What if … We learn to talk to animals? That’s one of the big ideas that could, they say,  transform what it means to be human: Actually, we can talk to animals. We do. They don’t say anything back though. Probably never will. One needs to sign in/buy something to read the subsequent classic New Scientist piffle. But do note this (free): Steven Wise, a lawyer at the Florida-based Nonhuman Rights Project, which brought the lawsuit, argues that if chimps are declared legal persons, they should be granted rights to protect their fundamental interests. “That would certainly include bodily liberty and likely bodily integrity as well,” he says. We could no longer keep chimps in captivity, never mind subject them Read More ›

If they do: Astronomers are constantly uncovering the “most distant,” “most massive” or “most energetic” objects in our universe, but today, researchers have announced the discovery of a truly monstrous structure consisting of a ring of galaxies around 5 billion light-years across. … Astronomers believe these GRBs (and therefore the galaxies they inhabit) are somehow associated as all 9 are located at a similar distance from Earth. According to its discoverers, there’s a 1 in 20,000 probability of the GRBs being in this distribution by chance – in other words, they are very likely associated with the same structure, a structure that, according to cosmological models, should not exist. Where have we heard this before? Copernicus, you are not going Read More ›

Details here: A few months ago I painted this portrait of noted evolutionary biologist and writer Richard Dawkins. I shipped the portrait to England on May 15th, 2015, destined for Cambridge, UK CB3. It was shipped from Burlington, Ontario, Canada. It hasn’t been seen since. If you have any information on the whereabouts of this very special portrait, please contact me at heather “at” heatherhorton “dot” com. Thank-you very much… We have no idea where the portrait is. Except Canada Post, absent a tracking number, is a black hole. To judge from the portrait, if Dawkins believed in God, it could be a Sunday School poster. Follow UD News at Twitter!

I noticed an article on MSN entitled “15 Ways You’re Secretly Ruining Your Marriage.”  Curious, I clicked on it, and the author was trotting out pop Darwinism by Way #2: YOU TAKE HIS PORN HABIT PERSONALLY Sure, it doesn’t feel great to think about your guy fantasizing about other women. But it’s totally normal. Research shows that 64 percent of U.S. men look at porn at least once a month, and 55 percent of ’em are married. And it really has nothing to do with how he feels about you or your relationship—most men just need to blow off steam by themselves, the way you zone out to How I Met Your Mother reruns after a long day. The fact Read More ›

BBC writer undermines own argument here: First, when talking about evolution, author Chris Baraniuk chooses to defend precisely the theory of evolution that is most under fire just now, in serious intellectual terms: Darwinism Darwin’s theory of evolution says that each new organism is subtly different from its parents, and these differences can sometimes help the offspring or impede it. As organisms compete for food and mates, those with the advantageous traits produce more offspring, while those with unhelpful traits may not produce any. So within a given population, advantageous traits become common and unhelpful ones disappear. The problem is, in a constantly changing environment, “helpful” and “unhelpful” might not mean anything for long. So the theory amounts to “the Read More ›

Handy links to ID-related articles from ARN A friend writes to advise us of this handy source, Access Research Network. For example, just a snippet from August to date: New book – “HUMANS: The fascinating story of how early Homo sapiens became modern humans” My God, Your God? Spectacular Discovery Reveals Power Grid in Muscle Cells; Design Implications Are Profound Evolution News and Views New book – “Who Designed the Designer?” Ignatius Press Sometimes, NASA’s promotion is fun but shameless Uncommon Descent The mystery of particle generations Symmetry Magazine Largely brain absent man functions normally Evolution News and Views The Healthy Man Who Was Missing a Brain Real Clear Science Giant Mystery Ring of Galaxies Should Not Exist Discovery Scientists Read More ›

We understand; they need the money. But get this: NASA ‘on the Cusp’ of Being Able to Answer if We’re Alone in the Universe Chairman says Obama’s funding level “would slow the rate” of missions like the Pluto flyby. More. Are we alone? It’s not an honest question because NASA would never accept a positive answer, as in: Yes we are alone. And we will never be sure if any answer is available either. That’s fine, and no one here says they shouldn’t be funded. But could they spare us this stupidity? Maybe we are not always the fools they take us for. Don’t let Mars fool you. Those exoplanets teem with life! But surely we can’t conjure an entire Read More ›

A great, simple way to see why philosophy is still important in an age of science.
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Here: n 2007, a 44-year-old happily married man with a white-collar job and two children visited a hospital in Marseille, France complaining of mild weakness in his left leg. Some time later, he concluded his hospital episode with his leg weakness cured, but with another, intriguing diagnosis in tow: he was missing most of his brain. A disconcerting notion to most, the condition didn’t seem to trouble the man much at all. Sure, his IQ tested a tad below average, but his medical history and neurological development were otherwise normal. Because metaphysical naturalism is just plain wrong. The situation is not even as rare as supposed; just not diagnosed in the past. See : Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but Read More ›

Here’s a classic pop sci article that could have been written, as George Orwell predicted (1949), by a machine: From ScienceDaily: From an early age, human infants are able to produce vocalizations in a wide range of emotional states and situations — an ability felt to be one of the factors required for the development of language. Researchers have found that wild bonobos (our closest living relatives) are able to vocalize in a similar manner. Their findings challenge how we think about the evolution of communication and potentially move the dividing line between humans and other apes. … Author Zanna Clay said that the findings show that “more research needs to be done on our great ape relatives before we Read More ›

The “Warfare Thesis” is an overly simplistic and downright mythological view of the relationship between religion and science. It models the relationship as one of conflict, with religion dogmatically resisting science’s inconvenient findings, such as evolution, while science objectively pursues the truth. But the Warfare Thesis is not opposed to religion. Early exponents such as Thomas H. Huxley and Andrew Dickson White were often friends with religion. Huxley was sympathetic to the Church of England and White spoke well of Christianity. Far from wishing to injure Christianity, White wrote that he hoped to promote it; at least, his favored version of Christianity. White’s target were those “mediaeval conceptions of Christianity.” Once this “dogmatic theology” is excised all would be well: Read More ›

Here’s a public access primer on psycho terms to lose. (In case you know someone who is going into debt for this stuff and must learn them in order to pass.) Maybe we are getting somewhere? Including: (1) A gene for. The news media is awash in reports of identifying “genes for” a myriad of phenotypes, including personality traits, mental illnesses, homosexuality, and political attitudes (Sapolsky, 1997). For example, in 2010, The Telegraph (2010) trumpeted the headline, “‘Liberal gene’ discovered by scientists.” Nevertheless, because genes code for proteins, there are no “genes for” phenotypes per se, including behavioral phenotypes (Falk, 2014). Moreover, genome-wide association studies of major psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, suggest that there are probably Read More ›

It’s not news that there is a persistent (and widely promoted) perception that Intelligent Design is little more than Creationism in a cheap tuxedo suit, an attempt to dress up a Christo-fascist, right-wing, theocratic agenda as though it were legitimate science, fraudulently stealing the prestige of science. (For people who believe this, science . . . in Richard Lewontin’s tellingly self-refuting phrase . . . is as a rule viewed as “the only begetter of truth.”  [NB: this is a philosophical claim about accessing truth and warranting it, not a scientific one; so, such scientism falsifies itself and tends to cause self-reinforcing confusion and polarisation.]) So pernicious is this insinuation or allegation, that if we are to clear and de-polarise Read More ›

From evolutionary psychologist that Harvard “Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth”guy: here: A truly ethical bioethics should not bog down research in red tape, moratoria, or threats of prosecution based on nebulous but sweeping principles such as “dignity,” “sacredness,” or “social justice.” Nor should it thwart research that has likely benefits now or in the near future by sowing panic about speculative harms in the distant future. These include perverse analogies with nuclear weapons and Nazi atrocities, science-fiction dystopias like “Brave New World’’ and “Gattaca,’’ and freak-show scenarios like armies of cloned Hitlers, people selling their eyeballs on eBay, or warehouses of zombies to supply people with spare organs. Of course, individuals must be protected from identifiable Read More ›

But that’s a big improvement, says Retraction Watch: Here: One hundred forty-seven journals (74%) responded to a request for information. Of these, 95 (65%) had a retraction policy. Of journals with a retraction policy, 94% had a policy that allows the editors to retract articles without authors’ consent. Why it isn’t simple: Retracting scientific papers can pose ethical and legal challenges for journal editors and publishers [1, 2]. The easiest cases occur when the authors all agree that the paper should be retracted due to serious error or misconduct. In harder cases, the authors do not all agree that a paper should be retracted. For example, one author may oppose retraction, believing that a serious flaw identified in the paper Read More ›