Science- I don't think it means what you think it means.

Hello everyone, warning: long engineering student rant ahead.

Social media is very prevalent these days and bad news- it means anyone can put up ignorant, false, satirical and inaccurate claims on the Internet without facing repercussions. Today, I'm going to show you exactly why you should never believe everything you read on the Internet, let alone wholeheartedly agree with it and share it around.

The following are screenshots taken from this webpage titled "Nine scientific facts prove the theory of evolution is false". Click the images to enlarge.
http://worldtruth.tv/nine-scientific-facts-prove-the-theory-of-evolution-is-false/

I think my Shockwave Flash crashed because the amount of illogic in this article is palpable.

The first sentence is already false. Any scientist who practises the Scientific Method knows that no scientific theory can really stand the test of time- there is always emerging scientific evidence that proves current theories wrong. Even the theories that students are being taught in schools are rife with assumptions, what makes you think what you know about evolution is 100% correct anyway? 

In Chemical Engineering we are given a number of theories to work with, one of which is Bernoulli's principle which works with flow in pipes. Is it 100% correct? Let's examine the number of assumptions we're working with when applying this theory:

1. Incompressible flow

2. Steady state

3. No transfer of kinetic or potential energy from gas flow to the expansion and compression of gas.

If any of these assumptions do not hold, the Bernoulli's principle is no longer valid. And even if you think a statement is as foolproof at 1+1=2, you think you are 100% correct? In nuclear physics when radioactive substances undergo decay, the mass of the resultant particles do not equal the mass of the original particle because some of it is lost as energy. Even a lazy student like me who still hasn't completely understood A level Physics till today can remember when there are exceptions to a rule, even in science. Good job, the writer of this article based his/her writing on a false assumption. The article has lost its credibility.

But wait, I swear I haven't gotten to the facepalm-worthy parts yet. Moving on...

I can almost visualise the keyboard tantrum behind the computer...

Firstly, wtf is "evolution is scientifically"? Typing in proper English gives you more credibility my friend.

Secondly, this author claims that modern science are starting to prove that new species cannot evolve by natural selection and provides no links, research papers or quotes to support this claim. I've decided to do the work for him/her and do a search on Google scholar. These are my results:

There is only one book (not even a research paper with hard experimental evidence and citations mind you) that has anything to do with disproving evolution and the source is Geeky Christian. As you can see I made the search engine bring up papers from 2010 just to be fair. I decided to give the source the benefit of a doubt and read the introduction chapter. Nope, the book sounds exactly like this article- pull up a few scientific theories that seem to disprove evolution and call it a day. This is not how research works, sorry.

Don't believe me? You can google the exact same phrase and you will have no results even until Page 4 (the furthest I searched).

I repeated the search with "disproving evolution" and this time I did come up with something credible. 

http://books.google.com.sg/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ZmDDXnwrYAgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=disproving+evolution&ots=R9Dayh1jQb&sig=L6XUmvjB2-2dc5cuRbnf1l2ml5U#v=onepage&q=disproving%20evolution&f=false

I didn't have time to go through it but it was more a book critique on the Facts and Theories of evolution than anything else. My point, however, is that I highly doubt the author did the proper reading and cross-referencing to prove any of the claims in the article. It is also the reason why I have never professed myself to be an expert of scientific matters- I simply never read widely enough or conducted any experiments to come to any conclusion of my own. In that rein, I, or the author for that matter, have no right to call any properly researched scientific claim "nonsense".

Erm you spelt "religion" wrong

The first argument (finally) that the author puts forth: because wingless birds don't magically sprout wings they disprove evolution. Ever heard of mutations? Mutations are errors that occur in DNA and it can actually cause even humans to sprout things from their bodies like oh I don't know, TUMOURS? And because DNA assortment is random and not controlled by the environment, birds won't "sprout wings to better adapt to the environment" because that shit ain't no intelligently controlled. It seems someone doesn't even know the basics in the theory he/she is attacking. 

Secondly, the author brings up a couple of "missing links" which he/she claims are obviously not missing links:

Archaeologists and scientists are not idiots. You think they need some random person on the internet telling them "it looks like an ape, has a head like an ape, it is obviously an ape"? DNA and forensics have to be analysed before they came to that conclusion and since I know nothing about the experimental process, I'm not going to conveniently and arrogantly say a bunch of experts are "talking nonsense".

All cells are made from atoms, and today's technology is simply not capable of replicating every single phenomenon in the universe. A probable reason organic life could have originated from inorganic matter could be that CO2 is scientifically classified inorganic yet contains a carbon molecule and can hence be rearranged in complex reactions to form an organic compound. Realise my use of the word "could" when I am not speaking authoritatively on a subject like only scientists and researchers can.

Hold on I'm really confused now. The author now claims because there are mechanisms in the organism that prevent replication errors, evolution is wrong (I'm presuming the logic here is that it means mutations won't happen). And yet in the next paragraph he/she cites a source that acknowledges that mutations exist. WHAT?

Okay now the author changes his/her mind which goes to show this was a poorly thought-out rant more than anything else. The claim "mutations destroy the species" IS FALSE. Care to explain viruses that become airborne and antibiotic-resistant bacteria? 

*DNA exists in chromosomes and not the other way around

As to the question the author was posing, scientists have come up with various hypotheses. A simple search on Google has drawn up a project known as the Chimpanzee genome project (which does not prove anything by the way, but merely offers an insight into how ancestral chromosomes produced the human chromosome 2):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee_genome_project

Also included are a shit ton of research and references like any credible article would

P.S. The point of this entry is not to prove evolution or to disprove any alternate theories (notice I never brought up Creationism or any other theory in my post). I just wanted to point out the scientific inaccuracies in this article which is by the way a ridiculously high number for a supposed list of "nine scientific facts". Believe whatever you want to but the onus is on you to get your facts right before passing anything off as "scientific". My only conclusion after reading this piece is that it is probably satire that flew over my head (I usually detect sarcasm well).

P.P.S. I understand that the author may not have had the privilege of access to a wide range of resources and reading material. If that were the case, then I would simply suggest they pass this off as an opinion piece open to critique so that all the readers could have an open discussion and everybody learns in the process. If this article hadn't been so accusatory and condescending towards scientists, I'd have gladly left it alone.

This is why I have always recommended reading widely- but then again what can I do about the lack of intellectual stimulation when national libraries still deem it fit to pulp books about gay penguins.