An Error-Filled TV Episode on the James Webb Telescope

 When I go to the series The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper on HBO Max, and look up some episodes on science topics, I get science journalism bungling right off the bat. In an episode entitled "The James Webb Telescope: Are We Alone?" (Season 2, Episode 15), Cooper says this early on: "The data and images from the Webb are helping some of our smartest scientific minds answer some of the most intriguing questions of our time: like where did we come from? Is time travel possible? And are we alone?" No, actually, the James Webb Telescope is not helping scientists answer any of those questions. The telescope is doing nothing to tell whether time travel is possible. The telescope has done nothing to detect life in space, so it is not answering the question of whether we are alone in the universe. And the telescope is doing nothing to clarify human origins. 

At the 2:17 mark we hear some scientist saying this about the James Webb Telescope: "Hopefully we'll be able to see a reflection of ourselves and to learn more about where we came from." That sounds pretty silly. You don't see anything whatsoever like "a reflection of ourselves" by peering into deep space. And there is no disagreement about where we came from, which is this planet.  The disagreement is about how we got here. 

At the 4:58 mark astronomer Dan Millisavljevic is asked why is it important to study the origin of stars, and he answers "We all want to know where we came from and how we got here on Earth." For real insight on that question, we should not be studying astronomy, but the topic of morphogenesis and human development. Where you came from is a speck-sized zygote existing inside your mother after your mother's egg cell was impregnated by a sperm from your father. How you got here was the nine-month process of morphogenesis and human development. That was a miracle of  organization light-years beyond any credible explanation of scientists, partially because every adult body is a wonder of engineering vastly more organized than any space telescope humans have ever built.  To help cover up the "big as the distance between the Sun and Alpha Centauri" shortfall in understanding such a matter, scientists told us the phony myth that there is a blueprint for making  a human being in each of our cells. That is not true, as many scientists have confessed. 

Scientists don't want you to focus on the question of morphogenesis, because it will help clarify how physical science utterly fails to explain the origin of any adult human body. So scientists like to convert the "how did you get here" question into some story involving supernova explosions. That is not actually any story of "how did you get here?" It is instead a shaky narrative trying to answer a much different question, the question of how did Earth's elements get here? I call this a shaky narrative because the extreme rarity of supernova explosions and the enormous distance between stars makes the narrative highly  questionable. As I explain in my post here, a rough calculation leads to the conclusion that less than two ten-thousandths of the galaxy should have been seeded with heavy elements from supernova explosions. 

At the 5;23 mark in the TV show scientist Ori Fox repeats one of the most misleading mantras of astronomers, Carl Sagan's enormously false claim that "we are all stardust." No, a human body is not dust. A human body is an information-rich state of vast hierarchical organization packed with systems very rich in mutually interdependent fine-tuned components, each requiring a special arrangement of very many parts. That is quite the opposite of the state of disorganization that is dust, which has no organization.  Astronomers mislead us very badly when they say "we are all stardust."  

Giving us an almost equally misleading statement, Millisavljevic says around the 5:47 mark, "It is because of these stellar explosions that we are here today."  A sensible thing for him to have said might have been, "Supernova explosions are one of very many prerequisites in nature for the existence of human beings." Astronomers believe that supernova explosions helped to create some of the heavier elements such as iron, and that such elements eventually winded up in clouds of gas and dust that formed into planet Earth. 

But as the infographic below illustrates, scientists think that elements as heavy as iron (with a symbol of Fe)  can arise from regular stellar nucleosynthesis, which does not require supernova explosions. And elements heavier than iron are probably not needed for the existence of organisms like human beings, although they are convenient for civilizations such as ours. Human bodies use copper, zinc, selenium, and iodine, all elements heavier than iron. But organisms like humans probably could have existed without such elements. So it is dubious  for Millisavljevic to have said, "It is because of these stellar explosions that we are here today."  We do not even know that the existence of organisms like humans required supernova explosions. And given the great rarity of supernova explosions, and the gigantic distances between stars, supernova explosions are a questionable explanation for the origin of Earth's heavy elements. 

At the 7:26 mark we hear an astronomer refer to the earliest stages of the universe's history and say "Webb will be able to access those earliest stages." This is not exactly true, because the James Webb Telescope is unable to access the first 380,000 years of the universe's history, the time before the Epoch of Recombination when the universe was 380,000 years old and the first atoms formed. And it will forever be impossible to create any telescope capable of accessing those first 380,000 years, because the density of matter and energy was so great that any rays or waves of light or any type of energy must have been hopelessly scattered so badly that observation of them will be forever impossible. 

The misstatement is one that has been constantly occurring with the James Webb telescope. Again and again astronomers said something like the telescope would be able to "look back to the beginning of Time," even though they knew that this was not the case, and that the telescope would not be able to see the first 380,000 years of the universe's history. 

At the 9:07 mark of the TV episode the journalist (Kristin Fisher) interviewing these scientists promises falsely that we will "meet a team of scientists close to finding life a billion years away." The promise is a false one. No one is close to finding life elsewhere else in our solar system. At the 9:37 mark some authority says that the wonderful thing about the Webb telescope is that it is "open to anyone all over the world." That is not true. There's merely some kind of program allowing scientists to request use of the James Webb telescope. 

Around the 14:41 mark we learn about how the photos released as images from the James Webb Telescope have been jazzed-up with various color "enhancements" to make them look more striking. We hear of black-and-white images which people like Judy Schmidt made into stunningly colorful images, by using Photoshop. Schmidt brags around the 15:31 mark that she can take images and "rotate them and then give it some color." Rather than anyone confessing about color fakery going on, we hear this  from an astronomer at the 15:48 mark:

"These images are representations of these energies that are coming in the infrared. So we assign each energy filter a color and we put them together to produce these beautiful images."

Gee, that sure sounds like color-faking to me. But I'm rather surprised that Kristin Fisher around the 16:02 mark does not talk like a typical fawning pushover science journalist, and asks this tough question:

 "What would you say to people who see these images and say these aren't real? These are fake. These are photoshopped." 

We get someone who answers most incorrectly, "Well, I mean, they have to be photoshopped, or you wouldn't see them." That's not true at all. People can see black and white images. 

Around the 18:38 mark we see an example of the astronomer Carl Sagan shoveling the BS he was so guilty of shoveling for decades. Sagan says this: 

 "People know that out there is a million other civilizations. They all look fabulously ugly and they're all a lot smarter than us."

No, people never knew any such thing. In this essay, Sagan referred to astronomers, and said, “When we do the arithmetic, the number that my colleagues and I come up with is around a million technical civilizations in our Galaxy alone.” The statement is nonsensical. First, it implies a consensus on the topic, when no such consensus ever existed, with estimates of the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy ranging from 0 to a billion. Second, there was never a sound basis for drawing such a conclusion. Suppose we calculate the odds based on the difficulties of a chance appearance of the most simple type of life (requiring cells, DNA, a genetic code, and very many types of proteins, which are each exceedingly unlikely to appear by chance), without assuming some special cosmic teleology that might improve the odds. Then the answer you get is that we should expect no other life form to have arisen anywhere else in the galaxy. That's not even considering the difficulties of intelligence appearing after life has appeared.

Around the 19:00 mark, NASA administrator Bill Nelson says he believes there is life in outer space. He is asked whether the Webb telescope will prove that there is life in space, and he says at the 19:32 mark, "At least it will get us closer to the answer." The James Webb telescope has been running now for about 4.5 years, and it has not got us any closer to answering whether there is life in space. It has not produced any evidence yet for the existence of life on other planets. 

At the 24;22 mark we have some person claiming the element phosphorus is "what makes life possible," which is a very misleading thing to say, given that the requirements for even the simplest one-celled life are very many, and mostly things gigantically more organized than mere phosphorus, such as many types of fine-tuned protein molecules that do not have any phosphorus. 

Around the 24:40 mark we hear of two scientists who are excited about getting a little observation time on the James Webb telescope, which will allow them to look at Saturn's moon Enceladus. The show tries to make it sound like some "they might find life" deal, but it's no such thing. There is no chance that life on Enceladus could be discovered with the James Webb telescope. 

At the 25:27 mark the show's narration gives us this bit of nonsense:

"So where is the finish line for finding life on Enceladus or anywhere else in the universe? It may be right here on Earth at the bottom of the ocean."

That sounds like someone saying you can prove there's life on Pluto by checking out the soil in Mexico. 

Around the 28:17 mark we have an astronomer describing images of supernova remnants from the James Webb telescope, saying, "We just were really surprised with these ring-like or bubble-like structure." How can that possibly be, given that for well over 50 years photos of such objects from regular Earth telescopes have shown exactly such "ring-like or bubble-like structure"? It sounds like someone saying, "I was really surprised that my photo of the clouds showed things white and fluffy-looking."

Next we see an astronomer getting all excited about a James Webb Telescope photo showing the supernova remnant called Cas A. We may wonder: why is he so excited? The image looks just like old images of that object, from decades ago. Around the 31:00 mark and the 32:00 mark an astronomer tries to make it sound like something has been learned from the Webb image of Cas A, but he fails. Everything he mentions was something already known before the Webb telescope was launched. The image shown at the 32:51 mark has a phony look to it, as it has lots of green, not actually corresponding to what you would see by looking at such an object from a spaceship near it. 

Asked at the 33:47 mark what he has learned about Cas A that he did not know before, we get a "sounds like nothing" answer from the astronomer, referring to "a new understanding of how this explosion produces and destroys dust." We already knew long ago that stellar explosions produce remnants that end up as interstellar dust. And we already knew before of how such dust production works. 

At the 39:36 mark we strangely have Ori Fox saying that the James Webb telescope gives him a sense of hope and optimism, because so many people worked together on the James Webb Telescope "to increase our knowledge and to make the planet a better place." That does not make sense. The James Webb telescope is not making the planet a better place. 

At around the 40:39 mark planetary scientist Geronimo Villanueva says he had "this philosophical moment" in which he was "in this telescope in the middle of the desert" in Chile. He says "you feel so insignificant because you understand that you are a speck of dust in this humongous universe." Once again, the nonsense of scientists deceiving us by comparing us to dust. Far from being a speck of dust, a human being physically is a work of enormously organized engineering vastly more impressive than any telescope humans have ever built. Humans know how to make big telescopes and big skyscrapers, but there is not a nation or corporation in the world that could build a living human body from its chemical raw materials. 

The James Webb telescope was designed partially to help find extraterrestrial life. But so far it has failed to do that. Scientists look all around for billions of light-years, and fail to see any sign of life. So why would such search failures cause any reasonable person to "feel so insignificant" or "understand that you are a speck of dust"?  To the contrary, search failures of this type should make us all the more prone to appreciate our own significance, and how our bodies are marvels of fine-tuned hierarchical organization vastly more impressive than anything we see with our telescopes. 

In Your Body Every Day There's a Million Miracles of Warp-Speed Purposeful Assembly

The infographic below gives you the "big picture" on the stupendous  hierarchical organization of the human body. 

 A recent article in MIT News is entitled "Biologist Joey Davis explores how cells build complex structures." We read of a biologist studying how ribosomes get assembled in a cell. At this point the average reader may remember seeing a cell diagram, and the reader may say to himself something like, "Oh, yeah, ribosomes, I remember that there are a few of those little balls in a cell." But the truth is that a typical human cell has millions of ribosomes, and ribosomes are fantastically complex components, like little machines. Ribosomes have the enormously complex function of assembling a huge variety of protein molecules, which are very complex components built from hundreds or thousands of amino acids. 

How did the average person get such a wrong idea about ribosomes, the idea that there were only a few of them in the cell, and that they are simple little balls? It is because our biology authorities have done such a poor job of educating us about the vast complexity of cells. Again and again, our biology authorities published misleading diagrams of cells, making it look like cells have only a few parts. 

The Google Gemini diagram below discusses some of the great complexities of the work done in the cell by ribosomes. 

The diagram has two shortfalls: (1) at the bottom it depicts a cell as enormously less complex than a cell is; (2) at the top it makes ribosomes look vastly less complex than they are.  The diagram below helps to show how complex is the structure of ribosomes, which require the special arrangement of very many types of protein molecules:

We see in the diagram above how vastly organized ribosomes are. For  a ribosome to be constructed, very many types of proteins must be assembled in just the right way, to produce the "protein factory" that is a ribosome. How does such an assembly occur? Scientists lack any explanation for this miracle of organization. The structure of ribosomes is not specified in DNA or any of its genes. DNA and its genes only contain low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up a particular protein. 

As enormously complex as ribosomes are, their complexity is dwarfed by the complexity of the structures that surround them, the structures called endoplasmic reticulum.  A document makes a bungling attempt to explain how the very complex structure of the endoplasmic reticulum arises. It is the vacuous non-explanation of "self organization." The emptiness of the concept is clear from a quote on page 13, where we read, "Self-organization is an interesting concept, but how organelles self-organize is unclear." The last resort of a scientist lacking an explanation for some very high state of organization is to make a vacuous appeal to "self-organization."

Every day that you live, fantastically complex components are magically being assembled in your body, components with a structure that is not specified by DNA or its genes. How this can happen is a mystery a hundred miles over the heads of scientists.  They know of no chemistry or physics factors that can explain such assembly. 

The wonders seem all the more staggering when we consider the speed at which these miracles of assembly occur. In the MIT article we get a mention of that. Below is a quote:

"During ribosome assembly, RNA molecules fold themselves into the correct shapes, creating docking sites for proteins to attach. Then, more RNA molecules come in and fold themselves into the structure.

'It’s a beautifully coupled process by which the cell folds hundreds of RNA helices and binds on the order of 50 proteins, and it does it in two minutes from start to finish. E. coli does this 100,000 times per hour, and it’s amazing how rapid and efficient the process is,'  Davis says."

How do ribosomes (such fantastically complex components) ever get built? The MIT article offers us no clue, except for two misleading sound bites. 

The first misleading sound bite comes in the subtitle of the article, which says this about Joey Davis:  "His studies have shed light on the assembly instructions that govern ribosomes, the critical protein-building machines of the cell." That makes it sound as if Davis had studied some assembly instructions for building ribosomes. But no such assembly instructions have ever been discovered, and no such assembly instructions are discussed in the MIT article. DNA and its genes have no assembly instructions for building ribosomes or any other type of organelle.

The second misleading sound bite comes when Davis makes a mention of evolution, without giving any specifics.  He says, "It appears that evolution has selected pathways that aren’t strictly ordered in the way we would think about an assembly line, where you always put in one component, then the next, and then the next. "  All uses of the phrase "evolution has selected" are misleading, as Darwinian evolution is a mindless process, and only conscious entities can select things. And claims about Darwinian evolution long ago do nothing to explain how ribosomes could get assembled right now in your body. If DNA contained some instructions for how to build ribosomes, then you might be able to make some farfetched appeal to lucky DNA mutations long ago that somehow gave us instructions in DNA for how to build ribosomes.  But DNA and its genes do not contain instructions for how to build ribosomes or any other type of organelle in a cell. 

Darwinism and claims about evolution are useless in explaining the wonders of biochemistry. That is why Darwin and evolution get virtually no mention in biochemistry textbooks. I documented this reality in my post "The Negligible Presence of Evolutionary Explanations in Six Biochemistry Textbooks," which documents the almost complete lack of mention of evolution, natural selection and Darwin in several long biochemistry textbooks. 

Somehow all these marvelously fine-tuned components bigger than protein molecules get assembled in our body,  in a way that scientists cannot credibly explain. No assembly instructions for such components and systems have ever been discovered in the body. These miracles of assembly are sometimes very fast and sometimes slow. The progression from a speck-sized zygote to a full human body over the nine months of pregnancy is a miracle of organization, but one that is relatively slow. Conversely, in your body there is constantly occurring very fast miracles of assembly, such as the "two minutes" marvel of assembly mentioned in the quote above. 

Some of these miracles of assembly are the construction of protein complexes.  Protein complexes are teams of different types of proteins. Proteins somehow assemble into very complex components called protein complexes, which are sometimes so complex they are commonly called "molecular machines" by scientists.  Below are some quotes in which scientists confess their lack of understanding of how protein complexes form:

• "The majority of cellular proteins function as subunits in larger protein complexes. However, very little is known about how protein complexes form in vivo." Duncan and Mata, "Widespread Cotranslational Formation of Protein Complexes," 2011.
• "While the occurrence of multiprotein assemblies is ubiquitous, the understanding of pathways that dictate the formation of quaternary structure remains enigmatic." -- Two scientists (link). 
• "A general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking." -- Two scientists, 2019 (link). 
• "Most proteins associate into multimeric complexes with specific architectures, which often have functional properties like cooperative ligand binding or allosteric regulation. No detailed knowledge is available about how any multimer and its functions arose during historical evolution." -- Ten scientists, 2020 (link). 
• "Protein assemblies are at the basis of numerous biological machines by performing actions that none of the individual proteins would be able to do. There are thousands, perhaps millions of different types and states of proteins in a living organism, and the number of possible interactions between them is enormous...The strong synergy within the protein complex makes it irreducible to an incremental process. They are rather to be acknowledged as fine-tuned initial conditions of the constituting protein sequences. These structures are biological examples of nano-engineering that surpass anything human engineers have created. Such systems pose a serious challenge to a Darwinian account of evolution, since irreducibly complex systems have no direct series of selectable intermediates, and in addition, as we saw in Section 4.1, each module (protein) is of low probability by itself." -- Steinar Thorvaldsen and Ola Hössjerm, "Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems,"  Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Some such as Hume trying to discredit the idea of miracles have defined a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. That is not a good definition of "miracle." Here is a good definition of "miracle": a miracle is something (not explained by known laws of physics or chemistry or common human agency) that occurs without visible or known agency, and which would be so improbable to occur by unguided chance that its probability of accidentally occurring is for all practical purposes zero. For example, if you were to take a pack of 52 playing cards, and throw such cards into the air, and all 52 cards became part of a triangular house of cards, that formation so perfect would be something so unlikely to occur that the probability of it occurring is for all practical purposes zero. 

Under this reasonable definition of "miracle," the assembly of every ribosome is a miracle, and the assembly of every other very complex and enormously organized organelle is a miracle, as is the assembly of every type of protein complex involving the "just right" arrangement of many types of proteins that assemble into "molecular machines" fine-tuned for some biochemical task.  There are no known laws of physics or chemistry that explain such wonders of organization.  The assembly of such components by a chance combinations of protein molecules has a probability that is negligible. Under the same definition of "miracle," the assembly of protein complexes as complex as the proteasome (described in this post's appendix) must also be called miracles. 

Every day within your body there are a million such miracles, very many of which involve a kind of warp-speed assembly in which parts magically assemble very, very quickly into functional components, in a way that is not predicted by anything we know about the laws of chemistry or physics, and that is not predicted by anything we know about what is in DNA and its genes.  The continual occurrence of such miracles is required for the continuation of your life.  The physical origin of your body (involving the nine-month progression from a speck-sized zygote to the vast organization of a full human body) was one miracle, but a slow, gradual miracle. The continuation of your body over the span of decades requires endless millions of other miracles,  in which purposeful cell components magically assemble in a way that is utterly beyond any explanation of physics, chemistry or genetics. 

I asked Google Gemini to produce an infographic visual explaining an example of a protein complex that assembles very quickly. It gave me the visual below. The nuclear pore complex (NPC) discussed is a very well-organized protein complex consisting of more than 30 types of proteins, arranged in just the right way to achieve a particular hard-to-achieve functional effect. Apparently this nuclear pore complex gets assembled within five minutes.   The bottom of the diagram has a few lines trying to explain the speed of assembly, but it is little more than the thinnest hand-waving. 

How there occurs such miracles of purposeful assembly at such stunning speeds is a mystery a thousand miles over the heads of scientists. When materialists claim that all of the processes of life "can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry," they are telling a lie as big as the sky. The continuation of your life requires the daily occurrence of these miracles of purposeful assembly. The progression from a speck-sized zygote to a vastly more organized full human body over nine months is a miracle of organization very far beyond the explanation of biologists. But it is not merely the origin of every human body that is beyond the explanation of materialists: it is also the continued living existence of an adult body that is a miracle beyond their explanation, because of the million microscopic miracles of warp-speed purposeful assembly that must occur every day for a human body to keep living.   

Postscript: Today while searching for some more quotes to add to my "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" post (the largest collection  anywhere of scientists confessing what they don't know), I found these two quotes. In one, scientists confess they don't understand how mammary glands arise in a developing body; and in the other scientists confess they don't understand how eyes arise in a developing body. 

• "A quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, we still lack basic knowledge regarding the formation and function of the organ that gives its name to all mammals, and which provides important health benefits for children and their breastfeeding parent through the creation and delivery of breast milk." -- 3 scientists (link). 
• "Despite increasing knowledge of pathways controlling the differentiation of many cell types in the eye, we still lack a basic understanding of the mechanisms controlling its morphogenesis." - 3 scientists (link).  

Also I read today a paper making it clear that contrary to boasts in the press, the AlphaFold2 software does not actually solve the protein folding problem, the problem of how protein molecules almost instantly acquire very complicated 3D shapes needed for their function. The year 2026 paper states, "The explanatory scientific understanding of the protein folding problem is thus

not directly advanced by AF2 [AlphaFold2]." Later the same paper says, "The protein folding problem remains unsolved." Instead, the AlphaFold2 software makes progress on a different problem, properly described as the protein structure prediction problem, which is the problem of predicting the 3D shape of a protein molecule from its amino acid sequence. Whenever one of the more complex types of protein molecules almost instantly takes the very complex 3D shape needed for its function, that is another example of a miracle of warp-speed purposeful assembly.  

Appendix A: The Proteasome Molecular Machine

Below is one example of the many types of protein complexes that seem to require miracles of assembly beyond the explanation of scientists. The wikipedia.org article on proteasomes tells us this:

"Proteasomes are protein complexes which degrade unneeded or damaged proteins by proteolysis, a chemical reaction that breaks peptide bonds...In structure, the proteasome is a cylindrical complex containing a 'core' of four stacked rings forming a central pore. Each ring is composed of seven individual proteins."

A paper on this topic is entitled "Gates, channels, and switches: elements of the proteasome machine." We read this:

"The proteasome has emerged as an intricate machine that has dynamic mechanisms to regulate the timing of its activity, its selection of substrates, and its processivity. The 19-subunit regulatory particle (RP) recognizes ubiquitinated proteins, removes ubiquitin, and injects the target protein into the proteolytic chamber of the core particle (CP) via a narrow channel."

Another paper is entitled "The 26S Proteasome: A Molecular Machine Designed for Controlled Proteolysis." A page on the site of the Theoretical and Computational Group tells us this:

"Recycling of unneeded protein molecules in cells is performed by a molecular machine called 26S proteasome (Figure 1), which cuts these proteins into smaller pieces for reuse as building blocks for new proteins. Proteins that need to be recycled are labeled by tags made of poly-ubiquitin protein chains. The 26S proteasome machine recognizes and binds to these tags, pulls the tagged protein close, then unwinds it, and finally cuts it into pieces. As the cell's recycling machinery, the 26S proteasome is vital for a variety of essential cellular processes, including protein quality control, cell cycle regulation, adaptive immune response, and apoptosis....The 26S proteasome recruits, unfolds, and degrades poly-ubiquitin tagged proteins through a complex interaction clockwork of over 60 known protein subunits that is driven through ATP hydrolysis."

A scientific paper tells us this:

"The 26S proteasome is a multisubunit complex that catalyzes the degradation of ubiquitinated proteins. The proteasome comprises 33 distinct subunits, all of which are essential for its function and structure." 

Below is a depiction of the human 26S proteasome structure, one that labels some of its protein parts. We see three different views of the same protein complex, with different protein parts labeled (the Greek letters used stand for alpha and beta parts mentioned in the table below):

Image credit: Xing Guo et. al, link.

Below are the number of amino acids involved in these parts, which I looked up using the UniProt online database (you can use the links to check the numbers I have given):

Protein	Number of amino acids	Comment
Proteasome subunit beta type-1	241	On Chromosome 6
Proteasome subunit beta type-2	201	On Chromosome 1
Proteasome subunit beta type-3	205	On Chromosome 17
Proteasome subunit beta type-4	264	On Chromosome 1
Proteasome subunit beta type-5	263	On Chromosome 14
Proteasome subunit beta type-6	239	On Chromosome 17
Proteasome subunit beta type-7	248	On Chromosome 20
Proteasome subunit alpha type-1	263	On Chromosome 11
Proteasome subunit alpha type-2	234	On Chromosome 7
Proteasome subunit alpha type-3	255	On Chromosome 14
Proteasome subunit alpha type-4	261	On Chromosome 15
Proteasome subunit alpha type-5	241	On Chromosome 1
Proteasome subunit alpha type-6	243	On Chromosome 14
Proteasome subunit alpha type-7	248	On Chromosome 20

The structure shown above clearly requires several thousands of amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way. The structure shown above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above (insufficient to specify the total structure) is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 60 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least eight of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 11, Chromosome 14, Chromosome 15, Chromosome 17, and Chromosome 20.

Appendix B: The Nuclear Pore Complex 

The nuclear pore complex or NPC is a large protein complex found in the "nuclear envelope" that is the outer boundary of the nucleus inside human cells.  A science research press release tells us this: 

"For structural biologists, the human NPC is a challenging yet exciting 3D puzzle, with around 30 different proteins each present in multiple copies. This amounts to around 1000 puzzle pieces, which form a round core with surrounding flexible parts."

The wikipedia.org article on this complex states that it consists of "456 individual protein molecules, and 34 distinct nucleoporin proteins." So the complex apparently requires 34 types of protein molecules. The article tells us that the "principal function of nuclear pore complexes is to facilitate selective membrane transportation of various molecules across the nuclear envelope." This mean that nuclear pore complexes have the extremely complex job of acting like gatekeepers, letting the right kind of molecules get into the nucleus of the cell, and keeping out the wrong type of molecules.  The article tells us that there are typically about 1000 of the nuclear pore complexes in every cell. We read of some impressive functionality of these nuclear pore complexes:

"Notably, the nuclear pore complex (NPC) can actively mediate up to 1000 translocations per complex per second. While smaller molecules can passively diffuse through the pores, larger molecules are often identified by specific signal sequences and are facilitated by nucleoporins to traverse the nuclear envelope."

The article (and also the Google Gemini infographic above) tell us that a nuclear pore complex has a molecular weight of about 110 megadaltons. A dalton is the mass equal to a twelfth of the mass of a carbon atom. A protein complex of 110 megadaltons would have the mass of about 9 million carbon atoms. Apparently the proteins that make up this complex are particularly complex proteins. Below are the exact numbers (we may assume that there are multiple instances of such proteins in a nuclear pore complex). 

Protein	Number of amino acids	Comment
NUP98_HUMAN	1817	On Chromosome 11
NU153_HUMAN	1475	On Chromosome 6
NUP93_HUMAN	819	On Chromosome 16
NU107_HUMAN	925	On Chromosome 12
NU205_HUMAN	2012	On Chromosome 7
NU160_HUMAN	1436	On Chromosome 11
NU214_HUMAN	2090	On Chromosome 9
NUP85_HUMAN	656	On Chromosome 17
NUP50_HUMAN	468	On Chromosome 22
NUP88_HUMAN	741	On Chromosome 17
NU133_HUMAN	1156	On Chromosome 1
NU155_HUMAN	1391	On Chromosome 5

The molecular machinery shown above clearly requires more than 12,000 amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way, which amounts to a special arrangement of more than 100,000  atoms. The structure of the molecular machinery described above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above  is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 34 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least nine of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 5, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 11, Chromosome 12, Chromosome 16, Chromosome 17 and Chromosome 22.

The nuclear pore complex (credit: Protein Data Bank, link)

Pathologizing Psychologists Fail to Explain Apparition Sightings

In my widely-read post "Pathologizing Scientists May Try to Stigmatize Witnesses of the Spooky," I described the bungling methods of a pair of scientists who have attempted to spread insinuations of psychological problems in people reporting that they saw spooky things. The latest example of bungling work of this type by a pathologizing scientist comes in the form of an article at "The Conversation" site, an article by psychologist Melissa Maffeo. The article is entitled " Is my brain wired to never see a ghost? A psychologist on three factors that make a paranormal experience more likely." We get more evidence of mudslinging weaponized psychology,  resembling the folly depicted below. 

In the article Maffeo shows no evidence of having studied apparition sightings. She cites not one single report of anyone who claimed to see an apparition. A look at her papers on Google Scholar shows no papers showing signs of scholarship of reports of apparition sightings. 

Maffeo offers three very lame explanations for why people may see apparitions. Her first attempt at an explanation (which she called "Haunted Factor #1") is the extremely lame explanation of "environmental stimuli." She starts out by referring to electromagnetic fields, which can be measured by a portable EMF detector sometimes marketed as a "ghost detector."  

EMF fields might explain why you might get a higher-than-expected reading on an EMF device. But EMF fields are worthless in explaining apparition sightings. I have published 85 posts describing apparition sightings, which you can read here (continue to press Older Posts at the bottom right to read them all). Not one of the many hundreds of apparition sightings I describe involved a case in which someone got a high EMF reading while reporting seeing an apparition about the same time. 

Maffeo describes a scientific study in which people were put in a special room, and bombarded with infrasound and complex electromagnetic fields (EMFs). The study's paper found that "although many participants reported anomalous sensations of various kinds, the number reported was unrelated to experimental condition."  The paper mentions subjects reporting "mildly anomalous sensations," but does not mention any subject reporting seeing an apparition. The paper says, "The results reported do not support the idea that complex EMFs play a role in inducing anomalous experience."  So Maffeo's "Haunted Factor #1" is a flop as an explanation for people seeing apparitions. 

Maffeo lists "Neurological Mixups" as "Haunted Factor #2." She refers to a study involving an epilepsy patient who had electrodes implanted in her brain. After an electrical current was sent to her brain, the female supposedly reported a "creepy feeling that somebody is close by."  The study fails to qualify as good evidence, because we do not have any transcripts of interviews in which this effect was reported. We merely have some short quotes from a subject, quotes which are not full sentences; and we do not know whether these quotes are in response to leading questions designed to elicit particular types of anomalous reports from the subject. In any case, what was reported was not an apparition sighting, and the case is of no value in explaining apparition sightings in people who do not have electrodes implanted in their brains, people with brains not being artificially stimulated by electricity sent into the brain from an outside source. 

Maffeo also refers to the 2002 paper "Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions." This 2002 paper has some quotes by a subject who the authors had brain-zapped with electricity, by inserting electrodes in her brain. The authors have attempted to portray this as evidence of an artificially induced out-of-body experience. But the only sentence that the paper quotes from the subject is one that does not indicate a full out-of-body experience. That sentence is this: "I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk." That sounds like some weird electricity-induced perception anomaly that is not properly described as an out-of-body experience. During an out-of-body experience a person will typically report leaving his body and seeing his entire body (not just the legs and lower trunk) from outside of the body. Eager to report some experimental induction of an out-of-body experience, our authors seem to have taken some account that does not match those of out-of-body experiences, and called that an out-of-body experience. The authors make this claim: "Two further stimulations induced the same sensation, which included an instantaneous feeling of 'lightness' and 'floating' about two metres above the bed, close to the ceiling." Since this is not an actual full-sentence quote from the subject, it has very little value as evidence. A second-hand account of a person's weird experience during brain zapping (by some other person who did not have that experience) is pretty worthless as evidence. What would we have read from a transcript of what the subject said, one including any questions the subject was asked? We have no idea. 

The paper did nothing to explain out-of-body experiences, since such things occur in people who do not have electrodes in their heads, and are not receiving inputs of electricity from an outside source. And the paper does nothing to explain apparition sightings. 

The final part of Maffeo's discussing of her "Haunted Factor #2" is a discussion of the rare phenomenon of sleep paralysis. This does nothing to explain 95% of apparition sightings and 95% of out-of-body experiences, which do not occur during any such sleep paralysis. 

Maffeo then offers a "Haunted Factor #3" of "Personality Traits." Maffeo now moves into pathologizing mode, playing the game of "stigmatize the witnesses." She claims, "There’s a growing body of research that suggests people with certain personality traits are more likely to believe in the paranormal." She links to a page that has the journal Nature as its source, but strangely has no listed author.  It's an "AI overview" page that reads like AI slop. 

Maffeo then refers to the very dubious socially-constructed concept of "schizotypy." She states this:

"There’s a growing body of research that suggests people with certain personality traits are more likely to believe in the paranormal. For instance, some people are hyperaware of unconscious perceptions and ideas, which then permeate their consciousness. Often, these traits are associated with magical thinking, distorted or unusual thoughts, disorganized behavior and, sometimes, trouble forming close relationships. Psychologists refer to this set of traits as schizotypy. They’re related to schizophrenia, although being high in schizotypy doesn’t mean you will be diagnosed with the disorder of schizophrenia. People with high levels of schizotypy are more likely to believe in the paranormal."

I quote in the appendix of this post how Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD discusses this concept of "schizotypy," and states that "This test for schizotypy is bogus." The term "schizotypy" seems to have been hoisted as a smear word to stigmatize and shame various nonconformists or believers in things that materialists rather that you not believe in. In the appendix of this post Gøtzsche describes a checklist for "schizotypy" characteristics, which he says is similar to one on a page of the Mayo Clinic website. He does not mention that one of the items on that Mayo Clinic checklist is "belief in special powers, such as mental telepathy." And looking at the paper here and the paper here offering a "scale" to assess "schizotypy," I see in both a checklist in which anyone reporting experience with ESP or a sixth sense would be judged to have a "symptom of schizotypy." So Matteo's claim that "people with high levels of schizotypy are more likely to believe in the paranormal" is pretty meaningless,  given that schizotypy has been defined so that anyone who believes in telepathy will score higher on a "schizotypy checklist." 

What is going on here is weaponized psychology involving circular reasoning.  A particular psychiatric-sounding term of abuse "schizotypy" was invented, without anyone giving a cohesive definition of such a term. Some alleged "characteristics of schizotypy" were arbitrarily listed, including "odd beliefs or magical thinking that’s inconsistent with cultural norms,"  "odd thinking and speech patterns," and "belief in special powers, such as mental telepathy."  Now anyone who fails to speak like a materialist would (and anyone who deeply studies the two hundred years of evidence for ESP) can then be conveniently shamed and stigmatized as being guilty of "schizotypy." This seems like very bad psychology bungling by pathologizing psychologists eager to attach badges of shame on sane well-functioning people. The nebulous term "schizotypy" is a not-really-scientific term of abuse similar to the equally nebulous and not-really-scientific term of abuse "transliminality" discussed here. 

Because the experimental evidence for ESP includes very well-replicated results such as the Ganzfeld experiments and extremely convincing results such as reported by professors Rhine and Riess, we should note that when psychologists include belief in telepathy as a symptom on a checklist of a socially constructed syndrome they call "schizotypy" (consisting of an arbitrary disjointed potpourri of unconnected "symptoms"), such psychologists have gone very far astray. It's kind of like someone inventing a checklist of 10 "symptoms" of something he decides to call "Wilkinson's Syndrome," and listing belief in the reality of social injustice as one of the symptoms. 

A recent paper ("Personality Facets Systematically Relate to Nonordinary Experiences") attempted to look for a relation between personality characteristics and reports of paranormal experiences. Contrary to Matteo's claim of a link between personality traits and reports of the paranormal, the paper failed to find any strong evidence of such a link. 

Maffeo seems to be engaging in the type of mudslinging that goes on when someone vaguely tries to tar someone by suggesting "associations" or "similarities" between that person and some other unsavory-seeming or despised type of person. She lists no real evidence of a correlation between this "schizotypy" and schizophrenia, no evidence that people who reported apparitions have this "schizotypy," and no evidence that people who see apparitions have schizophrenia.  The type of hallucinations typically occurring in schizophrenia are auditory hallucinations, in which people hear voices, rather than seeing human forms. 

Wrapping things up, Maffeo offers the lamest attempt to explain apparition sightings, the kind of explanation that would probably only be offered by someone who had failed to decently study reports of such sightings. She states this:

"Consider a person who believes in paranormal phenomena who experiences a natural change in electromagnetic fields or an episode of sleep paralysis. Those experiences induce unusual sensations that this person cannot explain. Searching for meaning in ambiguity, this person distorts their distinction between internally and externally generated sensations. They settle on the only explanation that makes sense to them – that this strange feeling they experienced was a ghost."

This fails miserably as an explanation for apparition sightings. There is zero evidence that people reporting apparition sightings ever experienced any such thing as "a natural change in electromagnetic fields"; and goofy, reckless experiments bombarding people with electromagnetic fields fail to ever produce apparition sightings. The vast majority of reports of apparition sightings (more than 95%) occur in people who are not experiencing any such thing as "sleep paralysis"; and probably 90% of them are reports from people who were not lying down when the reported event occurred. And very few of the rare people who report "sleep paralysis"  report seeing apparitions. Also, in reports of apparition sightings there is only rarely a claim of an unusual sensation before the apparition was seen. 

Maffeo's final reference to a paper is a reference to a paper in which some 22 people were taken to a building, with half of them being told that the location was haunted. The paper authors say "our model predicts that demand characteristics such as the mere suggestion that a location is haunted are also sufficient to induce poltergeist-like perceptions such as reports of a 'sensed presence,'  apparitions, or other anomalous sensations." But contrary to such a prediction, none of the 11 people told that the house was haunted reported seeing an apparition. So the paper gives no support for Matteo's insinuation that belief in the paranormal helps explain apparition sightings. 

Maffeo hasn't done anything at all to explain apparition sightings. All that she has given is another sad example of weaponized psychology in which psychologists seem to be eager to pathologize healthy witnesses of the spooky.

Maffeo ends her article with these "holier than thou" sentences trying to suggest her superiority to the witnesses she has tried to stigmatize:

"I’m pretty sure I don’t have personality traits like schizotypy. I don’t believe in the paranormal. And I don’t think I’ll ever see a ghost."

But this smug assertion of superiority may be inappropriate at the end of an article that fails so badly to explain what it is trying to explain. 

One of the reasons why apparition sightings cannot be explained by anything Maffeo mentions is that there are very many cases of people who saw an apparition of someone they did not know had died, with the witness soon learning the person did die at about the time the apparition was seen (discussed in the 18 posts here). Also not explained by anything Maffeo mentions is the fact that we often get reports of multiple witnesses seeing the same apparition. To read about such reports, see my posts below:

When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

When Apparitions Get Observed by Not Just One

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 Cases

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 More Cases
More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers
Many an Apparition Is Seen by More Than One
Still More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers

More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Witnesses

When Multiple Witnesses See the Same Apparition

Yet More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Witnesses

When Apparitions Get Multiple Witnesses

When Apparitions Are Seen by Multiple Witnesses

Many Said They Saw Nelly Butler's Apparition

While materialists would like to dismiss apparitions as a relic of the past, a look at the frequency of the term "ghost" using the Google Ngram viewer shows no sign that references to ghosts or apparitions are fading away. To the contrary, as shown below, the 21st century is showing a strong uptick in references to ghosts. 

Appendix: Gøtzsche on Schizotypy

In a page at the Mad in America website (which has many great articles exposing the overconfident errors of psychiatrists), Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD  refers to "schizotypy" as "a very vague and highly dubious concept." Below is a quote from an article at the Mad at America site, an article in which  Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD discusses this dubious socially constructed term "schizotypy", which does not correspond to any distinct thing in human minds. I'll quote almost all of what he says, although I suspend judgment about some of his complaints about psychiatrists. He states this:

Schizotypy is a very strange construct. I came across this diagnosis because a Danish filmmaker I worked with who made the film “Diagnosing Psychiatry,” got the diagnosis when she became stressed over a difficult divorce.

She jokes about this diagnosis in her film, and I looked it up on the Internet where there was a screening test for schizotypal personality disorder. The test reflects quite well how this construct is described on the Mayo Clinical website and by the DSM. There were nine questions and you should reply true or false, or yes or no, to each one.

1. “Incorrect interpretations of events, such as a feeling that something which is actually harmless or inoffensive has a direct personal meaning.” This is a very vague question, and many people interpret events incorrectly or take them personally.
2. “Odd beliefs or magical thinking that’s inconsistent with cultural norms.” That’s an interesting one. In Denmark, a young psychiatrist disagreed with the odd cultural norm at the department, which was to institute preventative treatment with neuroleptics for schizotypy. Is this psychiatrist then abnormal?
3. “Unusual perceptions, including illusions.” Most psychiatrists would need to say yes to this question. Just think about the illusion called the chemical imbalance.
4. “Odd thinking and speech patterns.” Surely, most psychiatrists display odd thinking, maintaining the lie about the chemical imbalance and many other lies, and also denying totally what other people see clearly, including their own patients, e.g. that psychiatric drugs do more harm than good.
5. “Suspicious or paranoid thoughts, such as the belief that someone’s out to get you.” If you are detained in a psychiatric department, such a reaction is normal and understandable. The staff surely is out to “get you,” namely to treat you forcefully with neuroleptics against your will. When psychiatric leaders use terms about their opponents such as “antipsychiatry” and “conspiracy,” can it then be considered a “yes” to item 5?
6. “Flat emotions, appearing aloof and isolated.” This is what psychiatric drugs do to people, so if they weren’t abnormal to begin with, the psychiatrists will ensure that they become abnormal.
7. “Odd, eccentric or peculiar behaviour or appearance.” One definition of madness is doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result, which is what psychiatrists do all the time. I would call that an odd, eccentric and peculiar behaviour.
8. “Lack of close friends or confidants other than relatives.” This is what psychiatric drugs do to people, particularly neuroleptics.... 
9. “Excessive social anxiety that doesn’t diminish with familiarity.” If you are detained in a psychiatric department, such a reaction is normal and understandable.

There was no explanation about the number of points needed for a diagnosis, so I tried the test a couple of times. If you have 5 out of 9 positive replies, you are told: “You are suffering from Schizotypal Personality Disorder … You must talk with a professional mental health expert.”

If you have 4 out of 9, the message is: “You have some symptoms and might be suffering from this disorder. You have got few points but according to DSM if you agree with three or four questions on this test, you might have developed this personality disorder. Please check with your mental expert.”

This test for schizotypy is bogus. Amusingly, many psychiatrists would be suspected of having this disorder because they test positive for items 3, 4 and 7, and they would then need to consult a “mental expert” who would likely also have 3 positives if tested. What is less amusing is that the test provides circular evidence for the patients who, even if they are normal, might test positive when they have been treated inhumanely by psychiatrists, including being forcefully treated with neuroleptics.