Culture

Last year, archaeologists discovered sewing needles in Siberia that were 20,000 years old. A recent paper draws together what we know of our ancestors’ clothing habits: “Many of the needles we discovered were not simply used to manufacture clothes but for embroidery and ornaments. There was an aesthetic role,” says Francesco d’Errico, an anthropologist at the University of Bordeaux in France and a co-author of the study. As for sewing and clothing in general: We do not know which Homo species—neanderthalensis or sapiens—first pioneered the practice of wearing furs. But by 76,000 years ago, anthropologists believe that Homo sapiens were creating bone awls, a precursor to the needle, in South Africa. In the millennia to follow, artifacts suggest most prehistoric Read More ›

The CRISPR babies scientist has been fired. (If not worse.) From the news: “CRISPR-baby scientist fired by university” Investigation by Chinese authorities finds He Jiankui broke national regulations in his controversial work on gene-edited babies.” “He provoked international outcry last November when he revealed that he had used the gene-editing technique CRISPR– Cas9 to modify human embryos in an effort to make them resistant to HIV; the embryos were then implanted into a woman and produced twin girls, Nana and Lulu, in November. According to the investigation’s findings, He is fully to blame for the gene-editing project, and flouted regulations. (David Cyranoski, Nature) The girls’ father was HIV-positive. The main reason some of us forebore to dance on the guy’s Read More ›

Recently, we covered Evolution News and Science Today editor David Klinghoffer’s response to a sneer by Kevin Williamson against ID at National Review (where Klinghoffer used to work, incidentally). Klinghoffer cited a number of respectable thinkers who have held Darwinism in little esteem—which led to our publishing a separate and different long list of such thinkers here at Uncommon Descent. Meanwhile, Williamson replied to Klinghoffer (“Irreducible Perplexity”), who fired back: Here’s what is missing: serious public debate. Telling scientists to “slug it out” in professional journals and not try to persuade others is like asking a free-market advocate to persuade his Marxist colleagues before he dares offer his case to the public. What makes Kevin think entrenched Darwinists are willing Read More ›

Jonathan McLatchie In this webinar, biologist Dr. Matti Leisola talks about his journey as a scientist from Darwin to design. See also: Jonathan McLatchie And Gunter Bechly On Conflicting Evidence Re Common Ancestry Matti Leisola: Another gifted scientist poised over the memory hole? and Matti Leisola On Evolution And The Recent Nobel Chemistry Prize Follow UD News at Twitter! Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

He argues that we may need new institutions, such as insurance against job obsolescence: I believe that humans are creative enough to come with the new institutions necessary to adapt to a changing world. What I fear is that we will not be allowed to do so. We do not live in an ideal free market, where we can choose whether or not to belong to any particular institution. Instead, we live in a mixed society where we are free to choose whether to belong to some institutions but other institutions are either mandated or forbidden. We are not always free to experiment with new institutions to identify the best ways to organize society. If humans are free to experiment Read More ›

A writer encountered this all-too-common type of behavior recently and was, well, surprised. To see why it feels normal to many of us, it is helpful to understand a bit about Darwinism as a social phenomenon. Faithful readers of various vintages will, of course, remember University of Toronto evolutionary biologist Larry Moran, best known publicly through his blog Sandwalk. At his blog Southern Prose, writer John Leonard happened to come across him the other day trashing well-known chemist James Tour. That was back in 2014 but the internet is forever. Tour signed the Discovery Institute statement, “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” (2001), calling for more openness on discussion of evolution: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random Read More ›

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 prefer to read and share “quality information”, factors such as “information overload and limited attention” contributed to “a degradation of the market’s discriminative power”. In other words, Qiu and colleagues concluded, quality material and the rate at which it spreads across the internet “reveals a weak correlation”. Low quality material – fake news, complete rubbish – is just as likely to go viral as the Read More ›

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 Science (link is external),indicating that the hands and animals depicted on the walls of three caves date back 65,000 years. This would mean that they were painted 25,000 years before the arrival of the first Homo sapiens in the Iberian peninsula. The estimated ages are based on uranium-thorium dating of the calcite layer that coats the frescoes. Could these be the work of Neanderthals? A Read More ›

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 why address what Douglas Axe is saying when so many talking points against design in nature are tailored to what someone/anyone else is saying? We wish Axe all the luck. I think we’re addressing the same question, Hans. You’re absolutely right to focus on my treatment of the probability of organisms evolving by chance. Veering Off Course On the other hand, if you’re focusing on Read More ›

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 of years ago… Another scientist from a university in the southern state of Tamil Nadu told conference attendees that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were both wrong and that gravitational waves should be renamed “Narendra Modi Waves”. Dr KJ Krishnan reportedly said Newton failed to “understand gravitational repulsive forces” and Einstein’s theories were “misleading”.Soutik Biswas and others, “India scientists dismiss Einstein theories” at BBC The Read More ›