Scientism: Believing that all correct answers come from science (and, in practice, that the answers offered on behalf of whatever counts for science in given situation is correct). How does that play out in the criminal justice system? From Kelly Servick at Science: … for decades, forensic examiners have sometimes claimed in court that close but not identical ballistic markings could conclusively link evidence to a suspect—and judges and juries have trusted their expertise. Examiners have made similar statements for other forms of so-called pattern evidence, such as fingerprints, shoeprints, tire tracks, and bite marks. But such claims are ill-founded, a committee at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded in 2009. “No forensic method has been rigorously shown to Read More ›

One common criticism of the upcoming Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism conference has been that “scientists just follow the evidence where it leads.” Even among fellow ID’ers who disagree with methodological naturalism, they find it difficult to envision why we would need an alternative that is different from “just go with the evidence.” The answer is simple – the scientific imagination. One of the reasons why I started the conference is because Methodological Naturalism (hereafter, MN) constrains thinking in ways that I am not sure even people led entirely by the evidence are aware of. Theory construction is often treated by both scientists and observers of science as an automatic given once the data is in. In actuality, though, it is Read More ›

The news that a computer program has beaten Go master Lee Se-dol in a best-of-five competition may have shocked some readers. In this post, I’d like to explain why I don’t think it matters much at all, by telling a little story about three guys named Tom, Sam and Al. Tom has a brilliant mind. He puts his perspicacious intellect to good use by playing mentally challenging games, and he always wins. Tom’s freakish ability to win games by performing astonishing leaps of mental intuition leaves many spectators baffled. “How on earth do you do it?” they ask him, whenever he chalks up a victory against yet another hapless opponent. “It’s a strange gift I have,” Tom answers modestly. “I Read More ›

From Rachel Feltman at the Washington Post: Neil deGrasse Tyson, science aficionado. With over 5 million Twitter followers and two television programs, NDT probably has a wider audience than any science communicator in the world. He’s a brilliant astrophysicist and a fantastic spokesperson for all things cerebral. Zounds. The planet just might make it through the catastrophe anyhow. It started with this tweet: From Feltman again: Miriam Kramer from Mashable chimed in with ducks, because duck sex is literally the most terrifying thing on the planet and pretty much the only argument it takes to disprove intelligent design. More. That would only be an argument against intelligent design if the system didn’t work well, but it does. Not that Kramer Read More ›

If so, ethologist Patrick Bateson is onto something. But how would we know? From ScienceDaily: Most fossils preserve the physical remains of organisms and their structure; however, geologists and paleobiologists recently found fossils that show the behaviors of predators preserved as traces in ancient sediments. Thus, fossils from southeast Missouri are helping scientists unlock clues about the behaviors of these predators and their interactions with their prey. Evidence shows that these ancient organisms were behaviorally sophisticated, tailoring their attacks for effectiveness. Tracks from the site showed that the predators attacked from above, moving alongside to use their many legs for more effective grappling of their prey. Further, predators preferentially selected smaller prey, indicating that they attacked their food rather than Read More ›

… at the Royal Society’s November meet on evolution. From Suzan Mazur interviews eminent ethologist Patrick Bateson at Huffington Post: Sir Patrick Bateson: Zoologists Should Not ‘Hog’ Upcoming Royal Society Evolution Meeting Suzan Mazur: When will the speakers for the November Royal Society event be announced? Patrick Bateson: Very shortly, I think. Suzan Mazur: Can you say what the subject of your talk will be? Patrick Bateson: I want to talk about a subject that has interested me for many years, namely how the organism plays an active role in the evolution of its descendants through its adaptability. When the challenge is one never previously experienced by the organism’s ancestors, the mechanisms generating the plasticity may be inherited but the Read More ›

Slowly making the public aware that a lot of those soapboxes are rotting. A bit at a time. From ScienceDaily, US National Institutes of Health wants us all to know this: Four ways inheritance is more complex than Mendel knew Today, we know that inheritance is far more complex than what Mendel saw in his pea plants. Our scientists who track progress in genetics research funded by NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences share some of the things researchers have learned about how traits are passed from one generation to the next. More. Listed are: 1. Some of our genes come only from Mom. 2. The environment may have the potential to trigger molecular changes that pass from generation to Read More ›

And proud of it? Policy analyst Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry offers one suggestion at The Week, ripping off science presenter Bill Nye, holding forth on the uselessness of philosophy: Many, though certainly not all, of the scientists who opine loudest about the uselessness of philosophy are public atheists. The form of atheism they promote is usually known as “eliminative materialism,” or the notion that matter is the only thing that exists. This theory is motivated by “scientism,” or the notion that the only knowable things are knowable by science. Somewhat paradoxically, these propositions are essentially religious — to dismiss entire swathes of human experience and human thought requires a venture of faith. They’re also not very smart religion, since they end up Read More ›

And literacy. From qz: Nine- and 10-year-old children in England who participated in a philosophy class once a week over the course of a year significantly boosted their math and literacy skills, with disadvantaged students showing the most significant gains, according to a large and well-designed study (pdf). More than 3,000 kids in 48 schools across England participated in weekly discussions about concepts such as truth, justice, friendship, and knowledge, with time carved out for silent reflection, question making, question airing, and building on one another’s thoughts and ideas. More. Unlike many edu-advocacy findings, this one makes sense. Philosophy teaches us to think in a systematic way. It’s hard to see how that wouldn’t help with math and literacy. But Read More ›

From Breitbart: US Attorney General: We’ve ‘Discussed’ Prosecuting Climate Change Deniers “This matter has been discussed. We have received information about it and have referred it to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action on,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch, responding to a question from green activist Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)4% at a Senate Judiciary Hearing.… Perhaps the kind of RICO action Whitehouse has in mind is similar to the one proposed to President Obama a few months ago by a number of key climate scientists, led by one Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University. However this campaign appears to have gone mysteriously quiet of late. Could it perhaps be Read More ›

  The Origin of Life Circus e-book for $7.50. The Origin Of Life Circus: A How To Make Life Extravaganza investigates the politics of origin of life science and synthesizing of life. Suzan Mazur, whose coverage of science began decades ago at Hearst Magazines, takes you into the lab and in conversation with dozens of the world’s greatest thinkers on the subject of origin of life – among them: Jack Szostak, Freeman Dyson, Carl Woese, Dimitar Sasselov, Matthew Powner, James Simons, Harry Lonsdale, Stu Kauffman, Andrew Pohorille, Steve Benner, Dave Deamer, Nigel Goldenfeld, Pier Luigi Luisi, Lawrence Krauss, Lee Smolin, Nick Lane, Jaron Lanier, and more. Mazur has made a career out of interviewing mostly non-Darwinian biologists. That’s because there are Read More ›

From neuroscientist Michael Graziano at The Atlantic: Here’s how we can construct theories that do a better job of explaining, even if they appeal less to our biases and intuitions. The brain is an information-processing machine. It takes in data, transforms it, and uses it to help guide behavior. When that machine ups and says, “Hey, I have a conscious experience of myself and the things around me,” that assertion is based on data computed in the brain. As scientists we can ask a series of basic questions. How did the machine arrive at that self-description? What’s the specific, adaptive use of that self-description? What networks in the brain compute that type of information? These are all scientifically approachable questions. Read More ›

By now we know the lyrics. From the Washington Post: These birds use a linguistic rule thought to be unique to humans But sometimes we use syntax to impart complex combinations of ideas. “Careful, it’s dangerous” is a phrase that has meaning, and so is “come toward me.” When those two phrases are combined, they have a different meaning than they do on their own: They’re directing the receiver to act in a different way than either phrase would independently. Until now, only humans seemed to use syntax this way. But a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications suggests that the Japanese great tit — a bird closely related to the North American chickadee — uses grammatical rules like these Read More ›

But not support for supersymmetry. So says New Scientist: 2016 could go down as the year when a new picture of nature’s fundamental workings was unveiled. The hopes spring from two “bumps” that have appeared independently, in the same place, in the latest data from the LHC’s two big detectors, ATLAS and CMS. They point to the existence of a particle that dwarfs even the Higgs boson, the giver-of-mass particle discovered at CERN in July 2012. (paywall) From the paywalled portion: Strangely, the only thing we probably can rule out is that the particle is what many theorists, including Ellis, would like it to be: a supersymmetric particle. Supersymmetry is a theory that plugs many holes in the standard model Read More ›

From Gunver Vestergård at ScienceNordic: And I have not become better friends with the system after stumbling upon scientific articles that conclude the likelihood of having a paper published is, statistically speaking, random. In other words, it is a lottery as to whether or not your paper will be accepted for publication. … A PhD is a research qualification and part of the training includes learning how to navigate the system of peer review. But I still find it hard to see how the system actually benefits research. You learn how to satisfy reviewers and editors by mastering the academic style of writing and the format of scientific papers. You learn that the transparency of your results are not so Read More ›