And the science paper that claimed so has been retracted. A team from the Shanghai Institute of Technology sought to study whether accuracy made any difference to whether a post goes viral on social media. They cited a concern about “the digital misinformation that threatens our democracy”: “The paper found that even though individuals may […]
Culture
Did Neanderthals create the first Spanish cave paintings?
If they did, that’ll be even less reason to think of them as some kind of “missing link”: What if, long before Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, the Neanderthals were humanity’s first artists? At any rate, this is the hypothesis raised by new dating of Spanish rock paintings published in February 2018 in the journal […]
Trying to have a discussion when others want a diversion
Douglas Axe talks about a long-running dialogue he has had as a result of his 2016 book, Undeniable , where he can’t seem to get his dialogue partner to focus on what he is saying in his book and not what someone else is saying and what a fourth party is saying about them: But […]
Women’s March falling apart before the anti-Semitism gets to science?
They’re all busting up, quarrelling.
Some Indian scientists nix Newton and Einstein
The BBC is now reporting on a trend in India to identity politics in science: The 106th Indian Science Congress, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, runs from 3-7 January. The head of a southern Indian university cited an old Hindu text as proof that stem cell research was discovered in India thousands […]
Evangelicals waving goodbye to Adam and Eve?
It is a sign of significant loss of cultural confidence when people are willing to reconfigure their “deepest convictions” even when the evidence against them isn’t “compelling.” Almost always that’s because what they call their faith is not actually among their deepest convictions.
Historian: Darwinists kept the “flat earth” myth going, to attack opponents of their views
From Mike Keas’s new book: “The reason for promoting both the specific like about the sphericity of earth and the general lie that religion and science are in natural and eternal conflict in Western society is to defend Darwinism.”
Heard at The Conversation: Enough with the “war on science” rhetoric!
A group of communications profs says it has the opposite of its intended effect: National Geographic’s March 2015 cover story provided a thoughtful discussion around the question of “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?” The actual cover, however, simply said “The War on Science.” That article never actually uses the term “war on science” […]
Be more afraid of the hype vendors than of the AI
The release of the Top Ten over hyped AI stories of 2019 has led the way for further promising ones, including this one, says engineer and philosopher Jonathan Bartlett: Was the machine cleverand sneaky or was it just programmed wrong? You decide. First, just to be clear, at Mind Matters we have nothing against AI. […]
Did fatness rule the Stone Age?
Not all Stone Age Venus figurines, of which 200 have been found, were fat. It doesn’t seem as though much has changed over 25 millennia except that many more people have much more to eat. So fatness wouldn’t signify success in more modern cultures.
Physicist: Is Darwinian natural selection a “force of nature” like gravity?
What, the “single best idea anyone ever had” (philosopher Daniel Dennett on Darwin ) is now comparable to gravity? Experimental physicist Rob Sheldon would take issue with that. Yes, a psychologist seems to think Darwinian natural selection is indeed a force of nature like gravity: Natural selection, one of the fundamental processes of evolution, has […]
The multiverse has become a talking point on Capitol Hill
You can’t ground a discussion in basic reality, says one commentator, “without somebody, sooner rather than later, confidently pronouncing something like “our universe is just one of many universes that are constantly evolving and forever changing.” He offers a response, courtesy Regis Nicoll: Everett imagined that each split created a parallel universe in which particles […]
Steve Meyer on the future of ID research: ID 3.0
Starting at the 38-minute mark: Steve Meyer is the author of Darwin’s Doubt See also: StTeve Meyer on the information enigma in evolution Follow UD News at Twitter! Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
Denmark: Perhaps not so rotten after all
Says Karsten Pultz, author of Exit Evolution: Recently, I wrote a piece for UD describing how a Danish Christian newspaper, Kristeligt Dagblad, is obviously biased in favour of evolution whenever it covers the creation vs. Evolution issue. In the article “Something Is Rotten In The State Of Denmark” I aired my frustration over the fact […]
Evolution or art? The chicken as a human artifact
We’ve probably had even more influence on the dog, of course. But here’s the interesting thing: When dogs run wild, they just go back to being wolfhounds after a few generations. Apparently, feral chickens just breed with still wild fowl and revert to ancestral types. Just how really significant irreversible changes occur remains unclear.