Peer review: Not publishing social science studies with null results harms public discourse
Big Bang lithium shortage a “hard nut to crack”?
Animal with muscles found from 560 mya (Ediacaran period)
Stone-tipped spears 500 kya indicate increase in human cognitive and social skills?
ENCODE adds 1600 data sets
Rainforest life accounts for “evolution” of short stature in pygmies—twice?
Literary figure Samuel Butler, it turns out, coined the term “Neo-Darwinism” in 1880
Dragonfly both perfect at first AND “the perfected result” of 300 mya of evolution?
P.Z. Myers channels Judith Jarvis Thomson on abortion; Dawkins disagrees
In my last post, I commended Professor P. Z. Myers for arguing that children with Down syndrome are fully human, and that their lives are worth living, even as I noted that Myers and I disagree on the morality of abortion. In a new post, Myers proposes a thought experiment in support of his pro-choice stance. Astonishingly, he maintains that a pregnant woman has the right to end the life of the embryo or fetus she is carrying, even if (hypothetically) it were as intelligent as you or I. In a previous post, Myers had written: Even if I thought embryos were conscious, aware beings writing poetry in the womb (I don’t, and they’re not), I’d have to bow out Read More ›