David Snoke
Encyclopedia
David W. Snoke is a physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 professor at the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...

 in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of the American Physical Society
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...

 "[f]or his pioneering work on the experimental and theoretical understanding of dynamical optical processes in semiconductor systems." In 2004 he co-wrote a controversial paper with prominent intelligent design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

 proponent Michael Behe
Michael Behe
Michael J. Behe is an American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate. He currently serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture...

.

Academic career

Snoke received his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

. He has worked for The Aerospace Corporation
The Aerospace Corporation
The Aerospace Corporation is a private, non-profit corporation headquartered in El Segundo, California that has operated a Federally Funded Research and Development Center for the United States Air Force since 1960...

 and was a visiting scientist and Fellow at the Max Planck Institute.

His research has focused on basic processes and phase transitions of electrons, holes, including nonequilibrium dynamics of electron plasma

and excitons,
the Mott transition from exciton gas to electron-hole plasma and Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons and polaritons. His research group at the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...

 uses stress to trap excitons in confined regions, similar to the way atoms are confined in traps for Bose-Einstein condensation experiments.

Behe and Snoke (2004)

In 2004, Snoke co-authored an article with Michael Behe
Michael Behe
Michael J. Behe is an American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate. He currently serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture...

, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute
Discovery Institute
The Discovery Institute is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design...

's Center for Science and Culture
Center for Science and Culture
The Center for Science and Culture , formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture , is part of the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank in the United States...

, in the scientific journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...

 Protein Science, which received widespread criticism. Behe has stated that the results of the paper support his notion of irreducible complexity, based on the calculation of the probability of mutations required for evolution to succeed. However, the published version did not address the concept directly; according to Behe, all references to irreducible complexity were eliminated prior to the paper's publication at the behest of the reviewers. Michael Lynch
Michael Lynch (geneticist)
Michael Lynch is Distinguished Professor of Evolution, Population Genetics and Genomics at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Besides many highly acclaimed papers, especially in population genetics, he has written a two volume textbook with Bruce Walsh, widely considered the "Bible" of...

 authored a response, to which Behe and Snoke responded. Protein Science discussed the papers in an editorial. Protein Science received letters that "contained many points of disagreement with the Behe and Snoke article", including the points that:


The paper's assumptions have been severely criticised and the conclusions it draws from its mathematical model have been both criticised and contradicted:
  • An essay criticised the paper for an "over-simplified the process, resulting in questionable conclusions", that "[t]heir assumptions bias their results towards more pessimistic numbers", including one assumption that is "probably false under all circumstances", another that is "probably false as a general rule" and assuming "much too high" a level of substitutions that would destroy the protein's function. It concludes "[a]nd ironically, despite these faulty assumptions, Behe and Snoke show that the probability of small multi-residue features evolving is extremely high, given the types of organisms that Behe and Snoke's model applies to."
  • More recent research suggests that Behe and Snoke's model, and even Lynch's response, may have been "substantial underestimates" "of the rate of obtaining an adaptive combination of mutations".
  • Biochemical analysis of the question has supported an orthodox evolutionary view and rejected Behe and Snoke's approach as an "unreasonable model which assume[s] 'leaps in thin air', such as the evolution of completely novel activities via multiple and simultaneous amino acid changes".


On May 7, 2005, Behe described the paper in presenting arguments for irreducible complexity in his testimony at the Kansas evolution hearings
Kansas evolution hearings
The Kansas evolution hearings were a series of hearings held in Topeka, Kansas, United States May 5 to May 12, 2005 by the Kansas State Board of Education and its State Board Science Hearing Committee to change how evolution and the origin of life would be taught in the state's public high school...

. At the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design...

trial later that year it was the one article referenced by both Behe and Scott Minnich
Scott Minnich
Scott A. Minnich is an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho, and a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture...

 as supporting intelligent design. In his ruling, Judge Jones
John E. Jones III
John Edward Jones III is an American lawyer and jurist from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. A Republican, Jones was appointed by President George W. Bush as federal judge on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in February 2002 and was unanimously confirmed by...

 noted that "A review of the article indicates that it does not mention either irreducible complexity or ID. In fact, Professor Behe admitted that the study which forms the basis for the article did not rule out many known evolutionary mechanisms and that the research actually might support evolutionary pathways if a biologically realistic population size were used."

A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (2006)

His book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth (Baker Books, 2006) was described in a review by Law Professor David W. Opderbeck, in the American Scientific Affiliation's Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith as "succeed[ing] admirably" in "establish[ing] that the 'day-age' view is a valid alternative for Christians who hold to biblical inerrancy", but as "less persuasive" at "argu[ing] for a concordist understanding of the Genesis texts and modern science." Snoke was elected a Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation
American Scientific Affiliation
The American Scientific Affiliation is a Christian religious organization of scientists and people in science-related disciplines. The stated purpose is "to investigate any area relating Christian faith and science." The organization publishes a journal, Perspectives of Science and Christian Faith...

in 2006.

External links

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