From Steve Fuller, who has studied the intelligent design controversy, “Brexit as the unlikely leading edge of the anti-expert revolution,” European Management Journal: At this point, we confront one of the big canards perpetrated by defenders of expertise, namely that anti-experts are anti-intellectuals who privilege ignorance over knowledge and would treat all opinions as equally Read More…
Month: September 2017
Quotes to ponder: Education does not determine acceptance of science consensus
From Caitlin Drummond and Baruch Fischhoff, Individuals with greater science literacy and education have more polarized beliefs on controversial science topics at PNAS: Prior research has found that political and religious polarization over science and technology issues in the United States can be greater among individuals with more education and science knowledge. We examine that Read More…
Are split-brain people really two half-persons? No, and that deepens the “mystery of consciousness”
From cognitive psychologist and physicist Yaïr Pinto at Aeon: We’ve got to admit that split-brain patients feel and behave normally. If a split-brain patient walks into the room, you would not notice anything unusual. And they themselves claim to be completely unchanged, other than being rid of terrible epileptic seizures. If the person was really Read More…
Smithsonian: Childhood experiences can permanently change DNA
From Lorena Infante Lara at The Smithsonian: But we’re finding out that our DNA isn’t always set in stone. Now, a team of researchers from Northwestern University led by anthropology professor Thom McDade have shown that DNA can also be modified by your environment during childhood. What’s more, the authors conclude in the journal Proceedings Read More…
Model: Quantum wave collapse creates gravitational fields, may be testable
Uniting quantum mechanics and gravity at last. From Anil Ananthaswamy at New Scientist One approach towards reconciling gravity with quantum mechanics has been to show that gravity at its most fundamental comes in indivisible parcels called quanta, much like the electromagnetic force comes in quanta called photons. But this road to a theory of quantum Read More…
Physicist at Forbes: The inflationary universe is not science any more
From theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder at Forbes: The problem with inflation isn’t the idea per se, but the overproduction of useless inflationary models. There are literally hundreds of these models, and they are – as the philosophers say – severely underdetermined. This means if one extrapolates the models that fit current data to regimes which Read More…
Chimps can learn to uses tools on their own, without being taught
From ScienceDaily: New observations have led researchers to believe that chimpanzees can use tools spontaneously to solve a task, without needing to watch others first. The evidence of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) spontaneously using sticks to scoop food from water surfaces is published in the open-access journal PeerJ. … The results challenge the accepted belief that chimpanzees Read More…
At Nautilus: Biggest mysteries of our universe might be outside traditional paradigms
From Claudia Grieb at Nautilus, In the sciences, new ideas are often judged for how far they lie outside of the systems that scaffold our understanding of the world— systems that are not only scientific, but also social. But when it comes to solving our most persistent mysteries in physics, like the composition of dark Read More…
Humans 250k years older than thought? Arose in multiple places?
From Will Dunham at Reuters, Genetic data from the skeletal remains of seven people who lived centuries ago in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province is offering intriguing new evidence that our species, Homo sapiens, is older than previously believed. Scientists said on Thursday they sequenced the genomes of the seven individuals including a boy who lived Read More…
What? Only an “extremely occasional” mutation is beneficial? But Darwinism… ?
From Jessica Hamzelou at New Scientist on a study in Iceland that shows that old fathers pass on more mutations than old mothers: “If a sequence is not present in the parents but is present in the child, then it’s new,” says Stefánsson. They discovered that 80 per cent of new mutations come from the Read More…
Post-modern science: The illusion of consciousness sees through itself
From Denyse O’Leary at Evolution News & Views: We know almost nothing about the human consciousness but naturalism must treat it as evolved from unconscious elements. Much confusion is avoided by recognizing that that is a core assumption, not a discovery. Naturalist theories of consciousness currently proliferate with abandon because there is no basis for Read More…
Do gut feelings hurt science decisions?
From R. Kelly Garrett at Phys.org: Where people differ is in how often they do so. A 2016 survey that my colleague Brian Weeks and I conducted found that 50.3 percent of all Americans agreed with the statement “I trust my gut to tell me what’s true and what’s not.” Some of those polled felt Read More…
If evolution were repeated, would jellyfish be intelligent?
From Douglas Fox at Aeon: The ctenophore was already known for having a relatively advanced nervous system; but these first experiments by Moroz showed that its nerves were constructed from a different set of molecular building blocks – different from any other animal – using ‘a different chemical language’, says Moroz: these animals are ‘aliens Read More…
Researchers: First Ediacaran animal identified
Mysterious Ediacaran Dickinsonia, from 550 mya was definitely an animal, they say. [pic] From ScienceDaily: ‘Dickinsonia belongs to the Ediacaran biota — a collection of mostly soft-bodied organisms that lived in the global oceans between roughly 580 and 540 million years ago. They are mysterious because despite there being around 200 different species, very few Read More…
Researchers: Evidence of life 3.95 billion years ago
From Phys.org: Rudimentary life may have existed on Earth 3.95 billion years ago, a time when our infant planet was being bombarded by comets and had hardly any oxygen, researchers said Wednesday. … A team presented what they say is the oldest-known fossil evidence for life on the Blue Planet—grains of graphite, a form of Read More…