In a recent piece titled, This Is Why You Have No Business Challenging Scientific Experts, science journalist Chris Mooney argues that qualified scientists have a special kind of inside knowledge which laypeople will always lack, no matter how well-informed they may be. Hence when a consensus exists among scientists in a particular field, laypeople would be well-advised to trust the experts. The privileged knowledge possessed by qualified scientists is the topic of a new book, titled, Are We All Scientific Experts Now?, by Cardiff University scholar, Professor Harry Collins (pictured above right, courtesy of Alexei Kouprianov and Wikipedia), a founder of the field of “science studies”. Collins’s contention, as summarized by Mooney (pictured above left, courtesy of Harris Social Media Read More ›

Today is the 70th Anniversary of the costly but vital D-Day Neptune- Overlord invasion in Normandy, France: [youtube dIjmOcp_xhQ] Worth a pause to reflect on in light of the final stanza of the US National Anthem: O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war’s desolation. Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And, as well, the final verse Read More ›

News for couch potatoes: Wake up: Surprisingly, it turns out that your average fit human can outrun a deer. In fact, a theory claims that we humans evolved the ability to be good endurance runners, so we could chase animals for hours, run them to a standstill, and kill them. The theory continues that their high-density protein and energy helped our brains evolve bigger and bigger. Back in 1978, Michael Baughman wrote an article in Sports Illustrated about how he outran a deer. The deer is more of a sprinter, than a marathon runner. But this has been known for centuries, if not millennia. Most animals bust out their energy sources in a stupid fright. But humans conserve them and Read More ›

By now, I imagine most of my readers have heard about Principal Kevin Lowery’s controversial graduation ceremony speech, delivered at the Cowan Civil Center on May 23, to the students of Lebanon High School, Missouri. The Freedom From Religion Foundation published a letter on June 2, alleging that Principal Lowery had violated the US Constitution. Embarrassingly, the person who authored the letter appears not to know who wrote the American national anthem, and he also misquotes the American Declaration of Independence! The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is headed by husband-and-wife team Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor (pictured above), should be covering its collective face in shame. This will take a long time for the FFRF to live down. Read More ›

Instead of afflicting scientific research with a vague, culturally-dependent set of metaphysical expectations and constraints (naturalism), why not characterize the scientific method in a metaphysically neutral manner? I think a more productive alternative to “methodological naturalism” would be “methodological pragmatism”. This would define science as a methodology for finding/creating models that work for various purposes without assuming or making any metaphysical judgements on the nature of reality. It would also not generate metaphysical expectations or confine interpretations of data to metaphysical narratives that are largely cultural.