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Scolds science writer John Farrell at Aeon: The Vatican still refuses to endorse evolutionary theory- – setting a billion believers at odds with modern science He; right, you know. We Catholics haven’t done near enough for the Other Billion — who belive in Darwin and in every a-crock-alypse going, especially the ones that prevent poor countries from getting where we are.  (Ifyou are even legally reading this, you are better off than most.) More from Farrell: Many in the Roman Catholic hierarchy agreed, but for different reasons. Teilhard incurred the particular displeasure of Rome because he suggested that the Bible’s account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and their Fall from grace as the ultimate origin and Read More ›

Hey, that idea was actually invented a long time ago, but don’t let that deter us from this: The human universe: Could we become gods? … But perhaps the most curious of all is the idea that the universe isn’t real, and we live in a computer simulation created by a superior intelligence. In fact, according to Nick Bostrom, the philosopher who developed the idea, this is the most likely explanation for our existence. Whatever the plausibility of this claim, it begs a tantalising question: could we ever create such a simulation? Could we become the gods of an artificial universe inhabited by creatures so smart they are able to question their own place in their universe? [subscribe wall follows Read More ›

… think we should maybe start space colonies (and spread the misery)? From Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Startalk: Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the future of humanity with one of the men forging that future: billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Join us as Neil and Elon talk about NASA funding, getting humans excited for the colonization of Mars, and why Elon feels it’s important to not be stuck here on Earth. You’ll also find out why sustainable production and consumption of energy is critically important, but flying cars may not be such a good idea. Meanwhile, back in the studio, guest engineer Bill Nye schools Neil and Chuck Nice about SpaceX’s major innovations and how they’ve improved Read More ›

Here. Many of the benefits of mindfulness are little more than hype. Mindfulness is better than medication for treating depression. Mindfulness helps students combat negativity, focus on their homework and pay more attention in class. Mindfulness helps long-haul airline travellers avoid air rage over delays and bad service. Mindfulness gives hedge fund managers a competitive advantage. That’s what the headlines say about mindfulness. But is it really a wonder drug for the 21st century? More and more people are realizing that much (not all) of hopes placed in mindfulness are little more than hype. First, if mindfulness meditation proves a legitimate treatment, it could be harmful if used wrongly. The same is true of drugs, surgery, nutritional supplements, psychotherapy, or Read More ›

Wave enough hands (and pom poms) and Air TV thinks you are only a step from a major discovery. This from commentator Steven Hayward: Ironically the best evidence for the abuse of climate science by the political class comes from a very sober commentary in Nature magazine this week about how climate scientists are concerned that the upcoming UN climate summit in Paris next December won’t reach a serious agreement (they’re right about this), but especially how the politicians are ignoring what scientists are telling them and the dilemma this supposedly causes climate scientists: Climate science advisers should use the time before Paris to reassess their role. Do they want to inform policy-makers or support the political process? The climate Read More ›

Basically, a new polyploid plant species has had more than one separate origin in Scotland. And we still don’t know how that works.* Polyploidy—the heritable condition of possessing more than two complete sets of chromosomes—has always been something of a mystery, and this new find both illuminate it and suggests we should pay more attention to it: Polyploidy is the heritable condition of possessing more than two complete sets of chromosomes. Polyploids are common among plants, as well as among certain groups of fish and amphibians. For instance, some salamanders, frogs, and leeches are polyploids. Many of these polyploid organisms are fit and well-adapted to their environments. … Well, from ScienceDaily: Dr Vallejo-Marin added: “It is impossible to say whether Mimulus Read More ›

Veteran science writer, specializing in origin of life, Suzan Mazur interviewed Eugene Koonin, Senior Investigator at National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) recently at Huffington Post: Suzan Mazur: You’ve said you think faint signals remain in tracing early ancestry. Carl Woese told me that these things are simply being inferred, that there’s no way to know… Eugene Koonin: Indeed, if you want to be rigorous in a way, there is nothing we can know about the past. Everything we’re saying about the past is inference — yet, inference is not a derogatory term. We are very confident about much of this inference. We are confident that all animals had a common ancestor about 700 million years ago, a little less. Although, do Read More ›

Here: Before we start, let’s invent two things: self-repairing AI supervisors that can direct projects lasting many millennia; and vehicles that can reach close to the speed of light, maybe riding on laser beams or driven by miniature black holes – which according to recent calculations by physicists at Kansas State University may be possible. When we reach the Singularity or the Omega Point or whatever flim flam destination is on offer, we might pause to wonder this: Why do people likely to credit every a-crock-alypse from nuclear winter to human-caused global warming also wonder if we can engineer the universe? Especially when they think it all just happened randomly anyway. See also: Copernicus, you are not going to believe Read More ›

Jeff Leek, at the Bloomberg School of Public Health (Johns Hopkins U), writes the Simply Statistics blog, at which he noted today the tyranny of the idea in science. In business, he says, startup ideas are a dime a dozen and only winners are rewarded. In science, startup ideas are rewarded, and the people who made them matter are forgotten. He gives, as an example, Higgs Boson – Peter Higgs postulated the Boson in 1964, he won the Nobel Prize in 2013 for that prediction, in between tons of people did follow on work, someone convinced Europe to build one of the most expensive pieces of scientific equipment ever built and conservatively thousands of scientists and engineers had to do Read More ›

From Rob Sheldon: The ideas of the Big Bang theory have been resisted by astronomers and cosmologists for decades if not millennia. Plato was against, Augustine was for a creation event. In modern times, the initial idea was put forward by a Belgian priest, Fr Georges Lemaitre in about 1927. Albert Einstein hated the idea, and preferred to insert an “anti-gravity” term into his famous set of gravitational equations to balance the attraction of gravity, and thereby obtain a steady-state, static, unchanging and eternal universe. It was only after Willem deSitter showed that Einstein’s solution was unstable, and Edwin Hubble showed that all the galaxies were moving away from us at increasingly faster speeds the further away they were, that Read More ›

Because nothing is a problem for a theory like Darwin’s. (Or Freud’s, for that matter.) Further to Berlinski’s Question Remains Unanswered, embryologist Jonathan Wells writes to say, Regarding the first line in the comments (by eigenstate): Haldane’s “rabbit in the Cambrian” suffices as a simple example of a devastating find for evolutionary theory’s basic model. In 2009, Steve Meyer and I spoke at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma. The day before, the museum’s curator of invertebrate paleontology, Dr. Stephen Westrop, made a pre-emptive strike by giving his own talk about why the Cambrian explosion poses no challenge to Darwinian theory. He concluded by taking exception to J.B.S. Haldane’s claim that finding a fossil rabbit Read More ›

Yes, yes, Peter Woit of Not Even Wrong. From Nautilus: Woit’s major complaint about the theory, then and now, is that it fails to make testable predictions, so it can’t be checked for errors—in other words, that it’s “not even wrong.” Contrast this with general relativity, for example, which enabled Einstein to predict, among other things, the degree to which a star’s light is deflected as it passes the sun. Had measurements of this effect not agreed with Einstein’s prediction, general relativity would have been disproved. Such falsifiability is a widely cited criterion for what constitutes science, a perspective usually attributed to philosopher Karl Popper. Plus, general relativity took Einstein only 10 years. String theory has taken more than 30 Read More ›

From The Guardian: Research has revealed that so-called neurobabble is surprisingly convincing – here’s a quick guide to harnessing its persuasive powers … Among the strategies offered by British neurologist Jules Montague: Make grand claims about mirror neurons For example: “Mirror neurons are the basis of human empathy, the entire emergence of human culture, and the shaping of our civilisation.” What it means: This is absolute codswallop. Mirror neurons, which fire when monkeys do something or see a fellow monkey doing it, have been called “the most hyped concept in neuroscience”. But the research is not yet proven to apply to humans. If you can shout “Parklife!” at the end of your sentence with the word “hippocampus” “or “fusiform gyrus” Read More ›

From John Cook, climate communications guy at the University of Queensland at The Conversation: Ironically, the practice of throwing more science at science denial ignores the social science research into denial. You can’t adequately address this issue without considering the root cause: personal beliefs and ideology driving the rejection of scientific evidence. Attempts at science communication that ignore the potent influence effect of worldview can be futile or even counterproductive. Actually, the first thing one should do is look at the personal beliefs and ideology of those presenting the evidence. Then compare them with those who reject the evidence. About fifty years ago, I was in a hospital, on the bookshelf of whose coffee room was an encyclopedia from about Read More ›

The Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics suggests ten principles to guide research evaluation. Here’s the .pdf (which may download automatically). Data are increasingly used to govern science. Research evaluations that were once bespoke and performed by peers are now routine and reliant on metrics. The problem is that evaluation is now led by the data rather than by judgement. Metrics have proliferated: usually well intentioned, not always well informed, often ill applied. We risk damaging the system with the very tools designed to improve it, as evaluation is increasingly implemented by organizations without knowledge of, or advice on, good practice and interpretation. Here’s one guideline: 5. Allow those evaluated to verify data and analysis. To ensure data quality, all researchers Read More ›