I was thinking recently, about how many audiobooks are consumed by people these days. I would guess that the main reason behind this consumption is convenience. Many people just don’t have the time, or don’t create the time, to really sit down and get their head in a book. But I understand that for many, Read More…
Science
Apparently, scientists are the only ones exempt from the fact that we evolved to have biases…
When science becomes a substitute for religion or philosophy, it must bear the weight of being a certain kind of truth. The trouble is, science isn’t that kind of truth.
Another, more nuanced, look at the Rosalind Franklin story
We’ve all heard the story, probably: That Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) should have shared the Nobel Prize for the double helix with Francis Crick (1916–2004) and James Watson. Science writer Nicholas Wade has gone into the story in considerable detail and finds to be much more complex.
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: Distrust of science is due to tribal loyalty
There seems to be no recognition that researchers, however fiercely competitive among themselves, also have a tribal loyalty that skews their judgment.
At Mind Matters News: Researchers: If we tell folks more about science, they trust less
Generally, the remedy for loss of trust after widespread failures is reform of the system, not reform of its doubters. Post-COVID, scientists should take heed.
Cancel Culture comes for the James Webb Space Telescope
If we’re so lucky that the Woke promise to boycott science altogether and picket NASA instead, we accept their offer!
At Mind Matters News: Why many now reject science… do you really want to know? Part 1
COVID demonstrated — as nothing else could — that the “science” was all over the map and didn’t help people avoid panic. Takehome: As the panic receded, the government started setting up a disinformation board to target NON-government sources of panic, thus deepening loss of trust.
Remember when the lab-leak theory of COVID-19 was “just a conspiracy theory”?
Matt Ridley: We don’t say this virus definitely jumped out of a laboratory, but we do say that if there is one city in the world where a laboratory leak of a novel SARS-like virus from bats would be most likely to happen, it would be Wuhan.
At Socrates in the City: Eric Metaxas and Stephen Meyer Tackle Science and God
Meyer is author of “The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe.” Eric Metaxas is a radio talk show host and author of Is Atheism Dead?
Science mag goes bonkers on abortion, and related stories
At The Scientist, we are informed, “Scientists Predict “Brain Drain” From States That Ban Abortion: Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, numerous researchers have announced plans to either vacate or decline career opportunities in states where abortion is or will soon be illegal.”
At Mind Matters News: Why science news sucks — a response to a disgusted physicist
Science writers, and their readers, often seek a certainty from science that it can’t really provide. They graft it in — so, of COURSE, they find it.
At Big Think: How the Multiverse could break the scientific method
Theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser raises the issue that the multiverse hypothesis suffers from the unscientific property of non-falsifiability. Embedded in his article is a solid acknowledgement of the fine-tuning of physical parameters for life to exist in our universe.
Has anything been learned from nearly two decades of keening about science’s replication crisis?
Science is beginning to sound like the medieval church, actually. We are now moving on from keening to caterwauling. But nobody working on the inside can actually do anything about it.
C. S. Lewis and the limits of science
He saw science as a limited language.
It turns out that fact-checker “credibility” ratings don’t affect people’s views of news much
Researchers: Notably, the researchers also found that a majority of people rely on credible sources of information, with two-thirds completely avoiding unreliable news sites.