Response to James Tour: 700 Papers and Still Clueless (Part 2 of 2)

Last year I made a video about James Tour, a chemist and creationist who speaks out against origin of life research. He didn't like it much, so he decided to make a 14-part series about how dumb I am. He really pulled out all the stops, parading all of his classic fallacious talking points, with plenty of bald-faced lies and deliberate misrepresentations of scientific research peppered in for good measure. Honestly, I was rather shocked at how stupid it was. With so much material to work with, I ended up with quite a lot to say in response, and had to split it into two parts. In this Part 2, we examine how James is lying about our progress towards prebiotic syntheses of all the major classes of biomolecules, and when it comes to cells, James would rather mislead his viewers with dazzling animations of modern eukaryotic cells than actually dig into the relevant literature. If you thought Part 1 was devastating, strap in. Part 1 of this response: /watch/sCHRwMnGJhgGR My original video on James: /watch/AjSkD7ZyxiSyk Research cited in this video: Condensation of amino acids in water: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11084-006-9012-y Amyloid aggregates from amino acid condensations: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201605321 Lee's formation of oligopeptides: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9385 Peptides by mechanochemistry: https://chemrxiv.org/articles/preprint/Mechanochemical_Prebiotic_Peptide_Bond_Formation/13187852 Bruce's peptide bond formation: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.orglett.5b01812 Peptide bond half-life: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja00230a041 A route to enantiopure RNA precursors from nearly racemic starting materials: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21860459/ Hydrothermal conditions at the origin of cellular life: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/ast.2015.1338 Lipid-assisted polymerization of nucleotides: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/9/4/83 A defense of the RNA world hypothesis: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229089462_The_RNA_world_hypothesis_The_worst_theory_of_the_early_evolution_of_life_except_for_all_the_others Testing ideas in prebiotic analogue conditions: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/11/2/134 The emergence of RNA from the heterogeneous products of prebiotic nucleotide synthesis: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33636080/ Jack's nature.com article for laypeople: https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-018-05098-w/d41586-018-05098-w.pdf Lee and the formose reaction: https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/syst.201900014 Breslow's autocatalysis: https://www.pnas.org/content/107/13/5723 Peptide-based organocatalysis: https://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12713 Impressive 92-mer polysaccharide total synthesis: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14851 Seeberger's automated glycan assembly: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c00751 McCollum's lipid synthesis: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A: 1006592502746 The lipid world: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023% 2FA%3A1006746807104 Nick Lane and chemiosmosis: https://www.molevol.hhu.de/fileadmin/redaktion/Fakultaeten/Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche_Fakultaet/Biologie/Institute/Molekulare_Evolution/Dokumente/188.pdf Nick Lane on membrane divergence: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4130499/ Selection of prebiotic molecules in amphiphilic environments: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/7/1/3 Full clip of Christian Mayer: /watch/eb.utuoy=erutaef&UENODKfna74nu Vesicles and nucleic acid amplification: https://www.nature.com/articles/nchem.1127 Lee's protocells: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00177-4.pdf Watch my other debunks: http://bit.ly/ProfDaveDebunk EMAIL► ProfessorDaveExplains@gmail.com PATREON► http://patreon.com/ProfessorDaveExplains Check out "Is This Wi-Fi Organic?", my book on disarming pseudoscience! Amazon: https://amzn.to/2HtNpVH Bookshop: https://bit.ly/39cKADM Barnes and Noble: https://bit.ly/3pUjmrn Book Depository: http://bit.ly/3aOVDlT

Category