Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Statistician Ioannidis on how COVID wrecked science

Readers may remember John Ioannidis. His point here is that getting more people involved with science doesn’t always work: "A lack of sharing and openness allowed a top medical journal to publish an article in which 671 hospitals allegedly contributed data that did not exist, and no one noticed this outright fabrication before publication." Read More ›

Larry Elder: Can somebody text Dr. Martin Luther King… ?

West: The blacks-as-apes trope is used by some on the right and left alike. In 2018, we called out actress Roseanne Barr’s loathsome comparison of Obama Administration official Valerie Jarrett to an ape. Now we call out a progressive white activist in California who is trying to stigmatize a conservative black man as an ape. Read More ›

New Video Presentation on YouTube: Intelligent Design & Scientific Conservatism

I have recently posted a new video on my Intelligent Design YouTube channel. In this video I discuss several areas in the philosophy of science and modern evolutionary biology, and their relationship to ID. These thoughts were prompted initially by an interesting paper by philosopher of science Jeffrey Koperski ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design, and Two Good Ones’. Koperski thinks that one good way to critique ID is to point out that it violates principles like ‘scientific conservatism’. Because there are several potential naturalistic mechanisms on the table, even if orthodox neo-Darwinism fails, ID is an unnecessary proposal. To turn to design explanations would be to adjust our theories too drastically. I argue against this claim, concluding that Read More ›

Artificial Cells “Created”

At Phys.Org today, a press release indicates that scientists have fashioned a type of stand-in for natural cells which can ‘mimic’ some of their functions/properties. The title of the PR is: “Scientists create artificial cells that mimic living cells’ ability to capture, process, and expel material.” Should we add this to the Miller-Urey experiment as a new piece of the puzzle as to how life started? Well, first of all, the limitations of the Miller-Urey experiment have been spelled out elsewhere, but should be well-known by now. Second, here’s what we read at Phys.Org: To design the cell mimics, the researchers created a spherical membrane the size of a red blood cell using a polymer, a stand-in for the cellular Read More ›

Why it’s okay for Rolling Stone to write false stories about a drug called Ivermectin

Much that happens in media today is not about what happened. It’s about Hot Hair and Big Lipstick posing as news. Readers, they don't need you. And you don't need them. We all have the internet. Read More ›

How materialism is enforced when the evidence is against it

Luskin at The Federalist: More than 1,100 scientists have signed a list agreeing they are “skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.” As a scientist, I’ve signed that list. But as an attorney, I can attest that many of these scientists — and others who are afraid to sign the list — face discrimination because they won’t toe the Darwinian line. Read More ›