From ScienceDaily: The molecular analysis confirms that all Laparocerus weevils have a common evolutionary ancestor (monophyly), but could not clarify whether that ancient founding species arrived from southern Europe or northwestern Africa. The two extant Moroccan species were found to be the result of a back-colonisation from the Canary Islands to Africa, and not the ancestral source lineage, which unfortunately is still unknown. The evolutionary process responsible for such richness comprises sequential radiation events in these archipelagoes, each generating several monophyletic groups. These groups, 20 in total, have been recognised as subgenera of Laparocerus, and five of them — Aridotrox, Belicarius, Bencomius, Canariotrox, and Purpuranius — are described as new to science in this study. Colonisation routes, habitat shifts, disruption Read More ›

From Jacob Grier at Slate: We Used Terrible Science to Justify Smoking Bans For three anti-smoking advocates—local physicians Richard Sargent and Robert Shepard, and activist and researcher Stanton Glantz from the University of California at San Francisco—this sudden drop in heart attacks was proof that smoking bans usher in extraordinary benefits for public health. “This striking finding suggests that protecting people from the toxins in secondhand smoke not only makes life more pleasant; it immediately starts saving lives,” said Glantz in a press release sent out by UCSF. Newspapers ran with the story, credulously assuming that the correlation had been truly caused by the smoking ban. “The bottom line of Helena’s plummeting, then soaring, heart attack rate is painfully obvious,” Read More ›

From Tom Bethell, author of Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates, at American Spectator: The Lord’s Day, Meet Darwin Day… and Shudder – Methodological Atheism Gray told Darwin that he didn’t see why they couldn’t have both Darwin’s theory of evolution and a role for a designing intelligence. Darwin would have none of it, but realizing that a thoroughgoing materialism wasn’t an easy sell, he actively concealed this aspect of his thinking. In one notebook he reminded himself to “avoid stating how far, I believe, in Materialism.” Darwin promoted his materialistic worldview indirectly by supporting the principle that science should invoke only material causes. According to this methodological rule, you needn’t be an atheist to Read More ›

And in other breaking news that’ll really surprise you, snowbanks continue to pile in Ottawa, Canada. 😉 Seriously, from Sarah Chaffee at Evolution News & Views: Strauss provokes alarm about a lack of accountability — “maverick teachers” who can teach whatever they wish. However, SB 55 offers very limited freedoms. Indeed, the language of the bill says that teachers can only present information in an “objective scientific manner.” Under this legislation, they can only talk about “scientific information.” And they can do so only in classes aligned with state science standards. School administrators retain the authority to ensure that teachers follow all these guidelines. Yet, quoting a local newspaper that quoted a science teacher in Sioux Falls, Ms. Strauss raises Read More ›

Of course not, as we have often noted in these pages. James Davison Hunter’s and Paul Nedelisky’s  Where the New Science of Morality Goes Wrong is a great primer on the subject.  Their take down of Sam Harris is especially good: The new moral scientists sometimes provide certain examples that they think illustrate that science has demonstrated (or can demonstrate) that certain moral claims are true or false. A favorite is the health or medical analogy. Neuroscientist and author Sam Harris, for example, employs the health analogy to argue that science can demonstrate moral value. A bit more circumspect than some who use the analogy, he recognizes that he’s assuming that certain observable properties are tied to certain moral values. Harris Read More ›

In a universe where we did not evolve so as to understand reality, someone is supposed to have developed a theory by which we need not worry about the Boltzmann brain From Anil Anathaswamy at New Scientist:  Any theory that lets bizarre brains randomly pop into existence can’t be a valid description of the universe. No? No? That might seem obvious, but such conscious observers, called Boltzmann brains, are inevitable in certain versions of cosmology. New work that claims to banish such theories not only suggests your brain isn’t such an oddity, but tells us which frameworks for the cosmos are the most sound. Cosmologist Sean Carroll can apparently save us. Whew. Carroll isn’t a fan of Boltzmann brains, and Read More ›

From Lisa Randall at Nautilus: If we were creatures made of dark matter, we would be very wrong to assume that the particles in our ordinary matter sector were all of the same type. Perhaps we ordinary matter people are making a similar mistake. Given the complexity of the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the most basic components of matter we know of, it seems very odd to assume that all of dark matter is composed of only one type of particle. Why not suppose instead that some fraction of the dark matter experiences its own forces? We can assume whatever we like if we haven’t found any dark matter. Including: Nonetheless, dark life could in principle be Read More ›

From Elizabeth Howell, offering 25 facts about our solar system that elude ready explanation: at Space.com: Earth’s Van Allen belts are more bizarre than expected Earth has bands of radiation belts surrounding our planet, known as the Van Allen belts (named after the discoverer of this phenomenon.) While we’ve known about the belts since the dawn of the space age, the Van Allen Probes (launched in 2012) have provided our best-ever view of them. They’ve uncovered quite a few surprises along the way. We now know that the belts expand and contract according to solar activity. Sometimes the belts are very distinct, and sometimes they swell into one massive belt. An extra radiation belt (beyond the known two) was spotted Read More ›

. . . being a peaceful witness (on the 44th annual occasion) against the ongoing global holocaust of the unborn; which has to date credibly mounted up to 800+ millions in 40+ years, and — per Guttmacher-UN numbers — is mounting up at one million more per WEEK: [youtube Obx_odS-18Q] And, ever, I hear the grim words once written upon a wall by a ghostly hand in the presence of a wicked king: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN. For, a wicked and perverse generation is being weighed in the balances and found severely wanting. Let us save ourselves from a wicked, perverse generation and let us stand in peaceful witness, calling to repentance and reformation. Notice, the questions and the evasive Read More ›

Some say that it’s not clear that the term is useful. A friend writes, “Information is always “about” something. How does one quantify “aboutness. ” He considers the term too vague to be helpful.” He suggests the work of Christoph Adami, for example, this piece at Quanta: The polymath Christoph Adami is investigating life’s origins by reimagining living things as self-perpetuating information strings. … Once you start thinking about life as information, how does it change the way you think about the conditions under which life might have arisen? Life is information stored in a symbolic language. It’s self-referential, which is necessary because any piece of information is rare, and the only way you make it stop being rare is Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Until recently it was thought the third major group of living land vertebrates, the crocodiles and birds (part of the wider group Archosauromorpha) only laid eggs. “Indeed, egg-laying is the primitive state, seen at the base of reptiles, and in their ancestors such as amphibians and fishes,” Professor Aitchison said. … “Further evolutionary analysis revealed the first case of live birth in such a wide group containing birds, crocodilians, dinosaurs and pterosaurs among others, and pushes back evidence of reproductive biology in the group by 50 million years,” Professor Liu said. “Information on reproductive biology of archosauromorphs before the Jurassic Period was not available until our discovery, despite a 260 million-year history of the group.” More. Paper. (public Read More ›

From Daniel J. McKaughan at Big Questions Online: The idea that science is a “value-free” enterprise is deeply entrenched. “Under standard conditions, water boils at 100°C.” This and countless other facts about nature are mind-independent; that is, they do not depend on what you or I think or feel. And the procedures by which we discover such facts are available to and respected by a diverse public, man or woman, black or white, rich or poor. It may seem, then, that the activities and results of science are inherently insulated from racism, sexism, political agendas, financial interests, and other value-laden biases that permeate the larger social context. Some even vigorously insist on keeping values out of science. Do you agree? Read More ›

Could just be the air we breathe. From Rachel Newer, a Valentine’s Day riff, at Smithsonian: Fall in Love With Cannibalism This Valentine’s Day We “civilized” folk tend to write off cannibalism as a freak phenomenon reserved for psychopaths, starvation and weird animals (I’m looking at you, praying mantis). In fact, eating others of your kind is a well-established biological strategy employed throughout the animal kingdom. Moreover, our own species’ history is rich with examples of this “eccentric” behavior, from medicinal consumption of human body parts in Europe to more epicurean people-eating in China. More. Nuwer recounts her experience of eating chef-prepared human placenta. See also: Darwin’s wastebasket: The evolutionary purpose of suicidal behaviour and Darwin’s wastebasket: “Evolutionary” explanation for Read More ›

In a beetle species. From ScienceDaily: The burying beetle is intimately involved in raising its children, including regurgitating food to its begging offspring. … Behavioral scientists predicted that genetic changes occur over time to develop parenting in a species. Based on this hypothesis, Moore’s team sequenced and assembled the genome of the burying beetle and measured the abundance of neuropeptides. They theorized that behaviors related to parenting stemmed from alterations in existing genes rather than the evolution of new ones. Their prediction proved correct; “When new traits evolve, evolution tends to modify existing genetic pathways rather than create new genes,” Moore said. The research, Moore said, suggests that many of the genes influencing parenting will be the same across many Read More ›

Our johnnyb writes to note a new book, Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions, by science journalist Richard Harris: American taxpayers spend $30 billion annually funding biomedical research. By some estimates, half of the results from these studies can’t be replicated elsewhere—the science is simply wrong. Often, research institutes and academia emphasize publishing results over getting the right answers, incentivizing poor experimental design, improper methods, and sloppy statistics. Bad science doesn’t just hold back medical progress, it can sign the equivalent of a death sentence. How are those with breast cancer helped when the cell on which 900 papers are based turns out not to be a breast cancer cell at all? How effective Read More ›