Category: Media
Why do science journalists promote “fake physics” to the public?
| May 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Multiverse |
Asks Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong: University press offices and grant agencies put out irresponsible hype about the work of one their faculty or grantees. In this case, it’s Taming the multiverse: Stephen Hawking’s final theory about the big bang from Cambridge, and Stephen Hawking’s last paper, co-authored with ERC grantee Thomas […]
What a grand convergence of social media means to what we can know about design in nature
| April 5, 2018 | Posted by News under Media, Science |
From Mark Steyn: Google/YouTube and Facebook do not, of course, make laws, but their algorithms have more real-world impact than most legislation – and, having started out as more or less even-handed free-for-alls, they somehow thought it was a great idea to give the impression that they’re increasingly happy to assist the likes of Angela […]
At least the Soviets knew enough not to believe Pravda
| March 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Books of interest, Intelligent Design, Media, Off Topic |
Here’s my (O’Leary for News) review of James O’Keefe’s American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News (off-topic, unless you intend to rely on them in any way for communications): — Has North American journalism gone undercover? If traditional media were doing their job, few people would have heard of James […]
Breaking: Prominent science journal offers rational assessment of an unhinged climate claim
| February 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Climate change, Culture, Global Warming, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
Specifically, the claim that global warming promotes violence. From the editors of Nature: Such retrospective analyses raise two questions related to cause and effect: did climate change alter the weather? And did the change in the weather provoke the conflict? Only a solid yes to both can justify bold statements that global warming promotes violence […]
Google has the solution to Wikipedia! Only one tweak is now needed.
| February 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Naturalism |
From Katyanna Quach at UK Register: A team within Google Brain – the web giant’s crack machine-learning research lab – has taught software to generate Wikipedia-style articles by summarizing information on web pages… to varying degrees of success. Glitches remain: We are still a very long way off from effective text summarization or generation. And […]
Salon “depublishes” article that attacks the Bible
| February 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Religion |
Eh? We’re as surprised as Heman Mehta at Friendly Atheist: She talked about how having multiple authors (because “God” didn’t write it) led to “two different creation myths, three sets of Ten Commandments, and four contradictory versions of the Easter story.” She explained the possible forgeries, the mixing of literary genres, the possible mistranslations, and […]
From American Council for Science and Health: Journalists’ war on science
| February 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
From Alex Berezow at ACSH, who treats the journalism war as one of three fronts: Of the three, this one may be the most insidious, since the war is conducted in high-profile media outlets by practitioners who don’t understand science or hide behind a false pretense of “transparency” and “balance.” Indeed, the journalistic war on science […]
Further to Wikipedia as “censor”: Wikipedia is merely responding to the implicit wishes of the people it misrepresents
| February 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Naturalism |
Because those people agree to use it at all. Referencing Tyler O’Neil’s article above, At ENST, David Klinghoffer writes, All the same, Klinghoffer did not say Wikipedia was worthless. “You can rely on Wikipedia for things that nobody cares about. If you want to know the population of Peoria, you can absolutely trust Wikipedia, but […]
Is Wikipedia actually a “censor”? Maybe something more ominous… Updated!
| February 13, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Naturalism |
From Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media: Each February 12, the scientific community celebrates the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday as both Darwin Day and Academic Freedom Day. The Discovery Institute also celebrates by naming a “Censor of the Year,” and on Monday they announced that “award” goes to none other than “the free encyclopedia,” Wikipedia. […]
Genetic novelty conference: “Errors cannot explain genetic novelty and complexity.”
| February 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Genetics, Genomics, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
From Guenther Witzany, Telos-Philosophische Praxis, Salzburg-Austria, Corrado Spadafora, CNR National Research Council of Italy, and Luis Villarreal, University of California here: Evolution – Genetic Novelty/Genomic Variations by RNA Networks and Viruses, 4 – 8 July 2018 Salzburg – Austria For more than half a century it has been accepted that new genetic information is mostly derived from […]
New Scientist also embraces the love drug
| February 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Medicine, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
Further to “New Scientist embraces politics,” we also learn, from Alice Klein at New Scientist, The love drug that could draw people away from any addiction: The “cuddle chemical” oxytocin boosts social bonds. Soon a version of it will be tested in pill form to see if it can reset the brain wiring that gets […]
New Scientist embraces politics
| February 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
From the editors at New Scientist: So yet again we find ourselves criticising Trump, even though we know that some readers are tired of it. Some are his supporters; others simply do not wish to see politics in a science magazine. Hint: If you know your readers are tired of something, stop doing it. The […]
New Scientist adopts the prophet’s mantle: End of days prophesied
| January 29, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Naturalism, Science |
Laura Spinney asks: End of days: Is Western civilisation on the brink of collapse?: History tells us all cultures have their sell-by date. Do political strife, crippling inequality and climate change mean the West’s time is now up Scientists, historians and politicians alike have begun to warn that Western culture is reaching a critical juncture. […]
How litigation undermines the ability of science media to provide honest results
| January 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
From skeptical science journalist Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health: Consider Mark Jacobson, the climate scientist who is suing a prestigious journal for $10 million because it hurt his feelings. There is good reason to believe that the lawsuit will be dismissed, but not before lawyers have collected a nice fee for […]
Is Technology a new religion? (And if so, what is happening at Temple Google?)
AFP tells us regarding the current Consumer Electronics Show (CES): >>Tech is the new religion, offering hope of salvation in a troubled world as industry leaders converge in Las Vegas this week. Technology will not just help us communicate better and give us bolder and brighter screens. It is promising to end urban congestion, treat […]
Uncommon Descent ranked well within the top 1% of web sites
| January 10, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under Food for thought, Free Speech, General interest, Media, Media Manipulation, Agit-Prop &/or Lawfare, Of General Interest, UD's Sci-Tech watch |
A few days ago, frequent commenter Dionisio noted: >>http://www.ranking.com/ Web Rank Biblegateway.com 168 MIT.edu 7,280 HARVARD.edu 7,246 Nature.com 7,449 Desiringgod.org 10,105 Answersingenesis.org 11,865 Gty.org 15,018 Icr.org 19,037 Religionnews.com 22,188 Rzim.org 35,858 Samaritanspurse.org 40,274 Truthforlife.org 49,862 Royalsociety.org 53,686 Evolutionnews.org 58,755 Jamesmacdonald.com 60,164 Reasons.org 65,259 Uncommondescent.com 80,763 Pandasthumb.org 106,377 Kodugamelab.com 668,032>> I took a look, especially at […]
The New York Times’ boffo article on UFO sightings: Skeptical thoughts from New York Magazine
| January 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Media |
From Jeff Wise at New York Magazine: The main article is decidedly short on specifics. There’s a brief reference to “footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves.” A more detailed account is provided in an accompanying […]
Millennial classic edition: Science writer Michael Shermer makes Scientific American’s Top Ten stories list
| December 29, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
Well, Shermer does write for them. Here’s the list, from Andrea Gawrylewski at Scientific American: If you spent any part of 2017 trying to argue someone out of their deepest-held beliefs, this one’s for you. Our own Michael Shermer offers how to convince people who aren’t swayed by cold hard facts. More. Yes, we remember that […]
American Council for Science and Health’s 10 biggest junk stories for 2017 include…
| December 28, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
From Alex Berezow at ACSH: #3. Stephen Hawking continues to be wrong about almost everything. Stephen Hawking apparently has decided to spend the remainder of his career as a doomsday prophet. Artificial intelligence. Climate change. Asteroids. Epidemics. Overpopulation. Electricity consumption. In Dr. Hawking’s opinion, any one of these could wipe humanity off the face of […]
Most of the pop science media are poised on the edge of the recycle bin…
| December 26, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Naturalism, Science |
In an earlier story today, the woes of the pop science mag industry were mentioned. To expand a little further, Steven T. Corneliussen tells us at Physics Today: The Financial Times highlighted one dimension of science journalism’s ceaseless churn by reporting in April that RELX, formerly Reed Elsevier, had sold the magazine New Scientist to […]
