Intelligent Design

From Colin Barras at New Scientist: The team discovered that male and female baboons each produce four vowel-like sounds. Females produce one that males don’t, and vice versa, so in total there are five distinct vowels. They correspond to the second syllable in “roses”, and the vowel sounds in “you”, “thought”, “trap” and “ah”. … “We believe that one of the major advantages of our study is that we worked on real vocalisations, which were spontaneously produced by baboons in a social context,” says Fagot. But Philip Lieberman at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, is not convinced. He thinks the researchers have unwittingly processed the baboon calls in a way that accentuates the fundamental frequency of the call and Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: This research challenges the classically accepted view that reduction of tooth size in hominins is linked with having a larger brain. The reasoning is that larger brains allowed hominins to start making stone tools and that the use of these tools reduced the need to have such large chewing teeth. But recent studies by other authors found that hominins had larger brains before chewing teeth became smaller, and they made and used stone tools when brains were still quite small, which challenges this relationship. The new study evaluates this issue by measuring and comparing the rates at which teeth and brains have evolved along the different branches of the human evolutionary tree. “The findings of the study indicate Read More ›

From John Mooallem at New York Times: Neanderthals Were People, Too “New research shows they shared many behaviors that we long believed to be uniquely human. Why did science get them so wrong?” Friends have noted that the piece is a refreshing change from the snark or (worse) odious virtue signaling that infests science writing today. Mooallem really does want to know why we might have got it wrong. The real surprise of these discoveries may not be the competence of Neanderthals but how obnoxiously low our expectations for them have been—the bias with which too many scientists approached that other Us. One archaeologist called these researchers “modern human supremacists.” The correct answer, which no one gives with complete honesty Read More ›

We are excited to report that we have received a steady stream of submissions to AM-Nat Biology over the last few weeks. If you haven’t submitted your abstract, please do so soon.
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Readers will recall Tom Wolfe’s The Kingdom of Speech, a defense of the fundamental difference between language as we know it and the squawks, moos, and gibbers we hear outside. Wolfe defended linguist Daniel Everett against the Colossus of MIT, Noam Chomsky. Now Everett himself offers some thoughts at Aeon: In 2005, I published a paper in the journal Current Anthropology, arguing that Pirahã – an Amazonian language unrelated to any living language – lacked several kinds of words and grammatical constructions that many researchers would have expected to find in all languages. I made it clear that this absence was not due to any inherent cognitive limitation on the part of its speakers, but due to cultural values, one Read More ›

This bears on the question of whether human beings can apprehend reality. Top naturalists are dedicated to the opposite view. Much politicking around freedom of the media depends on whether one believes that humans can apprehend reality and make choices based on information therefrom. From O’Leary for News at MercatorNet: It wasn’t so much fake news as *missed* news. … The internet changes a great deal but it does not change the fundamental nature of reality. One small Atlanta-based pollster sensed that the military wife or the WalMart manager might not wish to risk humiliation, even in the abstract, by giving an honest opinion. So he asked his respondents who they thought their neighbours would vote for. He called the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Although it is widely viewed as a vestigial organ with little known function, recent research suggests that the appendix may serve an important purpose. In particular, it may serve as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria. Several other mammal species also have an appendix, and studying how it evolved and functions in these species may shed light on this mysterious organ in humans. Heather F. Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, is currently studying the evolution of the appendix across mammals. Dr. Smith’s international research team gathered data on the presence or absence of the appendix and other gastrointestinal and environmental traits for 533 mammal species. They mapped the data onto a phylogeny Read More ›

Many sources feel that we readily believe fake news. Concern trolls in social sciences are often heard on this point, usually demanding government and corporate action. Having spent a life in news, I would say that the ability to detect fakery increases with familiarity with the medium, as any magazine rack will show. That’s because human are decision-makers. The humans analyzed are as much decision-makers as the analysts. Those who think that chickens are just like people, apes are entering the the Stone Age, and rocks have minds probably think that there are “scientific” formulas for getting around the reality of the independence of other people’s minds. From O’Leary for News (Denyse O’Leary) at MercatorNet: Fake news is hard to define. Read More ›

Traffic way down. Here: . . . unless people start reading them. Today virtually all the serious posts were animal- or science-related. Traffic is way down (about 60% of normal) which means people aren’t reading them. What do you want—clickbait? More. Of course, this could be a hack. In case not, let’s help Jerry. He brings us lots of traffic so it’s only fair. What clickbait could he offer? Readers, ideas? Is it just possible that lack of interest in defenses of classical Darwinism is related to growing interest in exciting new areas? Naw, that never happens in real life. See also: Darwinism: Replacement or extension? Quantum-like model of partially directed evolution? The thought seems information must already be present Read More ›

From science writer Robert Wright at New York Times: That said, one interesting feature of current discourse is a growing openness among some scientifically minded people to the possibility that our world has a purpose that was imparted by an intelligent being. I’m referring to “simulation” scenarios, which hold that our seemingly tangible world is actually a kind of projection emanating from some sort of mind-blowingly powerful computer; and the history of our universe, including evolution on this planet, is the unfolding of a computer algorithm whose author must be pretty bright. You may scoff, but in 2003 the philosopher Nick Bostrom of Oxford University published a paper laying out reasons to think that we are pretty likely to be Read More ›

From Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology: Abstract: (paywall)The background of this study is that models of the evolution of living systems are based mainly on the evolution of replicators and cannot explain many of the properties of biological systems such as the existence of the sexes, molecular exaptation and others. The purpose of this study is to build a complete model of the evolution of organisms based on a combination of quantum-like models and models based on partial directivity of evolution. We also used optimal control theory for evolution modeling. We found that partial directivity of evolution is necessary for the explanation of the properties of an evolving system such as the stability of evolutionary strategies, aging and death, Read More ›

Climate scientist Judith Curry is a TENURED professor.  But she has had enough.  She announced her resignation last week, citing the literal craziness of the climate science authoritarianism.  She writes: A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc. How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus Read More ›

Pot. Kettle. Rusty. From Michael Shermer at Scientific American: Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data. Creationists, for example, dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith. Anti-vaxxers distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one and only Read More ›

From astronomer Chris Impey at Nautilus: Interdependence and impermanence. The words have different meanings to a scientist and a Buddhist, but they provide a common ground for a discussion of the interactions and transformations that pervade the physical universe. To a Buddhist, impermanence means there is no permanent and fixed reality; everything is subject to alteration and change. The Buddha said that life is a series of different moments, joining to give the impression of continuous flow, like a river. The scientific view is similar, from a human as a persistent biological pattern even as the cells are continuously living and dying, to the processes in the universe that continuously exchange and transform matter and energy. Buddhist interdependence means that Read More ›

And birds still fly forwards too, no less. From Jesse Singal at New York Magazine: a paper published last month in Current Psychology by Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University and Jeffrey Brown and Amanda Torres of Texas A&M, the authors evaluated a bunch of psychology textbooks to see how rigorously they covered a bunch of controversial or frequently misrepresented subjects. The results weren’t great. In spring of 2012, Ferguson and his colleagues solicited and received 24 popular introductory textbooks, and then got to work evaluating them. Specifically, they evaluated those textbooks’ coverage of seven “controversial ideas in psychology” — ideas where there’s genuine mainstream disagreement among researchers — and also checked for the presence of five well-known scientific urban legends Read More ›