Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Academic Freedom

Americans support dissent re evolution

From Discovery Institute: As Americans celebrate their country’s freedom this week, a new survey reveals that an overwhelming 93 percent of American adults agree that “teachers and students should have the academic freedom to objectively discuss both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution.” And 88 percent agree that “scientists who raise scientific criticisms of evolution should have the freedom to make their arguments without being subjected to censorship or discrimination.” More. Some of us wonder at times about the use of the term “dissent,” as if it were something special. Dissent is, in general, evidence of thinking. There is little dissent among a herd of cows about anything that pertains to being a cow. See also: Read More ›

New Science Journal: Matters

Here: Observations, not stories, are the pillars of good science. Today’s journals however, favor story-telling over observations, and congruency over complexity. As a consequence, there is a pressure to tell only good stories. Moreover, incentives associated with publishing in high-impact journals lead to loss of scientifically and ethically sound observations that do not fit the storyline, and in some unfortunate cases also to fraudulence. The resulting non-communication of data and irreproducibility not only delays scientific progress, but also negatively affects society as a whole. Here at Sciencematters, we publish the true unit of science, the observation. You make an observation, make sure it’s solid and ethically sound, and then submit it to us. We guide your manuscript through triple-blind peer Read More ›

Scientific Dissent Can Never Be Securities Fraud

Over at the Progressive Fascist post, progressives wd400, FierceRoller, rhampton7, and Seversky have emerged as apologists for the attorneys general’s fascist efforts to quash dissent from climate alarmism.  What if the climate research really did amount to securities fraud they ask? I have litigated securities fraud cases for over 25 years.  I know what it takes to make a securities fraud case, and I can tell you that the fascist apologists’ question is like asking, “What if that circle really were square?”  There is a legal standard for what constitutes securities fraud, and the scientific research in question (whether it was disclosed or not) can never meet that standard.  Steve Simpson does a good job of explaining this principle here. Read More ›

Warning re open access publishing

From academic librarian Jeffrey Beall here: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards. The criteria for determining predatory publishers are here. We hope that tenure and promotion committees can also decide for themselves how importantly or not to rate articles published in these journals in the context of their own institutional standards and/or geocultural locus. We emphasize that journal publishers and journals change in their business and editorial practices over time. This list is kept up-to-date to the best Read More ›

Meeting the scientific outcasts and mavericks

Mathematicians and scientists who study evidence for design in nature are hardly the only ones! Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health offers some others, including Mark Davis. In an editorial for Nature, Davis and 18 of his colleagues made the case to stop vilifying invasive species. They argue that invasive species are not a threat to biodiversity, and the notion that these species are little more than barbarian invaders leads to bad policy. They write, “this perspective has led many conservation and restoration efforts down paths that make little ecological or economic sense.” More. Here: “Conservationists should assess organisms on environmental impact rather than on whether they are natives, argue Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists.” (paywall) Read More ›

Millennials’ low commitment to intellectual freedom

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 40 percent of millennials believe it would be appropriate for the government to restrict speech that offends minority groups. This mindset is manifesting itself on college campuses across the country, from the disinvitation of controversial speakers to top comedians refusing to perform at universities. What you’ve never had, you don’t miss. Strange, it should happen in the home of the First Amendment to the Constitution. (“Congress shall make no law respecting”) See also: Nicholas Kristof: More self-deceptive blather on academic freedom and Dawkins: Social justice warriors are dim, just dim … (And our future ruling class.) Follow UD News at Twitter!

Nicholas Kristof: More self-deceptive blather on academic freedom

From Nicholas Kristof at New York Times, who has just discovered  that most “liberals” don’t agree that close-mindedness is a bad thing (he wrote about it recently, and now follows up): Third, when scholars cluster on the left end of the spectrum, they marginalize themselves. We desperately need academics like sociologists and anthropologists influencing American public policy on issues like poverty, yet when they are in an outer-left orbit, their wisdom often goes untapped. In contrast, economists remain influential. I wonder if that isn’t partly because there is a critical mass of Republican economists who battle the Democratic economists and thus tether the discipline to the American mainstream. I’ve had scores of earnest conversations with scholars on these issues. Many Read More ›

Dawkins: Social justice warriors are dim, just dim …

Every so often, Richard Dawkins hits the target. Here’s his take on the junior jackboots of Asshat U Washington Times: “There seems to be a tendency among some students – perhaps the less intelligent – to suppress free speech,” Mr. Dawkins said in an interview with the Australian on Monday. “I hope it doesn’t last long.” More. There are two reasonable opinions about whether the SJWs are dim. Some would say they know how to get on very well after the collapse of the traditional humanities, and aim at careers in enforcement of Correctness of some kind. Of course, one hardly need be a genius for that. In fact, a lack of genuine curiosity is a great asset. But what’s this Read More ›

Less science, more crackdowns!

The global warming hype, unlike the nutrition freakout or the far side of Darwinism, could actually be true. But the behaviour of the proponents tells against that. From Willie Soon and István Markó at : Increasingly, we are seeing more and more outrageous and aggressive anti-scientific claims that anyone who is not willing to embrace the dangerous global warming bandwagon and to condemn its culprit, CO2, is actually the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier. This sort of name-calling, loud self-promotion and fact twisting actions, closer to political rodeo than to healthy scientific debates, are simply telling us that our opponents have already lost their fallacious arguments and are getting short on any real scientific facts. Professor Albert Einstein had it Read More ›

Mark Steyn on the growing criminalization of dissent

From Mark: The point I made – about the criminal enforcement of state ideology – has since been reinforced by the disgusting behavior of 20 (so far) attorneys-general from California to the US Virgin Islands ganging up to investigate and charge “climate deniers” for the crime of holding a different opinion and exercising their First Amendment right to express it. As I noted in my testimony, a group of lavishly enriched climate scientists led by Professor Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University recently urged the President to prosecute climate dissenters under RICO racketeering laws. In fact, the behavior of Shukla and his gang more closely resembles that of racketeers – as does the conspiracy of state attorneys-general. The freedom-of-information release Read More ›

FYI-FTR: D reminds us on the lesson of the White Rose martyrs

As we continue to look at the issue of wedges used at watersheds to trigger slides down mutually polarised slippery slopes to ruin, D reminds us on the lesson of the White Rose martyrs . . . a movement that is now pivotal in some key ways to the modern self-understanding of the German people. We tread holy ground here, lessons literally bought with blood and tears. Here is D, reporting on a recent tour of pivotal sites and linked reflections: >>Regarding your clear warnings about the inescapable consequences of disregarding the lessons from history, there are a few interesting things I noticed during my recent first visit to the Polish cities of Wroclaw and Krakow a week ago. However, Read More ›

Science: The Victim of Ideology ‘Uber Alles’

Here’s a link to an article from American Thinker that details how, in Ohio, the Univ. of Cincinnati did a three year study on the effects of oil-well “fracking,” the results of which demonstrate no contamination of ground water had occurred because of “fracking.” And then the study was quashed. Read More ›

Jerry Coyne defends Sam Harris

Readers may recall “No I in me and no sense in Sam Harris” wherein Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, comments on the conundrum that Harris thinks dispensing with the idea that one exists is the key to deeper knowing of the nature of reality. But, Rossiter, not to worry, some can go Harris, a Darwin fan, one better: Evolution shows our perceptions are not real Anyway, seriously, Harris is getting slammed for Islamophobia, and Jerry Coyne offers, First, Sam asks hard questions, and people don’t like to think about hard questions. Should we ever lie? Is torture ever justifiable? Is it even possible to even imagine a first strike against Islamic enemies? Is it possible that religion can Read More ›

Bill Nye the authority guy

Following on: Bill Nye open to jail time for climate change skeptics, from The Federalist: But Nye isn’t just speculating about putting people in jail. He is referring to a specific attempt to use the model of those old tobacco lawsuits to prosecute any company that has ever funded research or advocacy skeptical of claims about global warming. This campaign was started last year and has taken its newest steps recently with a meeting of state attorneys general who vowed to launch “investigations into whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change.” The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands—whom you would think would have enough to deal with at home straightening out Read More ›

Something else everyone should know about climate alarmism

A thought re Barry Arrington’s thread, MIT Atmospheric Physicist Explains What Everyone Should Know about Climate Alarmism: Maybe we are missing the real problem: In itself, global warming is just the latest a-crock-alypse by which green daycare moms compete in the middle class virtue stakes. And swindlers get rich. But what’s new there? We can be glad when the swindlers are not also murderers. They sometimes are. But readers, do consider the readiness with which Heat Doom morphs into a state religion, giving proponents the right to persecute dissenters. With so much money and power at stake, too. Cf Bill Nye open to jail time for climate change skeptics It’s most likely that the problem will be exported to other Read More ›