From New York Times: A paper in The British Medical Journal in December reported that cognitive behavioral therapy — a means of coaxing people into changing the way they think — is as effective as Prozac or Zoloft in treating major depression. In ways no one understands, talk therapy reaches down into the biological plumbing and affects the flow of neurotransmitters in the brain. Other studies have found similar results for “mindfulness” — Buddhist-inspired meditation in which one’s thoughts are allowed to drift gently through the head like clouds reflected in still mountain water. Findings like these have become so commonplace that it’s easy to forget their strange implications. … This longstanding conundrum — the mind-body problem — was succinctly Read More ›

From Discovery Institute: As Americans celebrate their country’s freedom this week, a new survey reveals that an overwhelming 93 percent of American adults agree that “teachers and students should have the academic freedom to objectively discuss both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution.” And 88 percent agree that “scientists who raise scientific criticisms of evolution should have the freedom to make their arguments without being subjected to censorship or discrimination.” More. Some of us wonder at times about the use of the term “dissent,” as if it were something special. Dissent is, in general, evidence of thinking. There is little dissent among a herd of cows about anything that pertains to being a cow. See also: Read More ›

Published on Jul 4, 2016 NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a unique time-lapse movie of the Galilean satellites in motion about Jupiter. The movie begins on June 12th with Juno 10 million miles from Jupiter, and ends on June 29th, 3 million miles distant. The innermost moon is volcanic Io; next in line is the ice-crusted ocean world Europa, followed by massive Ganymede, and finally, heavily cratered Callisto. Galileo observed these moons to change position with respect to Jupiter over the course of a few nights. From this observation he realized that the moons were orbiting mighty Jupiter, a truth that forever changed humanity’s understanding of our place in the cosmos. Earth was not the center of the Universe. For the Read More ›

At his blog Sandwalk, one of our favourite commenters, Larry Moran, who has wracked up a ton of loyalty points in terms of free ID literature, points out that various people have made a mistake in writing to Suzan Mazur, author of Paradigm Shifters, complaining about the Royal Society’s go-slow on the new reno (Darwin replacement). It looks to me like the organizers of this meeting didn’t think very carefully about the can of worms they were opening. When you have speakers like Denis Noble and Jim Shapiro you are just inviting trouble. When you try to lecture Suzan Mazur about paradigm shifting you are bound to regret it. I’m beginning to think this meeting isn’t going to happen. The Read More ›

Because they are in the midst of one. From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post: [Following is the censorship email Kull refers to above — it was not written by Denis Noble: “Could I request that you stop referring to the forthcoming RS-BA meeting (“New Trends in Evolutionary Biology: Biological, Philosophical and Social Science Perspectives”), and to the extended evolutionary synthesis, more generally, as in some way advocating a “paradigm shift”. Such language is both misleading (the vast majority of scientists working towards an extended synthesis do not seek revolutionary change in neo-Darwinism) and counterproductive (such talk undermines calm scientific discussion by creating an unnecessarily emotive and antagonistic atmosphere). More. Aw, shoot it. The lid is blowing off. Note: Apparently, the Read More ›

From Talk Origins, a lengthy excursus on the views of mid-twentieth century Nobelist George Wald (1906-1997), excoriating those who misquote him: We nonetheless read that he really did say with amazement: When we consider the spontaneous origin of a living organism, this is not an event that need happen again and again. It is perhaps enough for it to happen once. The probability with which we: are concerned is of a special kind; it is the probability that an event occur at least once. To this type of probability a fundamentally important thing happens as one increases the number of trials. However improbable the event in a single trial, it becomes increasingly probable as the trials are multiplied. Eventually the Read More ›

In this presentation, Tom Gilson describes regularism, intended to be a metaphysically neutral philosophy of science to replace methodological naturalism. Regularism is intended to focus on the things that the scientific methodology needs to operate properly rather than assumptions about what it will discover. Find out more information about the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism conference.

No, really. Berra’s blunder is now official Darwinian science From ScienceDaily: A UCLA-led team of researchers has taken a unique approach to explain the way in which technologies evolve in modern society. Borrowing a technique that biologists might use to study the evolution of plants or animals, the scientists plotted the “births” and “deaths” of every American-made car and truck model from 1896 to 2014. … Based on the study, the researchers can project how the electric car marketplace will evolve over the next several years. Alfaro said the field now is in an early phase of rapid diversification, and although it’s likely that many more electric and hybrid models will be introduced over the next 15 to 20 years, Read More ›

In another thread, Seversky complains: And it’s irrational nonsense to deny that much of who and what you are was determined by past events of which you were unaware and over which you had no control. What you inherited from your parent’s genes and the formative influences of childhood and adolescence means you, like everyone else, are a product of history. You can’t change that so the question becomes, to what extent can you be said to have free will. Seversky makes an argument based on false assumptions and misrepresentations that don’t characterize either side of the argument properly. He is simply attempting to word-smith a collection of phrases (like so many other physicalists here) that build nothing more than Read More ›

From Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: accepting Templeton Prize: A free society is a moral achievement. Without self-restraint, without the capacity to defer the gratification of instinct, and without the habits of heart and deed that we call virtues, we will eventually lose our freedom. That is what Locke meant when he contrasted liberty, the freedom to do what we ought, with licence, the freedom to do what we want. It’s what Adam Smith signalled when, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It’s what Washington meant when he said, “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.” And Benjamin Franklin when he said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” And Read More ›

From Olivia Goldhill at Quartz: Not much is definitively proven about consciousness, the awareness of one’s existence and surroundings, other than that its somehow linked to the brain. But theories as to how, exactly, grey matter generates consciousness are challenged when a fully-conscious man is found to be missing most of his brain. Several years ago, a 44-year-old Frenchman went to the hospital complaining of mild weakness in his left leg. It was discovered then that his skull was filled largely by fluid, leaving just a thin parameter of actual brain tissue. And yet the man was a married father of two and a civil servant with an IQ of 75, below-average in his intelligence but not mentally disabled. More. Zap! Read More ›

Could there be worse news? From Joe Carmichael at Inverse: Yasunori Nomura is a theoretical physics professor at University of California, Berkeley. He’s refining both multiverse and string theories, and tells Inverse that he commiserates with the pre-Socratics. “These old Greek scientists must have been doing similar reasonable, educated guessing,” he says. Like those ancient philosophers, even some of Nomura’s peers — contemporary, cutting-edge physicists — criticize his work as too speculative. “We are saying that there may be some multiple universes,” Nomura says. “And some people say, ‘You cannot go outside the universe — what are you talking about?’ But the methodology of science is always the same. You just make the theories based on what you can measure.” Read More ›

Here: Observations, not stories, are the pillars of good science. Today’s journals however, favor story-telling over observations, and congruency over complexity. As a consequence, there is a pressure to tell only good stories. Moreover, incentives associated with publishing in high-impact journals lead to loss of scientifically and ethically sound observations that do not fit the storyline, and in some unfortunate cases also to fraudulence. The resulting non-communication of data and irreproducibility not only delays scientific progress, but also negatively affects society as a whole. Here at Sciencematters, we publish the true unit of science, the observation. You make an observation, make sure it’s solid and ethically sound, and then submit it to us. We guide your manuscript through triple-blind peer Read More ›

From Statnews: A new analysis in the journal PLOS ONE has found that research papers in the life sciences have become increasingly dense over the past quarter-century. They have higher page counts, more — and more detailed — figures and tables, longer lists of authors, and richer appendices of supplementary data. The authors of the paper gathered all of those elements into an “average publishing unit,” which they found has doubled in the past two-plus decades. Although all that additional information packed into an individual study might be a good thing for science, the authors suggest that it could be too much strain for the system to bear. Peer reviewers are, after all, practicing scientists themselves with their own deadlines Read More ›

Slow news day. Enjoy.