Recently, we’ve been running a featurette, Tales of the Tone Deaf, featuring dim profs writing in dozy journal about why people doubt Science and how to fix them. They do not appear able to process the fact that the public is well aware of any number of dubious findings about nutrition, for example, marketed for decades as Science. And is beginning to learn about the corruptocrat crime labs. Yes, Science again. And then there are all the scandals around peer review to stumble over. Skeptics are replacing worshippers for a reason. The growing reputation of universities for suppressing honest discussion in favour of group thumbsucking does not help. No matter, a new book by Austin Ruse, Fake Science: Exposing the Read More ›

From BEC CREW at ScienceAlert: Researchers have discovered that the lungs play a far more complex role in mammalian bodies than we thought, with new evidence revealing that they don’t just facilitate respiration – they also play a key role in blood production. In experiments involving mice, the team found that they produce more than 10 million platelets (tiny blood cells) per hour, equating to the majority of platelets in the animals’ circulation. This goes against the decades-long assumption that bone marrow produces all of our blood components. More. W|e are expected to believe that that all just happened by natural selection acting on random mutations and that no source of information is required. Sure. The article in Nature. Abstract: Read More ›

From Mike Wall at Space.com: A strange radio signal that seemed to emanate from a small nearby star probably came from Earth-orbiting satellites, astronomers say. Late last week, researchers announced that, on May 12, the 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected a bizarre radio signal in the vicinity of Ross 128, a red dwarf star that lies just 11 light-years from Earth. The signal was theoretically consistent with a transmission from an alien civilization, the astronomers said, though they stressed that hypothesis was “at the bottom of many other explanations.” More. Coffee: Not really. Psychologically, aliens were at the top of the list. And they are much more fun than any other explanation even if they Read More ›

Just like Coulter and Yiannopoulos? From Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist: Richard Dawkins has a new collection of essays coming out next month in a book called Science in the Soul. Naturally, he’ll be visiting the U.S. on a book tour. One of the stops was going to be in Berkeley, California on August 9. It was sponsored by KPFA, a progressive radio station in the area, in a city known for being the hotbed of liberal activism. But that talk has now been canceled. More. Jerry Coyne quotes the cancellation notice: We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and Read More ›

One of the things that I find interesting from a design perspective is the existence of adaptive systems that don’t presently help them out. That is, they may have cellular response systems which help them in all sorts of scenarios which an ordinary individual is not subject to.
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The icon perished and became a zombie, lurking in the shadows of tax-funded textbooks. But let Wells tell it: Don’t miss the eighteen-winged dragonfly which has never existed except in tax-funded biology textbooks (you can see an illustration in the vid). Note: Tax-funded textbooks? That’s most of what keeps the zombies deadwalking. The vast majority of people compelled to pay for the textbooks cannot make a full-time job of opposing the pressure groups and lobbies that keep the textbooks bad. They can’t afford the time to even know about it. See also: Zombie Science and DNA replication film undermines textbooks

From Kayla Lattimore and Julie Depenbrock at NPR: Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads. It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you’re not a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, math), why even study algebra? That’s the argument Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California community college system, made today in an interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel. … Oakley is among a growing number of educators who view intermediate algebra as an obstacle to students obtaining their credentials — particularly in fields that require no higher level math skills. More. Hmmm. If we dropped Read More ›

From John Steele at Nautilus, interviewing cosmologist Paul Davies: Steele: What do you think are the most exciting recent advances in understanding time? … Davies: In terms of fundamental physics, is there anything especially new about time? I think the answer is not really. There are new ideas that are out there. I think there are still fundamental problems; we’ve talked about one of them: Is time an emergent property or a fundamental property? And the ultimate origin of the arrow of time, which is the asymmetry of the world in time, is still a bit contentious. We know we have to trace it back to the Big Bang, but there are still different issues swirling around there that we Read More ›

This is certainly the day for “earlier than thoughts.” Look on the bright side; it is way more interesting than Tales of the Tone Deaf, which predominated some short while back, about the prof-led move to Stamp Out Doubt. From Rachael Lallensack at Nature: The results, published on 18 July in Nature Communications1, push back against a controversial 2016 study2 that suggested dogs were domesticated twice. The latest analysis also add weight to previous research that moves the timing of domestication back as far as 40,000 years ago. … The researchers estimate that dogs and wolves diverged genetically between 36,900 and 41,500 years ago, and that eastern and western dogs split 17,500–23,900 years ago. Because domestication had to have happened Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: While it is accepted that humans appeared in Africa some 200,000 years ago, scientists in recent years have placed the approximate date of human settlement in Australia further and further back in time, as part of ongoing questions about the timing, the routes and the means of migration out of Africa. Now, a team of researchers, including a faculty member and seven students from the University of Washington, has found and dated artifacts in northern Australia that indicate humans arrived there about 65,000 years ago — more than 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. A paper published July 20 in the journal Nature describes dating techniques and artifact finds at Madjedbebe, a longtime site of archaeological research, that Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Stromatolites are round, multilayered mineral structures that range from the size of golf balls to weather balloons and represent the oldest evidence that there were living organisms on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists who believed life began in the ocean thought these mineral formations had formed in shallow, salty seawater, just like living stromatolites in the World Heritage-listed area of Shark Bay, which is a two-day drive from the Pilbara. But what Djokic discovered amid the strangling heat and blood-red rocks of the region was evidence that the stromatolites had not formed in salt water but instead in conditions more like the hot springs of Yellowstone. The discovery pushed back the time for the emergence of microbial Read More ›

Maybe Darwin and Steve Meyer aren’t the only ones who claim the right to honest doubt. Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #6 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution > Organic #6 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Paleontology #8 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism

No, not Atlantis, which has contributed so much to world fantasy literature. There is, in fact, a sort of lost continent, Zealandia. From Tia Ghose at LiveScience: The lost continent, which is mostly submerged, with all of New Zealand and a few islands peeking out from the water, is about half the size of Australia. By drilling deep into its crust or upper layer, the new scientific expedition could provide clues about how the diving of one of Earth’s plates beneath another, a process called subduction, fueled the growth of a volcano chain and this lost continent in the Pacific Ocean 50 million years ago. The new expedition could also reveal how that Earth-altering event changed ocean currents and the Read More ›

Graur’s latest claim that 75% of the human genome is non-functional has attracted a lot of digital ink. Pop science loves that sort of thing. From Kerry Grens at the Scientist: Up to 25 percent of the human genome is critical, while the rest has no function, according to a study published July 11 in Genome Biology and Evolution. The estimate, generated by looking at fertility rates and the expected frequency of deleterious mutations, contradicts a 2012 claim from a large international group called ENCODE, which estimated that 80 percent of the genome is functional. “For 80% of the human genome to be functional, each couple in the world would have to beget on average 15 children and all but Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at Evolution News & Views: String theory, which took root in the 1970s, proposes that “all objects in our universe are composed of vibrating filaments (strings) and membranes (branes) of energy.” That’s the ultimate Cool. It unites general relativity (the physics of the very big) with quantum mechanics (the physics of the very small) in one grand unified Theory of Everything, turning current conflicts into harmony. But string theory offers more. It can undergird the concept of a multiverse: There are more universes than particles in our known universe. Which mean that the theory must be true or we must act as if it is true irrespective of evidence—or at least people must be made to believe Read More ›