From New Scientist we learn, “Shamed Harvard scientist is barred from the classroom” (Peter Aldhous, 21 April 2011): Marc Hauser, the prominent animal cognition researcher found guilty of scientific misconduct by Harvard University last year, is to receive no rapid rehabilitation by his closest colleagues. He’s the one who made Discover’s Top Ten Retractions list Read More…
Author: News
Denyse O'Leary is the News blogger for Uncommon Descent
Panda’s Thumb’s Nick Matzke: Turning a debacle into a debris storm
Or a storm of worse substance … Further to Sal Cordova’s earlier post, “Matzke is a Liar”: If Matzke is what those who know him claim, perhaps Barbara Forrest could usefully thank him and ask him to cease his efforts on her behalf.
Coffee!! Expelled’s Ben Stein a … liberal?
Now, it wouldn’t surprise the Uncommon Descent news desk, but it certainly surprised Canadian blogging queen Five Feet of Fury when Yesterday he told Dennis Miller we need to “redistribute the wealth.” (FREE audio). But here, here, here, here, here, and here, anti-Expelled types have painted Stein as a conservative. Comments? (Note: Five Feet of Read More…
Rationalization, not reason drives doubts about Darwin – science writer Chris Mooney
In “The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science” (Mother Jones, April 18, 2011), Chris Mooney offers to explain “How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.” For example, Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that Read More…
Resources: A look at ancient Earth
The Earth as its continents would have been seen from space, starting 500 million years ago just before the Cambrian explosion (courtesy MSNBC Cosmiclog): As he built the visualizations, Mendez said he was struck by the fact that the distribution of land mass among the continents has changed dramatically over the past 750 million years, Read More…
Coffee!! We are at most one per cent human?
In Scientific American, we learn “ThNeuroscience of the Gut: Strange but true: the brain is shaped by bacteria in the digestive tract” (Robert Martone, April 19, 2011): We human beings may think of ourselves as a highly evolved species of conscious individuals, but we are all far less human than most of us appreciate. Scientists Read More…
Resources: History of philosophy of science journal (HOPOS) free for a limited time
Here. Dedicated to philosopher of science Ernan McMullin (1924–2011).
Coffee!! Evolution of sweat: Not sweatin’ it, just askin’
Latest news from Loughborough University in Leistershire, UK (18 April 2011): “Sweat research sparks evolution speculation”: Research at Loughborough University to find out where athletes sweat the most has revealed surprising results (the cntral and lower back, near the spine). [ … ] Discussions with colleagues with expertise in evolutionary biology raised a speculative explanation. Read More…
Peer review ineffectiveness findings make waves
At AITSE (Caroline Crocker’s outfit), we are reminded of an Atlantic article (November 2010) on how little peer review actually contributes to the growth of a stable knowledge base: Dr. John Ioannidis, formerly of Harvard University, Johns Hopkins and National Institutes of Health, is currently leading a team investigating whether medical research studies can be Read More…
Golden spider find demonstrates how neo-Darwinism leads to “impoverished science”: Physicist
In “A golden orb-weaver spider from the Middle Jurassic” (4/21/11), David Tyler at manchester U comments on a recent find: The golden orb-weaver spider features in newly reported research and provides an exciting insight into past ecosystems. Today, these animals adorn tropical rainforests, with giant females of Nephila maculate (legs spanning up to 20 cm), Read More…
Atheist philosophers on why Darwinism has got to go
Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, explain, Such cases of elaborate innate behavioural programs (spider webs, bee foraging as we saw above, and many more) cannot be ccounted for by means of optimizing physico-chemical or geometric factors. But they csan hardly be accounted for by gradualistic adaptation either. It’s fair to acknowledge that, although we bet Read More…
Options in evolution: Teilhard de Chardin’s evolution – “Poetry and not philosophy”
It’s often said that many European non-Darwinian evolutionists are fans of the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Here’s something to know, however: The Catholic thinker most identified with evolution, the French Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin … des not loom as large on the Catholic intellectual landscape as he did a generation Read More…
One-dimensional early universe theory is testable, prof says
In “Primordial Weirdness: Did the Early Universe Have One Dimension? Scientists Outline Test for Theory”, at ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2011), we re asked to consider whether the universe started out with only one dimension: That’s the mind-boggling concept at the heart of a theory that University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic and colleagues proposed in Read More…
Texas, listen: This lady knows how to teach biology
The way Darwin lobbyists don’t. California-based Caroline Crocker, Expelled and now the director of an integrity in science institute and author of Free to Think, offers some reflections on how to teach science as if it wasn’t a cult: …biological systems are a complex mixture of chemical and electrical reactions controlled by application of many Read More…
Remember “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”?
Always used to attack any traditional assumption, never used to attack nonsense, no matter how scofffable, talked in Darwin’s name. Western Michigan University philosopher Tim McGrew offers some thoughts on evidence, forthcoming in an anthology from Routledge: