And won’t likely help his reputation: My Sex Junk is a message to the world about sexuality. We can probably miss the one where ice cream cones discover sex. Pop science is no match for identity politics, as we might have guessed. Someone asks, does Nye has a future as the ”Pee Wee Herman of popular science”? Maybe that’s what’s left now. See also: March for Science, Bill Nye, and constitutional government Follow UD News at Twitter!
From Robert Tracinski at the Federalist: I am a Carl Sagan fan from way back. His 1980 TV miniseries “Cosmos” hit me at just the right age and inflamed a lifelong love of science. But we’ve had nearly 40 years to assess the long-term effects and see how Sagan unwittingly contributed to a trend that muddled public understanding of science. This weekend’s so-called “March for Science” is a perfect example of what went wrong. Fact morphed into narrative: If you don’t really need science so much as the narrative, then what you get is our own era’s official replacement for Sagan: Neil deGrasse Tyson. As the decades pass, Sagan’s imitators become less thoughtful and more propagandistic, less interested in conveying Read More ›
From Mic, via AP: You don’t need a scientific calculator to know that the March for Science was a massive success. Stretching across the United States — as well as globally from the North Pole to New Zealand — the March for Science saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets on Earth Day in many cities, adding up to totals much higher nationwide. Here are a few photos that begin to capture just how huge crowds nationwide became throughout the Earth Day celebration.More. Actually, looking at the photos, as UD commenter Chris Haynes notes, the crowds are just not that impressive. A number of foreseeable reasons come to mind, which makes one wonder about the impulse to hold Read More ›
Surely no one bet against that. From Ryan Cross at Science: More widespread support comes from the Clergy Letter Project in Olympia, a group of some 14,400 ordained clergy members that supports teaching evolution and climate change. Founder and executive director Michael Zimmerman says a survey of the group’s members showed strong support for the march. Negative responses mostly came from people who said they believed the event wouldn’t change anything, and might even further polarize science, Zimmerman says. “The new slightly more political focus of the march might have turned some members off,” he says. (In contrast, he notes, responses in favor of supporting the People’s Climate March were unanimous.) The Clergy Letter Project is best known for supporting Read More ›
From Evolution News & Views: Dr. Bechly specializes in the fossil history and systematics of insects, particularly dragonflies. From 1999 until the end of 2016, he served as the curator for amber and fossil insects in the Department of Paleontology at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart. … Chosen to organize the largest museum exhibit in Germany celebrating the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth in 2009, Bechly ended up having gnawing doubts about Darwin after he read books by intelligent design proponents Michael Behe and William Dembski. Initially keeping his scientific heresy a secret, he began years of private discussions with intelligent design proponents including CSC Director Stephen Meyer. … Dr. Bechly was one of the presenters at Read More ›
The Uncommon Descent News AI team came across this golden oldie, the Purpose of Purpose talk on YouTube, datelined Omaha, Nebraska (2009). While our Dawkinsbot was very lifelike even back then, the rant, let’s face it, is pretty dated. Which just shows how far we have come. To recap, concerns have been raised recently that scientists are bored with and annoyed by the bot, which is bad for our strategy to discredit Darwinism. They have to actually be paying attention first! Plus, not too long ago, the bot started melting down over nonsense retailed in the Twitterverse and we had to do an emergency rework of the politics module. But on the whole, this old footage does show that we are Read More ›
From Harvard sociologist Andrew Jowett at the Atlantic: The movement’s rhetoric suggests that if governments simply fund and heed scientific research, the world will march steadily toward peace and prosperity. Applying science to politics will create “an unbroken chain of inquiry, knowledge, and public benefit for all.” This is, dare I say, an unscientific conception of human action. A huge body of social-scientific literature—or just a good, hard look at the political scene—shows that conflict, uncertainty, and collective self-interest would remain central features of democratic politics even if all of the disputants took scientific findings as their starting point for policy recommendations. In a 2004 essay, Daniel Sarewitz, a professor at Arizona State University, challenged the longstanding expectation that bringing Read More ›
Money walks. At the Washington Times: Take, for example, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The current NIH budget is $32.3 billion, all of it from taxpayers. The Trump administration proposes to reduce that amount, though the decision is up to Congress. A scientist quoted in a recent article in The Atlantic says the proposed reduction would “bring American biomedical science to a halt.” But the NIH budget has been reduced several times in the past eight years without that happening. The 2017 March for Science is not about protecting experimental science, which is in no danger — at least, no danger from the U.S. government. It’s about pressuring lawmakers to vote for more money. But throwing more money Read More ›
From Tracy Staedler at LiveScience: Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson urges Americans to become more scientifically literate in a short video he posted yesterday (April 19) on his Facebook page. In the video he titled “Science in America,” Tyson comments on 21st-century attitudes toward science, explaining the importance of the scientific method and making the case that science denial could erode democracy. “Dear Facebook Universe,” he wrote. “I offer this four-minute video on ‘Science in America’ containing what may be the most important words I have ever spoken. As always, but especially these days, keep looking up.” Poseur. Democracy gets dismantled mainly when not believing the government of the day becomes a crime. In about 30 seconds, Tyson explains how Read More ›
Baylor computer science prof Robert Marks comments on Texas science standards at Dallas Morning News: There’s a battle over evolution education in Texas right now. The latest round is coming up soon in Austin, with the State Board of Education hearing testimony on both sides of the controversy. There is a tug-of-war between those who want to teach only their corner on truth and those who would prefer to include critical analysis and discuss developments that challenge neo-Darwinian dogma. This is unfortunate, because at least in areas of my specialization, using computers and mathematics to model evolution, the problems are fascinating and would be both fun and instructive to teach. Gregory Chaitin, arguably the greatest and most creative mathematician of Read More ›
From Steve Meyer, author of Darwin’s Doubt, at the Stream: Bill Nye may not be a scientist. But he used to play one on TV. Now he is an honorary co-chair and speaker for the “March for Science” in Washington D.C. and elsewhere on April 22. The choice of Nye as one of the faces of the March is revealing. March organizers have paid lip service to critical thinking and “diverse perspectives” in science. However, Nye is a good example of someone who promotes science as a close-minded ideology, not an open search for truth. He attacks those who disagree with him on climate change or evolution as science “deniers.” He wouldn’t even rule out criminal prosecution as a tool. Read More ›
From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: … In short, violent outbreaks on campus are not the outcome of kids acting out! Quite the contrary, they are the outcome of kids acting out the values that they have been absorbing over the past fifty years from increasingly illiberal teachers. … Take note that the new approach to intellectual freedom does not permit anyone to just mind their own business. Even silence can be violence… …One of two things will happen if universities continue to make themselves enemies of intellectual freedom and free speech. Either our intellectual life will rot or it will find a home other than the university. In the age of the internet, many are now exploring Read More ›
Copy Michael Denton.* From the editors of Nature, a look at the work of D’Arcy Thompson a century ago: The 100-year-old challenge to Darwin that is still making waves in research Biological response to physical forces remains a live topic for research. In a research paper, for example, researchers report how physical stresses generated at defects in the structures of epithelial cell layers cause excess cells to be extruded. In a separate online publication (K. Kawaguchi et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature22321; 2017), other scientists show that topological defects have a role in cell dynamics, as a result of the balance of forces. In high-density cultures of neural progenitor cells, the direction in which cells travel around defects affects whether cells become Read More ›
From William Thomas at Physics Today: A major study on scientific integrity in the US advocates stricter policies for scientific authorship attribution, increased openness in scientific work, the reporting of negative findings, and establishment of an independent, nonprofit Research Integrity Advisory Board. “Fostering Integrity in Research,” released 11 April by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, is an update to their landmark 1992 study, “Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process.” In the intervening 25 years, the scientific research enterprise has become larger, more globalized, and increasingly driven by information technology, which has led to major changes in how the integrity of research can be eroded or protected. More. Unfortunately, I (O’Leary for News) have been Read More ›
Jonathan Wells’ new book, Zombie Science takes up the topics of his earlier book, Icons of Evolution (2000). Nothing has changed. Largely the same old dust-covered discredited icons. What is one to make of claims that Darwinism is a robust vision of evolution if stuff that was questionable back then is plopped into edition after edition of biology textbooks today? The conventional term for that sort of thing is cultural decline. Live systems are self-correcting. From Discovery Institute: Watch Jonathan Wells live online as he presents Zombie Science on Tues., April 18th If the icons of evolution were just innocent textbook errors, why do so many of them still persist? Find out when you tune into the live stream of Read More ›