2011

Kelly Oakes here (September 23, 2011): While scepticism is necessary in situations like this — I’m sure we’re all aware of the famous Carl Sagan quote, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” — progress is not made by shouting down anything that does not fit within the current status quo. You never know, perhaps this result will be the one that topples relativity. (They probably didn’t, but there’s a chance, however slim, that those neutrinos did travel faster than light — and that’s a very interesting prospect indeed). Actually, in some areas of science today, it is not necessary to make either extraordinary claims or fail to provide massive evidence to get shouted down. For example, all the evidence for evolution Read More ›

… than what you might expect to find in nature. From “Aquarium Fishes Are More Aggressive in Reduced Environments, New Study Finds” ( ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2011)”, we learn something that won’t surprise many: Oldfield quantified aggressive behavior as a series of displays and attacks separated by at least a second. Displays are body signals such as flaring fins. An attack could be a nip, chase, or charge at another fish. In aquariums, these behaviors can lead to injury and in extreme cases to death. Aggressive behavior was not correlated with small-scale changes in either group size or habitat size alone. However, a significant difference was observed in environments sufficiently large and complex: fish spent less time exhibiting aggressive behavior. Read More ›

From “Twin Study Reveals Epigenetic Alterations of Psychiatric Disorders” (ScienceDaily, Sep. 23, 2011), we learn: Previous quantitative genetic analyses of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder reveal strong inherited components to both. However, although heritability for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is estimated at 70%, disease concordance between twin-pairs is far from 100%, indicating that non-genetic factors play an important role in the onset of the diseases. Essentially, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are thought to have a strong genetic component, which focuses researchers’ attention on the many cases where one twin has such a disorder and the other does not. The current study looked at 22 such pairs of twins. “Epigenetic mechanisms are linked to heritable, but reversible, changes in gene expression without Read More ›

Wallace, Darwin’s co-discoverer, couldn’t teach at a university today Here. Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection, saw hisdiscovery in the context of design. Of a socially humble background compared with Darwin, he was soon banished from the elite atheist circle, and consigned to the mockery of lesser men, then and since. Here’s the trailer for Darwin’s Heretic: Compare Wallace to the typical Darwinbot prof, as you watch. … Who would you rather study with?

JonathanM, one of our authors (recent subject of Darwin TV), also notes that Darwin lobbyist Eugenie Scott (National Centr for Science Education) was speaking recently at a Glasgow Skeptics meeting in Glasgow that he attended: The topic of the lecture (which you can watch for yourself) was “Evolution and Global Warming Denial: How the Public is Misled.” There was little scientific substance in the presentation, particularly on the subject of evolution. Instead, Dr. Scott attempted to draw parallels between the political strategies employed by Darwin skeptics (whom she seems to think are all creationists) and Climate Change skeptics (whom she pejoratively labeled “deniers”). She linked “evolution denial” and “global warming denial” to the American religious and political Right. But she Read More ›

In “British Humanists campaign to restrict academic freedom”( Access Research Network, September 23, 2011), British physicist David Tyler explains, This week has seen the launch of a new website, with the title: “Teach evolution, not creationism!” registered by the British Humanist Association. The issue relates to education and the way the subject of origins is handled. The organisations in the campaign are the British Humanist Association, the Association for Science Education, the British Science Association, the Campaign for Science & Engineering and Ekklesia. There are 30 individual signatories and most publicity has been given to Sir David Attenborough. The Daily Telegraph’s report said that “The naturalist joined three Nobel laureates, the atheist Richard Dawkins and other leading scientists in calling Read More ›

Here, we’ve given a fair amount of space to Texas textbook hearings, and it’s only fair to say why. Godfather Politics recalls (September 21, 2011) Texas distributes 48 million textbooks every year. This is a huge market if you are a textbook publisher. While California is the nation’s largest textbook market, the state’s financial crisis has not made it a major player. New York and Illinois are also big markets. Any new textbooks are going to be tailored to fit with what the textbook adoption agencies decide in to do in Texas since Texas has money to purchase new textbooks. “The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country.” Long before these current battles, Read More ›

Everyone has a religion, a raison d’être, and mine was once Dawkins’. I had the same disdain for people of faith that he does, only I could have put him to shame with the power and passion of my argumentation. But something happened. As a result of my equally passionate love of science, logic, and reason, I realized that I had been conned. The creation story of my atheistic, materialistic religion suddenly made no sense. This sent a shock wave through both my mind and my soul. Could it be that I’m not just the result of random errors filtered by natural selection? Am I just the product of the mindless, materialistic processes that “only legitimate scientists” all agree produced Read More ›

Last week in Glasgow, Scotland, Centre for Intelligent Design (C4ID) director Alastair Noble, David Swift, and I attended a lecture presented by Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education. The event was organized by Glasgow Skeptics, who previously hosted a talk by PZ Myers back in June. Click here to continue reading>>>