Category: Science
Rob Sheldon: If you want laws of nature, you must accept miracles
| October 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy, Religion, Science |
And Christianity too, says our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon. He explains: Proposition: Miracles are violations of natural law. 1. What is natural law; Who invented it? Who enforces it? Who interprets it? a) One argument is that natural law is merely inductive. The sun has risen daily for the past 5000 years of written […]
Elizabeth Warren and the progressive war on science
| October 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Science |
Here’s a reasonable take on Warren’s DNA results: Using this data, the original analysis, which was prepared by a respected geneticist, determined that five segments of Sen. Warren’s DNA — totaling about 12.3 million bases (“letters”) — are of Native American ancestry. That might sound like a lot, but the human genome contains more than […]
Psychology undergrads misled about science by their textbooks?
| October 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Psychology, Science, science education |
Could that be a factor in the recent meltdowns? A recent open access study of textbooks out of the University of Nevada addresses that case: Almost a quarter of the sampled textbooks explicitly and boastfully stated that there is no difference between psychology and other “hard” sciences such as chemistry and physics. Yet only one textbook […]
Should scientists take a “Hippocratic”-style oath, to reduce dishonesty?
| October 16, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Peer review, Science |
Just when doctors are abandoning the Hippocratic Oath because of its restriction on killing humans, some propose that scientists adopt a version of the basic idea. Others disagree: The authors suggest that researchers sign off on a number of statements, including: I will practice and support a scientific process that is based on logic, intellectual […]
Social sciences: The war on empirical fact and objectivity
| October 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Psychology, Science |
Some of us have a perhaps unhealthy fascination with just how bad the social sciences have become. We hope we can justify our amazement (and hilarity) over the easy hoaxes and all that on the grounds that real science also faces a war on math (“say goodbye to x and y”). Watching what happens to […]
Why does more gender equality lead to fewer women in science?
| October 10, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Science |
The Atlantic is asking: Though their numbers are growing, only 27 percent of all students taking the AP Computer Science exam in the United States are female. The gender gap only grows worse from there: Just 18 percent of American computer-science college degrees go to women. This is in the United States, where many college […]
Offbeat tales from the science vs. religion market: Fake Islamic science miniatures
| October 8, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science |
Also known as the “warfare thesis.” Sometimes real manuscripts are torn up to manufacture this kind of dreck for gullible tourists and museums: As I prepared to teach my class ‘Science and Islam’ last spring, I noticed something peculiar about the book I was about to assign to my students. It wasn’t the text – […]
J. P. Moreland on claims we know better than we know science truths
| October 7, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Ethics, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Philosophy, Science |
Youth speaker Sean McDowell interviews J. P. Moreland on his new book, Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology: J.P. Moreland is one of the 50 most influential living philosophers. He’s also a colleague and friend of mine at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He has spent his career writing largely […]
Medieval science fiction?
| October 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Science, Science fiction |
Yes, Intro of and why not? Take the medieval romances that feature Alexander the Great soaring heavenwards in a flying machine and exploring the depths of the ocean in his proto-submarine. Or that of the famous medieval traveller, Sir John Mandeville, who tells of marvellous, automated golden birds that beat their wings at the table […]
“Severe” manipulation of figures from lab that studied gene silencing technique
| September 29, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Peer review, Plants, Science |
But the reason for the manipulation is unclear: A fresh investigation into publications from a French plant-biology laboratory has revealed “severe” and “intentional” manipulation of research figures. No one has yet been named as responsible for the misconduct, but the institute that led the investigation is expected to announce disciplinary measures by the end of September. […]
Another pop science great, the 100-calorie snack guy, fizzles
| September 29, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
Behaviorist Brian Wansink whose “bottomless bowl” theory of why people eat too much – and other creative but problematic ideas hatched at Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab has fallen from grace: His lab informed food companies implementing the 100-calorie snack packs you see in stores, for example, under the idea that these smaller portions would […]
Darwin’s vigilantes: Fred Reed on why Darwinism persists
| September 24, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Culture, Darwinism, Science |
He had promised, he says, not to touch the subject again but… Looking back on what’s happened (and hasn’t happened) in the last fifteen years: A prime example is Richard Sternberg, a Ph.D. in biology (Molecular Evolution) from Florida International University and a Ph.D. in Systems Science (Theoretical Biology) from Binghamton University. He is not […]
Are people today more religious than in the past?
| September 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Naturalism, Religion, Science, science education |
If the measure is blind belief, maybe so: Darwin, for instance, is part of the House of Progress, which is why so many people will accuse you of being a creationist if you offer any criticism of his theory of Natural Selection (amusingly, this happens even to atheists). He was “right,” you see, so any […]
J. P. Moreland’s new book on scientism is out
| September 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy, Science |
Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland’s Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology makes clear he doesn’t like it: Rigid adherence to scientism―as opposed to a healthy respect for science―is all too prevalent in our world today. Rather than leading to a deeper understanding of our universe, this worldview actually undermines real science and […]
Globalization threatens the “ecosystem” of science, says researcher
| September 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Science |
One of three such trends, according to a Cambridge nanoscientist, and author of The Secret Life of Science: How It Really Works and Why It Matters: The scientific ecosystem also serves us in ways that are harder to articulate. It instills in us an appreciation for the beauty of mathematics, a belief in the inherent […]
At the Guardian: The “widespread notion that academia is morally superior is ridiculous”
| September 21, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Ethics, Intelligent Design, Peer review, Science, Science, worldview issues/foundations and society |
A former biochemist and now medical writer, he has tried both the academy and industry: For the last 18 months or so I’ve been working very closely with people with different roles (medical affairs, marketing, access, etc.) of one particular company. We’ve been preparing for the launch of a new indication for their product, following a […]
New book: Darwin, unlike some of his followers, was an “evolutionary pluralist”
| September 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
Now they tell us. But how did his followers get it so wrong? Or were they just funning us all these years? Re Revisiting the Origin of Species: The Other Darwins (Thierry Hoquet, CRC Press, August 13, 2018): Contemporary interest in Darwin rises from a general ideal of what Darwin’s books ought to contain: a […]
AAAS to introduce new policy for expelling members
| September 17, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Science |
The “Fellow Revocation Policy” was announced by president, Margaret A. Hamburg: The governing body of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, founded 1848, voted Saturday to enact a policy under which an elected AAAS Fellow’s lifetime honor can be revoked for proven scientific misconduct or serious breaches of professional ethics. The AAAS Council […]
Why do we think “social psychology” is science anyway?
| September 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Peer review, Psychology, Science |
More clutter building up in the inbox about the unreproducible results from social sciences: From ScienceDaily: Today, in Nature Human Behavior, a collaborative team of five laboratories published the results of 21 high-powered replications of social science experiments originally published in Science and Nature, two of the most prestigious journals in science. They failed to replicate […]
Rob Sheldon comments on the “dirtiest fight in physics”
| September 11, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Culture, Naturalism, Physics, Science |
Recently, we noted the dirtiest fight in physics, over the nature of the universe. Our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts: A great story on the level of confusion in the world of astronomy and particle physics. My own view is: they’re both wrong. Dark Matter WIMP proponents postulate an invisible particle that […]
