When Scientists Misrepresent Their Long Lab Labors as "Evolution"

 Let us examine the very big folly and misrepresentation that occurs when scientists engage in the most laborious and purposeful hi-tech fiddling in laboratories filled with gadgetry, and then try to pass off their long lab labors as examples of natural evolution. 

But first, as a springboard towards this discussion, I will mention a scientist who is simply making some provocative claims.  A recent article at www.yahoo.com is entitled "Scientist Says Human DNA Contains Clues of an Intelligent Creator." We read about assertions of Orson Wedgewood, an organic chemist with a PhD in organic medicinal chemistry. The article quotes a Daily Mail article which stated this:

"Dr Orson Wedgwood, a New Zealand-based healthcare researcher, argues that DNA could not have emerged randomly in puddles or undersea vents on early Earth, calling its spontaneous formation so improbable that it is effectively impossible.

Wedgwood believes the genetic system contains abstract instructions that nature has no known mechanism for creating unaided....

The statistical problem, he argued, concerns the extraordinary improbability of amino acids assembling into a functional protein without direction.

His conceptual objection goes further, as modern cells depend on DNA to provide instructions for proteins, while proteins help copy and translate those instructions. 

Wedgwood questioned how that interdependent arrangement could have arisen without intelligence."

The genetic code is the system within DNA by which particular triple combinations of nucleotides represent particular amino acids.  Speaking of that code, Wedgewood says, "Every other code is a result directly of intelligence, and that sort of speaks to the evidence of perhaps an intelligent originator." The visual below shows the Morse code on the left and the genetic code on the right. Both are schemes of representation under which a series of things are symbolically represented by particular combinations of symbolic tokens. During the age when telegraphs were the main technology for long-distance communication, the Morse Code was used to transmit written information over telegraph wires. When messages were transmitted using the Morse Code, an operator would use short presses on a button for one of the dot shapes shown below, and the operator would use longer presses on a button for one of the dash shapes shown below. The complexity of the genetic code used by all organisms is roughly equal to the complexity of the Morse Code. 

The Morse Code and the Genetic Code

The Daily Mail article had tried to offer a bit of "the other side" balance by stating, "A 2024 paper from Gerald Joyce's laboratory, titled RNA-Catalyzed Evolution of Catalytic RNA, showed that an RNA enzyme could copy functional RNA in a way that might enable evolution at the molecular scale." The same paper is referred to in the Yahoo article. That article first says, "RNA World research offers experimental footholds on the very steps Wedgwood calls impossible." Then it says this:

 "Researchers at the Salk Institute are not waiting for the philosophy to settle. In a 2024 paper published in PNAS, Gerald Joyce, Papastavrou, and Horning reported an RNA enzyme capable of copying functional RNA strands while allowing new molecular variants to emerge — evolution happening entirely within an RNA system."

But the claims refer to work that is not experimental in the sense of simulating early Earth conditions. And the work was not any demonstration of what can happen by evolution or by unguided natural chemical events. The work was instead long purposeful lab labors by scientists using all of the conveniences available to today's chemists -- quite the opposite of natural evolution, and quite the opposite of anything occurring by natural chemistry. 

Perhaps we can absolve the writers of the Daily Mail article and the Yahoo article, because they are merely repeating a very bad misrepresentation that glaringly occurred in the paper they are referring to. That paper is the paper "RNA-catalyzed evolution of catalytic RNA." The paper started out in its first line by misrepresenting things badly by claiming, "An RNA enzyme with RNA polymerase activity was used to replicate and evolve an RNA enzyme with RNA-cleavage activity." No natural evolution was occurring. The "evolution" described was a series of changes produced by a long series of purposeful interventions made by scientists fiddling around in a modern hi-tech lab. Calling such long lab labors "evolution" is a grotesque misrepresentation. 

The text below (from the "Methods" section of the paper) shows how the so-called "evolution" required the longest and most intricate series of purposeful lab labors by scientists or their helpers, with state-of-the-art hi-tech equipment being used throughout the process:

"Synthetic oligonucleotides were either purchased from IDT or prepared by solid-phase synthesis using an Expedite 8909 DNA/RNA synthesizer, with reagents and phosphoramidites from either Glen Research or ChemGenes. All other RNAs, including RNA templates and polymerase ribozymes, were prepared by in vitro transcription (SI Appendix, Methods) and purified by denaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). Assays of polymerase or hammerhead ribozyme activity used fluorescently labeled RNA primers or substrates, respectively. The reaction products were separated by PAGE, imaged using an Amersham Typhoon RGB laser scanner, quantified using ImageQuant TL software, and plotted using GraphPad Prism. Hot Start Taq, OneTaq, Q5 high-fidelity DNA polymerase, T4 RNA ligase, T4 RNA ligase 2, K227Q T4 RNA ligase 2, and Universal miRNA Cloning Linker were from New England Biolabs. SuperScript IV reverse transcriptase, Turbo DNase, MyOne C1 streptavidin magnetic beads, and Pierce high-capacity streptavidin agarose beads were from Thermo Fisher Scientific. Nucleoside 5′-triphosphates were from Chem-Impex International, pCp-biotin, γ-(2-azidoethyl)-ATP, and sulfo-cyanine5-azide were from Jena Bioscience, and all other chemical reagents were from Sigma-Aldrich....

Beginning with a population of polymerase ribozymes obtained after 52 rounds of directed evolution (17), error-prone PCR was performed (31) and a new 5′-terminal region was added during PCR using primer Fwd1, which contained an AvaII restriction site. In vitro transcription of polymerase-encoding DNA was carried out in the presence of γ-(2-azidoethyl)-ATP, which enabled attachment via click chemistry (SI Appendix, Methods) of a 5′-hexynylated RNA primer (Primer1). Following PAGE purification, 50 nM polymerase-primer conjugates were mixed with 100 nM 3′-biotinylated RNA template (Tem2) and 75 nM cofactor oligodeoxynucleotide (Tem4), which were annealed by heating at 80 °C for 30 s, then cooling to 17 °C. The cofactor oligo, which binds to the new 5′ end of the polymerase, was found to increase polymerase activity and was included in all polymerase-catalyzed reactions.

The annealed materials were added to a reaction mixture containing 4 mM of each NTP, various concentrations of MgCl2, 50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.3), and 0.05% Tween-20, which were incubated at 25 °C for various times. The reaction was quenched by adding an equal volume of 250 mM EDTA, 500 mM NaCl, 5 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0), and 0.025% Tween-20, then mixed with 5 µg streptavidin magnetic beads per pmol of biotinylated template and incubated with agitation at 23 °C for 1 h. The beads had been pre-blocked by incubating with 1 mg/mL tRNA. The beads were washed twice with urea buffer [8 M urea, 1 mM EDTA, and 10 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0)], and the polymerase-primer conjugates were eluted from the RNA template in NaOH buffer (25 mM NaOH, 1 mM EDTA, and 0.05% Tween-20), then neutralized in 100 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), ethanol precipitated, and the full-length products were purified by PAGE.

The purified products were captured on magnetic beads that had been derivatized with DNA oligo Rev2, which is complementary to the 3′ end of the polymerase (SI Appendix, Methods). The bead-bound polymerase was reverse transcribed in situ. Then in a concerted reaction using both AvaII restriction enzyme and T4 DNA ligase, the 5′ substrate for the class I ligase (S1) was installed at the 3′ end of the polymerase cDNA. The 3′ substrate (S2), which was 3′-biotinylated, was added to the solution and the bead-bound ligase ribozymes were challenged to join the two substrates in the presence of 60 mM MgCl2, 200 mM KCl, 0.6 mM EDTA, and 50 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.3) at 25 °C in 30 min.

The ligated products and corresponding polymerase cDNAs were cleaved off the beads using EcoRV (SI Appendix, Methods). The released molecules were captured on streptavidin magnetic beads, washed three times with NaOH buffer and twice with urea buffer, eluted in formamide buffer [95% formamide, 100 nM EDTA, and 1 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0)] by heating at 95 °C for 5 min, then ethanol precipitated. The cDNAs were reverse transcribed using primer Fwd2, which is specific for substrate S2, then PCR amplified using primers Rev1 and Fwd3, the latter of which is specific for the ligation junction between S1 and S2. Nested PCR with primers Fwd4 and Rev1 provided materials to begin the next round of evolution. New mutations were introduced by error-prone PCR (31) after rounds 53 through 58, 60, 61, 63, and 67 through 70."

Notice the use of the passive voice throughout this passage. The use of the passive voice helps achieve a covering-up the manual purposeful interventions that are occurring everywhere throughout these long lab labors. So, for example, we have a line saying "the beads were washed twice with urea buffer [8 M urea, 1 mM EDTA, and 10 mM Tris-HCl (pH 8.0)], and the polymerase-primer conjugates were eluted from the RNA template" instead of a line saying something like this: "Scientist John Smith washed the bead with urea buffer and he then eluted  the polymerase-primer conjugates from the RNA template, because this was part of his design plan to achieve the desired results."

Efforts such as those described in this paper do not do anything at all to rebut the weighty assertions of Orson Wedgwood.  Long lab labors by scientists purposefully trying to achieve some end result by using the finest gizmos and hi-tech gadgets of modern chemists do not do anything to show what unguided natural evolution or unguided chemical combinations might have produced eons ago.  

Wedgwood's insight about the genetic code stands unscathed. Human beings have never witnessed any such thing as the natural and unguided origination of some novel system of representation, something as complex as the Morse Code or the genetic code. It seems  valid to argue that a complex new system of representation can only arise though the work of one or more intelligent agents, never through unguided natural processes. 

Newspaper Accounts of Various Types of Paranormal Phenomena

Below is a 1924 newspaper account of clairvoyance:

You can read the account here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026749/1924-10-08/ed-1/?sp=14&&r=0.387,0.578,0.468,0.224,0

Below is a 1914 newspaper account of a miraculous healing:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88078751/1914-04-21/ed-1/seq-3/

In the newspaper article here, we read of strange powers of Mrs. C. B. Jamay:

"Mrs. Jamay astonishes those about her by suddenly stating: some fact concerning their, health or their work which was known only to themselves. She is often consulted by physicians and surgeons, authorities in their professions, and gives a diagnosis with astonishing accuracy. Many remarkable cures are accredited to her, although she frankly disclaims any knowledge of medicine or surgery. She has several times given advice to inventors which is said to have enabled them to perfect mechanical devices, although she knows little of mechanics."

Later we read this:

"When a patient is brought before her Mrs. Jamay’s method is entirely different. While under the influence of this strange power she slowly passes her hand close to the patient’s body, but  without touching. When her hand is opposite the part affected her arm is suddenly thrown back, often with such force as to be painful. What is called the power of divination then visits Mrs. Jamay and her diagnosis is often amazingly accurate.

One of the leading physicians of New York city once brought his wife to Mrs. Jamay, who proceeded to pass her hands over the afflicted woman. Mrs. Jamay found nothing wrong for some time,  when her hand was suddenly thrown back and she announced that an organ of the patient’s body had been removed and that-another organ was affected in a certain manner. The physician-husband of the patient confirmed Mrs. Jamay’s statement and stated that X-ray photo graphs proved every detail of-the diagnosis."

Later we read of Mrs. Jamay being tested for clairvoyance, with her passing the tests very well:

"Many of the tests made by psychologists in the attempt to analyze Mrs. Jamay’s mysterious power were highly technical. .The investigations were made with every possible attention to detail. Several professors were usually present in the laboratory with their wives. One held a stop-watch, another noted every detail in short hand, while several trained observers watched the results... One of the most striking of these tests consisted in throwing pictures from a stereopticon on Mrs. Jamay’s bared breast. Mrs. Jamay, although completely blindfolded, was able to state the nature of the pictures five out of six times with absolute accuracy and without a second’s hesitation."

We then read this anecdotal account of Mrs. Jamay's clairvoyance:

"This power of second sight, or whatever term may be used to describe it, has proved marvellously successful in locating several people who have been lost. One of these cases was that of a son who quarreled with his father and ran away. The father made every effort to discover his son, but without success. Mrs. Jamay happened to hear of the case, and was able to announce that the young man was in a town in Canada and lived near an important railroad centre. She announced that it was unnecessary to look further since the son would write to his father on a certain date which was then near. The letter was received on the exact date as foretold."

Below is a very weird newspaper account of it raining for hours only at the spot of two poplar tress, even though the sky above was clear. 

The event may have a supernatural manifestation with a symbolic meaning. The word "poplar" begins with the syllable "pop," which in English is a word meaning "father." The manifestation may have come from the spirit of a dead father. Or the father might be a divine Father of us all. 

I myself have seen some dramatic types of paranormal-seeming phenomena which seemed to have a recurring "Pa" motif. Such phenomena may involve panels (as discussed here and here) or both a panel and pasta (as discussed here). 

There are many reports of deathbed visions, discussed in my series of posts here. But the report below is the only one I have read of a deathbed manifestation consisting of an inexplicable artwork appearing on the deathbed pillow of someone who died. The artwork reportedly depicted angels and clouds. 

You can read the account here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn92053943/1884-09-08/ed-1/?sp=2&&r=0.32,1.089,0.488,0.233,0

In the newspaper account below, a  woman hears her mother's voice, at the same time her mother suffered a stroke far away.

The 1995 newspaper account below (discussing the success of "psychic spies") was co-written by Jack Anderson, who in his day was one of America's most respected newspaper columnists:

The newspaper account below tells of a healing of a sick daughter that seemed to come from an apparition, the apparition of the daughter's deceased mother:

You can read the account below:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn91064011/1910-04-14/ed-1/?sp=9&&r=-0.902,0.413,2.804,1.341,0

For the benefit of readers reading in a foreign language, here is some of the text of the 1910 article:

"DEAD MOTHER’S SPIRIT
VISITS SICK DAUGHTER

Watchers Who See Apparition
Say Girl Immediately Began
to Recover.

WILMINGTON, Del., April 14.—What
they believe was a supernatural manifestation in the room of their daughter, Maude, who has been critically ill for
several days, has profoundly affected
Mr. and Mrs. William Robinson, of
Eighth and Buttonwood streets.
The manifestation was a shadowy
form that looked like an angel with out
stretched wings upon the wall directly
over the head of the child. The parents
of the girl have been unable to find a natural explanation for the appearance  of the figure, which they watched for 
some time during the early hours."

This is another case of an apparition seen by multiple witnesses. For many other cases, see my posts below:

When Multiple Witnesses See the Same Apparition

When Two or More See the Same Apparition

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

When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

Yet More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Witnesses

When Apparitions Get Multiple Witnesses

Many Said They Saw Nelly Butler's Apparition

A Physicist's Intellectually Empty Explanation of Why He Is an Atheist

For ages humans have looked up at the stars, and have got a kind of feeling that they were somehow important, for some reason. Speaking rather metaphorically, we can say that the stars do tell us something very important, but too few scientists are listening to what the stars are saying.  (At the end of this post, I'll clarify what I mean by that.) 

Liller 1 star cluster (credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Ferraro)

In a recent interview, physicist Carlo Rovelli says one of the silliest things I have ever heard someone say. He says, "There's no fundamental difference between natural objects and mental objects, between culture and nature, between living beings and dead beings, between men and women -- this is the equality of all things." Rovelli has written a book pitching this idea, one entitled The Equality of All Things.

On page 228 of his book "There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness," Carlo Rovelli has a short essay entitled "Why I Am an Atheist." It's an essay remarkable for its extremely vacuous content. Rovelli fails to give any reason that has any intellectual weight. 

Let's discuss how you could state bad reasons and good reasons for being a theist or being an atheist. By "bad reasons" I mean reasons that are relatively unpersuasive or that have little intellectual weight. By "good reasons" I mean reasons that are relatively persuasive or that have relatively high intellectual weight.  Let's start with bad reasons you could state for being a theist. A bad reason might be something like the reason that your friends are theists, or that your parents told you to be a theist, or that you enjoy the music and the architectural grandeur of the church you go to. Another bad reason (from an intellectual or philosophical standpoint) you might give for being a theist is that you were emotionally moved by reading some text long ago that some people claim was inspired by God. But if you had some convincing argument that such a text or scripture was inspired by God, that might be a better argument. 

It is easy to think of some good reasons that a person could give for being a theist. For example, a person might argue that the sudden unexplained origin of the universe suggests the existence of a deity that caused such an event. Or a person might argue that the enormous hierarchical organization, fine-tuned functional complexity, enormously high information richness and component interdependence within living organisms such as humans could only have arisen if there were a supernatural designer helping to bring about the appearance of such organisms so rich in complex systems made of complex systems made of complex systems made of complex systems.  Or a person might argue that the enormous amount of precise fine-tuning in the universe's fundamental constants and laws argue strongly that we live in a universe that must have been fine-tuned by a supernatural designer. Or a person could argue that the wonders of the human mind and human memory are things almost entirely beyond any explanation involving an appeal to brains and their neurons, dendrites and synapses. Endless facts of neuroscience and endless neuroscience case histories and medical case histories could be brought up to support such an argument. The argument would be that since the human mind and its powers absolutely cannot be explained by anything we know about the human brain, it must therefore be that every human is a soul that must originate from a divine source. 

Making equally weighty reasoning, a person could argue that we absolutely cannot explain the natural physical origin of any adult human being, because of the failure of physical science to explain the progression from a speck-sized zygote (containing no specification of how to build a human body or any of its cells) to the vast state of hierarchical organization that is the full human body. This argument could be powerfully combined with the previous argument.  The combined argument would be that we do not have any credible natural explanation for how either the mind or the body of any adult human arises, and that therefore the very existence of adult humans with fantastically organized bodies and enormous depths of mental powers requires something like transcendent causal agency. 

What kind of arguments might theoretically qualify as relatively weighty arguments for atheism? You might give some argument trying to show that biologists have done a great job of explaining all the wonders of the human mind and the human body, and the wonders of the biosphere, and therefore there is no need to postulate something supernatural to explain the origin of such things. You might also give some argument that there is a natural reason why the universe might have originated in an event like the Big Bang, without any purposeful agency being involved in such an event. You might also try to give some type of speculative argument trying to show that it is not so improbable that there could have accidentally existed a universe as fine-tuned for the existence of life as our universe. Making such arguments in any compelling way and honest way would be very difficult. 

Does Rovelli give anything like such arguments in his "Why I Am an Atheist" essay? He does not. He acts just as if no such arguments can be given. 

He starts out his essay with the weak reason that he does not like people who are virtuous because they fear post-mortal punishment. We have this laughable "false dilemma" piece of reasoning: 

"I don't like those who devote themselves to others and to justice, thinking that in this way they will please God. I like those who instead devote themselves to others because they feel love and compassion." 

This is an example of the fallacy of a false dilemma. You can do good for both of the reasons stated. And the line of reasoning is fallacious, because what type of people a person likes or dislikes has nothing to do with whether he should believe in a God. Humans make all kinds of mistakes, and have all kinds of faults. If it were true that those who believe in God tend to be unlikable people, that would not be any good reason for disbelieving in God, if there were adequate reasons for holding such a belief. Similarly if most of those who believe in UFOs are unlikable, that would be no reason for disbelieving in UFOs. 

Rovelli's next paragraph is equally vacuous. He states this:

"I've never liked feeling in communion with a group of people standing in silence inside a church listening to a service. I like to feel in communion with a group of friends, talking with them, looking into their eyes and their smiles."

This is pretty much the worst reason ever for being an atheist. It's another false dilemma. Being a theist does not stop you from feeling "in communion with a group of friends, talking with them, looking into their eyes and their smiles." And it makes no sense to bring up what you enjoy when you are explaining why you are a theist or an atheist. I may note that the silence of students in a lecture hall listening to an atheist professor such as Rovelli is very similar to the silence of church attendees during a church service. 

The next paragraph is equally ridiculous from the standpoint of nonbelief justification. It features only more irrelevant "what I like" talk by Rovelli, such as him saying "I don't like shutting myself away in silence to pray to God." Prayer is not a requirement for belief in God, and what you like has no weight when you are trying to justify whether you believe or disbelieve in God. 

The next paragraph is equally ridiculous from the standpoint of nonbelief justification. It consists only of Rovelli maintaining that theists are dogmatic because they claim that God created the universe. A contrast is drawn between such claimed dogmatism and an "I don't really know" attitude. The line of reasoning has no weight. While a belief in organized religions such as Christianity and Islam typically involves a great deal of dogmatism, theism by itself does not require any great dogmatism. And atheists like Rovelli tend to be just as dogmatic as anyone claiming that God created the universe. Atheists such as Rovelli dogmatically assert all kinds of unproven and extremely dubious claims, such as the groundless claim that Darwin showed that all species have a common ancestor (a claim Rovelli makes in his chapter on Darwin), and the claim that brains produce minds and store memories (a claim inconsistent with a host of observations, as discussed in the posts of my site here). So it is not actually true that atheists are less dogmatic, as Rovelli tries to suggest. 

The second-to-last paragraph is more "what kind of people I like" reasoning that is featherweight from an intellectual standpoint. It has absolutely zero weight from the standpoint of justifying a philosophical position. For example, Rovelli say he does not like people who say that they know what is good and what is evil. 

We then have the grand climax of Rovelli's "Why I Am an Atheist" essay. It starts out in the least convincing way imaginable, by saying this:

"I like talking with friends, trying to help them when they are in trouble. I like talking to plants, and giving them water to drink when they need it. I like being in love. I like gazing in silence at the sky. I like stars. I have an infinite liking for stars." 

What on Earth does that have to do with whether we should believe or disbelieve in God? 

After gushing passionately that he has "an infinite liking for stars," Rovelli tells us more about how he does not like theists, speaking as if he strongly dislikes people who "seek refuge in the arms of religion when they feel lost, when they are suffering." He ends his "Why I Am an Atheist" essay with this sentence that sums up his whole essay: "And since I want to be like those I like and admire, and not like those I don't like and am not impressed by, I do not believe in God."

Adoring all the stars while hating many people?

I have never read an attempted justification for atheism that sounds as vacuous as this one. There is zero intellectual weight and zero argumentative force in anything Rovelli has said in this essay. Rovelli's essay sounds very much like something that a thirteen-year-old might write, but only if the thirteen-year-old was a clumsy reasoner.

Rovelli should do more studying of biology, which might cause him to stop making extremely misleading claims such as the claim that we are made of stardust. Physically humans are made of enormously well-arranged organ systems which are made of gigantically organized organs which are made of vastly organized cells which are made of extremely organized organelles which are made of proteins and protein complexes so well-organized (and with so many well-arranged parts) that they are often called molecular machines, even by materialist scientists. Physical organization so fine-tuned and hierarchical (and with so very many interdependent very complex components) is the opposite of dust (something utterly unorganized), and also something that would be fantastically improbable to ever arise in the godless universe Rovelli believes in. 

I suspect that Rovelli has spent too much time gazing adoringly at the stars, and not enough time studying how stars like the sun require the most precise fine-tuning of physical laws and fundamental constants for them to exist, fine-tuning that would be enormously improbable in the godless universe he believes in. Studying that topic would have been easy for a high-IQ physicist such as Rovelli. Below are some relevant quotes in which scientists are talking about stars and how they require very precise fine-tuning:

• "We conclude that a change of more than 0.5 % in the strength of the strong interaction or more than 4 % change in the strength of the Coulomb force would destroy either nearly all C [carbon] or all O [oxygen] in every star. This implies that irrespective of stellar evolution the contribution of each star to the abundance of C or O in the ISM would be negligible. Therefore, for the above cases the creation of carbon-based life in our universe would be strongly disfavoured." -- Oberhummer, Csot, and Schlattl, "Stellar Production Rates of Carbon and Its Abundance in the Universe."
• "From 1953 onward, Willy Fowler and I have always been intrigued by the remarkable relation of the 7.65 Mev energy level in the nucleus of ¹²C [Carbon 12 isotope] to the 7.12 Mev level in ¹⁶O [Oxygen 16 isotope]. If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two levels you have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just where these levels are actually found to be. Another put-up job? Following the above argument, I am inclined to think so.  A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature."  -- Astronomer Fred Hoyle, "The Universe -- Past and Present Reflections" (link). 
• "Fred Hoyle first pointed out, the beryllium would decay before interacting with another alpha particle were it not for the existence of a remarkably finely-tuned resonance in this interaction. Heinz Oberhummer has studied this resonance in detail and showed how the amount of oxygen and carbon produced in red giant stars varies with the strength and range of the nucleon interactions. His work indicates that these must be tuned to at least 0.5% if one is to produce both these elements to the extent required for life."  -- Physicists B.J. Carr and M.J. Rees, "Fine-Tuning in Living Systems." 
• "A mere 1 percent offset between the charge of the electron and that of the proton would lead to a catastrophic repulsion....My entire body would dissolve in a massive explosion...The very Earth itself, the planet as a whole, would crack open and fly apart in an annihilating explosion...This is what would happen were the electron's charge to exceed the proton's by 1 percent. The opposite case, in which the proton's charge exceeded the electron's, would lead to the identical situation...How precise must the balance be?...Relatively small things like atoms, people and the like would fly apart if the charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Larger structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." -- Astronomy professor emeritus George Greenstein, "The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos," pages 64-65.
• "What is particularly striking is how sensitive the possibility of life in our universe is to a small change in these constants. For example, if the constant that controls the way the electromagnetic field behaves in a vacuum is changed by four percent, then fusion in stars could not produce carbon....Change the cosmological constant in the 123rd decimal place and suddenly it's impossible to have a habitable galaxy." --  Marcus Du Sautoy, Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, "The Great Unknown," page 221. 
• "The values of some fundamental physical constants are considered to be finely tuned and balanced to give our observable world. Examples include finely tuned balance between quark masses needed to produce protons and neutrons ...and production of heavy nuclei in stars, which depends on the finely tuned balance between the fine structure constant ...and the ratio of the proton mass ..and electron mass...These and other examples suggest a narrow 'habitable zone' in parameter space...where essential biochemical elements can form... For this reason, fundamental constants are referred to as 'biofriendly' or 'biophilic' ....We need to tune the same fundamental constants setting α and β (ℏ, e, c, me, mp) that, importantly, involves tuning, which is additional and different to tuning involved in fixing α and β....We can conjecture that multiple independent tunings were involved. This includes tuning fundamental constants to produce heavy nuclei and additional tunings needed for other observed sustainable structures to emerge." -- Kostya Trachenko, "Constraints on fundamental physical constants from bio-friendly viscosity and diffusion" (link).
• "If we extend the model back to nucleosynthesis, about 1 second after the beginning, then the density of the universe must be within one part in 10¹⁵ of the critical density in order to still be close to critical today. The further we push back, the closer the constraint: at the Planck time, it is one part in 10⁵⁵...The contribution to the vacuum energy is ∼ 1, 123 orders of magnitude larger than the observed value. This is a fine-tuning problem. Quantum field theory and general relativity can explain the small observed value of the cosmological constant, but only by supposing that the different (positive and negative) contributions to the vacuum energy from each quantum field happen to cancel each other to 123 decimal places. This requires an unmotivated but suspiciously precise coincidence between a number of independent factors. As an example of fine-tuning for life, the cosmological constant problem is a near perfect storm...Make the cosmological constant a few orders of magnitude larger and structure formation freezes before anything has formed. The universe will be a thin, uniform hydrogen and helium soup, a diffuse gas where the occasional particle collision is all that ever happens. A very simple way to make a universe lifeless is to make it devoid of any structure whatsoever. Alternatively, a negative cosmological constant causes the universe to recollapse. If the cosmological constant were −10⁻⁶⁸, then the universe would recollapse ...10⁻¹⁰ seconds after the big bang...Weaken the strong force by a few more percent, or increase the strength of electromagnetism, and carbon and all larger elements are unstable (Barrow & Tipler, 1986). The parameters of the standard model must walk a tight-rope in order to form stable nuclei and support stable stars." -- Physicist Luke Barnes, "The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Life" (link). 
• "It is commonly argued... that if the fine-structure constant α were off by a few percent, the shift in the resonance energy would inhibit stellar production of ¹²C [main type of carbon] required for the emergence of carbon-based life."-- Four scientists (link).
• "Now, there are a few aspects of this situation that appear fine-tuned. First, the average density of the Universe—the average density around which you have these part-in-100,000 variations—is quite special. If it had been larger, the force of gravity would have caused the whole Universe to stop expanding very early on and it would have collapsed in on itself. For instance, if it had been just 1% denser one second after the big bang, the Universe would have collapsed, effectively coming to an end, less than seven minutes later. On the other hand, if it had been a bit smaller, the reduced gravitational attraction would have allowed the Universe to expand much more quickly, making it far too diffuse for stars, or any sort of complex structure, to ever form. To have a Universe that lasts as long as ours, the initial density had to be extremely fine-tuned....The amplitude of the tiny, part-in-100,000 variations in this average density also appear fine-tuned....Furthermore, there are a number of other properties of our Universe that appear 'selected' for life....Fine-tuning is striking because a number of seemingly disparate aspects of the early Universe and of physics have conspired together to enable a universe like ours to develop. It has the quality of a statistical residue, since the physical conditions of the early Universe together with the values of the parameters of physics constitute a concrete pattern that is not predicted by the big bang theory per se nor by the structure of our (current) laws of physics per se. However, this pattern turns out to be just the right one such that particular, complex structures can emerge, like galaxies and stars and planets and a periodic table of elements that can form complex molecules and eventually life." -- Adam D. Hincks, holder of a Physics PhD from Princeton University (link). 

Why We Should Have No High Confidence in Astronomy Professors Estimating the Number of Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Nowadays academia professors tend to be people with limited knowledge concentrated in one particular field. It is a mistake to assume that people who have concentrated their studies in one narrow area are knowledgeable about many related topics. For example, a professor of medieval history may have little knowledge of modern history. 

Google Gemini infographic on scientist overspecialization

People often make the mistake of assuming that some very complex question involving many fields of knowledge will be well-handled by some person who specializes in only one of those areas of knowledge. Consider the important question: how high will the temperature grow later in this century because of global warming? It is a mistake to think that someone is well-equipped to answer that question merely because he calls himself a climate scientist. This is because the question involves many questions involving things other than just  earth science and the atmosphere, including these:

(1) How high will the human population be later in this century? Fossil fuel use may be proportional to the number of people, but it is hard to predict the future population because of factors such as falling birth rates in many countries. 

(2) How much progress will humans make in reducing fossil fuel use, by using alternate technologies such as solar power, wind power and nuclear power?

(3) Will there be some nuclear fusion breakthrough that greatly reduces the amount of fossil fuel use?

(4) Will fossil fuel use tend to dramatically drop off not mainly because of human concerns over global warming, but because of a Peak Oil scenario under which it becomes more and more expensive to extract oil from underground?

(5) Will there be technological breakthroughs that allow geoengineering efforts to roll back the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

A climate scientist may have no expertise allowing him to give good answers to these questions very relevant to judging how high the average temperature will be later in the century. Expertise in one narrow subject does not mean you will give a good answer on a question involving very many subjects. 

 A type of article that pops up in the press every now and then is an article in which some astronomy professor tries to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy or in our universe. The average person probably thinks that an astronomy professor can be trusted to give a reliable answer on that question. But such an opinion may be misguided, because the question involves so much more than just astronomy. 

The question of the likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations appearing involves all of these questions, almost all of which are outside of the domain of astronomy:

(1) How many planets not-too-big and not-too-small exist in the habitable zones of stable long-lived stars?

(2) What is the chance of life accidentally appearing on some suitable planet?

(3) What is the chance of life with simpler cells (prokaryotic cells) ever progressing to become life with far more complex cells (eukaryotic cells)?

(4) What is the chance of one-celled life ever progressing so that there exists on a planet large organisms with limbs and organs?

(5) What is the chance that there ever would appear on some planet with life some species with limbs capable of manipulating tools?

(6) What is the chance that a planet with life would ever produce intelligent creatures smart enough to use language and build a civilization?

(7) What is the chance that a technological civilization would destroy itself before long, so that it would not be available to communicate with other planets?

(8) Is it true that mere brain evolution explains the appearance of intelligence, or are there reasons for thinking that the existence of thinking, reasoning, and instantly recalling conscious creatures such  as us cannot be explained by mere brain activity?

(9) Do we have reasons for thinking that we already have evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, in the form of UFO sightings that cannot be explained without assuming extraterrestrial spacecraft?

(10) Are there reasons for believing that there exists some cosmic designer who might be interested in having intelligent life exist on many planets, so that the chance of extraterrestrial civilizations appearing might be greatly increased?

How many of these questions involve astronomy? Only one. So why do we think that astronomy professors are well-qualified to be addressing such questions?

The record of astronomy professors in estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations is a poor record. Moreover, in discussing some of the questions relevant to such an estimate, astronomy professors have long been guilty of misspeaking about some of the relevant factors in making such an estimate. 

An example of such an astronomer who made great mistakes at such a task was Carl Sagan. Eager to promote the idea that extraterrestrial cultures were abundant  in our galaxy, Sagan again and again misled his readers and those who listened to him in interviews.  Making a grotesque misrepresentation of the complexity of the bodies of human beings, Sagan endlessly repeated the slogan "we are all star stuff." Human bodies are enormously organized marvels of fine-tuned functional complexity that are the opposite of "stuff" (a word meaning something disorganized). Sagan also repeatedly misled his readers and listeners by making the false claim that "the stuff of life" is scattered throughout the universe. The truth is that the lowest building components of living things are amino acids, which have been found in only the tiniest trace amounts in outer space, such as 1 part per billion on comets or interstellar molecular clouds. 

In his book Intelligent Life in the Universe, Sagan dogmatically proclaimed on page 418 that "The number of extant civilizations substantially in advance of our own in the Galaxy today appears to be perhaps between 50 thousand and one million." The claim was as arbitrary and poorly established as Senator McCarthy's claims about there being 205 registered communists in the US State department. Just as McCarthy kept changing his estimate about the number of communists in the State Department, Sagan kept changing his estimates of the number of civilized planets in our galaxy. He would repeatedly claim that there were a million civilizations in our galaxy, and many of the times he made such estimates, he would try to suggest that whatever estimate he made was the estimate made by most astronomers, although he never gave any evidence to back up such a claim about a  majority of astronomers agreeing with him, and never even backed up any claim that a large fraction of astronomers agreed with him. 

A Scientific American article appearing a while ago gives us another example of why we should have little confidence in astronomy professors estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations. The astronomy professor author starts out by making the fallacious "many chances equals some successes" argument, the reasoning that extraterrestrial life must exist because there are so many chances for it to arise. There are maybe a billion trillion planets in the observable universe, but if the chance of the accidental origin of life on any planet is less than 1 in a billion trillion, it should be unlikely that life would ever accidentally appear elsewhere in the observable universe. And there are strong reasons for thinking that the chance of life accidentally appearing on any particular planet is less than 1 in a billion trillion, because of the very great organization needed for even the simplest self-reproducing cell.  It is not generally true that many chances equals some successes or even a single success in any case where the probability of success per trial is very low. 

The same astronomer gave no sign at all that he understands the huge levels of functional complexity, component interdependence and information richness in organisms such as humans. It's par for the course. The astronomer seemed to show no grasp of how fine-tuned a hierarchical organization of matter a human body is, but why should we think that he would?  Astronomy is not biology. 

A thorough study of all of the factors relevant for estimating the chance of extraterrestrial intelligence would include the study of whether brains are a credible explanation for human mental phenomena. Such a study would involve a very thorough study of the human brain and its physical shortfalls suggesting it cannot be the source of the human mind and human memory, and also a very thorough study of the human mind and human mental experiences, both common and extraordinary. That would be a type of study that few astronomers have done.