August 2015

Sometimes UD’s comment exchanges are highly informative. In this case, in a Quote of the Day thread: DK, 15: >> [To WJM] [WJM to Seversky, 14:] If I can one minute decide for myself that a moral code is binding on me, and decide for myself the next minute that it is not, exactly how is any moral code, the “binding” nature of which we decide for ourselves, binding? Strawman erected by misrepresentation. Seversky said that his moral code is “binding,” which means that it is not changeable at a whim. You have chosen to have an authority “bind” you. You chose that for yourself, using free will. You have nothing to feel superior about.>> DK, 16: >>Barry: [to Seversky] Read More ›

From Evolution: Making sense of life by science writer Carl Zimmer and evolutionary biologist Doug Emlen: Science writer Carl Zimmer and evolutionary biologist Douglas Emlen have teamed up to write a textbook intended for biology majors that will inspire students while delivering a solid foundation in evolutionary biology. As .pdf, courtesy the Darwin in the schools lobby, here. Note: It takes a couple minutes to download. Thoughts? What’s changed? Note: News posting light till late this evening, owing to O’Leary’s alternate day job. Follow UD News at Twitter!

At Not Even Wrong, Columbia mathematician Peter Woit notes, Online media stories with skepticism about the multiverse continue to appear. The latest one is by Shannon Hall at Nautilus, with the title Is it Time to Embrace Unverified Theories? (I think it’s a general rule that the answer to all questions in titles is No). I like one of the comments on the piece, arguing that some speculative physics is best thought of not as science or religion, but as a game. The article he is referring to is here: Is It Time to Embrace Unverified Theories? In the world of modern physics, there is change afoot. Researchers are striving so hard to leap beyond the mostly settled science of Read More ›

From CBS News: HARTFORD, Conn. – A University of Connecticut researcher known for his work on the benefits of red wine to heart health falsified his data in more than 100 instances, and nearly a dozen scientific journals are being warned of the potential problems after publishing his studies in recent years, officials said Wednesday. UConn officials said their internal review found 145 instances over seven years in which Dr. Dipak Das fabricated and falsified data, and the U.S. Office of Research Integrity has launched an independent investigation of his work. Is nothing sacred? Eleven scientific research journals that have published Das’ work are being notified of the problems, which came to light after a three-year review sparked by an Read More ›

Because Darwin. From Science Nordic: Both groups breed in the same area in the Caribbean, the Sargasso Sea, but typically you would expect a long-term physical separation of the two, to allow them to develop in different directions. This makes them a great mystery of evolution. Now scientists have solved this puzzle. It turns out that the eels became two species 3.5 million years ago, when Panama arose from the sea, separating the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. One group of eels were led to Europe by the Gulf Stream, where a new species emerged … The eel’s life story is difficult to understand from an evolutionary perspective. When they say “an evolutionary perspective,” they mean a Darwinian perspective, of course. Read More ›

I have already featured the following from Seversky as our quote of the day: I do not hold that there are no binding moral principles. I say we are entitled to decide for ourselves which moral codes should bind us. This does not mean that abominations like the Nazis or Stalinist Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia are inevitable. Those regimes imposed their policies by the most brutal violence and certainly did not seek the opinions, let alone the consent, of those they oppressed. In my prior post I highlighted the incoherence of the first two sentences. In this post I want to focus on the faulty assumptions in the remainder of the post. Seversky declares that the link between violence Read More ›

At Evolution News & Views: Epigenetic change: Lamarck, wake up, you’re wanted in the conference room! To recap, Darwinism entails vertical transfer of genes from a common ancestor to descendants. Horizontal gene transfer means transfer of genes from one organism to another on contact, irrespective of the ancestry of either life form. HGT is a form of evolution, yes. But it drastically weakens the status of Darwinism as the “only known theory.” Any Darwinian claim about evolution must first rule out HGT as a possible explanation. And, as we shall shortly see, it must rule out epigenetics as well. Why does this historic shift in the burden of proof receive comparatively little attention? Probably it’s due to the overwhelming acceptance Read More ›

Seversky I do not hold that there are no binding moral principles. I say we are entitled to decide for ourselves which moral codes should bind us. This does not mean that abominations like the Nazis or Stalinist Russia or Pol Pot’s Cambodia are inevitable. Those regimes imposed their policies by the most brutal violence and certainly did not seek the opinions, let alone the consent, of those they oppressed. Only a materialist could string those sentences together.

From ScienceDaily: More than 20 million years ago, a short struggle took place in what is now the Dominican Republic, resulting in one animal getting its leg bitten off by a predator just before it escaped. But in the confusion, it fell into a gooey resin deposit, to be fossilized and entombed forever in amber. The fossil record of that event has revealed something not known before — that salamanders once lived on an island in the Caribbean Sea. Today, they are nowhere to be found in the entire Caribbean area. … “There are very few salamander fossils of any type, and no one has ever found a salamander preserved in amber,” Poinar said. “And finding it in Dominican amber Read More ›

Montsechia/Oscard Sanisidro From Indiana University, Indiana University paleobotanist David Dilcher and colleagues in Europe have identified a 125 million- to 130 million-year-old freshwater plant as one of earliest flowering plants on Earth. The finding, reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents a major change in the presumed form of one of the planet’s earliest flowers, known as angiosperms. “This discovery raises significant questions about the early evolutionary history of flowering plants, as well as the role of these plants in the evolution of other plant and animal life,” said Dilcher, an emeritus professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Geological Sciences. … “Montsechia possesses no obvious ‘flower parts,’ such as Read More ›

From Quanta Magazine: Emerging data suggests the seemingly impossible — that mysterious new genes arise from “junk” DNA. Genes, like people, have families — lineages that stretch back through time, all the way to a founding member. That ancestor multiplied and spread, morphing a bit with each new iteration. For most of the last 40 years, scientists thought that this was the primary way new genes were born — they simply arose from copies of existing genes. The old version went on doing its job, and the new copy became free to evolve novel functions. Certain genes, however, seem to defy that origin story. They have no known relatives, and they bear no resemblance to any other gene. They’re the Read More ›

One of biology’s most important concepts, no? From Pos-Darwinista: A lizard lineage which has evolved over the last 19 million years has helped scientists to re-think one of the most important concepts of modern biology. ‘Adaptive radiation’ is recognised as a pillar of evolutionary science. It describes the development of new biodiversity, and is triggered when a species encounters a new environment with plenty of available resources –this is called ‘ecological opportunity’. This single species then makes the most of these resources and multiplies rapidly into several new forms. When all these resources have been used up by new species, the process of biodiversity proliferation slows down dramatically. ‘Early-bursts’ of new species diversification have previously been seen as a central Read More ›

Further to Wikipedia is a reliable source. – yrs, Easter Bunny (“Controversial,” we repeatedly find, means only that some powerful lobby doesn’t like the information presented. It often has nothing to do with whether the information was accurately or adequately sourced), From ScienceDaily: On Wikipedia, politically controversial science topics vulnerable to information sabotage As society turns to Wikipedia for answers, students, educators, and citizens should understand its limitations when researching scientific topics that are politically charged. On entries subject to edit-wars, like acid rain, evolution, and global change, one can obtain — within seconds — diametrically different information on the same topic, say authors of a new report. Thank lazy students and lazier teachers. The authors note that as Wikipedia Read More ›

In a recent post I castigated Zachriel for his support of the practice of chopping little boys and girls into pieces and selling the pieces like meat in the marketplace.  In response Popperian weighs in with this:   The problem, which Barry seem to have difficulty grasping, is that all words are ultimately undefined. As such it’s not possible to make a pure moral statement outside of a particular moral problem to solve.  All we can hope to achieve is to define words well enough so that we can all understand their usage in the context of a specific problem. Yet, Barry is demanding that Zachriel somehow do otherwise as if it were possible, in practice. It’s unclear how this is a Read More ›

From RealClearScience: Wikipedia Wars: ‘Controversial’ Science Topics Are Edited More Often Than Uncontroversial Topics Blow us away again, will you? “Controversial,” we repeatedly find, means nothing more than that some powerful lobby doesn’t like the information presented. It often has nothing to do with whether the information was accurately or adequately sourced. Adam Wilson and Gene Likens, both based out of the University of Connecticut, were curious just how often this happens. So they downloaded the complete revision histories (dating from 2003 to 2012) of three politically controversial scientific topics — acid rain, global warming, and evolution — and compared them to four politically uncontroversial topics — heliocentrism, general relativity, continental drift, and the standard model in physics. They found Read More ›