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Academic Freedom

DI Fellow, David Berlinski: “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics”

He continues (HT, BA77): >>Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time …. … Come again … DB: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with Read More ›

Can Wikipedia be fixed? (And, should we care? [Is it time to walk away and lock it out like a virus?])

By 2012, the longstanding Encyclopedia Britannica had published its last print edition. Microsoft’s Encarta has long since bitten the dust, and so has Collier’s notable effort. Wikipedia, like it or lump it — mostly the latter — seems to have taken over that go-to first source slot. Indeed, for a great many subjects a Wikipedia article will dominate a Google search (or the like), to the point where one gets the impression that if it is not in the top three or so references, that was programmed in by the search engine’s programmers. And yet, as PJ Media reports, co-founder and original author of Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view [NPOV]” policy, Larry Sanger has gone on record, regarding Wiki’s entrenched Read More ›

Matti Leisola: Another gifted scientist poised over the memory hole?

From ENST re Matti Leisola, Dr. Leisola is the former dean of Chemistry and Material Sciences at Helsinki University of Technology, and the author of 140 peer-reviewed science publications on enzymes and rare sugars. Among other distinctions, he is a winner of the Latsis Prize of the ETH Zürich. While arguing, from vast experience, against modern evolutionary theory and for intelligent design, the book is also a memoir. … Leisola’s deep knowledge of biology is evident throughout the book, but fellow scientists may find Chapter 10 particularly valuable. There, Leisola unpacks what he has learned about evolution and design from his work on engineering enzymes and microbes. More. If he is like Gunter Bechly, that’ll sink his career. Darwinism today Read More ›

At Nature: Change how we judge research. Hmm…

From Stephen Curry, professor of structural biology and assistant provost for equality, diversity and inclusion, at Nature: The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) … Conceived by a group of journal editors and publishers at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in December 2012, it proclaims a pressing need to improve how scientific research is evaluated, and asks scientists, funders, institutions and publishers to forswear using journal impact factors (JIFs) to judge individual researchers. … Most agree that yoking career rewards to JIFs is distorting science. Yet the practice seems impossible to root out. In China, for example, many universities pay impact-factor-related bonuses, inspired by unwritten norms of the West. Scientists in parts of Eastern Read More ›

Creationist speaker Ken Ham disinvited from university campus

From Todd Starnes at Townhall: The Todd Starnes Radio Show obtained exclusive emails between the UCO [University of Central Oklahoma] Student Association and Answers in Genesis explaining why they had to rescind the invitation and opt out of a signed and legally binding contract. “We are currently getting bombarded with complaints from our LGBT community about Ken Ham speaking on our campus,” student body president Stockton Duvall wrote on Jan 25. “I was going to request that Mr. Ham refrains from talking on this issue, even if asked his views during the Q&A.” Ham was scheduled to deliver his remarks on March 5 in the university’s Constitution Hall. I find it highly ironic that after being booked to speak in Read More ›

“Erased” paleontologist Bechly gets support from Science and Health Council

Remember Gunter Bechly? That gifted and productive German paleontologist who got driven out and also disappeared from Wikipedia because he thinks there is design in nature?* Alex Berezow for American Council for Science and Health noticed and writes: If a respected scientist endorses a controversial view, should he or she be erased from history? The editors at Wikipedia think so, but only if the controversial opinion is one they personally dislike. That’s precisely what happened to a respected German paleontologist, Günter Bechly. His biography on Wikipedia has been deleted. Poof. Gone. It’s like he never existed. According to German Wikipedia, where a version of Dr. Bechly’s page (which appears to have been created in 2012) still exists, he was once an Read More ›

Canadian psychologist takes on the howling post-modern void, largely alone

From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: Unhinged criticism of the man has obscured the merits of his book: Professor Jordan Peterson, author of the top-selling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is beginning to look weary in the face of the waves of hatred he has endured recently. Two years ago, he was almost unknown outside his field. A Canadian clinical psychologist and professor of psychology (University of Toronto), he is author of over 100 papers in his specialities, the psychology of religious and ideological belief and personality theory. His principal work, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999), was a well-received tome. He taught at Harvard before being awarded tenure at the University of Toronto. So how Read More ›

The problem of using “methodological” naturalism to define science

One of the problems that keeps on cropping up here at UD and elsewhere is as captioned. Accordingly, I just noted to JDK et al in the “complaining” thread as follows: ___________ KF, 66: >>I should note on the subtly toxic principle that has been injected in such a way as to seem reasonable (especially to those who have been led to be ever-suspicious towards or at minimum forever apologetic over, our civilisation’s Judaeo-Christian heritage). Namely, so-called “methodological” naturalism. The first key trick in this, of course is that there is a grand suggestion that “methodological” removes the philosophical agenda involved in the naturalism. It does not. Instead, it subtly converts the effective meaning of “Science” into: the “best” evolutionary Read More ›

Re, Seversky: “a lot of this reads like complaining because science isn’t coming up with observations and theories that you like . . . “

Sometimes, an issue comes to a head, and there is then need to deal with it. The headline inadvertently shows that we are at such a juncture and the post yesterday on time to take the lead is therefore timely. For, the underlying problem at work on ID is that there is an often implicit but sometimes quite explicit ideologically loaded redefinition of science at work. Accordingly, I think it appropriate to headline my response to Seversky, including the onward accusation of religious bias: KF, 28 (in reply to 21): >>Strawman soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, confuse, poison and polarise the issues: a lot of this reads like complaining because science isn’t coming up with observations Read More ›

Tabby’s Star, 3: the business of dealing with Black Swans

In the Tabby’s Star”extraordinary claims” follow-up thread, one of the usual objector personas tried to pounce on the corrective: To do so, he tried to counter-pose the concept of Bayesian analysis, then professes to find that a discussion of the difference between risk and radical uncertainty is little more than meaningless verbiage. This is, however, little more than a play to keep going on business as usual in science in the teeth of warning signs: Where, we must also reckon with the subtleties of signals and noise: I have responded onward and think it worth the while to headline: KF, 53 : >>Let me clip Barsch as a public service for those dipping a tentative toe in the frigid, shark-infested Read More ›

From Slate: The end of truth, and science, is NOT in sight

From Daniel Engber at Slate: Ten years ago last fall, Washington Post science writer Shankar Vedantam published an alarming scoop: The truth was useless. … This supposed scientific fact jibed with an idea then in circulation. In those days of phantom Iraqi nukes, anti-vaxxer propaganda, and climate change denialism, reality itself appeared to be in danger. Stephen Colbert’s neologism, truthiness—voted word of the year in 2006—had summed up the growing sense of epistemic crisis. “Truth comes from the gut,” Colbert boasted to his audience. “Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.” … Ten years on, the same scientific notions have now been used to explain the rise of Donald Trump. The coronation Read More ›

How litigation undermines the ability of science media to provide honest results

From skeptical science journalist Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health: Consider Mark Jacobson, the climate scientist who is suing a prestigious journal for $10 million because it hurt his feelings. There is good reason to believe that the lawsuit will be dismissed, but not before lawyers have collected a nice fee for themselves. Jacobson’s attorneys and the journal’s attorneys can both make a lot of money arguing with each other, even if the suit never actually goes to trial. Routinely, lawyers are required to solve problems that they themselves created. If something like this were to occur in any other area of life, it would be called racketeering. Recently, RealClearScience wrote an article that covered a paper Read More ›

Higher ed is drowning and we weren’t the only people to notice

From sociologist Christian Smith at Chronicle Review: BS is undergraduate “core” curricula that are actually not core course systems but loose sets of distribution requirements, representing uneasy truces between turf-protecting divisions and departments intent on keeping their classes full, which students typically then come to view as impositions to “get out of the way.” BS is the grossly lopsided political ideology of the faculty of many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, creating a homogeneity of worldview to which those faculties are themselves oblivious, despite claiming to champion difference, diversity, and tolerance. … BS is the ascendant “culture of offense” that shuts down the open exchange of ideas and mutual accountability to reason and argument. It is university Read More ›

At RealClearScience: Failed psychological theories go through six stages

From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience: With the publication of his exhaustingly researched and skillfully reported article, “LOL Something Matters,” science writer Daniel Engber convincingly demonstrated that the “backfire effect,” the notion that contradictory evidence only strengthens entrenched beliefs, does not hold up under rigorous scientific scrutiny. Bluntly stated, the “backfire effect” probably isn’t real. Of course the backfire effect “probably isn’t real.” It probably never could have been real. Market discipline, for example, requires people to change their minds frequently about the goods and services they use. If they did not do so, innovations would be rare instead of common. What’s really happening in many situations is that people decline to believe ideological or otherwise imposed “truths” that violate their Read More ›

Are Mormons allowed to have their doubts in a free society?

From a study reported by political science prof Benjamin Knoll at HuffPost: – 37% reject God-guided evolution and believe in a literal Adam and Eve who were not the process of biological evolution. These Mormons have a more literalist/fundamentalist view. – 37% accept God-guided evolution as the origin of life on Earth but also believe in a literal Adam and Eve created by God and not the result of evolution. Perhaps many in this group believe Adam and Eve to be a special exception to the evolutionary process while accepting evolution as the most persuasive explanation for all other life. — 13% accept God-guided evolution and reject the idea that Adam and Eve were separately created by God outside of Read More ›