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The Kingdom of Speech From E. J. Spode at 3 AM Magazine (“Whatever it is, we’re against it”), a longish review of Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech: Because, in this day and age, it isn’t about finding the truth; it’s about winning the news cycle. This attitude is pristinely reflected in a review of the book in Canada’s Globe and Mail. “Wolfe is a reporter and an entertainer, an opinionated raconteur rather than a scientist, and that is why we will always report on his jocular provocations. And if they serve as an excuse to explain what universal grammar was in the first place – as it has done – then Chomsky should be thrilled.” Right. Because what could Read More ›

A reader draws our attention to Prof. Eric Arnoy’s comments at Calvin College, BiochemistryII: The reduction of nitrogen to ammonia, known as nitrogen fixing, is vital to agriculture: N2 + 3H2 → 2NH3 The bacteria that perform this job for plants are symbionts with th plants, exchanging ammonia for energy. The plant provides leghemoglobin to bind the oxygen. Now, here’s the interesting part: Leghemoglobin is part of the globin protein family and resembles the mammalian oxygen-binding protein myoglobin in structure, though the sequences differ greatly. But how is that? Arnoy writes, Furthermore, myoglobin is not found in plants, so it would be a stretch to suggest that leghemoglobin arose from myoglobin. Instead, what we see here is a wonderful example Read More ›

More info at Evolution News & Views: In a New Documentary, Origin, Paul Nelson and Ann Gauger Confront the Enigma of Chemical Evolution Materialist accounts of origins face a dual challenge — biological evolution and chemical evolution. The latter describes the problem of generating life from nonlife in the hostile environment of the early Earth. To call that problem overwhelming, given the resources of matter and energy alone — in other words, blind churning — doesn’t begin to do it justice. It doesn’t even begin to begin. OriginDVD-Cover__44959.1473718956.1280.1280.jpgThat’s the takeaway from an effective new documentary from Illustra Media, Origin: Design, Chance and the First Life on Earth, featuring Discovery Institute biologist Ann Gauger and philosopher of biology Paul Nelson. Stephen Read More ›

From Todd Wood at his blog: News articles last week in El País and New Scientist report the discovery of a Neandertal infant burial in an ancient cave about 58 miles north of Madrid, Spain. … The abstract describes the discovery of Des-Cubierta cave in 2009 and the subsequent excavation of Late Pleistocene remains of a Neandertal child. From Richard Gray at New Scientist The blackened hearths surround a spot where the jaw and six teeth of a Neanderthal toddler were found in the stony sediment. Puzzlingly, within each of these hearths was the horn or antler of a herbivore, apparently carefully placed there. In total, there were 30 horns from aurochs and bison as well as red deer antlers, Read More ›

From Richard Stone at Science: It’s unknown how many papers and theses are ginned up under false pretenses. In 2014, a member of Iran’s Academy of Sciences estimated that each year as many as 5000 theses—roughly 10% of all master’s and Ph.D. theses awarded in Iran—are bought from dealers. In a recent Google search, Behzad Ataie-Ashtiani, a civil engineering professor at Sharif University of Technology here who has shined a light on the practice (Science, 18 March, p. 1273), says he found 330,000 links to paper sellers in Farsi. (paywall) – Science 16 Sep 2016: Vol. 353, Issue 6305, pp. 1197 DOI: 10.1126/science.353.6305.1197More. Of course, the problem is slightly different from the one we discussed with China because the papers Read More ›

From Julien d’Huy at Scientific American: Although the animals and the constellations may differ, the basic structure of the story does not. These sagas all belong to a family of myths known as the Cosmic Hunt that spread far and wide in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas among people who lived more than 15,000 years ago. Every version of the Cosmic Hunt shares a core story line—a man or an animal pursues or kills one or more animals, and the creatures are changed into constellations. Folklorists, anthropologists, ethnologists and linguists have long puzzled over why complex mythical stories that surface in cultures widely separated in space and time are strikingly similar. In recent years a promising scientific approach to Read More ›

From Brian Clark Howard at National Geographic News: Published in the journal Science Advances this week, a new study reported that our surrounding area of stars, gas, and dust—called the Local Arm, Orion Spur, or Orion–Cygnus Arm—is actually about 20,000 light-years long. The immediate implications are that the galaxy is actually a little more symmetrical and regular than scientists previously thought, says one of the study’s co-authors, Mark J. Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Although a better understanding of our galaxy’s structure doesn’t necessarily mean gravity or other forces acting on us are different from what we expect, it could help us better understand large-scale features in the future, notes Reid. More. See also: Cosmologist Luke Barnes on Read More ›

From Fiona Macdonald at ScienceAlert: A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been “fabricated”. The report uncovered fraudulent behaviour at almost every level, and showed that some pharmaceutical companies had hidden or deleted records of potentially adverse side effects, and tampered with data that didn’t meet their desired outcomes.More. Odd way of putting things: As damning as this problem is for China’s scientists, they aren’t the only ones that are under more and more pressure to publish positive and “groundbreaking” results in order to keep their jobs. A study published earlier this month revealed that the enormous pressure on academics is acting like a Read More ›

Closing our religion coverage for the week (a bit late), over at ReligionNews.com, Emily McFarlane Miller reports that Mike McHargue tells us: ‘Science Mike’ McHargue: ‘Christians aren’t stupid, and atheists aren’t evil’ … What are some of the most compelling things you’ve found in your scientific studies that point you back to God? Probably the first thing would be how ideally suited the human brain is as a host for beliefs about God, the way belief seems to be relatively inevitable a consequence of human consciousness, and the way our brains tend to develop in healthy ways when we indulge that belief, especially in a God who is loving. Beyond that, as you learn more about cosmology and physics, particle Read More ›

Collectively, they are, um, dumb. After a while, one gets plumb tired of it. From Graham Lawton at New Scientist: IT COST more than $13 billion and took 14 years, but eventually, as expected, God showed up. The joy and relief were immense. That was in 2012, and the evidence has only become stronger. Disbelief is no longer an option. God is real. Not the God of course, but Her particle, aka the Higgs boson. If only proving the existence of God were that simple. Gallons of ink and blood have been spilled over this question but have largely got us nowhere. Belief in a god or several gods is a leap of faith. So is disbelief. The only coherent Read More ›

From Hugh Ross at Salvo: With access to gravitational waves emanating from both medium-sized and supermassive black hole binaries, astronomers will be able to explore new properties of gravity and general relativity. They will be able to determine in much more detail the formation histories of both stars and galaxies in the universe. These advances will lead to a more precise understanding of the cosmic creation event and the subsequent development of the universe. Inevitably, worldviews will come into play, but scientific testing can and should overcome preconceived ideas. How did our universe come to exist? Was it by chance? For a fair-minded person, the understanding to be gained by these advances promises to remove any remaining doubts about the Read More ›

Cleaning out the in tray here, and came across this from science writer John Farrell, a while back, at Forbes, on evangelicals (BioLogos types) “coming out” for Darwin in a recent book: While I appreciate the candor in There is more to the challenge of evolution than just accepting the age of the universe and that all species, including humans, are deeply related. … The way the world came to be has to say something about the character of its creator, according to many theologians.many of these essays, the book could have cut even closer to the bone. And how does “evolution” portray the world? As Farrell quotes contributor Schneider, Schneider, in particular, lays out this challenge: worth quoting from an Read More ›

From Charles Q. Choi at Inside Science News: Now researchers examining 153 galaxies find that by looking solely at where stars and gases in those galaxies are located, they could precisely predict the anomalous ways in which they moved. This may hint that dark matter is more strongly coupled to normal matter than currently thought. It could also indicate that dark matter does not exist and that another explanation is needed for the discrepancies that dark matter models were invoked to solve, said study lead author Stacy McGaugh, an astrophysicist and chair of astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Previous analyses of the orbital velocities of the stars in galaxies often depended on visible wavelengths of light. However, Read More ›

One wouldn’t think anyone had to point that out, but physicist Christopher Graney does a good job at Aeon: … Yes, [an opponent] said, a moving Earth messes with certain Biblical passages, like Joshua telling the Sun to stand still. But it also messes with certain astronomical terms, such as sunrise and sunset. Copernicans had work-arounds for all that, Locher said, even though they might be convoluted. What Copernicans could not work around, though, were the scientific arguments against their theory. Indeed, Locher even proposed a mechanism to explain how Earth could orbit the Sun (a sort of perpetual falling – this decades before Isaac Newton would explain orbits by means of perpetual falling), but he said it would not Read More ›

So thinks Francis Thackeray at RealClearScience: Dawson’s role in the Piltdown Man hoax appears to have been confirmed in 2016 by palaeo-anthropologist Dr Isabelle de Groote and her colleagues. High-tech forensic analyses led them to conclude that only a single hoaxer, presumably Dawson, was responsible. The case seems closed. But is it? Yes, everyone is blaming Dawson now. Research I have conducted recently and published in the South African Journal of Science suggests that Dawson may not necessarily have been the culprit in this particular case. I suspect someone realised that Dawson was a fraudster and decided to play a joke on him. Archival research in London and Paris leads me to believe that a French Jesuit priest was in Read More ›