Erring Experts #20

 Here is the latest in a series of videos I am making. 

A Biochemist's Promissory Note About Explaining Minds Sounds Very Lame

 The site www.realclearscience.com calls itself the "Real Clear Science" site, but what it often gives us is not real clear science, but articles that are clearly ideology and propaganda pieces.  Occasionally the propaganda includes PR pieces written to serve the vested interests of the pesticide industry. On January 6 the site had an article written to defend the pesticide industry and to attack whistleblowers who point out the hazards of pesticides. On the same day the site had a link to an article in the Irish Times entitled "Will science be able to explain consciousness?" with the title subtitle "There is every reason to believe that consciousness will eventually yield to scientific analysis just as the general nature of life yielded."  The article is by emeritus biochemistry professor William Reville.  The article is a very lame promissory note.

Reville starts out by claiming that "science now understands the basic molecular basis of life" and then stretches this into the claim that science understands the "general nature of life." He attempts to use this triumphal boast as a kind of springboard to suggest that solutions to the mystery of mind will be forthcoming. It's kind of like someone saying, "I was able to finish the one-kilometer race, so you can bet that I will be able to finish the marathon race." 

But the claim that science understands "the general nature of life" is untrue. Scientists do not understand any such thing. In particular:

• Scientists lack any credible explanation of how cells in the human body are able to reproduce. Cells are fantastically organized units so complex they have been compared to factories. Scientists can describe various phases in cell reproduction, but do not understand how cell reproduction is able to occur. The reproduction of every eukaryotic cell is a marvel as hard to explain as a jet aircraft splitting up to become two working jet aircraft. One of the main reasons why scientists cannot explain how cells reproduce is that the DNA in the nucleus of cells does not contain any instructions for how to build a cell. Neither DNA nor its genes even specify how to make any of the organelles that are the main building components of cells. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein.  So we cannot at all explain the reproduction of cells by imagining that a cell reads from DNA some blueprint on how to make a cell. 
• Scientists lack any credible explanation for the origin of any type of protein molecule. Living things require very many different types of protein molecules. In the human body there are more than 20,000 different types of protein molecules, each a different type of complex invention. Most types of protein molecules require hundreds of well-arranged amino acid parts, and that altogether requires thousands of very well-arranged atoms in an average protein molecule. How did so many types of protein molecules so organized originate? Scientists do not understand how this occurred. You do not have any credible explanation if you merely refer us to Darwin or natural selection or evolution. The problem is that the functional thresholds of functional protein molecules are very high, ruling out a Darwinian explanation for their origin.  Darwin knew nothing about the complexity of protein molecules, and certainly did not explain their origin. For a good explanation of why Darwinism fails to explain the origin of protein molecules, read computer scientist David Gelernter's widely discussed book review entitled "Giving Up Darwin."  I may note that in that  book review, Gelernter misstated the average amino acid length of a protein molecule, listing it as merely 250. For the type of cells humans have (eukaryotic cells), the average length of a protein molecule is about 472 amino acids, meaning the probability of evolution producing a successful protein molecule (estimated by Gelernter as basically zero)  is very, very many orders of magnitude smaller than Gelernter suggests.  As four Harvard scientists stated in a paper, "A wide variety of protein structures exist in nature, however the evolutionary origins of this panoply of proteins remain unknown."  
• Scientists lack any credible explanation for how protein molecules get the three dimensional shapes needed for their function.  DNA merely specifies which amino acids make up particular protein molecules, and does not specify the three-dimensional shapes that such molecules must have to function properly. How do protein molecules form into such shapes? That is the long-standing problem called the protein folding problem, and it has never been solved. Don't be fooled by false claims that some AlphaFold2 software solved the protein problem. Such software merely made progress on a different problem, called the protein folding prediction problem. The quotes below tell us the truth on this matter:  (1) "In real time how the chaperones fold the newly synthesized polypeptide sequences into a particular three-dimensional shape within a fraction of second is still a mystery for biologists as well as mathematicians."   -- Arun Upadhyay, "Structure of proteins: Evolution with unsolved mysteries," 2019. (2) "The problem of protein folding is one of the most important problems of molecular biology. A central problem (the so called Levinthal's paradox) is that the protein is first synthesized as a linear molecule that must reach its native conformation in a short time (on the order of seconds or less). The protein can only perform its functions in this (often single) conformation. The problem, however, is that the number of possible conformational states is exponentially large for a long protein molecule. Despite almost 30 years of attempts to resolve this paradox, a solution has not yet been found." -- Two scientists, "On a generalized Levinthal's paradox," 2018. 

• Scientists lack any credible explanation of how protein complexes  are able to form. This is the problem of why it is that protein molecules so often form into very organized protein complexes, teams of protein molecules needed for the protein molecules to be functional. Such complexes are often so organized they are called "molecular machines." We cannot explain their formation merely be referring to DNA. Neither DNA nor its genes specify which protein molecules belong to particular protein complexes, nor do they specify how the intricate arrangement should occur. Here are some relevant quotes: (1) "The majority of cellular proteins function as subunits in larger protein complexes. However, very little is known about how protein complexes form in vivo." --Duncan and Mata, "Widespread Cotranslational Formation of Protein Complexes," 2011. (2) "While the occurrence of multiprotein assemblies is ubiquitous, the understanding of pathways that dictate the formation of quaternary structure remains enigmatic." -- Two scientists (link). (3) "A general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking." -- Two scientists, 2019 (link). (4) "Protein assemblies are at the basis of numerous biological machines by performing actions that none of the individual proteins would be able to do. There are thousands, perhaps millions of different types and states of proteins in a living organism, and the number of possible interactions between them is enormous...The strong synergy within the protein complex makes it irreducible to an incremental process. They are rather to be acknowledged as fine-tuned initial conditions of the constituting protein sequences. These structures are biological examples of nano-engineering that surpass anything human engineers have created. Such systems pose a serious challenge to a Darwinian account of evolution, since irreducibly complex systems have no direct series of selectable intermediates, and in addition, as we saw in Section 4.1, each module (protein) is of low probability by itself." -- Steinar Thorvaldsen and Ola Hössjerm, "Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems,"  Journal of Theoretical Biology.
• Scientists lack any credible explanation of how any adult human body is able to appear. The physical structure of an adult human being is a state of organization many millions of times more complex than a mere fertilized speck-sized egg cell.  (A human egg cell is about a tenth of a millimeter in length, but a human body occupies a volume of about 75 million cubic millimeters.) So you don't explain the physical origin of an adult human being by merely referring to the fertilization of an egg cell during or after sexual intercourse.  We cannot explain the origin of an adult human body by merely using words such as "development" or "growth." Trying to explain the origin of an adult human body by merely mentioning a starting cell and mentioning "growth" or "development" is as vacuous as trying to explain the mysterious appearance of a building by saying that it appeared through "origination" or "construction."  If we were to find some mysterious huge building on Mars, we would hardly be explaining it by merely saying that it arose from "origination" or by saying that it appeared through "construction." When a person tries to explain the origin of a human body by merely mentioning "growth" or "development" or "morphogenesis," he is giving as empty an explanation as someone who tells you he knows how World War II started, because he knows that it was caused by "historical events." The claim that you can explain the origin of a human body by imagining a reading of a DNA blueprint for making a human body is a lie long told by biologists and chemists. As many scientists have confessed, no such blueprint or recipe or program for making a human body exists in DNA.  As discussed here, not only does DNA not specify how to make a human, DNA does not even specify how to make any organ or appendage or cell of a human. There are more than 200 types of cells in human beings, each an incredibly organized thing (cells are so complex they are sometimes compared to factories or cities).  DNA does not specify how to make any of these hundreds of types of cells. Cells are built from smaller structural units called organelles. DNA does not even specify how to make such low-level organelles. 

• Scientists have made no real progress in understanding the origin of life. No experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever been able to produce life from non-life. No experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever been able to produce the building blocks of one-celled life (organelles) from non-life. No experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever been able to produce the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life (functional protein molecules) from non-life.  No experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever even been able to produce the building blocks of the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life (biologically relevant amino acids) from non-life.  It was widely claimed that the Miller-Urey experiment produced the building blocks of the building blocks of the building blocks of one-celled life (biologically relevant amino acids) from non-life. But such claims were false.The Miller-Urey experiment never realistically simulated early Earth conditions, for reasons explained here. 

So where does this leave Reville's claim that scientists understand "the general nature of life"? It leaves that claim as an unfounded boast. Scientists do not understand any such thing. As biologist Denis Noble recently said, "It’s time to stop pretending that, give or take a few bits and pieces, we know how life works." 

Given the complexities discussed above, we should laugh hard at this ridiculously lame statement by Reville trying to persuade us that scientists understand "the general nature of life":

"The hierarchical structure of the world, from the simplest to the most complex, is traditionally categorised as follows: mineral, vegetable, animal, human. Each level displays all properties of the simpler level beneath but in addition displays a property/properties not present below. Thus, the human body is made of matter, is living, conscious and self-aware. The animal body is similar but lacks self-awareness. The plant body is made of matter, is living but lacks consciousness and self-awareness. Minerals are made of matter but are not alive, conscious or self-aware."

No, that is not a correct description of the hierarchical structure of the world. That is an extremely ridiculous statement trying to make the hierarchical structure of biology sound enormously less complex and organized than it is. Below is a correct description of the  hierarchical structure of biology. 

HUMANS CONSIST OF HUMAN BODIES AND HUMAN MINDS.	Human minds have displayed a vast number of capabilities, many of which mainstream scientists fail to properly study.
HUMAN BODIES MAINLY CONSIST OF ORGAN SYSTEMS AND A SKELETAL SYSTEM.	The human skeletal system contains 206 bones.
ORGAN SYSTEMS CONSIST OF ORGANS AND SUPPORTING STRUCTURES.	Examples of organ systems include the circulatory system (consisting of much more than just the heart), and the nervous system consisting of much more than just the brain.
ORGANS CONSIST OF TISSUES.
TISSUES CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX AND VASTLY ORGANIZED  CELLS	There are more than 200 types of cells in the human body, each a different type of system of enormous organization. Cells are so complex they have been compared to factories with many types of manufacturing devices.
CELLS TYPICALLY CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX MEMBRANES AND THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS OF ORGANELLES.	A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few mitochondria, but cells typically have many thousands of mitochondria, as many as a million. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few lysosomes, but cells typically have hundreds of lysosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few ribosomes, but a cell may have up to 10 million ribosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict one or a few stacks of a Golgi apparatus, each with only a few cisternae. But a cell will typically have between 10 and 20 stacks, each having as many as 60 cisternae.
ORGANELLES CONSIST OF VERY MANY PROTEIN MOLECULES AND PROTEIN MOLECULE COMPLEXES.	There are some 100,000 different types of protein molecules in the human body, each a different type of complex invention. Protein molecule complexes are groups of different types of protein molecules that work together as team members to achieve a function that cannot be achieved by only one of the proteins in the complex. Very many protein complexes have so many parts working together dynamically that such complexes are now being called "molecular machines."
PROTEIN MOLECULES CONSIST OF HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF WELL-ARRANGED AMINO ACIDS, EXISTING IN A FOLDED THREE-DIMENSIONAL SHAPE.	Small changes in the sequences of amino acids in a protein are typically sufficient to ruin the usefulness of the protein molecule, preventing it from folding in the right way to achieve its function.  See "The Fragility of Fine-Tuned Protein Molecules" section of the post here for quotes stating this.
AMINO ACIDS CONSIST OF ABOUT 10 ATOMS ARRANGED IN SOME SPECIFIC WAY.	Some amino acids have 20 atoms. Given 10+ atoms in amino acids, and an average of about 470 amino acids per human protein molecule, a human protein molecule contains an average of about 5000+ very well-arranged atoms. Amino acids in living things are almost all left-handed, although amino acids forming naturally will with 50% likelihood be right-handed.
ATOMS CONSIST OF MULTIPLE PROTONS, NEUTRONS AND ELECTRONS.	A carbon atom has 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons.

The visual below correctly describes the hierarchical nature of life, and it is a reality almost infinitely harder to explain than the "mineral-vegetable-animal-human" tiers that Reville claimed as a description of the "hierarchical structure of the world." 

We then have from Reville an extremely misleading triumphalist narrative in which he describes increasing scientific discoveries that 

"cumulatively explained the secret of life in the mid-20th century." No,  what was discovered in the mid-20th century was mainly just DNA (and its genes) and the enormous complexity of protein molecules.  Such discoveries raised many more questions than they answered.  Calling DNA "the secret of life" (as if biological life has only one secret rather than hundreds of deep unanswered questions) is one of the most misleading speech customs of biologists and chemists.  Reville gives us the groundless claim that "The entire history of science fully justifies expectation that analogous scientific investigations will eventually unveil how consciousness and self-awareness gradually developed through biological evolution and how these processes work at a molecular level." No, there is no basis for any hope that the human mind will be understood by further investigations at a molecular level. 

What Reville is attempting here is a fallacious kind of reasoning that someone might fallaciously but more effectively use by saying something like this:

"Isn't it amazing the progress science has made? In the twentieth century scientists learned how to blow up entire cities by splitting atoms. Scientists have made all kinds of amazing discoveries such as discovering the chemical composition of distant stars and the velocities of distant galaxies. Now scientists can view things as small as a billionth of meter.  Science is so very powerful, so surely it will be able to figure out how brains produce minds." 

This would be a fallacious argument for at least two reasons. First, successes in the past do nothing to justify optimism about successes at vastly difficult undertakings in the future. Second, successes in understanding the material do nothing to justify optimism about successes in understanding the immaterial, something like the human mind.  But at least the argument quoted above is one that appeals to real accomplishments. Scientists did actually figure out how to blow up entire cities by splitting atoms, and did discover the chemical composition of distant stars and the velocities of distant galaxies. Reville's argument has the same two weaknesses of the argument above, with an additional fallacy that he is appealing to supposed accomplishments of biologists that never actually occurred. Biologists never actually discovered "the basic nature of life" in the sense of understanding any of the unanswered questions in my bullet list above. There did not ever occur any discoveries that "cumulatively explained the secret of life in the mid-20th century."  Every major discovery that was made simply deepened the mysteries of how species could have originated, deepened the evidence for accidentally unachievable organization in the human body, deepened the mystery of how a human body can originate, and deepened the mystery of how a cell can reproduce. If you got the opposite impression, it was because boastful scientists constructed many a groundless triumphal legend, and made very many misstatements about what they had accomplished, very frequently claiming to understand deep mysteries a thousand miles over their heads. 

Reville then uses one of the most witless arguments of materialists: the claim that we can explain the human mind as an emergent property. The argument (so often used before) will typically give an example involving water, and that is just what Reville does.  Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, and neither has any such property as wetness. But when oxygen and hydrogen are combined to make water, then we have something with the property of wetness. It is claimed that such a property could never be predicted by just analyzing hydrogen or just analyzing oxygen.

According to Reville, this example shows that amazing new properties can arise when matter combines in different ways. He suggests that human consciousness is simply such a property, a property that just arises from certain complex combinations of matter such as we find in the brain.

But this reasoning is absurd.  The human mind is not a property of the brain or a property of the body. In general, a property is a simple intrinsic characteristic of something, which can be completely expressed by giving a single number. For example, the properties of a rock are hardness, weight, height, width, length, and depth. Each of these simple properties can be expressed by a single number. (You may not think hardness can be expressed by a number, but there is something called the Mohs scale used to numerically express the hardness of rocks). We might also think of the color of the rock as being a property, although that requires a simplification (since the rock will actually be multiple colors). If one makes such a simplification, then that color can also be expressed as a single number, such as a number on a color scale. Even wetness can be expressed by a single number (we might, for example, create a wetness scale of 1 to 10, and reasonably assign liquid water a value of 10, and a thick soup a value of about 5).

But the human mind is not a simple characteristic that can be numerically expressed by a number. When we consider all of the very many facets of the human mind (memory, intelligence, personality, emotions, will, self-hood, spirituality, creativity and dozens of other facets or functions), we certainly do not have anything like a simple characteristic that can be expressed by a number. The human mind is also something mental, something much different from a physical property such as width, weight, or wetness. Below are two images showing aspects of human mental experience, normal and anomalous.

So much more than just "consciousness" or "awareness of surroundings"

In light of such facts, the argument of the emergentist falls apart. It may sound persuasive to make this shallow, sketchy comparison:

"When we combine hydrogen and oxygen, we see the emergence of a new, unexpected property of 'wetness.'  This can help explain how our consciousness could suddenly arise from the combination of certain types of neurons."

But it does not at all sound convincing to make this deeper, more complete comparison.

"When we combine hydrogen and oxygen, we see the emergence of a new, unexpected property of 'wetness,' which is a simple, physical property that can be expressed by a single number. This can help explain how certain combinations of physical neurons could produce human mentality that is not physical, extremely diverse, and is enormously complex and multifaceted, and not capable of being expressed by a single number."

Obviously the latter argument does not work. Our minds are not at all a property. They are far too complicated, multifaceted, and multi-functional to be a property, which is a simple physical thing, like a single facet of something. And it makes no sense to use some analogy involving a tangible property of wetness to try to explain intangible aspects of minds. 

An additional reason for rejecting "mind is a property" reasoning comes from near-death experiences. In these experiences a person will often report floating above his body, and looking down on it. A property is something that cannot be separated from the object with which it is associated. So it would be absolutely nonsensical to say something like, “The rock is on the left side of the room, but the length of the rock is on the right side of the room,” just as it would be nonsensical to say, “I have your bicycle in my garage, but I have the weight of your bicycle in my kitchen.” But judging from near-death experiences, it is possible for a human mind to be separated from the brain, at least briefly. Since properties can never be separated from their associated objects, such experiences supply an additional reason for thinking that the human mind cannot be considered a property of the brain.

Reville makes a common mistake of reductionists at the beginning of his deliberation on such a topic: the mistake of posing a "problem of consciousness." Such a mistake involves bungling reductionist shrink-speaking in which the extremely multifaceted and enormously complex reality of the human mind is described using the minimalist word "consciousness," which serves to depict the human mind as a mere shadow of itself.  We do not have some mere problem of explaining why humans are aware of their surroundings. We have the almost infinitely bigger problem of explaining why there occurs all of the rich phenomena of human minds, which add up to being a reality enormously larger than mere "awareness of surroundings." Under any realistic consideration of the human mind, all attempts to explain the human as a property seem ridiculous in the extreme.  A property is a one-dimensional thing that can be described with a single number. The human mind is something enormously deeper and more diverse and more multifaceted than some mere property. 

"Consciousness" defined as mere "awareness of surroundings" would be a suitable term to use for the mental experiences of an ant. Purporting to explain human minds by describing them as mere things with awareness of surroundings (some shadow-like thing that might be a mere property) is as grotesque a trick and glaring a fallacy as purporting to explain human bodies by the shrink-speaking sophistry of describing them as mere "oblong shapes with protrusions" and claiming that it is real easy for nature to make such shapes, such as when such shapes arise from puddle splashes.  The person who depicts a human as "some consciousness" is like some person who describes World War II as "some noise."

The rest of Reville's article consists of some comments against panpsychism. Skepticism about panpsychism does nothing to justify optimism that neuroscientists will be able to explain minds. Reville gives us not one valid reason for being optimistic that further investigations into matter will be able to explain consciousness, self-hood or the human mind. His very field (biochemistry) actually gives us the strongest basis for doubting such a claim. 

What we see by deeply studying biochemistry are the most enormously impressive engineering effects throughout the human body. Inside your body is a vast army of chemical components so complex and so well-organized that mainstream scientists have for a long time been calling them "molecular machines." The extremely abundant existence of such accidentally unachievable molecular machines and countless other examples of extremely impressive engineering effects in the human body provide (with many other lines of evidence) an extremely strong basis for believing that the physical structure of every adult human body is something that will forever be unexplainable by bottom-down physical causes, and can only be the result of top-down causal agency.  If our bodies must have arisen from some mysterious top-down agency, then it is all the more plausible to assume that our minds must arise from some mysterious top-down agency. 

But the main reasons for suspecting that scientists will never be able to explain minds by studying brains comes not from biochemistry but from neuroscience itself. Neuroscientists have discovered many very serious brain physical shortfalls which exclude the brain as an explanation for the human mind and human memory, as discussed here.  Sadly, our neuroscientists are failing to pay attention to the implications of their own discoveries, and such scientists keep paying lip service to dogmas of their belief community that are excluded by the low-level findings of neuroscientists themselves. 

Notably, our biochemist makes not one single mention of anything in biochemistry that might explain minds or mental phenomenon.  That should surprise no one. Biochemistry involves equations like the one below, in which the things on the left of the arrow are material inputs, and the things on the right of the arrow are material outputs:

6CO2+6H2O→C6H12O6+6O2

But there could never, ever be any sensible chemical equation looking like this:

C12H18O12+6O2→ My thoughts about whether God exists

We should have little confidence in anyone claiming that the problems of human societies will be solved by scientists unless such a person is a scholar of human societies. Similarly, we should have no confidence in any person predicting that the problems of explaining humans minds will be solved by investigations into matter unless such a person is a scholar of the human mind and human mental experiences, a topic of oceanic depth. In general biochemistry professors such as Reville are specialists who are not scholars of human minds and human mental experiences. 

Erring Experts #19

 Here is the latest in a series of videos I am making.

Universities Continue to Boast About Pitifully Weak Neuroscience Results

Nowadays university press releases are notorious for their brazen  bunk. Authorship anonymity is a large factor that facilitates the appearance of misleading university and college press releases.  University and college press releases typically appear without any person listed as the author. So when a lie occurs (as it very often does), you can never point the figure and identify one particular person who was lying.  When PR men at universities are thinking to themselves "no one will blame me specifically if the press release has an error," they will feel more free to say misleading and untrue things that make unimpressive research sound important.  

 

Misleading press releases produce an indirect financial benefit for the colleges and universities that release them.  When there occurs untrue announcements of important research results, such press releases make the college and university sound like some place where important research is being done. The more such press releases appear, the more people will think that the college or university is worth the very high tuition fees it charges. 

Judging from the quote below, it seems that science journalists often look down on the writers of university and college press releases, even though such science journalists very often uncritically parrot the claims of such people.  In an Undark.org article we read this:

"Still, there are young science journalists who say they would rather be poor than write a press release. Kristin Hugo, for example, a 26-year-old graduate of Boston University’s science journalism program, refuses to step into a communications role with an institution, nonprofit or government agency.  'I’ve been lucky enough that I haven’t had to compromise my integrity. I really believe in being non-biased and non-partisan,' she says. 'I really, really, really want to continue that. I wouldn’t necessarily begrudge someone for going into [public relations] because there’s money in that, but I’d really like to stay out of it.' "

Let us look at the latest bad joke in the long-running comedy series entitled Neuroscience Press Releases. It is a press release with the untrue title "Neural Prosthetic Device Can Help Humans Restore Memory." We hear this untrue claim: "A team of scientists from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Southern California (USC) have demonstrated the first successful use of a neural prosthetic device to recall specific memories." Near the front of the press release is a reference to a scientific paper. The paper is a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of affair that fails to document any results greater than you should expect from mere chance, given several groups of researchers trying methods like the method tried, even if the methods all had zero effectiveness. 

The paper (which can be read in full here) is entitled "Developing a hippocampal neural prosthetic to facilitate human memory encoding and recall of stimulus features and categories." In the "Main Results" section the paper states this about its tests with 14 subjects:

"Across all subjects, the stimulated trials exhibited significant changes in performance in 22.4% of patient and category combinations. Changes in performance were a combination of both increased memory performance and decreased memory performance, with increases in performance occurring at almost 2 to 1 relative to decreases in performance."

This does not sound like an impressive result at all.  If I were to tell 14 people to guess whether it will be sunny or cloudy in particular states on the first of next month, and then I asked them to do the same task for the 15th of the month, while they were holding a rabbit's foot, I might easily find that the number of people who did better with the rabbit's foot was twice as high as the number of people who did worse.  I might expect to get such a result with maybe a 25% probability. 

There is a way to roughly estimate the probability of getting results like those reported in the paragraph above. We have a description of 14 people being tested, and almost twice as many getting an improvement compared to those getting a decline in performance. The probability of this happening by chance is roughly equivalent to the chance of 14 people flipping a coin, and nine of them or more getting heads, and five of them or fewer getting tails; for in that case the number of "good" results are twice as many as the number of "bad" results (if you consider "heads" as the good result).  The Stat Trek binomial probability calculator screen below shows the odds of getting 9 or more "heads" results when flipping 14 coins.  It is 21%. Because the quote above says "almost 2 to 1" rather than "more than 2 to 1," and 9 is more than twice as high as 4, we can slightly round up this probability of 21% to be a probability of about 25%. 

So some neuroscientist reporting a result like the one mentioned above does nothing to show that anything more than chance was involved.  What we should always remember is that neuroscientists are free to do multiple tests, and file away in their file drawers tests that fail completely, producing only results expected by mere chance.  Also, there are many thousands of experimental neuroscientists who spend half of their time trying to produce impressive results; and very many journals have "publication bias" under which they only publish positive results. So we never should regard some result that could very easily have been produced by mere chance as a result telling us something about the brain or about the effectiveness of some medical intervention, particularly if such a result is not a well-replicated result. Getting something with a chance likelihood of about 25% is an utterly unimpressive result that does basically nothing to indicate that something more than chance was involved. 

The diagram below illustrates why getting a result with a chance likelihood of about 25% does basically nothing to show that some medical device is effective. The red N letters are a negative results, and the green P's are a positive result.  In the case shown below, reports of a positive effect get published, even though 9 out of 10 experiments failed to show the effect.  

Figure 4 of the "Developing a hippocampal neural prosthetic..." paper gives us a "heat map" of the results, shown below. The gray squares represent cases of "no significant change." The yellow, orange, brown and purple squares represent a negative change in memory performance. The blue squares represent a positive change in memory performance. No one making a brief study of the chart below will notice any difference. The amount of negative change seems like about the same as the amount of positive change. 

The authors then confess to us about the miserably bad statistical power of their results.  The "rule of thumb" used in experimental studies is that to reach a statistical power considered "good," you need to get what is called a statistical power of at least 80%. But the authors confess their results have a statistical power of only 10%.  

Such results have no persuasive power. They are results that are not good evidence for anything. The authors give this pitiful-sounding bit of excuse making for their poor results:

"With respect to the low overall statistical power, achieving high power would require an extremely large number of trials, which would take over an order of magnitude more time with a patient than what is possible in a clinical setting due to the time allotted for experiments. Within the clinical restrictions, and without causing undue fatigue on the patients, this experiment has run the maximum number of trials that was able to be performed with each patient. This is a restriction that is inherent with working with not only a patient population, but also the low number of overall trials compliant with a memory task (e.g., Suthana et al., 2012; Ezzyat et al., 2018) required to perform these types of experiments. Further, due to the relatively small nature of the patient population undergoing procedures which require the implantation of neural electrodes, this study, with an n of 14, has a relatively large patient population compared to many published neurostimulation papers. The low statistical power and limited patient group is therefore not unique to our lab or experiment, but also applies to other research that has been published in this area."

 

The excuses are not valid. If the device they created had worked, you would not have needed to run ten times as many trials on the 14 subjects used. In such a case good statistical power would have been demonstrated with the same number of trials.  As for the last sentence, it is equivalent to saying, "Yes, our results are pitiful, but all the other experiments like ours produce results equally pitiful." 

Now, there's nothing wrong with producing an unsuccessful study that fails to produce any decent evidence of memory improvement by electronic means. The only sin is if you boast about such a result, and produce an untrue press release shamelessly making the false claim  that you have produced a device that can "help humans restore memory." And that is exactly what Wake Forest University School of Medicine did. They have described a very unconvincing experimental result as evidence that someone created a device that can "help humans restore memory." It's just another example of what goes on every day in the world of science news: colleges, universities and other institutions making false boasts about achieving scientific goals they did not actually achieve. The epidemic of misleading statements in university press releases is an epidemic that continues to rage full blast, and you will find some of its worst examples in press releases about biology and medicine.

If I were to do a visual giving a proper metaphor for the type of boasting that went on in the press release described above, the kitten would have to be so small you couldn't even recognize it as a kitten. 

Postscript: The tendency of university press releases to make groundless boasts about biology and medicine accomplishments is also shown in a recent press release entitled "Research team uncovers universal code driving the formation of all cell membranes." We have a press release with what sounds like some runaway groundless boasting:

"The theory describes how membranes are compartmentalized, remodeled and regulated, and provides a basis for understanding fundamental questions such as how life is formed at conception, how viruses invade cells and how neurons send signals for feeling, thought and action....'We feel that this represents a conceptual revolution that is akin to the discovery of the genetic code,' says Overduin. 'We're the first to see the overall forest from the trees.... It's remarkable that an undergraduate student can come up with a new code that turns biology upside down and allows us to make sense of it in a radically new way.' "

This all seems very much like groundless boasting, and a look at the scientific paper provides no evidence that anything new has been discovered. Finding a new code used by cells comparable to the genetic code would involve discovering some new repository of information that used repeated symbolic tokens in a systematic way, involving some scheme of representation comparable to the Morse Code or the genetic code. The authors prevent no evidence they have discovered any such thing. All we have in the paper is some very woolly speculation not well-supported by any observations. The press release statements sound like runaway illusions of grandeur not justified by any observations. 

But that's how university press releases are these days. The rule is: "anything goes" when it comes to boasting. 

Erring Experts #17

 Below is the latest in a series of short videos I am making.

DNA Is Not a Blueprint, So "All Bets Are Off" About Body Origins and Mind Origins

Ever since the discovery of DNA and the genetic code in the middle of the twentieth century, many scientists have been making an untrue claim about DNA: the claim that DNA is some kind of blueprint or program or recipe for making a human body. 

There are various ways in which this false idea is stated, all equally false:

• Many described DNA or the genome as a blueprint for an organism.
• Many said DNA or the genome is a recipe for making an organism.
• Many said DNA or the genome is a program for building an organism, making an analogy to a computer program.
• Many claimed that DNA or genomes specify the anatomy of an organism. 
• Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) specify phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism).
• Many claimed that genotypes (the DNA in organisms) "map"  phenotypes (the observable characteristics of an organism) or "map to" phenotypes.
• Many claimed that DNA contains "all the instructions needed to make an organism."
• Many claimed that there is a "genetic architecture" for an organism's body or some fraction of that body. 
• Using a little equation,  many 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. 

Some of these claims are documented in Table 1 of the paper here, where some authors count (in only June and July of the year 2000, in a single newspaper) 10 claims that DNA is a draft or script, 6 that it is a software program, 8 that it is a blueprint, 6 that it is a cook book (a recipe), and 12 that is a map. The same table shows similar claims being made abundantly in the leading scientific journal Nature; and Table 2 and Table 3 of the same paper shows similar claims being made abundantly in 2001 and 2003 in both the newspaper and Nature. 

There was never any justification for making any such claims. The only coding system that has ever been discovered in DNA is a system allowing only low-level chemical information to be specified.  That coding system is known as the genetic code, and it is merely a system whereby certain combinations of nucleotide base pairs in DNA stand for amino acids.  So a section of DNA can specify the amino acids that make up a protein molecule. But no one has ever discovered any coding system by which DNA could specify anything larger than a protein molecule. 

Judging from the facts, we must conclude that while DNA uses a code of symbolic representations (the genetic code), DNA is not a blueprint for making a human, is not a recipe for making a human, and is not a program or algorithm for making a human. The facts indicate that DNA is not anything close to a complete specification of an organism, but that DNA is instead something much simpler, mainly just a kind of database (or a collection of ingredient lists) used in making particular parts of an organism.

To get an idea of the true nature of DNA, it is a good idea to adopt a conceptual model of DNA. In science, a model is a somewhat simplified representation that helps us understand a more complicated reality. A classic example of a model is the Bohr model of the atom, in which the nucleus of an atom is compared to the sun, and the electrons in an atom are compared to planets that revolve around the sun. The atom is actually more complicated than such a situation (given the weirdness of quantum mechanics), but the Bohr model is still useful to help us get a basic grasp of what an atom is like. The Bohr model is essentially accurate, because just as the great majority of a solar system's mass exists at its center in the sun, the great majority of an atom's mass exists at its center in the atomic nucleus.

Now, what model can we use to grasp the basic nature of DNA? A good model to use is what we may call the chain-of-colored-beads model. Let us imagine a long chain of colored beads, in which there are about twenty possible bead colors, and each bead stands for a particular type of chemical called an amino acid. That is exactly how DNA works. We can imagine that one of these colors means kind of “Start.” The amino acids are the constituents of proteins. So after one of these “Start” beads appears in the chain, there is then a sequence of colored beads, with each color representing one of the twenty amino acids. Altogether the long “chain of beads” that is DNA specifies the ingredients of thousands of different proteins.

A particular snippet or section of DNA will correspond to a chain of amino acids that is the starting point of a protein. The visual below illustrates this schematically.

Now, once we have adopted this useful “chain of colored beads” model to help us understand the nature of DNA, we can understand the limitations of DNA. What type of information can be specified with such a “chain of colored beads”? Only simple linear information, what is called one-dimensional information. As two scientists state, "Genes are merely a means of specifying polypeptides," the one-dimensional chains like those depicted above. 

An example of one-dimensional information is a telephone number, a social security number, or a stock ticker tape. Such information can always be presented with a single line or row, although some types of one-dimensional information might require a long line or row. A more complicated type of information is what is called two-dimensional information. Such information requires both rows and columns. An example of two-dimensional information is the information in a calendar or a spreadsheet.

Another more complicated type of information is called three-dimensional information. Three-dimensional information specifies something that can only be described using the dimensions of length, width, and depth. An example is the information specifying the three-dimensional structure of a car.

Now, what type of information would be required to specify the physical layout of a three-dimensional body such as the human body? To specify such a thing, you would need three-dimensional information, information involving length, width and depth. But there is no way that such three-dimensional information could exist in DNA, which has merely one-dimensional information.

In fact, it seems that in order to make a complete biological specification of an organism, you would need not just three-dimensional information, but four-dimensional information. Time is often regarded as the fourth dimension. We can describe four-dimensional information as information that involves not merely aspects of length, width, and depth, but also an aspect of time.

Why would you need four-dimensional information to specify an organism such as a human? For one thing, it is not true that humans just pop into existence as adults. Instead, there is a long series of transitions between the earliest state of a newly fertilized egg, and that of a full-grown human. A full human specification would have to specify each of these states. So the specification would need to use the fourth dimension of time to specify this temporal progression in human forms.

Another reason why a full human specification would need to be four-dimensional is that human beings are not static objects, but intensely dynamic objects. Think of all the dynamic activity occurring every day in your body. Blood and electricity is flowing about, proteins are being synthesized according to specific time tables, cells are being born and dying according to other time tables, and so forth. A single snapshot of the state of a human body is not at all sufficient to capture this dynamic activity. You would need to have a specification that is four-dimensional. Similarly, if someone from some small island in the Pacific had no idea of what a city was, you would never specify what a city was by just showing some maps. You would need to somehow specify the motion occurring in the city: the subways moving, the cars moving, the people moving, the water flowing through pipes, and so forth.

But DNA can only specify one-dimensional information. So it is very absurd to maintain that a biological specification of humans is in the one-dimensional information of DNA.

The table below lists on the left various types of information that would be needed to have a full biological specification of an organism, and on the right whether or not such information can be specified in DNA.

Type of information	Can it be specified in DNA?
Linear amino acid sequence of a protein molecule	Yes
Three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule	No
Exact location where a protein is located in body	No
Layout of a cell organelle	No
Layout of a cell	No
Layout of a tissue type	No
Layout of an organ	No
Layout of an organ system	No
Layout of a full body plan	No
Structure progression from simplest tiniest form to fully grown form	No
Dynamic behavior inside an organism during a particular month or year	No

Some would disagree about the answer I have given in the third row, and claim that the three-dimensional shape of a protein molecule is purely a consequence of its sequence of amino acids. If this were true, scientists would have long ago solved the protein folding problem, and would be able to predict the three-dimensional shapes of proteins from their one-dimensional sequence of amino acids. But after decades of trying to do this, the protein-folding problem is still unsolved, and (as discussed here) scientists still cannot accurately predict the 3D shapes of large proteins from their amino acid sequences.

The fact that DNA can only store one-dimensional information is a decisive reason for rejecting all claims that DNA even half-specifies the human organism. There are two other reasons for rejecting such claims. The first is that no one has found any information in DNA corresponding to human body plan information. The human genome has been thoroughly studied through massive projects such as the Human Genome Project and the ENCODE project. No one has found any gene information specifying a human body plan, a structural plan for a cell, a structural plan for an organ, or a structural plan for an organ system.

The second reason is equally enormous. It is simply that there exists nothing in the human body that could interpret a specification of human biology, if such a thing existed in DNA. Consider computer code. Such code can only work because there is an enormously sophisticated piece of software called an interpreter or compiler that is smart enough to read such complex instructions. If it were to happen that DNA stored instructions for making a human, contrary to the evidence, we would only explain human development if we imagined that somewhere in our biology was some enormously sophisticated machinery or functionality capable of reading such highly complex instructions and executing them. But no such functionality has ever been discovered.

Is it accurate to say that DNA is a recipe for building a body? No it is not. A recipe includes an ingredient list, and a set of instructions explaining how to make a particular meal or dish using those ingredients. DNA has lots of ingredient lists specifying the ingredients of proteins. But nowhere does DNA specify a series of instructions for assembling a cell, an organ, an organ system, or a full body. Protein molecules have three-dimensional shapes that they assume for unknown reasons. Such shapes are not specified in DNA.

MINIATURE LANGUAGES
NAME	LIST OF WORDS IN LANGUAGE	WHAT CAN BE SPECIFIED BY LANGUAGE	WHAT CANNOT BE SPECIFIED BY LANGUAGE
Sandwich Language	Bread, Turkey, Ham, Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, Bacon	Various types of sandwiches	Anything that is not a sandwich
Exercise Language	Jump, Crouch, Stretch, Punch, Lift, Bend, Squat, Spin	Various types of exercises	Anything that is not an exercise
DNA Language	Alanine, Asparagine, Aspartic acid, Arginine, Cysteine, Glutamine, Glycine, Glutamic acid, Histidine, Isoleucine, Lysine,Leucine, Phenylalanine, Methionine, Serine, Proline, Tryptophan,Threonine, Tyrosine, Valine	Polypeptide sequences – a linear one-dimensional  sequence of amino acids	Anything that is not a polypeptide sequence, including the 3D shape of a protein, the shape of any body part, the structure  of any organism, or a behavior or instinct.

So where is it that biological shapes and structures come from? This is a gigantic unknown, which stands as a dramatic contradiction of all attempts to explain biology in mechanistic or materialistic terms. We do not know where the 3D shapes of protein molecules come from. We do not know where the shapes of cells come from. We do not know where the structure of tissues comes from. We do not know where the shapes of organs come from. We do not know where the shapes of organ systems come from. We do not know where the overall body plan of an organism comes from. We therefore have a strong reason to suspect that such things are mysterious inputs from some unfathomable reality outside of an organism.

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). 

The visual below illustrates the ridiculous situation in today's biology. Shown are search results I got on the first page of results, after asking Google "is DNA a blueprint for making a human body?" Half of the results are false, and half of the results are true. 

Last week we had the latest confession by a scientist that DNA is not a blueprint. It occurred in a very influential place: on the pages of the leading scientific journal Nature. Entitled "It’s time to admit that genes are not the blueprint for life,"  the article was by biologist Denis Noble.

Not wishing to shock his scientist readers too much, Noble kind of pulls his punch, and tells a bland story that kind of has a sound of "things are more complicated than we thought."  But the true story is something far more shocking.  The real story is this:

1. As soon as DNA and the genetic code were discovered, around the middle of the twentieth century very many scientists started to tell a wholly unjustified lie that DNA was a blueprint or recipe or program for making the human body. Nothing had been discovered that justified any such claim. The code used by DNA (the genetic code) is something capable of expressing only low-level chemical information, not any high-level structural information. 
2. The lie that DNA is a body blueprint continued to be told by many scientists throughout the rest of the 20th century. During the last decade of that century, the Human Genome Project was busy making a complete list of all the genes in DNA. 
3. When the Human Genome Project completed in 2001, very many scientists continued to make the false claim that DNA is a blueprint for making a human, even though no evidence supporting such a claim had been found by this gigantic effort analyzing the contents of DNA. 
4. Despite all these claims, by now many scientists have confessed that neither DNA (the genome) nor its genes are any such thing as a blueprint or recipe or program for making a human body, and in February 2024 the leading science journal Nature had an article entitled "It's time to admit that genes are not the blueprint of life," contrary to its numerous previous claims that genes are such a blueprint. 

How can you describe what it should be like for the person who studies the facts and realizes that neither DNA nor its genes are any specification, blueprint, recipe or program for building the human body or any of its organs or any of its cells, contrary to the claims so often made? There is a good English expression that describes the situation. The expression is: "all bets are off." "All bets are off" is an English expression that describes a state of loss of confidence that follows a revelation that undermines your confidence about some situation.   Some examples of using the expression are below:

• "I was all ready to marry Willy because I thought he was someone who would be devoted to me for the rest of my life. But I just learned he's been having a sex affair with his co-worker, so all bets are off."
• "I was going to invest many thousands in New Shiny Tech, Inc. But I just learned that their profit and loss statement is bogus, so now all bets are off."
• "I was set to buy that house on Maple Street, but the inspection report shows the foundation is all rotting, and that the pipes are all leaking inside the walls. So now all bets are off."

The same expression should be used by anyone who learns of how scientists have been gigantically misleading us for so many years about how our bodies arise. Such a person should be saying: "all bets are off" about the origin of human bodies, human gene pools and human minds. What this means is that the key causal claims of biologists regarding the origin of human bodies and human minds should be distrusted, particularly whenever such causal claims seem to have an ideological motivation.  Whenever a biologist makes some kind of claim that seems to be part of justifying his worldview, we should be extremely suspicious. 

The person starting to think he should be saying "all bets are off" about his origin (based on all the long years of scientists lying about DNA) will have ample further justification for such a thought when he considers the question of how human minds arise.  There are many similarities here:

(1) Just as scientists told us in a matter-of-fact manner for many decades that DNA is a blueprint for the human body (a claim without any observational foundation), scientists have told us for more than a century that the brain is the cause of the human mind and the storage place of human memories (a claim without any robust observational foundation). 

(2) The claim that DNA is a blueprint for the human body was an ideologically motivated claim, told to try to help prop up boasts that human origins are understood, and to help banish ideas that the arising of an adult body requires some superhuman causal reality. Similarly, the claims that the brain is the source of the mind and the storage place of memories are ideologically motivated claims, told to help prop up claims that humans have no soul, and claims the arising of human minds can be naturally explained without requiring some causal reality higher than human beings. 

(3) Those  claiming that DNA is a blueprint for the human body kept chanting year after year "the microscopes will find it some day," even long after the most powerful microscopes that should have found any DNA body blueprint failed year after year to find any such blueprint for building bodies or cells.  Similarly those  claiming that brains store human memories kept chanting year after year "the microscopes will find it some day," even long after the most powerful microscopes that should have found any memories stored in the brain failed year after year to find any human learned knowledge stored in brain tissue.