Wait. If atheist neurologist blogger Steven Novella is right, the science presenters in media must be speaking a different language from the rest of us. The impression that he says they don’t convey (“insight into the ultimate nature of reality”), they in fact do — by a variety of means. That’s okay, of course, until the whipped cream hits the fan.
Medicine
At Stat News: Science has got obesity all wrong
A science writer reflects on the way paradigms work. If he’s right, a popular paradigm it was dangerous to doubt will come under fire.
A new open access paper offers an approach to cancer that sees past Darwin
Researchers: Although neo-Darwinian (and less often Lamarckian) dynamics are regularly invoked to interpret cancer’s multifarious molecular profiles, they shine little light on how tumorigenesis unfolds and often fail to fully capture the frequency and breadth of resistance mechanisms.
Statistician Ioannidis on how COVID wrecked science
Readers may remember John Ioannidis. His point here is that getting more people involved with science doesn’t always work: “A lack of sharing and openness allowed a top medical journal to publish an article in which 671 hospitals allegedly contributed data that did not exist, and no one noticed this outright fabrication before publication.”
Medical science: “Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?”
Michael Cook: The gold standard for fraud is a Japanese researcher in anaesthetics, Yoshitaka Fujii, of Toho University. By the time he came unstuck about 10 years ago, he had published around 200 articles – and 183 of them have been retracted because he had falsified the data. “If someone can publish 183 fabricated trials,” said Roberts, “the problem is not with him, the problem is with the system.”
At Mind Matters News: Epilepsy: If you follow the science, materialism is dead
Egnor: on the issue of intellectual seizures, the fact that there has not been a single seizure in recorded medical history out of 250 million seizures, a quarter of a billion seizures, that has evoked abstract intellectual content, Maybe the next one will, but I’m not going to bet on it…
A panel on CV19 with a co-inventor of mRNA technology
See here: Okay, embed seems to work. If not please click the link. This is a FYI news item, no discussion. END
Dr Been and Dr Marik on Covid-19 after 15 months
Here: This is a news notice, not an invitation to debate, so no comments. END
When Woke invades science…
Sadly, cancer isn’t racist. Nor is Alzheimer syndrome. They can’t be fought by rallies or civil disobedience, which we could all just do. Not just anyone who cares can be a science researcher. A war on math, for example, as “white supremacy” will simply prevent progress.
At Mind Matters News: More on the COVID-19 lab leak theory
It’s off topic for ID as such. But it is important for helping people work through a general principle that concerns all issues that pertain to science: “Trust the science” is not a good approach when the science is so clearly not bound by any standards of grappling with the facts. (Darwinism anyone?)
Big Science: Questioning the lab leak theory of COVID-19 is “divisive”
Oh sure. Reality check: Millions of people have died in this debacle. That’s nothing new for the Chinese Communist Party. But it’s a bit of a kick in the head for the rest of us. If distinguishing between truth and lies is “divisive,” so be it. The Nature article is a shameful display.
“Follow the science” is becoming a jibe in the age of COVID panic
At ACSH: Rather shamelessly, the Washington Post has also offered tips to stop yourself from spreading “misinformation.” And the Guardian has even recommended “10 ideas to rebuild our broken internet.” Let’s add an eleventh: take your own advice and stop running sloppy stories because they attract eyeballs.
Epigenetics: What dad does comes out in offspring, researchers report
The researchers report that they are homing in on HOW non-DNA information travels in sperm.
Michael Egnor: What would happen to your soul if your head were transplanted?
Michael Egnor: As with so many metaphysical questions about the mind-body relationship, we need first to understand the meaning of the words we use.
US Prez accuses Texas and Mississippi governors of “Neanderthal thinking”
How about New York governor Cuomo packing nursing homes with COVID patients, which resulted in thousands of deaths? Now that we have channelled Neanderthal man anyway, does he have an opinion on that?