Descriptions of this week’s massive impact into Jupiter makes an interesting point on human existence relative to Jupiter: All Eyepieces on Jupiter After a Big Impact By DENNIS OVERBYE, New York Times July 21, 2009

Anybody get the number of that truck?

Astronomers were scrambling to get big telescopes turned to Jupiter on Tuesday to observe the remains of what looks like the biggest smashup in the solar system since fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into the planet in July 1994.

Something — probably a small comet — smacked into Jupiter on Sunday, leaving a bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean near its south pole. Read More ›

This is a bit dated. It took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University a few months back: SOURCE

Michael Bloomberg, check your messages. In “Weak Link: Fossil Darwinius Has Its 15 Minutes: Skepticism about a fossil cast as a missing link in human ancestry” (Scientific American, July 21, 2009), Kate Wong observes,

And in an elaborate public-relations campaign, in which the release of a Web site, a book and a documentary on the History Channel were timed to coincide with the publication of the scientific paper describing her in PLoS ONE, Ida’s significance was described in no uncertain terms as the missing link between us humans and our primate kin. In news reports, team members called her “the eighth wonder of the world,” “the Holy Grail,” and “a Rosetta Stone.”

The orchestration paid off, as Ida graced the front page of countless newspapers and made appearances on the morning (and evening) news programs. Gossip outlets, such as People and Gawker, took note of her, too. And Google incorporated her image into its logo on the main search page for a day.

And then it all just melted away, with SciAm being only the latest source to say, “Hey, wait a minute. Shut off the canned wonder track for a minute, will you?” Read More ›

Many attempts have been made recently to rescue Darwin from the charge of supporting social Darwinism, but as with the attempts to exonerate him from supporting racism, they only lead people to discover the documentary evidence for themselves. British physicist David Tyler reflects on this phenomenon. Just admitting it and getting past it would solve the problems, but then Darwin could no longer be the subject of dog-like veneration and ridiculous hagiography. Anyway, here’s Tyler:

Darwin was an advocate of Social Darwinism Read More ›

September 25 is the release date for the movie Creation in the UK, which tells the story of Darwin’s plight of being a perfectly innocent and doe-eyed scientist coming to grips with the unsavory religious implications of his perfectly honest science (the website claims artistic license in telling the story, and I take their word for it). The movie particularly focuses on the religiously charged conflict that arises between Charles and his religiously faithful wife Emma, as the trailer makes clear. The film is being supported by the Christian group Damaris in their campaign of advancing Theistic Evolution. The movie is based on the book Annie’s Box by Randall Keynes, who is Darwin’s great-great-grandson.

Is this vapid appeal to authority all the Darwinians have left? Creationism piece no way to honor Darwin’s birthday July 20, 2009 Letter to BOSTON GLOBE SHAME ON you for publishing two creationist op-eds in two years from the Discovery Institute, a well-funded propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution. Virtually no scientist takes “intelligent design’’ seriously, and in the famous Dover, Pa., trial in 2005, a federal court ruled that it is religion in disguise. The judge referred to the theory’s “breathtaking inanity,’’ which is a fine description of Stephen Meyer’s July 15 op-ed “Jefferson’s support for intelligent design.’’ Well, yes, Thomas Jefferson died 33 years before Darwin published “The Origin of Species.’’ And Meyer’s idea that Read More ›

Here’s my Mercator.Net story on Francis Collins as new NIH head: President Obama has chosen an evangelical Christian as the new head of the National Institutes of Health. He is coming under fire from both sides of the culture wars. [ … ] Of course, his advocacy of faith as a public scientist has received mixed reviews, to the point of attracting histrionics about looming “theocracy.” But now that Collins faces confirmation hearings before the Senate, the focus will shift from his persona to his view on issues relevant to his new job. He seems much more relaxed about abortion and human embryonic stem cell research than the average evangelical leader, so it will be interesting to see if he Read More ›

A friend draws my attention to “Defenders of the Faith: Scientists who blast religion are hurting their own cause.” by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (Newsweek, July 14, 2009), in which they warn against new atheist attacks on Francis Collins:

The critics, though, have it exactly backward: the United States needs more scientists like Collins—researchers who show by their prominence and their example that a good scientist can still retain religious beliefs. The stunning irony in the longstanding tension between science and religion in America is that many scientists who merely claim to be defending rationality from religious fundamentalism may actually be turning Americans off to science, doing more harm to their cause than good.

The poster boy for the so-called New Atheist movement today is biologist Richard Dawkins, author of the bestselling book, The God Delusion. He and other New Atheists attack faith without quarter, and insist that science and religion are fundamentally irreconcilable. In the process, they are helping to keep U.S. society polarized over science and likely helping to make it still harder for many religious believers to accept scientific findings in areas like evolution.

This is all well-meaning rot, of course. Read More ›

This was the question:

Here’s On the Epistemological Crisis in Genomics by Edward R Dougherty, which moved in Current Genomics, April 2008.

Abstract

There is an epistemological crisis in genomics. At issue is what constitutes scientific knowledge in genomic science, or systems biology in general. Does this crisis require a new perspective on knowledge heretofore absent from science or is it merely a matter of interpreting new scientific developments in an existing epistemological framework? This paper discusses the manner in which the experimental method, as developed and understood over recent centuries, leads naturally to a scientific epistemology grounded in an experimental-mathematical duality. It places genomics into this epistemological framework and examines the current situation in genomics. Meaning and the constitution of scientific knowledge are key concerns for genomics, and the nature of the epistemological crisis in genomics depends on how these are understood.

He kvetched,

The rules of the scientific game are not being followed. Given the historical empirical emphasis of biology and the large number of ingenious experiments that have moved the field, one might suspect that the major epistemological problems would lie with mathematics, but this is not the case. While there certainly needs to be more care paid to mathematical modeling, the major problem lies on the experimental side of the mathematical-experimental scientific duality. High-throughput technologies such as gene-expression microarrays have lead to the accumulation of massive amounts of data, orders of magnitude in excess to what has heretofore been conceivable. But the accumulation of data does not constitute science, nor does the a postiori rational analysis of data.

What’s happened since? Another black hole?

Contest question, for a free copy of Expelled?: What rules of science are relevant for genomics. Are they being followed? Read More ›

At Seed Magazine (June 29, 2009), Adrian Melott of “The Big Idea” asks, “Sometimes, something kills nearly all life on the entire planet. But is there a regular cycle to this creation and destruction of Earth’s biodiversity?”, arguing, Fortunately, all known dips in biodiversity seem to be followed by periods of rapid diversification called radiations. It was the end-Permian event that allowed the dinosaurs to develop and flourish. Of course, yet another mass extinction ended their reign. In their place, birds and then mammals ascended. And now humans have emerged. But even with all our intelligence and technology, we still don’t really understand what causes extinctions or radiations. One of the big mysteries associated with these phenomena is also a Read More ›

In “Why microbes are smarter than you thought,” Michael Marshall at New Scientist (June 30, 2009) intros and links many stories of the amazing ways microbes manage without brains and can even appear to think ( well, not really, but … ). Here’s my favourite, but go here for more: Many single-celled organisms can work out how many other bacteria of their own species, are in their vicinity – an ability known as “quorum sensing”. Each individual bacterium releases a small amount of a chemical into the surrounding area – a chemical that it can detect through receptors on its outer wall. If there are lots of other bacteria around, all releasing the same chemical, levels can reach a critical Read More ›

In “The Quantum Life” (Physcisworld.com, July 1, 2009), Paul Davies, astrobiologist and director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University, examines the case for quantum mechanics kickstarting the origin of life (Q-life): But why should quantum mechanics be relevant to life, beyond explaining the basic structure and interaction of molecules? One general argument is that quantum effects can serve to facilitate processes that are either slow or impossible according to classical physics. Physicists are familiar with the fact that discreteness, quantum tunnelling, superposition and entanglement produce novel and unexpected phenomena. Life has had three and a half billion years to solve problems and optimize efficiency. If quantum mechanics can enhance its performance, or open up Read More ›

At New Scientist, Michael Brooks tells us “Seven Things That Don’t Make Sense About Gravity,” including – If gravity were a tiny bit stronger, the universe as we know it would not exist – From plants to quail, life of all stripes seems to need gravity to work properly Uh … so then gravity doesn’t make sense because … why, exactly? Because there wasn’t supposed to be a solution to those problems? Why not? It reminds me a bit of this earlier kvetching about gravity. Fine tuning is a big problem for these people.

In “Re-Write The Textbooks: Key Genetic Phenomenon Shown To Be Different Than Believed,” (ScienceDaily, July 2, 2009) we learn, Because females carry two copies of the X chromosome to males’ one X and one Y, they harbor a potentially toxic double dose of the over 1000 genes that reside on the X chromosome. To compensate for this imbalance, mammals such as mice and humans shut down one entire X-chromosome through a phenomenon known as X-inactivation. For almost two decades, researchers have believed that one particular gene, called Xist, provides the molecular trigger of X-inactivation. Now, a new UNC study appearing online July 1 in the journal Nature disputes the current dogma by showing that this process can occur even in Read More ›

And what should they call it? The Browridge series? Anyway, here’s the latest plot from New Scientist, “Why Neanderthals were always an endangered species”: For much of their 400,000 year history, Neanderthals were few and far between, a new analysis of genetic material from several of the extinct, ancient humans now suggests. It’s difficult to put a number on the population of a species based on DNA alone, but less than a few hundred thousand of the archaic humans roamed Europe and Asia at any one time, says Adrian Briggs, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “There never were million and millions of Neanderthals,” he told New Scientist. I didn’t know homo sapiens Read More ›