Sources here. See also: Ribosome precisely structured for cell growth

From Adam Rogers at Wired: ADAM RUSSELL, AN anthropologist and program manager at the Department of Defense’s mad-science division Darpa, laughs at the suggestion that he is trying to build a real, live, bullshit detector. But he doesn’t really seem to think it’s funny. The quite serious call for proposals Russell just sent out on Darpa stationery asks people—anyone! Even you!—for ways to determine what findings from the social and behavioral sciences are actually, you know, true. Or in his construction: “credible.” Even for Darpa, that’s a big ask. The DoD has plenty of good reasons to want to know what social science to believe. But plenty more is at stake here. Darpa’s asking for a system that can solve Read More ›

From science prof Darrin Durant at The Conversation: Florida recently passed a law which “authorizes county residents to challenge use or adoption of instructional materials” in schools. It’s been described as “anti-science” by individual scientists and USA’s National Center for Science Education. The National Center for Science Education is, among other things, the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby. For what that tends to mean, see Zombie Science. In his book How to be Antiscientific, Steven Shapin argues that descriptions of science, and what ought to be done in science, vary tremendously among scientists themselves. So you’re not anti-science if you have a preference for or against things like a preferred method, or some particular philosophy of science, or some supposed “character” of science. Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Optimization for self-production may explain key features of ribosomes, the protein production factories of the cell, reported researchers from Harvard Medical School in Nature on July 20. In a new study, a team led by Johan Paulsson, professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School, mathematically demonstrated that ribosomes are precisely structured to produce additional ribosomes as quickly as possible, in order to support efficient cell growth and division. … Ribosomes are composed of a puzzlingly large number of different structural proteins — anywhere from 55 to 80, depending on organism type. These proteins are not just more numerous than expected, they are unusually short and uniform in length. Ribosomes are also composed of two to three strands Read More ›

The kalaam argument: The Cosmological Argument or First Cause Argument is a philosophical argument for the existence of God which explains that everything has a cause, that there must have been a first cause, and that this first cause was itself uncaused. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is one of the variants of the argument which has been especially useful in defending the philosophical position of theistic worldviews. The word “kalam” is Arabic for “speaking” but more generally the word can be interpreted as “theological philosophy.” (All About Philosophy) David Snoke, president of Christian Scientific Society, co-authored a paper with Michael Behe (2004). From his article, “Why Christians should not use the Kalaam argument,” The Kalaam argument is essentially as follows, although Read More ›

The people who thought up the question probably didn’t realize that the concept could be used to argue for design in nature. After all, a mortal world cannot by definition be perfect, so if this is the best one, well … From Oliver Burkeman at the Guardian: “Once upon a time, it was of great survival value to be worried about everything that could go wrong,” says Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian and self-declared New Optimist whose book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future was published just before Trump won the presidency last year. This is what makes bad news especially compelling: in our evolutionary past, it was a very good thing that your attention could be Read More ›

From medievalist Tim O’Neill (an atheist) at History for Atheists: The Church had always accepted that the Bible could be interpreted in a non-literal manner and that it should be if Biblical exegesis and rational analysis of the world conflicted. That’s why all those Biblical references that talk about a flat earth had long since been regarded as poetic rather than literal. So in 1615 Cardinal Bellarmine made it clear in his letter to Paolo Foscarini that the same could potentially happen with passages that were traditionally interpreted as saying the earth was fixed and unmoving: “[I]f there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the centre of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and Read More ›

From Daniel Mallock at New English Review, a review of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth by Kenneth Francis: The problem of meaning and values is a central issue. Regarding the philosopher Nietzsche and his famous assertion that “God is dead,” Mr. Francis writes that this concept “… gave great comfort to psychopaths and those seeking moral autonomy. In other words, everything is permitted if God does not exist.” The issue of meaning is one of the central issues of religion and of philosophy, too. If there is no God, then humanity itself and everything that we do is an accident—a galactic happenstance—that shatters human attempts to ascribe meaning and value to thoughts, actions, feelings, and to Read More ›

Asked at ScienceDaily: In order to examine the frequency distribution and chronology of different near-death experiences, the researchers collected and analyzed written accounts from 154 individuals who had gone through a near-death-experience. They took note of which specific near-death-experiences where present in each narrative and then examined the order of appearance of the different phenomena in each story. They found that on average, a person experiences about 4 different phenomena during a near-death-experience. The most frequently reported features were feeling of peacefulness (80% of participants), seeing a bright light (69%) and encountering with spirits/people (64%), whereas the two most uncommon experiences were speeding thoughts (5%) and precognitive visions (4%). In terms of chronology, they found that a third of the Read More ›

From Elizabeth Howell, at Space.com: Would it be easy to determine if the source of a mysterious radio signal was aliens? Probably not. A new paper argues that contact with extraterrestrials will likely be discovered through a prolonged, incremental process rather than an instantaneous eureka-like moment. Eureka — what the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes allegedly said when he cracked a tough science problem about water displacement — tends to be the exception in science rather than the rule. … Cirkovic said in an email that the community involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) should instead be prepared for a process that would take a very long time. It may take decades as the SETI community looks at all Read More ›

You know, Dawkins dumped at Berkeley and all that. From Elliot Kaufman at National Review: Why must ardent secularists from the Islamic world like Ayaan Hirsi Ali — the type of people the Left looks to for inspiration in the history of Western secularism — be deemed bigots, while Sharia-supporting conspiracy theorists like Linda Sarsour are cherished? Why has criticizing Islam caused the New Atheists to cross a red line in the progressive imagination? These positions make no sense if one thinks of the Left as seriously secular, convinced of the need to end the reign of superstition. But American liberals profess neither the passionate skepticism of David Hume nor the honest, urgent atheism of Nietzsche. They prefer to embrace Read More ›

From Ian Crawford at Space.com: Beyond the more narrowly intellectual benefits of astrobiology are a range of wider societal benefits. These arise from the kinds of perspectives – cosmic in scale – that the study of astrobiology naturally promotes. It is simply not possible to consider searching for life on Mars, or on a planet orbiting a distant star, without moving away from the narrow Earth-centric perspectives that dominate the social and political lives of most people most of the time. Today, the Earth is faced with global challenges that can only be met by increased international cooperation. Yet around the world, nationalistic and religious ideologies are acting to fragment humanity. At such a time, the growth of a unifying Read More ›

But leaves phylogeny unclear. From ScienceDaily: Tardigrades are microscopic animals, justly famous for their amazing ability to withstand complete dehydration, resurrecting years later when water is again available. Once desiccated, they have been frozen in ice, exposed to radiation, sent into space vacuum… and still they spring back to life. Tardigrades became more famous recently when it was suggested that their DNA was a mix of animal and bacterial segments, making them “Frankenstein” hybrids. The new research has now laid the Frankenstein idea to rest by arguing that tardigrade DNA looks “normal,” with no evidence that these special animals use extraordinary means to survive. Previous ideas that they might have taken up large numbers of foreign genes from bacteria are Read More ›

Missed this one a while back, but worth noting: From Erin Ross at Nature: “In the past, I’ve done armchair activism — you know, ‘hashtag activism’,” says Bradley, who works at Pennsylvania State University’s Brandywine campus in Media. But this year, he says, “I felt it was important to get involved on the ground.” His trip to Capitol Hill was organized by the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA). For the past three years, the group has invited linguists, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists from across the country in Washington DC, for a brief training session before a whirlwind day of meeting with members of Congress and their aides to advocate for science funding. This year, participation set a record: Read More ›

Pos-Darwinista writes to call our attention to several preprints on why dissent is bad in science. Okay, okay, there is good dissent, which is accepted by the Establishment, and then there is bad dissent, which is not accepted by the Establishment. Text Galileo. 1. Climate Skepticism and the Manufacture of Doubt: Can Dissent in Science be Epistemically Detrimental?: Biddle, Justin and Leuschner, Anna (2015) [Preprint] Abstract: The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating between epistemically beneficial and epistemically detrimental dissent. By “dissent,” we refer to the act of objecting to a particular conclusion, especially one that is widely held. While dissent in science can clearly be beneficial, there might be some instances Read More ›