I love intelligent design. It is my favorite kind of science, namely, science by analogy. I tell you, I've gotten sick over the years learning molecular techniques, biochemistry, genetics, and all those other things that actually allow me to perform science. Now I find out I don't have learn anything new, apparently everything is already known! And, you don't need to collect data, all you have to do is develop an adequate analogy or stupid gimmick to make your point. The WSJ writes: (sorry nonsubscribers)

AMES, Iowa -- With a magician's flourish, Thomas Ingebritsen pulled six mousetraps from a shopping bag and handed them out to students in his "God and Science" seminar. At his instruction, they removed one component -- either the spring, hammer or holding bar -- from each mousetrap. They then tested the traps, which all failed to snap.

"Is the mousetrap irreducibly complex?" the Iowa State University molecular biologist asked the class.

"Yes, definitely," said Jason Mueller, a junior biochemistry major wearing a cross around his neck.

That's the answer Mr. Ingebritsen was looking for. He was using the mousetrap to support the antievolution doctrine known as intelligent design. Like a mousetrap, the associate professor suggested, living cells are "irreducibly complex" -- they can't fulfill their functions without all of their parts. Hence, they could not have evolved bit by bit through natural selection but must have been devised by a creator.


The only problem I've found with my new love of intelligent design are the hundreds of siRNA experiments I've performed, (siRNAs eliminate expression of a single gene they are targeted against) that don't all kill the cells. If only I didn't know for a fact from my own experiments that all cells aren't irreducibly complex, I could believe they are irreducibly complex and retire. Stupid siRNA.

That and all those knockout mice in the literature that have no phenotype or have non-lethal phenotype. Shit, and I forgot about all those c. elegans, and yeast studies that knockout genes and the damn things survive.

Stupid nature. Now I'll never know everything.