2016

From Todd Wood: Beyond that, it was incredibly refreshing to hear the talks in this symposium. Hybridization has been a passing interest of mine for a long time (thanks to Frank Marsh), and long ago, I came to the conclusion that hybridization was not remotely rare (like I had been taught) and that the biological species concept didn’t really explain what we were seeing in the real world of hybridizing species. Sure enough, Rebecca Ackermann of the University of Cape Town said that the Biological Species Concept is basically dead. That was in the first talk of the day. In the second, Mike Arnold of the University of Georgia said that introgressive hybridization is the rule in eukaryotes, plants and Read More ›

From Ed Yong at the Atlantic: “This is humbling,” says Jonathan Eisen from the University of California, Davis, “because holy **#$@#!, we know virtually nothing right now about the biology of most of the tree of life.”More. Which makes the dogmatism of the Darwinians all the more curious. And who would ever have thought of calling it a tree anyway, but for past beliefs? See also: Tree of life morphs into … leaf? and Kirk Durston on the new tree of life Classic Darwinian fundamentalism: Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Heather Zeiger at GoodReads, a review of Richard Weikart’s The Death of Humanity: The second chapter considers man as an animal, which includes Darwin’s influence. Weikart does not demonize Darwin, but instead introduces the reader to several characters who used Darwin’s theory to justify their own agendas, including those that wanted to call people of other races “less evolved” and people with certain neurological and mental disabilities “atavistic.” This leads into the third chapter which addresses how biological determinism contributes to dehumanization and our culture of death. Importantly, the characters in this chapter assume that man lacks free will and is really a product of his genes. In making this assumption, they again reduce man to chemistry. Out of Read More ›

Readers will remember the “science guy”: From Reason: As a taxpayer and voter, the introduction of this extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my quality of life as a public citizen… So I can see where people are very concerned about this, and they’re pursuing criminal investigations as well as engaging in discussions like this….That there is a chilling effect on scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change, I think that is good. Via Washington Times More. That sort of thing is big in Big Government now. For example, Breitbart London notes the lawfare approach: Now the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands — some utter nonentity called Claude Earl Walker — has gone a step Read More ›

Further to Scientists, data, and diet, from ScienceDaily: Butter might not be a health food, but researchers unearthed more evidence that replacing it with vegetable oils does not decrease risk of heart disease … A research team led by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health has unearthed more evidence that casts doubt on the traditional “heart healthy” practice of replacing butter and other saturated fats with corn oil and other vegetable oils high in linoleic acid. The findings, reported today in the British Medical Journal, suggest that using vegetable oils high in linoleic acid might be worse than using butter when it comes to preventing heart disease, though more research needs to be Read More ›

From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post: Mae-Wan Ho, the Hong Kong-born evolution scientist and one of neo-Darwinism’s most effective critics, has died at age 74, I learned today. Ho was co-founder with her husband, physicist Peter Saunders, of the Institute of Science in Society, the UK organization focused on reclaiming science for the public good. She was also the author or co-author of a dozen books, one of her favorites, The Rainbow and the Worm. … Ho thought the Modern Synthesis did need to be completely replaced, however, “so that the universe of learning, of finding out about nature” could “open up properly.” She applauded the current work of Oxford University physiologist Denis Noble, principal organizer of the upcoming Royal Society Read More ›

When someone asks “Do you believe in evolution?” they probably want a short answer, and don’t have the patience to listen to a 15-minute lecture on the different meanings of “evolution” and how you stand on each. So how do you answer this trick question? Here’s a very short answer that works for me: Yes, I believe in the evolution of life, and I believe in the evolution of automobiles. Optionally, to make sure they get the point, you could add “but I don’t believe either could have happened without design.” It is actually a pretty good analogy, see my April 2,2015 post at ENV, In Biology as in Technology, Similarities Do Not Prove Absence of Intelligent Design

Erik Larson at the Atlantic (May 2015): Questioning the Hype About Artificial Intelligence … Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has openly speculated that humans could be reduced to “pets” by the coming superintelligent machines. Musk has donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute, in a self-described bid to help stave off the development of “killer robots.” At Berkeley, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is dedicated to addressing what Bostrom and many others describe as an “existential threat” to humanity, eclipsing previous (and ongoing) concerns about the climate, a nuclear holocaust, and other major denizens of our modern life. Luminaries like Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have also commented on the scariness of artificial intelligence. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: … dinosaurs and their close relatives had much more variation in growth patterns then ever expected, and this variation does not appear to be related to differences between males and females. Given how little we really know about dinosaurs and their ilk, it’s surprising we expect anything. Asilisaurus lived during the Triassic Period, roughly 240 million years ago in present-day Africa. With four legs and a long tail, the animal was about the size of a Labrador retriever, and likely maxed at 65 pounds, according to previous studies of the animal. Its exterior skin appearance remains unknown. Fossils of Asilisaurus kongwe — a combination of Swahili and Greek works meaning “ancient ancestor reptile” — are vital because a Read More ›

From Neuroskeptic at the Daily Dot: Why is there so much neurobullshit around today? I think the answer is that neuroscience really has made great advances in the past few decades, and these advances have been very visible. Methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), introduced in 1990, have made it possible to measure and picture brain activity in real time. FMRI really is an amazing technology that has revolutionized neuroscience; it has also made neuroscience more accessible to the public. The trouble is that the colorful images produced by fMRI and other neuroimaging techniques are immensely compelling but often misinterpreted. Such images have led to the impression that now, for the first time, we can understand the brain, Read More ›

Got that? You’re sure to graduate in evolutionary psychology: From a computer model from the University of Waterloo: The study, by Professor Bauch and Richard McElreath from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, found that when population sizes become large, the presence of STIs decreases fertility rates more among males with multiple partners, therefore changing which mating behaviour proves to be most beneficial to individuals and groups. Reality: The only consistent enforcer of monogamy has been the relatively equal number of boys and girls born. In early hunter-gatherer populations, it was common for a few males to monopolize mating with multiple females in order to increase their number of offspring. In these small societies where there is a maximum Read More ›

Remember when neurohype was supposed to replace thinking about thinking? Neuroskeptic offers a spring cleaning tip: … take this sentence about stress and the benefits of meditation. “Stress activates your amygdala, creates a red alert, activates your flight-or-fight symptoms, and heats up your system. Your thinking brain gets totally frozen and completely hijacked by your emotional brain.” Impressive – but what happens if we take out the word “brain”, and the other neuroscientific terms like “amygdala”? Then we’re left with “Stress creates a red alert, activates your flight-or-fight symptoms, and heats up your system. Your thoughts get totally frozen and completely hijacked by your emotions.” More. A normal sentence in English. If technical terms don’t tell us anything new, they’re Read More ›

For the delight of programmers here at UD, I include this post. Over at the “Reference Frame,” a blog by Lubos Motl, string theorist, and physicist extraordinaire, he has this post on a new game for “gamers” calledQuantum Moves. I don’t have time for any in-depth comment; however, for the programmers among us, here is a titillating quote from Motl’s blog: In the paper, the authors remarkably demonstrated that using their intuition and heuristic approaches, the human players were able to find solutions to tasks in which the well-known classical optimization algorithms don’t work well – but the quantum computers would. The well-known classical optimization algorithms fail especially near the “quantum speed limit”, when the shortest process duration is combined Read More ›

Flying Spaghetti Monster not a religion. (pick self up off floor) From Newsweek: Worshippers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster call their faith FSMism or Pastafarianism, a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarianism. One such worshipper, Stephen Cavanaugh, a prisoner in a Nebraska state penitentiary, sued the state in 2014 over the right to practice his faith. Cavanaugh argued that his religion requires him to wear special religious clothing in the form of “full pirate regalia,” but that prison officials refused to allow him to do so, despite allowing members of other, recognized religions to purchase and wear special clothing and other items. Cavanaugh also argued that prison officials kept him from meeting and holding religious services with other members of his Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Key gene in development of celiac disease has been found in ‘junk’ DNA 40% of the population carry the main risk factor for celiac disease but only 1% develop the disease. A newly found gene that influences its development has been found in what until recently has been known as ‘junk’ DNA. Celiac disease is a chronic, immunological disease that is manifested as intolerance to gluten proteins present in wheats to an inflammatory reaction in the small intestine that hampers the absorption of nutrients. The only treatment is a strict, life-long, gluten-free diet. … This study confirms the importance of the regions of the genome previously regarded as ‘junk’ in the development of common complaints such as celiac Read More ›