College Fix: A physics professor whose class considering intelligent design thrust Ball State University into the national spotlight years ago is scheduled to return to his old campus, which had shut down his popular “Boundaries of Science” course.
Science
At City Journal: Review of book attempting to scuff out the lab leak theory re COVID-19
Wade: “The lab at Wuhan, where researchers were manipulating Covid-type viruses, received funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Could Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, the NIH’s senior officials, have had any possible motive for suppressing their experts’ initial conclusion that the Covid virus was probably artificial?”
At Mind Matters News: Why it’s difficult for science to answer some basic questions
We can only research and see what happens, as the questions science is expected to answer grow more basic and more profound.
Otangelo Grasso on the difficulties of reasoning with atheists
Evidence doesn’t seem to matter much.
At City Journal: In science today, correctness openly trumps truth
Irrespective of evidence, if people don’t like what’s being said about them — and they are a perceived victim group — it’s not science. Well, at least we know how science will end: As a public relations agency!
When progressivism hit the science journals…
Wesley J. Smith: Science isn’t about politics, opinion polls, or subjective opinions. It is supposed to be about adducing facts about the natural world and applying them. Whether to permit, outlaw, or regulate abortion isn’t a question that science can answer.
At Phys.org: Study reveals flaws in popular genetic method
“The most common analytical method within population genetics is deeply flawed, according to a new study from Lund University in Sweden.”
The Intelligent Design Audiopaper Project
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…
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.