Expose of the Human Genome Project Fails to Mention Its Biggest Lies

The site www.undark.org has some fine examples of science journalism. A recent article at the site tells a shocking tale. The article is entitled "Haunting the Human Genome Project: A Question of Consent." We are told something I have never read before: "When a much-celebrated working draft of the human genome was published in 2001, the vast majority of it — nearly 75 percent — came from just one Roswell Park volunteer, an anonymous male donor known as RP11." The African-American man signed a consent form that assured him that no more than 10% of the genome map would be built from his DNA. The promise of that consent form was violated.  We read this:

"The revelations potentially cast a stain on a project that had been extolled for its high ethical standards. 'It’s a big deal when researchers act deceptively, which is to say they do things that they said they weren’t going to do, or don’t do things that they said they were,' said Paul Appelbaum, a Columbia University professor who specializes in legal and ethical issues in medicine, psychiatry, and genetics..... “I think it’s fair to say RP11 was probably misled about what was going to happen,” said R. Alta Charo, a professor emerita of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison....Appelbaum described the episode as exemplary of a long history of deceptions that have contributed to a lack of trust in the research enterprise, especially in minoritized communities....To Appelbaum, however, the idea that the Human Genome Project’s landmark paper may have misrepresented donor procedures is gravely concerning — the kind of transgression that can erode public trust in science more broadly.... The reference assembly that emerged from the Human Genome Project has become 'the foundation for all genomic data and databases,' wrote the authors of a 2019 opinion piece in the journal Genome Biology. And to this day, the most widely used reference assemblies continue to derive more than 70 percent of their sequence from a person who did not clearly consent to that level of use."

Such claims of deceit are troubling. But the deceit involved is "chickenfeed" or "peanuts" compared to vastly greater deceit which occurred in connection with the Human Genome Project. This was the deceit of claiming that the project was going to discover a specification of how to make a human body, one stored in DNA (the human genome).  The pitchmen of the Human Genome Project told us again and again that the project should be funded because it was going to discover a blueprint for the human body. The human genome (DNA) has no such specification of how to make a human body or any of its organs or cells. Consisting of only low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up particular proteins, DNA never provided the slightest reason for suspecting that it was a specification for how to build a human body or any of its cells. 

There were various versions of the lie told to justify the Human Genome Project:

• Some described DNA or the genome as a blueprint for a human.
• Some described DNA or the genome as a recipe for making a human.
• Some described DNA or the genome as a program for building a human.
• Some claimed that DNA or genomes specify the anatomy of a human. 
• Some claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) specify phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism).
• Many claimed that phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) are "expressions" of genotypes (the DNA in organisms). 
• Some claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) "map"  phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) or "map to" phenotypes.
• Some claimed that DNA contains "all the instructions needed to make a human."
• Some claimed that there is a "genetic architecture" for a person's body or some fraction of that body. 
• Using a little equation, some claimed that a "genotype plus the environment equals the phenotype," a formulation as false  as the preceding statements, since we know of nothing in the environment that would cause phenotypes to arise from genotypes that do not specify such phenotypes. 

These were all the most outrageous lies. DNA contains only low-level chemical information, not high-level anatomy information. DNA does not even tell how to build cells or any of the organelles that make up cells. Weaker formulations of the lies above idea included claims that DNA is "life's instruction book" or "the key to life" or "the book of life" or "the secret of life." While such rather vague assertions are not as explicitly false as the statements in the bullet list above, such formulations are equally misleading, as they insinuate the false claims in such a bullet list. Variations on these false statements above may use the term "genes" rather than DNA or genome. Such statements are equivalent to the statements above, because a gene is merely part of DNA (human DNA consists of roughly 20,000 genes). 

There is no truth to the claim that DNA is a specification for anatomy.  DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information such as which sequences of amino acids make up polypeptide chains that are the starting points of protein molecules.  Many biology authorities (some of which I quote below) have confessed this reality that DNA does not specify anatomy. 

But the pitchmen of the Human Genome Project told us endless lies about DNA like the ones above, claiming that DNA is something vastly more than it is, and claiming that the human genome is something vastly more than it is. In fact, their lies continue on US government web sites which continue to teach false claims about DNA. 

(1) At the government page here (https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/about-genomics/educational-resources/infographics/Your-Genome-You) we are incorrectly told "The genome contains all the instructions for you to grow throughout your lifetime."  This is not true. A genome (a person's DNA) merely specifies low-level chemical information, and does not specify how the progression from a tiny speck-sized zygote to a full adult body can occur. No instructions on how to build a human body are found in DNA, which does not even specify how to make any of the roughly 200 types of cells in the human body. 

(2) The US government page here (https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Deoxyribonucleic-Acid-Fact-Sheet) misleadingly states that "the complete DNA instruction book, or genome, for a human contains about 3 billion bases and about 20,000 genes on 23 pairs of chromosomes." In this sentence DNA is referred to as if it is an instruction book for making a human. DNA is no such thing. All it contains is low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up particular proteins.  The same page misleads us when it states this: "DNA contains the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive and reproduce." DNA does have any instructions for how a full human body can develop from a speck-sized fertilized zygote, and DNA does not tell us anything about what we need to survive or reproduce. 

(3) Another US government page (https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/A-Brief-Guide-to-Genomics) here falsely tells us that "Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is the chemical compound that contains the instructions needed to develop and direct the activities of nearly all living organisms." DNA does not have instructions specifying the anatomical organization of a human, and does not "direct the activities of nearly all living organisms." DNA lists the structure of some chemicals you need; it does not direct your activities. The same page contains the untrue claim that "DNA contains the information needed to build the entire human body." DNA does not specify any anatomical structures in a human, and does not even specify how to make any of the 200 types of cells in they human body. The same page makes the extremely absurd claim that "virtually every human ailment has some basis in our genes." For example, when you get pneumonia or influenza or COVID-19 or many infectious diseases, you have got an ailment that does not have any basis in your genes. And when you are injured in an accident, that has no basis in your genes.  

(4) On the page here (https://www.genome.gov/About-Genomics/Introduction-to-Genomics) we get the false claim that "Each genome contains the information needed to build and maintain that organism throughout its life."  Genomes (DNA molecules) contain no instructions on how to build an organism or any of its cells. The rest of the page contains some equally misleading misinformation. 

(5) The title of the NASA web page here (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/life-blueprint-in-asteroids) refers to DNA as "the blueprint for life."  The page makes the very untrue claim that DNA  "contains the instructions to build and operate every living being on Earth."  

(6) On the US government page here (https://www.genome.gov/outreach/unlocking-lifes-code-exhibition#) we are given a link to the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEJ0eRaebIc (here). At the beginning of that video, we have a young boy say, "I have always found it really intriguing that everything about who we are and what we look like is controlled by these tiny molecules called DNA." This extremely false statement is not corrected, just as if the makers of the video wanted you to believe it is true. 

A misleading visual on a US government web page

Since the lie that DNA is a blueprint or program or recipe for building bodies has so often been told, I will need to cite again a list I have compiled of distinguished scientists and other PhD's or MD's who have told us such an idea is untrue. Below is the list:

• On page 26 of the recent book The Developing Genome, Professor David S. Moore states, "The common belief that there are things inside of us that constitute a set of instructions for building bodies and minds -- things that are analogous to 'blueprints' or 'recipes' -- is undoubtedly false."
• Biologist Rupert Sheldrake says this "DNA only codes for the materials from which the body is constructed: the enzymes, the structural proteins, and so forth," and "There is no evidence that it also codes for the plan, the form, the morphology of the body."
• Describing conclusions of biologist Brian Goodwin, the New York Times says, "While genes may help produce the proteins that make the skeleton or the glue, they do not determine the shape and form of an embryo or an organism." 
• Professor Massimo Pigliucci (mainstream author of numerous scientific papers on evolution) has stated  that "old-fashioned metaphors like genetic blueprint and genetic programme are not only woefully inadequate but positively misleading."
• Neuroscientist Romain Brette states, "The genome does not encode much except for amino acids."
• In a 2016 scientific paper, three scientists state the following: "It is now clear that the genome does not directly program the organism; the computer program metaphor has misled us...The genome does not function as a master plan or computer program for controlling the organism; the genome is the organism's servant, not its master."
• In the book Mind in Life by Evan Thompson (published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) we read the following on page 180: "The plain truth is that DNA is not a program for building organisms, as several authors have shown in detail (Keller 2000, Lewontin 1993, Moss 2003)."
• Developmental biologist C/H. Waddington stated, "The DNA is not a program or sequentially accessed control over the behavior of the cell."
•  Scientists Walker and Davies state this in a scientific paper: "DNA is not a blueprint for an organism; no information is actively processed by DNA alone...DNA is a passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins."
• Geneticist Adam Rutherford states that "DNA is not a blueprint," a statement also made by biochemistry professor Keith Fox. 
• "The genome is not a blueprint," says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, noting "it doesn't encode some specific outcome."
• "DNA cannot be seen as the 'blueprint' for life," says Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, who says, "It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times."  
• Sergio Pistoi (a science writer with a PhD in molecular biology) tells us, "DNA is not a blueprint," and tells us, "We do not inherit specific instructions on how to build a cell or an organ." 
• Michael Levin (director of a large biology research lab) states that "genomes are not a blueprint for anatomy," and after referring to a "deep puzzle" of how biological forms arise, he gives this example: "Scientists really don’t know what determines the intricate shape and structure of the flatworm’s head."
• Ian Stevenson M.D. stated "Genes alone - which provide instructions for the production of amino acids and proteins -- cannot explain how the proteins produced by their instructions come to have the shape they develop and, ultimately, determine the form of the organisms where they are," and noted that "biologists who have drawn attention to this important gap in our knowledge of form have not been a grouping of mediocrities (Denton, 1986; Goldschmidt, 1952; B. C. Goodwin, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1994; Gottlieb, 1992; Grasse, 1973; E. S. Russell...Sheldrake, 1981; Tauber and Sarkar, 1992; Thompson, 1917/1942)."
• Biologist B.C. Goodwin stated this in 1989: "Since genes make molecules, genetics...does not tell us how the molecules are organized into the dynamic, organized process that is the living organism."
• An article in the journal Nature states this: "The manner in which bodies and tissues take form remains 'one of the most important, and still poorly understood, questions of our time', says developmental biologist Amy Shyer, who studies morphogenesis at the Rockefeller University in New York City."
• Timothy Saunders, a developmental biologist at the National University of Singapore says, "Fundamentally, we have a poor understanding of how any internal organ forms.”
• On the web site of the well-known biologist Denis Noble, we read that "the whole idea that genes contain the recipe or the program of life is absurd, according to Noble," and that we should understand DNA "not so much as a recipe or a program, but rather as a database that is used by the tissues and organs in order to make the proteins which they need."
• A paper by Stuart A. Newman (a professor of cell biology and anatomy) discussing at length the work of scientists trying to evoke "self-organization" as an explanation for morphogenesis states that "public lectures by principals of the field contain confidently asserted, but similarly oversimplified or misleading treatments," and says that "these analogies...give the false impression that there has been more progress in understanding embryonic development than there truly has been." Referring to scientists moving from one bunk explanation of morphogenesis to another bunk explanation, the paper concludes by stating, "It would be unfortunate if we find ourselves having emerged from a period of misconceived genetic program metaphors only to land in a brave new world captivated by equally misguided ones about self-organization."
• Referring to claims there is a program for building organisms in DNA, biochemist F. M. Harold stated "reflection on the findings with morphologically aberrant mutants suggests that the metaphor of a genetic program is misleading." Referring to  self-organization (a vague phrase sometimes used to try to explain morphogenesis), he says, "self-organization remains nearly as mysterious as it was a century ago, a subject in search of a paradigm." 
• Writing in the leading journal Cell, biologists  Marc Kirschner, John Gerhart and Tim Mitchison stated, "The genotype, however deeply we analyze it, cannot be predictive of the actual phenotype, but can only provide knowledge of the universe of possible phenotypes." That's equivalent to saying that DNA does not specify visible biological structures, but merely limits what structures an organism can have (just as a building parts list merely limits what structures can be made from the set of parts). 
• At the Stack Exchange expert answers site, someone posted a question asking which parts of a genome specify how to make a cell (he wanted to write a program that would sketch out a cell based on DNA inputs).  An unidentified expert stated that it is "not correct" that DNA is a blueprint that describes an organism, and that "DNA is not a blueprint because DNA does not have instructions for how to build a cell." No one contradicted this expert's claim, even though the site allows any of its experts to reply. 
• A paper co-authored by a chemistry professor (Jesper Hoffmeyer) tells us this: "Ontogenetic 'information,' whether about the structure of the organism or about its behavior, does not exist as such in the genes or in the environment, but is constructed in a given developmental context, as critically emphasized, for example, by Lewotin (1982) and Oyama (1985)."
• Biologist Steven Rose has stated, "DNA is not a blueprint, and the four dimensions of life (three of space, one of time) cannot be read off from its one-dimensional strand."
• Jonathan Latham has a master's degree in Crop Genetics and a PhD in virology. In his essay “Genetics Is Giving Way to a New Science of Life,” a long essay well worth a read, Latham exposes many of the myths about DNA. Referring to "the mythologizing of DNA," he says that "DNA is not a master controller," and asks, "How is it that, if organisms are the principal objects of biological study, and the standard explanation of their origin and operation is so scientifically weak that it has to award DNA imaginary superpowers of 'expression'” and 'control' to paper over the cracks, have scientists nevertheless clung to it?"
• An interesting 2006 paper by six medical authorities and scientists tells us that "biochemistry cannot provide the spatial information needed to explain morphogenesis," that "supracellular morphogenesis is mysterious," and that "nobody seems to understand the origin of biological and cellular order," contrary to claims that such order arises from a reading of a specification in DNA. 
• Keith Baverstock (with a PhD in chemical kinetics) has stated "genes are like the merchants that provide the necessary materials to build a house: they are neither the architect, nor the builder but, without them, the house cannot be built," and that "genes are neither the formal cause (the blueprint), nor the efficient cause (the builder) of the cell, nor of the organism."
• Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin stated, "DNA is not self-reproducing; second, it makes nothing; and third, organisms are not determined by it." Noting that "the more accurate description of the role of DNA is that it bears information that is read by the cell machinery," Lewontin lamented the "evangelical enthusiasm" of those who "fetishized DNA" and misspoke so that "DNA as information bearer is transmogrified into DNA as blueprint, as plan, as master plan, as master molecule." In another work he stated "the information in DNA sequences is insufficient to specify even a folded protein, not to speak of an entire organism." This was correct: DNA does not even specify the 3D shapes of proteins, but merely their sequence of amino acids. 
• In 2022 developmental biologist Claudio D. Stern first noted,  "All cells in an organism have the same genetic information yet they generate often huge complexity as they diversify in the appropriate locations at the correct time and generate form and pattern as well as an array of identities, dynamic behaviours and functions." In his next sentence he stated, "The key quest is to find the 'computer program' that contains the instructions to build an organism, and the mechanisms responsible for its evolution over longer periods." Since this was written long after the Human Genome Project had been completed, he thereby suggested that no such instruction program had yet been discovered in the genome (DNA). 
• A 2024 article says, "Martínez Arias, 68, argues that the DNA sequence of an individual is not an instruction manual or a construction plan for their body...The Madrid-born biologist argues that there is nothing in the DNA molecule that explains why the heart is located on the left, why there are five fingers on the hand or why twin brothers have different fingerprints."
• A 2022 paper in the journal Science (one authored by more than ten scientists) says this: "Although the genome is often called the blueprint of an organism, it is perhaps more accurate to describe it as a parts list composed of the various genes that may or may not be used in the different cell types of a multicellular organism....The genome in and of itself does not provide an understanding of the molecular complexity of the various cell types of that organism."

In the very mainstream publication The Guardian, science writer Phillip Ball says this about the Human Genome Project that ended in 2003, noting the failure of science figures to clean up their old misstatements about DNA after they were debunked by the Human Genome Project:

"But a blizzard of misleading rhetoric surrounded the project, contributing to the widespread and sometimes dangerous misunderstandings about genes that now bedevils the genomic age. So far, there have been few attempts to set the record straight. Even now, the National Human Genome Research Institute calls the HGP an effort to read 'nature’s complete genetic blueprint for building a human being' – the 'book of instructions' that 'determine our particular traits'. A genome, says the institute, 'contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism'. But this deterministic 'instruction book' image is precisely the fallacy that genomics has overturned, and the information in the genome is demonstrably incomplete. Yet no one associated with genomic research seems bothered about correcting these false claims...Plenty remain happy to propagate the misleading idea that we are 'gene machines' and our DNA is our 'blueprint'.

The correct relation between DNA and the different levels of organization in a human body is illustrated in the diagram below. The black bar makes it clear that none of the seven most complex levels of organization is specified by DNA or genes.

I understand the main reason why the salesmen of the Human Genome Project (many of them scientists) kept lying about the nature of DNA (the human genome). It was because they wanted to aggrandize DNA, and make it sound like something gigantically more important than it is, to maximize the chance of their project getting funding. But the project was completed more than twenty years ago. Why do the lies about DNA keep coming from so many materialist scientists? The answer to that question is told in my post here. 

Veridical Apparitions Are Not Very Rare

In the series of posts listed below I gave many examples of people who saw an apparition of someone they did not know was dead, only to soon learn that the person had died about the same time the apparition was seen:

An Apparition Was Their Death Notice

25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Yet Another 25 Who Were “Ghost-Told” of a Death

Scientific American's Very Lame "Ghost Explanations"

They Also Were "Ghost Told" of a Death

More Accounts of Veridical Apparitions

Even More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Serve as Announcements

Still More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Act as News Bulletins

They Too Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

They Seemed to Ghost-Learn of Someone's Death

It Seemed Her Suicide Was Not Her End

Let us look at some more cases of this type, which are sometimes called crisis apparitions or veridical apparitions. In the newspaper report below, we read of an Arctic explorer who saw an apparition of his daughter while the explorer was in icy wastes very far from Philadelphia, where the daughter lived. The explorer wrote down the day when this apparition appeared. Months later he found the daughter had died on the same day.

You can read the account below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1902-06-27/ed-1/seq-4/

The 1996 account below tells of a pilot who seemed to see an apparition of another pilot days before he learned of the pilot's death:

You can read the full story here:

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A2974063?solr%5Bquery

A 1906 paper tells us this about a Colonel Longfeld who was "ghost-told" of someone's death:

You can read the full account here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85034374/1906-01-20/ed-1/?sp=7&q=+%22apparition+vanished%22&r=0.365,0.594,0.44,0.21,0

Next I have an eerie case that rather seems to be a case of someone named Campbell being "ghost-told" of his own death. The account comes from pages 337-338 of the 1864 book "Savage Africa" by William Winwood Reade. It's an account we might call "The Fatal Bed":

"Mr. Beale was taken on board the ' Dover,' shook hands with the captain on deck, went below, and expired almost immediately.  Mr. Trestrail, his colleague, sat down to write out the case... Toward the end the hand-writing changes its character, becomes uneven, and sometimes scarcely legible. A few hours afterward Trestrail was a corpse. The two surgeons were buried together.

Mr. Campbell wrote out a report of Mr. Trestrail's case. He slept alone in the surgeons' quarters, in the same bed in which the two others had died. 

A palisade was being erected around their grave. Mr. Savage is a mulatto trader on the island. A few days afterward Campbell came to him and asked him to give him a bed. Savage complied with his request. 

' Don't you like your quarters ?' he said.

' No," replied Campbell. ' I have seen Beale. And, Savage,' he added, ' I shall never see my poor wife and children any more."

As the palisade round the grave was finished Dr. Campbell also died."

We may presume that Campbell became convinced he would soon die because he saw the apparition of Beale.  In the next pages we are told of two materialists claiming what sounds like dramatic and varied poltergeist activity in the following days. 

The newspaper account below tells of a 3-year-old who did not know his mother was dead, at the time he seemed to see an apparition of the mother:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87065501/1906-07-07/ed-1/seq-7/

At the link here, we read a newspaper account of a Colonel Langfeld seeing an apparition while in east Africa:

"Rising to see who was there, he was surprised to find a European sitting at his table, which was fully set out for a meal. As the stranger raised his head in the full moonlight he saw that it was his friend (who had gone to Nyanza), but hollow eyed and with a suffering mien. The colonel managed to utter a question, when suddenly the apparition vanished and the table appeared clear of all dishes. Six weeks later word came to the station that on the same day on which these remarkable events had happened or seemed to happen the young merchant had lost his way and had been killed and partly eaten by wild beasts."

In the account below, someone tells of seeing an apparition of her brother, holding a telegram announcing his death, with both the apparition and the telegram vanishing. Three days later the telegraph announcing the death arrived, in permanent physical form. 

The account below appeared in the Napa Valley Register in 1922, and can be read here. We read this:

"Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of 'Omar' and one of the least superstitious of men, told of an apparition he was quite unable to explain on natural lines. He saw clearly his sister and her children having tea in his dining room, through the window from bis garden, although they were not visiting him at the time. He also saw his sister quietly withdraw from the room, as though fearing to disturb the children. At that moment she died in Norfolk."

An 1897 newspaper account tells of a Judge Phillips who had a friend who promised when they parted, "I shall look you to the face again before I die." The two never met again under normal conditions. But while riding a carriage, Judge Phillips says he saw an apparition of the friend, one that persisted for minutes. He later learned the friend died about the same time.  Below is the middle part of the story:

You can read the full story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86090439/1897-09-12/ed-1/seq-8/#

Below is a diagram serving to remind you of the philosophical relevance of apparition sightings.  Apparition sightings are part of a body of interrelated evidence indicating that we are souls rather than mere outputs of brains. The items in this diagram are discussed here. 

The Osiris/REx Bennu Mission Disappoints, As I Predicted

 In October 2020 on this blog I published a post entitled "NASA's Asteroid-Stuff Retrieval Mission: The Spilling Boondoggle." Below are some of the things I said in that post:

"The OSIRIS-REx mission is a billion-dollar NASA mission designed to retrieve some matter from an asteroid, and return it to Earth.  It is rather hard for me to imagine a less worthy way to spend a billion dollars. Asteroids are lifeless dry rocks in space that contain nothing very interesting.  We already have a pretty good idea of what makes up an asteroid. Many meteorites have hit the Earth, and scientists who have analyzed their composition have a basis for inferring the element composition of asteroids.  A science site tells us that most meteorites 'are fragments of asteroids.'

Nobody is interested in the exact composition of asteroids other than a very tiny tribe of scientists such as planetary geologists.  If we get back a little asteroid material from the mission, the results will be a complete yawn to 99.9% of the people who read the results in their science news feeds.  It will be some very boring result such as '80% iron and 20% a combination of nickel, iridium, palladium, and  magnesium.' "

By now the OSIRIS-REx mission has completed. The automated spacecraft gathered a sample of dirt from the asteroid Bennu, and returned the sample to Earth in September 2023.  There was then an almost comical glitch in which scientists were long unable to open the top of the sample container.  Finally in January 2024 a news story reported that success had finally occurred, telling us this:

NASA FINALLY RIPS LID OFF STUBBORN ASTEROID SAMPLE

IT'S TAKEN THEM OVER THREE MONTHS

We read this truly ridiculous account in the January 2024 news story:

"In an October update, NASA' noted that 'two of the 35 fasteners on the TAGSAM head could not be removed.' Now, just over 3.5 months later, the main container is finally open. 'Finally having the TAGSAM head open and full access to the returned Bennu samples is a monumental achievement that reflects the unwavering dedication and ingenuity of our team,' said principal investigator Dante Lauretta in a statement."

Can we imagine a more laughable case of scientist boasting? Scientists took three months to get some screws off of a container (something the average Joe could do in maybe ten minutes), and then a scientist is boasting that this is a "monumental achievement."  What can we expect next -- that the next time someone at NASA changes a light bulb, this will be hailed in a NASA press release as an "epic history-making  accomplishment"? 

By now scientists have had many months to analyze the contents of the sample returned from the asteroid Bennu.  The first long publicly accessible analysis of the sample is contained in the 73-page paper "Asteroid (101955) Bennu in the Laboratory: Properties of the Sample Collected by OSIRIS-REx" which you can read using the link here.  Here is the "dull as dishwater" abstract of the paper's contents:

"On 24 September 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission dropped a capsule to Earth containing ~120 g of pristine carbonaceous regolith from Bennu. We describe the delivery and initial allocation of this asteroid sample and introduce its bulk physical, chemical, and mineralogical properties from early analyses. The regolith is very dark overall, with higher reflectance inclusions and particles interspersed. Particle sizes range from sub-micron dust to a stone ~3.5 cm long. Millimeter-scale and larger stones typically have hummocky or angular morphologies. A subset of the stones appears mottled by brighter material that occurs as veins and crusts. Hummocky stones have the lowest densities and mottled stones have the highest. Remote sensing of Bennu’s surface detected hydrated phyllosilicates, magnetite, organic compounds, carbonates, and scarce anhydrous silicates, all of which the sample confirms. We also find sulfides, presolar grains, and, less expectedly, Na-rich phosphates, as well as other trace phases. The sample’s composition and mineralogy indicate substantial aqueous alteration and resemble those of Ryugu and the most chemically primitive, low-petrologic-type carbonaceous chondrites. Nevertheless, we find distinct hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopic compositions, and some of the material we analyzed is enriched in fluid-mobile elements. Our findings underscore the value of sample return — especially for low-density material that may not readily survive atmospheric entry — and lay the groundwork for more comprehensive analyses."

The quote above ends with a false statement. Far from underscoring the value of sample return, the reported results suggest that retrieving tiny samples from asteroids is a waste of money. Nothing of any biological interest is reported. Notably, the paper fails to make any mention of any amino acids detected.  Amino acids are the simplest chemical components of living things. 

By May 2024 scientists had already had months to look at the soil sample from Bennu, and had found no good evidence of anything of biological interest. But in that month the Smithsonian Institute had a speaker announcement making the bogus claim that "analysis of the sample promises to provide insights into the formation of the Earth as a habitable world and the origin of life." This was one of very many similar statements pushing groundless hype about this mission. 

One preprint paper co-authored by D. Glavin claims to have found amino acids in a Bennu sample at the extremely low trace amount of "70 nmol/g" which is only 70 nanomoles per gram.  Ordinary soil has about .1 moles per gram, and 70 nanomoles is only .00000007 moles per gram.  Probably almost all of the reported amount is from earthly contamination.  We cannot have any confidence that such a finding tells us anything about whether multiple types of protein-related amino acids exist in trace amounts on asteroids.   

Scientists use methods to prevent contamination when analyzing samples from space, but there is no reason to believe that such efforts are entirely effective.  There are two potential sources of contamination. A spacecraft may contain trace amounts of amino acids from Earth when it lands on another planet or asteroid.  Once  a sample is returned to Earth, there are endless possibilities for contamination, because amino acids are everywhere on Earth. 

The paper here ("OSIRIS-REx Contamination Control Strategy and Implementation") tells us about methods to prevent microbes and amino acids from existing on the Osiris/REx spacecraft that gathered the sample from the asteroid Bennu. It claims, "To return a pristine sample, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sampling hardware was maintained at level 100 A/2 and <180 ng/cm² of amino acids and hydrazine on the sampler head through precision cleaning, control of materials, and vigilance."  This is a mention of some standard of cleanliness that was a target level, and we have no guarantee that such a target level of cleanliness was actually obtained. Moreover, the standard of cleanliness mentioned is less than 180 nanograms per square centimeter.  Under such a standard, we might expect that you would get tiniest trace amounts results as reported by Glavin  (merely 70 nanomoles per gram) from trace amounts from Earth that were left on the spacecraft when it reached the asteroid Bennu.

Then there is another possibility for contamination: contamination during the analysis of a soil sample on Earth. Such contamination is all but impossible to prevent, giving that amino acids and microbes are floating around everywhere on Earth.  Sterilization can be used to kill microbes, but sterilization does not remove amino acids. 

The paper above states this:

"Some level of contamination and alteration of the sample is probable. Decisions and actions which impact sample cleanliness can occur at any time in the lifecycle of spacecraft fabrication, operations, and sample curation."

An article at the site Salon tells us that when a soil sample was analyzed from the asteroid Ryugu, under conditions supposed to prevent contamination, the sample was contaminated not merely by amino acids but by microbes. We are referred to a paper entitled "Rapid colonization of a space-returned Ryugu sample by terrestrial microorganisms." We read this:

"The population statistics indicate an extant microbial community originating through terrestrial contamination. The discovery emphasizes that terrestrial biota can rapidly colonize extraterrestrial specimens even given contamination control precautions."

If entire microbes (millions of times bigger than amino acids) can get through the contamination measures of scientists analyzing samples from asteroids, then can we have any confidence that most of the amino acids detected at the tiniest trace amounts of only 70 nanomoles per gram actually came from an asteroid rather than from terrestrial contamination? No, we cannot. 

There is a technique used to guess whether amino acids in a meteorite or asteroid sample arose from earthly contamination. The technique is to try to check for whether the amino acids are racemic. Some amino acids are racemic if they have an equal number of left-handed and right-hand versions of the amino acids. One of very many accidentally unachievable features of earthly life is what is called homochirality: that in living organisms all amino acids are left-handed, contrary to what we would expect by chance. Producing amino acids in a laboratory produces equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed amino acids. By checking whether amino acids in a meteorite or asteroid sample are racemic, you can get a good hint as to whether they arose from earthy contamination (the amino acids in earthly proteins are all non-racemic).  

The paper by Glavin et. al. merely claims that one of the nine protein-related amino acids it detected was racemic: the amino acid alanine. It makes no such claim about the other protein-related amino acids it found. So we have no reason to think that any of the protein-related amino acids other than alanine came from the asteroid Bennu itself, and we are left with no abundance estimate for how much alanine was found.  We can presume that the abundance was very much less than the reported very tiny, miniscule total of  70 nanomoles per gram, leaving you with a negligible abundance. Alanine is not one of the more complex amino acids used by proteins. 

The bottom line is that no reliable results of any great biological interest have come from the Osiris/REx Bennu mission. The mission was as bad a boondoggle as I said it was in my 2020 post. 

Handling Biological Complexity, the Mainstream Gives Us Flagrant Falsehoods and Fairy Tales

Quanta Magazine is a widely-read online magazine with slick graphics. On topics of science the magazine again and again is guilty of the most glaring failures. Quanta Magazine often assigns its online articles about great biology mysteries (involving riddles a thousand miles over the heads of PhDs) to writers who lack even a bachelor's degree in biology. Often it will assign such articles to be written by people identified as "writing interns."  The articles at Quanta Magazine often contain misleading prose, groundless boasts or the most glaring falsehoods. I discuss some examples of such poor journalism in my posts here and here and here.

Let us look at a fairly recent example of very misleading journalism at Quanta Magazine. It is an article with the enormously misleading title "Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized." We are deceived very badly by this title.  Eukaryote cells are the type of cells found in human bodies. Eukaryote cells are vastly more organized than a much simpler type of cell called prokaryotic cells. But prokaryotic cells are also enormously organized.  Prokaryotic cells simpler than eukaryotic cells are fantastically organized cells, requiring more than 100,000 base pairs very specially arranged in a vastly improbable way to achieve functional performance.

The paper "Fundamental behaviors emerge from simulations of a living minimal cell"  describes "a genetically minimal bacterial cell, consisting of only ... 493 genes on a single 543-kbp circular chromosome with 452 genes coding for proteins (Breuer et al., 2019 ), some of which are subunits of multi-domain complexes." Each of those genes is a complex invention with hundreds of fine-tuned parts that almost all have to be just right. The total number of amino acids that have to be arranged just right in the proteins partially specified by these genes is roughly 150,000. Far from supporting any "life is simple, we can make it from scratch" narrative, such a paper supports the idea that even the simplest self-reproducing cell has a degree of organization and functional complexity greater than the organization and functional complexity of an 80-page technical manual. And even all that information does not give you a self-reproducing cell; it's only a prerequisite for such a cell. 

The claim that eukaryote cells were "the first cell to get organized" is a glaring falsehood.  The predecessors of eukaryote cells (prokaryote cells) were themselves enormously organized.  The claim that the earliest cells were simple is a lie told by materialists to help bolster their claims of accidental biological origins.  If you are trying to sell the unbelievable idea that life accidentally originated, then the lie that the earliest cells were simple is one of the lies that you need to tell.  And materialists keep telling that lie. We may excuse the writing intern who is the author of this article for the article's glaringly false headline, because writing interns should not be held to very high standards.  But we should not excuse the editors of Quanta Magazine, who have let an article with a glaringly false headline be published in their publication. 

A guy lying (in the 2nd sentence) about the earliest cells

In the rest of the article, we get an attempt to sell us the fairy tale story of endosymbiosis, the idea that we got enormously complex eukaryotic cells by some "lucky swallowing." We read this:  "How this all happened isn’t entirely clear, but today, most experts agree that 2 billion or 3 billion years ago, an archaean cell engulfed a bacterial cell, which somehow escaped digestion and adapted to life inside its host." How did eukaryotic cells originate? Our professors have now "got the memo" that they are supposed to be telling a particular answer, one that is extremely unbelievable. They now maintain that the first eukaryotic cell originated because of an incredibly improbable “combination” accident. The idea is that a bunch of prokaryotic cells somehow ganged up to become a eukaryotic cell – kind of like what would happen if five people collided into each other to somehow originate a new species of three-headed creatures which each had ten legs and ten arms.

Inside a eukaryotic cell are many specialized units called organelles. The organelles include things like ribosomes, lysosomes, mitochondria, and endoplasmic reticulum. Our professors attempt to convince us that these mitochondria are ancestors of prokaryotic cells that somehow got incorporated into eukaryotic cells.

There are several reasons for thinking that such a thing is far too improbable to have ever happened. Among these are the following:

1. No one has ever observed any type of event like the supposed event in which prokaryotic cells combined to become a eukaryotic cell. Microbiologists have done innumerable experiments with prokaryotic cells, and have never observed any combination of prokaryotic cells become anything like a eukaryotic cell.
2. A prokaryotic cell injected with the DNA of a eukaryotic cell will not start producing eukaryotic cells as its offspring.
3. Nowhere in human DNA does it specify the overall shape of a human body, the structure of a human organ system, the structure of a particular human organ, the structure of a tissue, the structure of a cell, or even the structure of any organelle of a cell. Although genotypes influence phenotypes, genotypes do not specify phenotypes. Genotypes merely list chemicals used by an organism.  DNA does not specify the physical structure of an organism. We can therefore imagine no conceivable event by which some lucky combination of prokaryotic DNA could result in a cell that produced eukaryotic offspring, because the structure of a eukaryotic cell is not even specified in DNA.

  In the book Aliens, biologist Matthew Cobb gives a description of current thinking on this topic, emphasizing the improbability of it:

"What happened on Earth – known as eukaryogenesis – was not the product of random mutation and the subsequent sifting of acquired characters that have differential fitness (the essence of natural selection). Instead there appears to have been a single event of mind-boggling improbability, for it involved two life forms interacting in a most novel way....Prior to that moment, all life had consisted of small microbes with no cell nucleus and no mitochondria. Everything changed when one unicellular life form, known as an archaebacterium, ended up inside another, called a eubacterium."

On another page Cobb says this:

"We could in principle calculate the probability of the appearance of eukaryotes, but we would soon run out of zeros...That weird hybrid was our ancestor, and its existence – and therefore ours – was incredibly improbable. As far as we are aware, no such event happened before or since."

Obviously we have here a fairy tale, an "old wives' tale."  Scientists have no credible tale to tell of how eukaryotic cells originated, just as they have no credible tale to tell of how prokaryotic cells originated. Whenever they refer to eukaryotic cells arising by fantastically improbable combination accidents, biologists are merely engaging in the most farfetched hand-waving. Because neither prokaryotic cells nor eukaryotic cells specify in their DNA how to make either a eukaryotic cell nor any of its organelle components, there is no conceivable lucky combination accident of prokaryotic cells that would result in eukaryotic cells with the ability to reproduce to make other eukaryotic cells. 

Only at the end of the Quanta Magazine story (with a deceptive title and the most unbelievable fairy tale as its content) do we get some candid truth telling.  At the end the evolutionary biologist Toni Gabaldon says, "The most fascinating thing about eukaryotes is that we still don’t understand how they came about.”  Correct -- so why is it that biologists are claiming to understand the origin of species such as ours? If you don't understand how the cells in human bodies originated, then you don't understand how the human species originated. 

What happens is that biologists are always making these groundless boasts about understanding great mysteries they do not understand. But every now and then they make confessions that contradict such boasts, and reveal how little they know. You can read many hundreds of such confessions in my very long post "Candid Confessions of the Scientists."  

The same Quanta Magazine had a recent story with the groundless headline "The Cosmos Teems With Complex Organic Molecules," with the false subtitle of "Wherever astronomers look, they see life’s raw materials."  The article gives the asteroid Ryugu as an example of such claimed abundance. The truth is that amino acids (the smallest components of living things) have only been detected in space in the tiniest trace amounts.  The only biologically relevant amino acid reportedly found in Ryugu were three of the simplest amino acids (glycine, alanine and valine), which were reportedly found at a level of only 1 part per billion; and whenever levels that small are reported, the reported detection is questionable. Senselessly the Quanta article describes molecules containing only 20 atoms as "very complex." That isn't a complex molecule from the perspective of biology.  An average-sized protein molecule has about 8,000 atoms in it.  No protein molecule has ever been found in space outside of manned spacecraft or space stations. 

Those wishing to push unbelievable ideas of accidental biological origins engage in different types of misspeaking.  Most commonly they engage in a kind of misspeaking in which great marvels of vast organization are described as if they are things not complex. So, for example,  they may falsely describe a human body (something with sky-high levels of organization) as a mere "bundle of atoms." But when it comes time to sell the groundless notion that life can accidentally originate, then their language is entirely different. Suddenly they are trying to persuade us that molecules of merely 20 atoms are "very complex."  

The Quanta Magazine article "Meet the Eukaryote, the First Cell to Get Organized" was enormously misleading, but its brazen falsehoods and absurdity is not quite as great as the brazen falsehoods and absurdity in a recent article on the site The Conversation, another materialist propaganda site often littered with the type of false and nonsensical statements so often found in Quanta Magazine. 

The writer of the article is a professor of astronomy. Trying to sell Darwinism, the astronomy professor teaches the glaring falsehood that Darwinists keep  telling again and again, the claim that DNA is a specification for building an organism.  He states this: "In biology, information refers to the instructions stored in the sequence of nucleotides on a DNA molecule, which collectively make up an organism’s genome and dictate what the organism looks like and how it functions." No, DNA does not dictate what an organism looks like and how it functions.  DNA contains no anatomy information. DNA does not specify the structure or function of any organ system;  DNA does not specify the structure or function of any organ; DNA does not specify the structure or function of any cell; DNA does not specify the structure or function of any of the organelles that are the building components of cells. See my post here for a long list of quotations by scientists and doctors saying that DNA is no such thing as a specification for building an organism. 

The levels of hierarchical organization in the human body are shown in the diagram below, which correctly tells us that none of the seven highest levels of organization are specified by DNA or its genes. 

I explain in other posts (such as here) why if there were to exist a blueprint in DNA for making a human body or any of its organs or cells -- something never found -- that would not at all explain how human bodies or their organs or their cells get built, for reasons such as the fact that such building instructions would be so vastly complex that nothing inside a human womb would be capable of understanding them and acting on them to produce the state of vast hierarchical organization that is a human body. 

After inexcusably telling us the flagrant falsehood that DNA dictates "what the organism looks like and how it functions," the astronomy professor then makes the supremely ludicrous statement  that "it’s wrong to conclude that animals are more complex than microbes." This is very obviously the worst kind of nonsense. Animals such as mammals are very obviously gigantically more complex than microbes. 

Wise worldviews tend to make the people who argue for them sound smart. But when people try to sell foolish or fallacious worldviews they can end up making very stupid-sounding statements, even if they have high IQs. And when the proponents of an ideology again and again make many different types of deceptive statements in their zeal to sell that ideology, you have a very clear sign of people marching in the wrong direction. 

Humans have minds, mental capabilities and mental experiences of gigantic depth and complexity, and bodies more organized and functionally impressive than anything humans manufacture. In a previous post I stated what I called the first rule of accidental construction:

The first rule of accidental construction: the credibility of any claim that an impressively organized final result was accidentally achieved is inversely proportional to the number of parts that had to be well-arranged to achieve such a result, and the amount of organization needed to achieve such a result.

I can state a similar rule relating to minds:

The first rule of neural explanation: the credibility of any claim that human minds are produced by brains (or are the same thing as brain states) is inversely proportional to the diversity and depth of human mental experiences, the number of mental powers that humans have, and the speed, skill and depth of such powers. 

It is because of such rules that Darwinists tend so strongly to misrepresent the vast physical complexity of humans and other living things and misrepresent the vast mental complexity of human minds, telling us the most absurd nonsense and falsehoods such as the claim quoted above that an animal is not more complex than a microbe, or other falsehoods as glaring and other word tricks as bad, such as the deception of trying to describe a human as mere "consciousness." What is going on is that such people are telling the falsehoods they need to tell and performing the deceptive tricks they need to perform in order to sell us on a theory of accidental construction that has a credibility inversely proportional to the degree of organization and complexity in living organisms and human beings, and to sell us a "brains make minds" theory that has a credibility inversely proportional to the skill, speed, depth and diversity of human mental powers and human mental experiences. The more we can be tricked and deceived into thinking that living organisms and humans are a million times simpler than they are, the more likely such ideology pitchmen will be to succeed.