Culture

Well, this’ll be interesting. Darwin vs. Boyle. From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post: — In an attempt to do damage control, one of the organizers of the Royal Society paradigm shift meeting (not Denis Noble) sent me an email, which follows, asking that I stop referring to the Royal Society meeting as such. Why? Because he speaks for scientists who think they can control the scientific discourse as it was controlled at the time of Darwin. They are embarrassed. They don’t want to be seen as sitting on scientific evidence and feeding the public old science — which they are — and so they circle the wagons and deride those outside the circle who dare to point out that there is Read More ›

From Jonathan Webb at New Scientist: Ten years earlier again, Dawkins’ pioneering account of the “gene-centric” view of evolution, The Selfish Gene, also won huge acclaim. It crystallised an argument that had been brewing since Watson and Crick’s beautiful DNA structure marked a new peak in our understanding of inheritance: these sequences would tend to accumulate and propagate mutations that were beneficial to the gene itself. Any given gene “wants” to be passed on to as many future offspring as possible. Forty years on, however, this concept faces some opposition among today’s biologists. More. Um, now that you mention it … But Dawkins sees no need to rethink evolution in the light of modern developments: Perhaps the most popular challenge raised Read More ›

Further to the Arizona State U study author’s demand for “acceptance” rather than mere “understanding” of evolution, two thoughts: 1. The difference between “accept” and “understand” becomes quite clear when we turn away from Darwinism and look instead at a fact-based field. Let’s say, sterile procedure in the operating room. One doesn’t really care whether health care personnel “accept” sterile procedure, as long as they understand and follow it. Indeed, “acceptance” is valueless by itself. It is in fact counterproductive by itself: Bimbette Fluffarelli, popular host on Airhead TV, knows that “evolution is true,” with a fervour that would shame Jerry Coyne. Fortunately for her (and everyone), she has never had to think about it. Brownell frets about a lack Read More ›

The philosopher Plato wrote in his work, Phaedrus, that successful theories should “carve nature at its joints.” Scientists have a special obligation to abide by this maxim, since the stated aim of science is to systematically describe Nature, as she really is. The worst kind of intellectual crime I can conceive of would be the imposition on the populace of a conceptual system which fails to carve Nature at its joints. When people are deceived into believing a false proposition, their error can be corrected by simply pointing out the truth; but when people are forced to adopt a totally wrong way of slicing and dicing reality, the very fabric of their thinking is warped, and intellectual progress is retarded. Read More ›

From Arizona State University, a classic in propaganda masquerading as research: In a first-of-its kind study, scientists from Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences have found that a majority of professors teaching biology in Arizona universities do not believe that helping students accept the theory of evolution is an instructional goal. In fact, a majority of study participants say their only goal is to help students understand evolution. researchers at work School of Life Sciences assistant professor Sara Brownell (left) and graduate student Elizabeth Barnes are studying the perceived conflict in the classroom between evolution and religion. According to the study’s authors, this finding was surprising. The exploratory research, published May 18 in the scientific journal CBE—Life Sciences Education, Read More ›

Nancy Pearcey, offers an article based on Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes, her most recent book. The public has responded swiftly and strongly against the Obama administration’s demand that public schools admit transgender students into the showers, locker rooms, and sports teams of their choice. But to be successful, the response must also be informed. Where did transgender ideology come from, and how can we respond more effectively? The answer may surprise you. If we dig deeply, we discover that the turning point, historically, was Darwin’s theory of evolution. It had a lasting impact in at least three ways. Matter Does Not Matter Let’s tease out its impact through the language of the Read More ›

Only religion prevents us from seeing the Darwinian truth about evolution. Or at least that’s what one would think reading ScienceDaily: Generally seen as antithetical to one another, evolution and religion can hardly fit in a scientific discourse simultaneously. However, biologist Dr Aldemaro Romero Jr., Baruch College, USA, devotes his latest research article, now published in the open access Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), to observing the influences a few major religions have had on evolutionists and their scientific thinking over the centuries. … “Since the advent of Modern Synthesis we have a pretty consistent set of evidence that evolution is not linear, that there is not such a thing as direction for evolutionary processes, and that nothing is predetermined Read More ›

Readers may recall that unusually thoughtful science writer John Horgan recently told “Skeptics” Scientific American to do something useful with their lives. (Bash Bigfoot less, pop science more.) The Skeptics, of course, protested that soft targets are fun. (The multiverse can be science even if unfalsifiable…) The exchange identified the issue clearly. The Skeptical science communicators are mainly looking for confirmation of their theories from science; Horgan wants them to report on actual science. In Nature (which owns Scientific American), Chris Woolston writes, Horgan wrote that for sceptics to really have an impact, they need to tackle the “dubious and even harmful claims promoted by major scientists and institutions”. For example, Horgan argues that sceptics should expose the harm that Read More ›

From Wesley J. Smith at First Things: Most people understand the word “death” to mean the end of biological life or, as Merriam-Webster defines it, “a permanent cessation of all vital functions.” But now an influential cadre of utilitarian bioethicists wants to redefine it to include a subjective and sociologically based meaning. Their purpose isn’t greater scientific accuracy. Rather, by making “death” malleable, they hope to open the door further to treating indisputably living human beings as if they were cadavers. Legally, human death is declared when medical testing discerns the irreversible cessation of one of two biological functions that must work for a human being to be considered an integrated functioning organism. The first is the cardio/pulmonary function, the Read More ›

In response to “Mendel holds back genetics teaching,” a post on the way in which Nature is moving to quietly distance itself from today’s Darwinism, Jonathan Wells writes to say, Radick is right to criticize the gene-centric view that dominates modern biology, but the problem was not Gregor Mendel, who merely described patterns of inheritance for some traits in peas and never encouraged anything like a “genes-for” approach. Even Wilhelm Johannsen, who coined the word “genes,” regarded genes as abstractions. The problem came from the Darwinian materialists’ determination to reduce heredity to material particles on chromosomes. The materialists (most prominently Thomas Hunt Morgan) were the source of what Radick calls “the doctrinaire Mendelism that came later.” Poor Mendel. Sure. The big Read More ›

From Gregory Radick at Nature: The problem is that the Mendelian ‘genes for’ approach is increasingly seen as out of step with twenty-first-century biology. If we are to realize the potential of the genomic age, critics say, we must find new concepts and language better matched to variablebiological reality. This is important in education, where the reliance on simple examples may even promote an outmoded determinism about the power of genes. … What of Mendel? Some might complain that it is a poor anniversary gift to jettison him from his place of honour in the genetics curriculum. Let me suggest that this grumbling, although understandable, is misguided. If we want to honour Mendel, then let us read him seriously, which Read More ›

From an interesting 2013 paper: on peafowl courtship: Conspicuous, multicomponent ornamentation in male animals can be favored by female mate choice but we know little about the cognitive processes females use to evaluate these traits. Sexual selection may favor attention mechanisms allowing the choosing females to selectively and efficiently acquire relevant information from complex male display traits and, in turn, may favor male display traits that effectively capture and hold female attention. Using a miniaturized telemetric gaze-tracker, we show that peahens (Pavo cristatus) selectively attend to specific components of peacock courtship displays and virtually ignore other, highly conspicuous components. Females gazed at the lower train but largely ignored the head, crest and upper train. When the lower train was obscured, Read More ›

Yes, we know. It’s complicated. Science writer John Horgan might have expected some pushback from his advice to Skeptics: Bash Bigfoot less, pop science more, and he got his wish (!) via Steven Novella at Neurologica blog: Horgan gives a very superficial analysis, in my opinion to the point of being wrong. He claims they [multiverse, string theory] are not falsifiable, therefore they are pseudoscientific, “Like astrology.” For those of you playing logical fallacy bingo, that is a false analogy. There are many problems with astrology that do not apply to string theory. Indeed. Astrology eventually became testable* and flunked. It’s not clear that the multiverse or the computer sim universe will ever become testable. The “non-falsifiable” criticism has been Read More ›

In my law practice I often represent charter school applicants appealing local districts’ denial of their charter applications to the Colorado State Board of Education.  Some years ago in one of these appeals a local district decided to support their case for denial by hiring an infamous advocacy firm masquerading as experts in education economics to produce a report demonstrating the terrible economic threat charter schools represent to school districts.  The firm produced the report and I proceeded to explode it by pointing out the tendentious assumptions upon which it was based. The district’s decision to use the firm backfired, because their obvious bad faith probably helped me win that appeal.  I was particularly pleased with one line from my Read More ›

From Dennis Horgan at Scientific American: Here’s an example involving two idols of Capital-S Skepticism: biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss. Krauss recently wrote a book, A Universe from Nothing. He claims that physics is answering the old question, Why is there something rather than nothing? Krauss’s book doesn’t come close to fulfilling the promise of its title, but Dawkins loved it. He writes in the book’s afterword: “If On the Origin of Species was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see A Universe From Nothing as the equivalent from cosmology.” Just to be clear: Dawkins is comparing Lawrence Krauss to Charles Darwin. Why would Dawkins say something so foolish? Because he hates religion so much Read More ›