2011

Why you should swear off all popular science media (except for Uncommon Descent and other sensible blogs) for your own mental health: Where does all this leave us?Let me return to the beginning, to Cordelia Fine and how we can think better about science, neural function, and human difference. The essentialist view of the brain is rapidly falling by the wayside. It is not just the recognition of neuroplasticity, and how experience and use can shape how the brain fires and wires together. Today, how we think about what parts of the brain do has changed – the essentialist view of innate modules, as well as our projection of human categories onto the brain, has come largely undone in the Read More ›

According to this paper, ScienceDaily (Feb. 14, 2011) — New research shows that all not mammals are created equal. In fact, this work shows that the animals most commonly used by scientists to study mammalian genetics — mice — develop unusually quickly and may not always be representative of embryonic development in other mammals. Hmm. Lab rats might not work out either. For medical purposes, the only solution, I guess, is to use lab technicians and postgrad students instead. Some regulations appended to the legislation may need to be changed, of course, but it shouldn’t take too long …

NOVA scienceNOW: Where Did We Come From? Airing Wednesday, February 16 at 8pm on PBS In this episode of NOVA scienceNOW, journey back in time to the birth of our solar system to examine whether the key to our planet’s existence might have been the explosive shockwave of an ancient supernova. Meet a chemist who has yielded a new kind of “recipe” for natural processes to assemble and create the building blocks of life. And see how the head louse, a creepy critter that’s been sucking our blood for millions of years, is offering clues about our evolution. Finally, meet neuroscientist André Fenton, who is looking into erasing painful memories with an injection. Thoughts?

Read the last quoted line of a Nature editor’s recent story: The design Debate But external peer review hasn’t always kept the foundation out of trouble. In the 1990s, for example, Templeton-funded organizations gave book-writing grants to Guillermo Gonzalez, an astrophysicist now at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, and William Dembski, a philosopher now at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. After obtaining the grants, both later joined the Discovery Institute — a think-tank based in Seattle, Washington, that promotes intelligent design. Other Templeton grants supported a number of college courses in which intelligent design was discussed. Then, in 1999, the foundation funded a conference at Concordia University in Mequon, Wisconsin, in which intelligent-design proponents confronted critics. Those Read More ›

In “Mind vs. Machine”, in The Atlantic (March 2011), Brian Christian reflects When the world-champion chess player Garry Kasparov defeated Deep Blue, rather convincingly, in their first encounter in 1996, he and IBM readily agreed to return the next year for a rematch. When Deep Blue beat Kasparov (rather less convincingly) in ’97, Kasparov proposed another rematch for ’98, but IBM would have none of it. The company dismantled Deep Blue, which never played chess again. The apparent implication is that—because technological evolution seems to occur so much faster than biological evolution (measured in years rather than millennia)—once the Homo sapiens species is overtaken, it won’t be able to catch up. Simply put: the Turing Test, once passed, is passed Read More ›

… about genetics, here, in honour of Darwin Day. Meet A False Fact: What Would Darwin Do (WWDD)?Now, in the spirit of challenging false facts and views, as Darwin encourages us to do, we have a particular “false fact” in mind, used to support a false view. Both are widely promoted by Richard Dawkins, who should know better. (More about that, below.) We’ll call this false fact Dawkins’ Whopper. You can listen to the Whopper here, as Dawkins answers this question: Out of all the evidence used to support the theory of evolution, what would you say is the stongest [sic], most irrefutable single piece of evidence in support of the theory? Or you can read a transcript of what Read More ›

An unbylined news feature in Raw Story (January 30th, 2011) tells us “Oklahoma bill would mandate educators question evolution in classes”

Educators in Oklahoma would be forced to openly question in their classes the legitimacy of the scientific theory of evolution should a new bill become state law.

“It’s a simple fact that the presentation of some issues in science classes can lead to controversy, which can discourage teachers from engaging students in an open discussion of the issues,” state Rep. Sally Kern, a Republican, said in defense of the bill she filed recently.

That used to be called teaching. Or a part of it anyway. Put another way: Any fact-based proposition that can be true can, alternatively, be false. Learning to hold intelligent opinions means considering reasonable arguments for adn against a proposition.

But, to get some idea how Darwinism is probably taught today, among Raw Story’s readers, note this: Read More ›

In “Science Cannot Fully Describe Reality, Says Templeton Prize Winner” (Science 16 March 2009), David Lindley profiles French physicist and Templeton winner Bernard d’Espagnat, 87: Quantum mechanics allows what d’Espagnat calls “weak objectivity,” in that it predicts probabilities of observable phenomena in an indisputable way. But the inherent uncertainty of quantum measurements means that it is impossible to infer an unambiguous description of “reality as it really is,” he says. He has proposed that behind measured phenomena exists what he calls a “veiled reality” that genuinely exists, independently of us, even though we lack the ability to fully describe it. Asked whether that entails a kind of mysticism, d’Espagnat responds that “science isn’t everything” and that we are already accustomed Read More ›

A friend offers “The 6 Crappiest Interview Questions”, groaning “Indeed! (And I’ve been asked many of them). Yes, we all have. Apparently, if you are really good, you will also get to hear from the same source, The Oatmeal, about crappy interviewees. It’s only fair, after all, that some of us should get our own back.

No, this isn’t about what you think. For once, we are talking about frogs and newts.

A friend notes that an evolutionary biologist puzzles as follows:

“One of the most puzzling paradoxes in the evolution of toxins is why organisms evolve to be deadly – contrary to venoms, for which deadly effects have a clear benefit. Extreme toxicity occurs repeatedly, from saturniid caterpillars to dart poison frogs. Selection favors the most-fit individuals, and those should be the ones that avoid predation. Killing an individual predator does not give an advantage over simply deterring one, especially if the prey has to be handled or eaten by a predator to deliver the poison. How, then, can we explain the evolution of deadly toxicity?” (Brodie, E. D., III. 2009. Toxins and venoms. Current Biology 19: R931-R935.)

Brodie, I’m told, is a leading researcher on evolutionary arms races at the University of Virginia. He goes on to suggest a solution: “arms races between predators and prey … drive the exaggerated evolution of toxicity in general, without resulting in deadly consequences to the primary selective agent.” (R933) He suggests as an example is the predator-prey relationship between garter snakes and a newt that produces tetrodotoxin powerful enough to kill 10-20 humans or thousands of mice. But the interesting thing is that the snakes, which seem to be the “primary selective agent” for newts, in the sense of selecting them for dinner, are resistant to the toxin. Brodie attributes the newts’ heightened toxicity to coevolution with the garter snakes.

My friend asks, “But how does that solve the paradox? Newts with a higher level of toxicity would only accrue selective advantage if those higher levels of toxicity protected them against the predators.”

Well, I suspect the answer lies in another question: Read More ›

“I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us – everything that exists – proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.” – Thomas A. Edison

Or what? Science 4 February 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6017 pp. 555-561 DOI: 10.1126/science.1197761 RESEARCH ARTICLE The Ecoresponsive Genome of Daphnia pulex John K. Colbourne et al To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jcolbour@indiana.edu We describe the draft genome of the microcrustacean Daphnia pulex, which is only 200 megabases and contains at least 30,907 genes. The high gene count is a consequence of an elevated rate of gene duplication resulting in tandem gene clusters. More than a third of Daphnia’s genes have no detectable homologs in any other available proteome, and the most amplified gene families are specific to the Daphnia lineage. The coexpansion of gene families interacting within metabolic pathways suggests that the maintenance of duplicated genes is Read More ›

… it turns out that Jerry “whyevolutionistrue” Coyne doesn’t like Elaine Ecklund, a Templeton author on faith and science*: Elaine Ecklund is making more hay out of her Templeton-funded research than I would have thought possible. Author of the book Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, she has spent her post-publication time distorting her findings as loudly and as often as possible, and spinning them to claim that they show the need for a consilience of science and faith. Templeton could not have gotten more bang for their bucks. Her latest piece, “Science on Faith“, is in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (It’s behind a paywall but I got it from the library.) Once again Ecklund emphasizes the many Read More ›

One group that isn’t going along with John “end of science” Horgan’s “immoral” rap about multiverse theorizing is the Templeton Foundation. A friend sends me this excerpt from a recent newsletter (which I can’t currently find online): Meanwhile, Cambridge University cosmologist and JTF Trustee John D. Barrow has just published the UK version of his new title, The Book of Universes. Barrow, a best-selling popular science author and the 2006 Templeton Prize winner, explores the underappreciated fact that Einstein’s theory of relativity predicts the existence of multiple and varied universes. What might these universes be like? And what do the latest scientific findings tell us about our own universe? Barrow’s Book gives readers a comprehensive overview of what we know, Read More ›

… and I presume that the elect are wending their way home from the “I do, I do, I do, I do, I DO believe in Darwin!” praise festival. Guitar chords, someone? I understand some Darwinists like to get folksy when fronting the message … Why, exactly, they do believe in Darwin will be long debated by social historians. I’d just shrug and say “Darwin feeds their inner ape,” and – more practically – their many genteel endowments. The ol’ Brit toff understood that sort of thing precisely, if nothing else. He got rich off Wedgwood pottery. Okay, well the (cue evil music!) Discovery Institute sent me this, about Wallace, Darwin’s co-theorist (remember, the theory could have been called Wallaceism, Read More ›