In my work in aerospace R&D I produce computer simulations using what is arguably the most sophisticated Finite Element Analysis program ever developed: LS-DYNA. It was originally conceived and developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the mid-1970s for research into variable-yield nuclear weapons. For more than 35 years it has been under constant refinement […]
Month: January 2011
Repeatability in studies falls over time: Can you give this phenomenon a name?
In “The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?” (New Yorker, December 13, 2010), Jonah Lehrer reported, Many results that are rigorously proved and accepted start shrinking in later studies.[ … ] … now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our […]
Running On Immunity Against Disproof
Three months ago Princeton evolutionary biologist Andrea Graham became the talk of the ecoimmunology town through her summarization of the apparent connection between immunity and fertility (1). From trials carried out on 1476 individuals of wild Soay sheep from the St Kilda island archipelago in northern Scotland, Graham et al painted a complex picture of […]
Philosopher offers six signs of “scientism”
Non-materialist neuroscientists must often deal with the claim that their work is “unscientific,” despite the fact that, for example, the placebo effect, for example, is one of the best attested effects in medicine and the fact that there Is mounting evidence for researchable psi effects. The problem arises because, as Susan Hack puts it, “scientism” […]
Now that we have got to “pre-selection”, even Darwinians must be wondering …
In “Evolution by Mistake: Major Driving Force Comes from How Organisms Cope With Errors at Cellular Level” ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2011), Joanna Masel and Etienne Rajon posit “pre-selection” by error in order to explain how natural selection works its Darwinian wonders: In nature, it turns out, many new traits that, for example, enable their bearers […]
Anthony Hopkins Schools Charlie Rose on the Warfare Thesis
As if we needed more evidence that the myth of the warfare thesis is alive and well, Charlie Rose supplied it in abundance in his interview with legendary actor Anthony Hopkins last week. Fortunately Hopkins was able to disabuse the audience of Rose’s misconceptions, though it is not clear Rose was the better for it. […]
Knockout gene study in mice prompts speculations on human behaviour #3348
Lab mice by Aaron Logan, Lightsource In “Ma’s gene does different things to pa’s copy” Jessica Hamzelou (26 January 2011) reports for New Scientist on a knockout study of mice where researchers knocked out a gene called Grb10 in females and mated them with normal males. (From the report: “Most of our genes are expressed in […]
New Book on Alfred Russel Wallace and the ID Connection
In my new book, Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life, I take the reader on a journey from 19-century England, to the wilds of the Amazon River Basin, to the Malay Archipelago, and back to the highly charged scientific climate of Victorian London. Wallace’s story is one of discovery, from shocking Charles Darwin with his […]
The Accidental Design Apologist
Back in 2004, a well-known philosopher appeared in an interview and appeared to make a startling concession – that there was evidence that evolution itself was in some sense designed, and perhaps even directed towards a goal. This let to a lot of buzz on the internet, eventually resulting in back and forth between the […]
So what will you do when your turn comes?
Nathan Black reports for Christian Post “Intelligent Design Proponent Fired from NASA Lab” (Jan. 26 2011). David Coppedge is an information technology specialist and system administrator on JPL’s international Cassini mission to Saturn, the most ambitious interplanetary exploration ever launched. A division of California Institute of Technology, JPL operates under a contract with the federal […]
Coffee!! Flying reptile egg soon to be major movie
Adult pteranodon fossils from Royal Ontario Museum. Courtesy Kenn Chaplin from Toronto Jonathan Amos reports at BBC News (20 January 2011) on a “Fossil female pterosaur found with preserved egg“. Wonderful news, and note this: The egg indicates this ancient flying reptile was a female, and that realisation has allowed researchers to sex these creatures […]
The 4% solution: The ultimate Copernican revolution is “We’re different”?
In “The challenge of the great cosmic unknowns” ( New Scientist 24 January 2011), Dan Falk reviews Richard Panek’s The 4% Universe: Dark matter, dark energy, and the race to discover the rest of reality: As he nears the present day, Panek weaves together two separate yet closely related storylines. In the first, he takes […]
ID Foundations, 3: Irreducible Complexity as concept, as fact, as [macro-]evolution obstacle, and as a sign of design
[ID Found’ns Series, cf. also Bartlett here] Irreducible complexity is probably the most violently objected to foundation stone of Intelligent Design theory. So, let us first of all define it by slightly modifying Dr Michael Behe’s original statement in his 1996 Darwin’s Black Box [DBB]: What type of biological system could not be formed by […]
Finally starting to drag the carcass of Darwinism off the scene?
I’ve long suspected that the carcass of Darwinism is finally getting dragged off the scene, and with any luck, the career atheists and the Christian Darwinists will be fighting over it full time, with few onlookers, and Templeton funding the whack. Have a look at this roundup of abstracts a friend sent me: Forthcoming articles […]
Information and Energy
Today’s PhysOrg.com site contains this article. To my view, their investigation has important implications for ID. Many critics of ID ask us: “Well, how does your Designer design?” This is their way of saying to us that a Designer who lies outside the physical realm cannot possibly act within it. Of course, this amounts to […]