Researchers: “To build the machinery that enables bacteria to swim, over 50 proteins have to be assembled according to a logic and well-defined order to form the flagellum, the cellular equivalent of an offshore engine of a boat.” They ADMIT this? It sounds like a Recovery Meeting.
Culture
Darwin’s man Jerry Coyne has begun to worry about Wokeness
Coyne: But violence, looting, and rioting aren’t the main things I worry about. I worry about Wokeness.
Pushback at StatNews against politicizing science. Rob Sheldon weighs in
Sheldon: The editors of Science and Nature compromised their scientific objectivity years ago. They promoted papers that big pharma wanted, they suppressed papers that made big pharma look bad. They were complicit in the coverup of not just tobacco and sugar lobbies, but vaccines and Darwinism and global warming… So of course this produced cognitive dissonance, since it violated some of the very basic tenets of objective science.
Hey, it’s Friday night? Anthropologists get in on “We are NOT alone!”
Of course, there’s the detail of actually finding any extraterrestrial life forms before we all fight viciously for the right to represent them as their agents and, if they are intelligent (but not especially so) get them to sign long-term contracts … 😉
One of those rare instances where science is self-correcting … Ioannidis is vindicated
Hey, that’s good news. But what about all the people whose lives were turned upside down by the herd of stampeding buffalo otherwise known as our moral and intellectual superiors?
Science writer mourns the slow suicide of science
Alex Berezow: “Political partisanship. There was a time when scientists knew better than to deal in politics. That time is now gone. Openly cheering for one side of the political spectrum over the other, scientists and science media outlets are gambling with their reputation.” Well, from an international perspective, here’s the obvious problem: If the US Prez is THAT important, science ain’t what it used to be.
A humanities scholar gets a clue about what Darwinism IS
Amazing! Hey, here, we were all waiting for Freestone to try out the CLUNK!! on us: “If you believe in God, well, rejoice! God can use Darwinism too!” Luckily, we didn’t hear it. We are sick of certifying idiots. For one thing, we’ve run out of certificates. And anyhow, Freestone doesn’t sound like an idiot.
Check out Steve Meyer’s new web site
He’s the author of Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, also The Return of the God Hypothesis. Here’s the new site. Here’s the kind of thing you can see lots of there: David Klinghoffer thinks it;s the best interview with Meyer he’s ever seen.
Religion, science, … and the religion of science facing COVID-19
In fact, during the COVID crisis, a great deal of the blather for science made no sense at all, a fact that is becoming more and more evident. People won’t immediately give up believing in science as a result. Rather, they will begin to treat it as the superstition of the social elite. It doesn’t make sense and doesn’t need to. It is wisely got around wherever possible.That’s not what science used to be but that;s what many policy decisions have made it.
Will “science” please stand down?
Because what our betters really want is that their nonsense, whatever it stems from and wherever it leads, always be dressed up as “science.”
And now… New Scientist tells us herd immunity is “bad science”… Rob Sheldon responds
Rob Sheldon: We have the data to improve our models and the much-attacked Greater Barrington declaration suggests that we should, since the DATA from Sweden show that lockdowns are neither necessary nor even helpful. But this author suggests that the models are perfect, and therefore the data must be rejected in the name of science, of course. He is displaying, even in his own scientific subfield, the same TRUST in science, that we disparaged in Nature. The disease of deification begun by Darwin is far more pervasive than anyone wants to admit. You might say that herd immunity hasn’t yet been reached.
It isn’t skeptics who are harming science today
Mahlberg: In the latest major backflip, the WHO has condemned lockdowns as a primary strategy for combating the spread of the virus, after originally recommending them.
Now Nature endorses Joe Biden for US Prez—and doesn’t seem to realize what it is doing to itself
Nature was founded in 1869. Between then and now, many U.S. Prezzes have come and gone. The puzzling part is why Nature (and stablemate Scientific American) would throw themselves into the fray like this, as if they had no reputation or credibility, apart from politics, to defend. If it’s all really about politics, fine. Many suspected that but no one could prove it. Now, any statement made on behalf of “science” will be wisely read as on behalf of “politics.” That will harm genuinely urgent causes the most. When there’s no daylight between “Stop plastic in the oceans!” and “Vote for Schmeezer!”, most people will make up their own mind about plastic in the oceans/Schmeezer. The authority of science becomes indistinguishable from Schmeezer’s media outreach. Well, at least they brought it on themselves.
Rob Sheldon responds to Nature’s decision to go political: Are they really scientists or just political hacks?
Sheldon: My best explanation is that the editors of Nature, SciAm, NEJM are themselves not research scientists, but political hacks—hired under the supposition that good relations with government funders required not science but PR.
Rob Sheldon on Nature’s Screed (on the upcoming US election)
As with many things done today, I always wonder are they extreme cynics or just very stupid? But whatever they are, science will never again regain the status they covet so intensely.