The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: BioLogos is the theistic evolutionist advocacy group founded by Francis Collins. For years they have been gravely advising their fellow Christians that science rules out belief in a historical first pair of human beings. That evolutionary view, posing a seemingly heavy theological challenge to traditional Christian faith, has taken a couple of hits in recent days. … It’s painful when friendships fall apart in front of your eyes. Here, though, I won’t tell you I feel terrible about it. It’s not that I have a stake in the fight per se. I’m not a Christian, nor, obviously, a theistic evolutionist. Discovery Institute takes no position on how, or whether, you should read Read More ›

From apologist Evan Minton at Cerebral Faith: Often, you’ll hear atheists and anti-theists say things like “Christians don’t believe in science” or “Christians are anti-science!” or “You can believe in God or you can believe in science, but not both.” or “You can believe in The Bible or you can believe in science, but not both.” Atheists claim to be the champions of science and they deride Christians and Christianity for being opponents to science. But, in order to respond to the secularist’s claims, one has to ask a very important question: “What do you mean by that?” It’s one of the questions of The Colombo Tactic, a debate tactic talked about in Greg Koukl’s Tactics: A Game Plan For Read More ›

A take on getting to know our inner Neanderthal from Ruth Williams at The Scientist, For example, being a self-described night owl and being prone to daytime napping were both traits positively influenced by Neanderthal variants, as were loneliness, low mood, and smoking. Genetic loci associated with having red hair were found to be devoid of Neanderthal variants, suggesting red-headed Neanderthals were either rare or non-existent. The new study also supports Capra and colleagues’ previous observations that Neanderthal variants are associated with sun-induced skin lesions, mood disorders, and smoking. That traits such as skin color, sun-burning, and sleep patterns were identified by the analyses might be explained by the Neanderthals’ adaptations to life at more northern latitudes, suggests Capra. But for Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Because Neanderthal alleles are relatively rare, the researchers needed data representing a really large number of people. They found what they were looking for in data representing more than 112,000 participants in the UK Biobank pilot study. The Biobank includes genetic data along with information on many traits related to physical appearance, diet, sun exposure, behavior, and disease. Earlier studies had suggested that human genes involved in skin and hair biology were strongly influenced by Neanderthal DNA, Kelso says. But it hadn’t been clear how. “We can now show that it is skin tone, and the ease with which one tans, as well as hair color that are affected,” Kelso says. The researchers observe multiple different Neanderthal alleles Read More ›

This is old news, but I only just learned about it, and I don’t think it was talked about when it happened. In 2006, the Ouachita Parish (i.e., county) School Board decided to allow a “teach the controversy” approach to science education. After the policy was enacted, the science teachers wrote a letter thanking the school board for their decision. Here’s what they said:
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From Mark Latham at Rebel Media on gender theory as harmful for dogs: Yes, a new dimension in post-modern science. More. Note: from a Humane Society member and donor: Neglected, mistreated, and abandoned dogs have way bigger problems than human opinions about gender. See also: Nature: Stuck with a battle it dare not fight, even for the soul of science. Excuse me guys but, as in so many looming strategic disasters, the guns are facing the wrong way. and Post-modern science: The illusion of consciousness sees through itself and things get woozier after that

At Classical Conversations: There has been a growing trend to say that Americans need less algebra education. In The Math Myth, Andrew Hacker argues that algebra and other upper-level high school mathematics like geometry and trigonometry are largely unnecessary for students and can even get in the way of students preparing for the life ahead of them. Hacker is not alone in his assessment. The chancellor of the California community college system, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is trying to remove algebra as a requirement for non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors. This idea has been getting play in outlets from the Huffington Post to the New York Times. I don’t disagree that there are problems in mathematics and the way Read More ›

From Dalmeet Singh Chawla at PhysicsToday: A newly proposed, citation-based metric assesses the veracity of scientific claims by evaluating the outcomes of subsequent replication attempts. Introduced in an August bioRxiv preprint by researchers at the for-profit firm Verum Analytics, the R-factor was developed in response to long-standing concerns about the lack of reproducibility in biomedicine and the social sciences. Yet the measure, which its creators also plan to apply to physics literature, has already triggered concerns among researchers for its relatively simple approach to solving a complex problem. … Although it takes on a critical flaw in modern science, the new metric has drawn plenty of criticism. Pseudonymous science blogger Neuroskeptic, who was one of the first to report on Read More ›

Identifying the “Grand Challenge” in a Specialty Grand Challenge Article, Peter K. Jonason, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney University, explains: If one assumes, like evolutionary psychologists do, that psychological systems are biological and physical (i.e., no ethereal concept of mind) in nature, evolutionary models must apply to the brain and its sequalae. However, since at least Descartes and, perhaps as far back as Plato, a mind-body dualism has existed whereby the mind (i.e., psyche) has been treated as distinct from the body and there is a tendency to treat humans as distinct from “animals” in some form of implicit anthropocentrism which has led to psychological theories generally being developed in parallel deafness to biological theories (Jonason and Read More ›

From Rachel Feltman and Matthew R. Francis at Popular Science: The main reason some physicists obsess over the beginning of the universe is because so much evidence points to there being one. But what if our universe grooved within an ageless multiverse—like a patch of ground from which countless flowers bloom. In this model, each universe has a big bang and keeps its own time. In the most popular version, each universe might even have its own version of physics too. Infinite possibilities yield infinite results: Some say this theory explains life itself. We’d have to be extremely lucky for a single big bang to create a universe with the perfect conditions for life as we know it, but if Read More ›

From Günter Bechly at Evolution News & Views: In a recent post for Evolution News, we discussed vestigial structures as alleged evidence for evolution (Chaffee 2017). As an illustration, the article featured an image of the auricular tubercles or “Darwin’s ear points,” a bump-like thickening on the helix of the auricle (exterior ear) of many people that is often claimed to be an atavistic vestige of the pointy ear tip found in monkeys. Evolutionists say the feature proves a shared ancestry of humans with lower primates. The bump was originally discovered by the celebrated British sculptor Thomas Woolner, who informed Charles Darwin about it. In The Descent of Man, Darwin (1871:15-17) cited this structure as probable evidence for common ancestry Read More ›

From John Maynard Smith (1920–2004): I am convinced that a proper training in science requires that undergraduates are confronted by the problems of contemporary science. Only then can they see science as an activity, and not as a body of received doctrine. Evolutionary Genetics, 1989. p. v. But now, come on. Did Smith really think that or isn’t it more like he thought his own cherished views would never be challenged. 1989 was well before ID theorists, for example, started to apply information theory reasoning to Darwinian claims and long before Third Way challenges were anything more than a tolerated eccentricity. Darwinians have been on a tear against academic freedom ever since. Note: Among his major books were The Theory Read More ›

From Mindy Weisberger at LiveScience: Driven by ambition and curiosity to learn what lies on the other side of death, five medical students deliberately stop their hearts in order to experience “the afterlife” in the new thriller “Flatliners” (Sony Pictures), which opened in U.S. theaters on Sept. 29. They quickly discover that there are unexpected and terrible consequences of dallying with death — but not everything they experience after “dying” is in the realm of science fiction. A growing body of research is charting the processes that occur after death, suggesting that human consciousness doesn’t immediately wink out after the heart stops, experts say. More. The most serious enemy of what we can know is what we think we know Read More ›

From Chris Baraniuk at New Scientist: New York City mice may be evolving to eat fast food like pizza They examined the mice’s RNA to see if the rural and urban populations expressed different genes. Ultimately, they homed in on 19 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): places in the genome where a single letter varies from mouse to mouse. Several SNPs were in genes associated with digestion and other metabolic processes. One highlighted gene was used to produce omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. A version of this gene appears to have been selected for in humans as we moved from hunter-gathering to agriculture. The theory is that the urban vermin have “evolved” to supplement their diet on human food waste. Eureka! Read More ›