If the whole colony is acting as a single organism to eat offspring and live, what becomes of the individual selfish gene? Oh, never mind. The heresy consists in wondering.
Intellectual freedom
Do universities still need intellectual freedom? Why?
At one time, a university education was a prized opportunity to be part of an intellectual elite. Academic freedom was a club rule because it served well in the days when Einstein and Bohr, to name just two, provided us with a much better understanding of physics by overturning all that we thought we knew in certain areas. But maybe things have changed.
If ID is dead, why are some obsessed with shutting it down?
Ah yes. Mutterings about the need for censorship. When we don’t have a reasonable response to a troubling topic, first, we self-censor. Then we censor anyone who raises it. Sure, guys. That’ll work. The questions are still there but only for those capable of addressing them.
At Skeptical Inquirer: Thinking outside the box is called the “Nobel Disease”
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor doesn’t agree. In reality, he says, unorthodoxy helped the unorthodox scientists win the Prize.
At STAT: Ioannidis’ differing COVID-19 views shouldn’t be demonized
Demonizing differing views is a characteristic of superstition, not science. It says a lot about “science” today that its practitioners choose such methods.
Some timely thoughts on “gullibility”
Our betters need to believe that we are gullible. Not so, says Hugo Mercier, whose recent book, Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe (2020), takes a different position from that of the campus fatheads.
Wikipedia erases list of climate skeptics
Even if everything is all pristine and honest with climate science today, the settled habit of simply censoring opposing views inevitably corrupts. Over time it corrupts absolutely. Darwinism is paying the price even now for that kind of thing, if we go by the defensive Darwinblather around the current, sublime embarrassment of de novo genes.
Spoof alert!: Jerry Coyne is interviewed at Dissociated News
Coyne has been a frequent topic on our page in recent months and a reader dug this out from 2013 and sent it in. Michael Egnor imagines an interview with Jerry Coyne on deplatforming opponents: They’re still talking about it. After I told them not to.
Science media have strange standards for assessing corruption…
Berezow goes on to add something very significant: “The scientific publishing industry is thoroughly corrupt, and AAAS and Science are now also a part of the problem. If and when all government-funded research is mandated to be released free of charge upon publication, journals like Science may go out of business. Good riddance.”
At MercatorNet: For once, a woke “ethicist” gets shut down by people with disabilities
Message to activists for persons with disabilities: Please fight for Peter Singer’s freedom of speech to display his agenda to the world while there is still a slight chance you can legally fight it. Leave the defense of censorship to those well-heeled woke who would also deprive you of your lives. So many of them will be only too happy to oblige in both cases.
Sokal hoaxer Peter Boghossian makes some Utah State students feel that they are not “safe”
Apparently, he is guilty of “conceptual fascism” as well. My, my. Kiddos, the only people who should not “feel safe” around a Sokal hoaxer are people who are full of it. If you knew your stuff and were doing anything useful, you’d have nothing to fear. You’d even find it fun.
At Times Higher: Is Defending Expertise Worthwhile These Days?
Taking issue: Persecution stories are only a small part of the picture. The insistence that anyone be allowed to have whatever they are doing, saying, or thinking regarded as science in order to do justice to wronged groups doesn’t in fact arise from scientists who are on the outs with their colleagues about an ingroup issue like Vit C injections or HPV vaccines. It arises from a social justice demand that the professional and academic spoils of science be shared among a host of new claimants, making a variety of claims.
Test: If naturalists are right, totalitarian states should be just as creative as free ones
A Chinese university is dumping intellectual freedom from their charters yet China hopes to be the world’s top AI power. Is there a contradiction here?
At Nature: Doubt and diversity are okay in science
This retired historian of science thinks it might even be okay to question the “biological ‘species’ concept”.
Roger Scruton, a non-Darwinian intellectual, was honored recently in Czech Republic
Where he did much to keep intellectual freedom alive during the communist years