut-and-paste modifications of the genome without the involvement of RNA, and that a similar self-templating can occur in RNA.

Just about everyone who's still reading this post will be scratching their heads at this point wondering what the heck this has to do with whether information can flow from proteins back to nucleic acids. The answer is "nothing." What Denis Noble is arguing against is some imaginary view of the Central Dogma that forbids all other forms of information change in the genome, including transposon insertions. In that sense, he's allied with a large group of like-minded peole who think that the Central Dogma specified all possible examples of information flow by saying that it has to be DNA --> RNA --> protein and nothing else. Strike four. (This is a special rule of baseball where we allow an extra strike for beginners.)

We've been here before. Lot's and lots of real evolutionary biologists have criticized Denis Noble for his lack of knowledge and his unscientific stance on evolution. It hasn't made a difference so we need to keep doing it. It's difficult not to be very angry at people like Denis Noble. I am angry, and so is Jerry Coyne [Famous physiologist embarrasses himself by claiming that the modern theory of evolution is in tatters]. Here's what Jerry wrote eight years ago and it's just as true today as it was then, which shows us that kooks are not correctable.

None of the arguments that Noble makes are new: they’re virtual tropes among those people, like James Shapiro and Lynn Margulis, who embarked, at the end of their careers, on a misguided crusade to topple the modern theory of evolution.

However famous Noble may be in physiology, he’s a blundering tyro when it comes to evolutionary biology. He might try discussing his ideas with other evolutionists and listening to their responses. He obviously hasn’t done that, and yet travels the world trading on his expertise in physiology to show that the edifice of modern evolutionary biology is rotten. And he writes papers to that effect, including the dreadful piece referenced below.

But what’s really rotten is Noble’s knowledge of the field and his claim that virtually every assumption of neo-Darwinian evolution is wrong. In fact, his arguments are so rotten that they stink like old herring.

They’re not even wrong.

Noble's article spawned several others in the next issue of Biosemiotics

• Louise Westling (2012) A Humanist’s Response to Denis Noble’s “The Illusions of the Modern Synthesis”
• James A. Shapiro (2021) Response to Denis Noble’s Article “The Illusions of the Modern Synthesis,” Biosemiotics (I'll deal with this one in a separate post.)
• M. Polo Camacho (2021) Could the Greatest Illusion of the Modern Synthesis Be Practical?
• Lorenzo Magnani (2021) Semiotic Brains Build Cognitive Niches
• Alexei A. Sharov (2021) Towards a Biosemiotic Theory of Evolution
• Arran Gare (2021) Joining Forces Against Neo-Darwinism: Linking Organicism and Biosemiotics
• Eva Jablonka (2012)Signs of Consciousness?

These articles have one thing in common. They believe everythiing that Denis Noble said about the Modern Synthesis. That's pretty remarkable since everything that Noble said was either wrong, misleading, or irrelvant (and sometimes all three). It's unbelieveable that seven other authors didn't bother to read up on evolutionary theory and the earlier critcisms levelled against Denis Noble and his ilk.

This is not science; this is a cult and these crazy ideas are the Kool-Aid.