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New Scientist asks Island of wild children: Would they learn to be human? … The sound comes again across the tops of the trees. Hooting, and then distant replies. High-pitched and repetitive, the sounds are not words. But they mean something anyway: the hunters are coming home. They emerge one by one from the foliage, stepping out cautiously into a wide and sandy bay. There are five of them, all males. The basic concept was done fifty years ago by William Golding in Lord of the Flies (1954). The difference is, in these times, the line between fact and fiction is increasingly blurry. What Golding meant as a parable of universal (and contemporary) human nature told as fiction, dollars to Read More ›

From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong blog: Today I happened to come across a really wonderful discussion there though, and wanted to draw attention to it, even though it’s from a year ago. It’s entitled A View from an Ex-String Theorist and consists of a long piece by someone who has recently left string theory, as well as some answers to questions asked by others. If you want to understand what string theory looks like these days to good theorists who are working on it, read what “No_More_Strings” has to say. The suggestion that “string theorists” should stop calling what they do “string theory” is an excellent one. … If you didn’t have to start every grant application Read More ›

At Retraction Watch: A new study suggests that much of what we think about misconduct — including the idea that it is linked to the unrelenting pressure on scientists to publish high-profile papers — is incorrect. Some factors were associated with a higher rate of misconduct, of course — a lack of research integrity policy, and cash rewards for individual publication performance, for instance. Scientists just starting their careers, and those in environments where “mutual criticism is hampered,” were also more likely to commit misconduct. More. That makes sense. To argue the opposite is like saying that the need to make a profit causes car dealers to dump rolling coffins on their customers. Given the career-ending risks, there must be Read More ›

Further to “Dawkins is destroying his reputation?” (He is now generally accepted as a figure of fun, when not just bloody offensive. A threat only to his allies.) Unless, of course, you bring your charge card. No, really. Lawyer and writer John Gilmore says of Dawkins’ visit to Rochester, Minnesota: The program began with an off-putting series of short videos, essentially haranguing the audience to become a member of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, with any number of membership levels available depending upon how much one wanted to pay in support of the cause. The similarity to televangelist pitches was so palpable that I couldn’t shake it off for the balance of the evening. Of course, other analogies to religion and Read More ›

His repu—WHAAAA??? He is now generally accepted as a figure of fun, when not just bloody offensive. A threat only to his allies. Wee hours coffee: From The Guardian: Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation? These days, Dawkins describes himself as “a communicator”. But depending on your point of view, he is also a hero, a heathen, or a liability. Many of his recent statements – on subjects ranging from the lack of Nobel prize-winning Muslim scientists to the “immorality” of failing to abort a foetus with Down’s syndrome – have sparked outraged responses (some of which Dawkins read aloud on a recent YouTube video, which perhaps won him back a few friends). For some, his controversial positions have started to Read More ›

O’Leary for News’ new media blog Russia’s amazing troll farm Welcome to the Russian troll house. Now flee! Will there still be science in 2020? Is truth mechanical? Or does it point to a larger reality? The internet is like the movies except that it talks back The question isn’t, as science fiction faddists ask, can a robot do your job? How much of the Internet is teen fiction? And how damaging is that? Would teens be helped by courses in Internet studies? The Internet can create holograms but not people New media do not help reduce social inequality. They may even increase it. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Prager University, here. From transcript of audio: Now, if all you are is a brain, an exhaustively physical system of neurons and synapses, then there’s no “you” that’s gonna be making a “choice” at all. Your thought processes are basically just a complex series of colliding electron-dominos crashing into one another. It’s just physical cause and effect, right — something that can be exhaustively understood in terms of physics and chemistry? There’s no “you” that’s an agent that’s deliberating, or choosing, or exercising free will. And that’s why, if you are just a brain, you cannot have free will. You would just be a physical machine — a very complex but programmed computer. But, if you’re something more than Read More ›

… can afford so many administrators and pump up grades? And the problem of burgeoning bureaucracy helps explain some worrying trends, foremost being a perceptible decline in academic standards over time (it’s evident in grade inflation; there are three times as many Oxford Firsts now as there were 30 years ago) and — a lesser problem — the way private donors to the university are losing the run of themselves. You don’t have to dig deep to find academics enraged at how administration flourishes while faculties are cash-strapped. That also explains why students with no sympathy for academic or intellectual freedom just want to be educrats, not indebted baristas. That’s where the action is today in academic life. Prediction: It’ll Read More ›

Irreducible complexity From Yahoo News: The new research — which involves two studies, one led by Charles Carter and one led by Richard Wolfenden, both of the University of North Carolina — suggests a way for RNA to control the production of proteins by working with simple amino acids that does not require the more complex enzymes that exist today. This link would bridge this gap in knowledge between the primordial chemical soup and the complex molecules needed to build life. Current theories say life on Earth started in an “RNA world,” in which the RNA molecule guided the formation of life, only later taking a backseat to DNA, which could more efficiently achieve the same end result. Like DNA, Read More ›

Here: So it’s not just that students refuse to countenance uncomfortable ideas -they refuse to engage them, period. Engagement is considered unnecessary, as the immediate, emotional reactions of students contain all the analysis and judgment that sensitive issues demand. Yes. We know. Maybe it is time we had this conversation. They have no experience with, interest in, or tendency to support intellectual freedom. Greg Lukianoff of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has pointed out that generally, students today do not support students who question the establishment. They want to be educrats, not baristas. And that’s all they want. Prof, you raised them. You own them. You suck it up. We have suffered enough. And we have definitely had Read More ›

Closing our religion coverage for the week, as so often, with the new atheists, we note an op-ed in the New York Times asking for a theology of atheism. (It must be new atheism because the old-fashioned atheism didn’t ask for a theology, by definition.) Here: I’d come for Sunday Assembly, a godless alternative to church founded in London in 2013. A cheerful woman with a name tag stood and promised a crowd of about 40 people “all the fun parts of church but without any religion, and with fun pop songs.” The band led us in secular “hymns” like “Walking on Sunshine” and “Lean on Me.” The day’s guest preacher, a Ph.D. candidate from Duke, described his research on Read More ›

From Nature: If the British public likes chemistry — at least more than the chemists believed — then it is positively glowing about science in general. Survey respondents described it with words such as ‘welcoming’, ‘sociable’ and ‘fun’. And a separate poll by Ipsos MORI this year showed that scientists are among the most trusted professionals in Britain; some nine in ten people said that they trust scientists to follow all of the research rules and regulations relevant to them. “Nine in ten people trust scientists to follow the rules. How many scientists would say the same?” How many scientists would say the same? Not many, probably, of the attendees at this week’s 4th World Conference on Research Integrity in Read More ›

Here. Finally, creationism has a solid hold in African American churches. There’s important outreach to be done on that front, and it’ll have to be accompanied by an acknowledgment of racism in science, both historically and in its current practice. While science is not itself racist, and neither is evolution, both have been tainted by and abused for the benefit of racism, and the African American community has cause for its ambivalence. Those of us who love evolution, love science, and want to share that love with our brothers and sisters of all races and religions need to find better ways to bridge these gaps. Well, just admitting it would be a welcome change. They could also stop promoting Darwinism, Read More ›

Between space exploration and lunacy, presumably: A few months ago in the journal Nature, two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, published a controversial piece called “Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics.” They criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today’s most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are “sufficiently elegant and explanatory.” Despite working at the cutting edge of knowledge, such scientists are, for Professors Ellis and Silk, “breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical.” More. If it is not empirical (evidence-based), why should the taxpayer fund it? Why should anyone care what they think? As I have said Read More ›

From a book excerpt at Salon, a mag you’d read if you believe you are smart despite evidence: Over the next two decades Darwin revised the “Origin of Species” five times. Even in his final revision, he did not take the theory to its logical end; but he had already privately concluded that his principles of natural selection applied to the human race as well. “As soon as I had become . . . convinced that species were mutable productions,” he wrote in his later “Autobiography,” “I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law.” In 1871 he finally published “The Descent of Man,” an extension of his evolutionary principles to the human race. The “Descent” brought Read More ›