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Science

At Physical Chemistry Letters: The Perils of Politicizing Science

Cancel Culture: People who could not advance by achievement advance by thinning out the ranks above them by denouncing the societal sins du jour that they can stick on them, truly or falsely. NOT going out on a limb here: Most Cancel Culture types actually wouldn’t care about the same offenses, if practised by people who advance their interests. Mediocrities can’t afford to be that fussy. Read More ›

That time they invented scientists as well as research papers…

The Googlebot soon found the papers and [fictional] Antkare was credited with 101 papers that had been cited by 101 papers, which propelled him to 21st on Google’s list of the most cited scientists of all time, behind Freud but well ahead of Einstein, and first among computer scientists. Read More ›

Asked at Quillette: Why Is the Society for American Archaeology Promoting Indigenous Creationism?

What to think? Well, Darwinism was the original Cancel Culture, as many reading this will know. For many decades, it was difficult or impossible to critique it from any perspective, no matter what the evidence. If social power alone wins, why not Indigenous creationism? Weiss and Springer will be lucky to come out of this with their careers intact. Read More ›

Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

On the Design Disquisitions YouTube channel, I’ve posted a new video where I recommend several books of interest, specifically pro-ID literature. Most of the suggestions may be familiar to you, but hopefully there are a few that you’ve not read before. I also give a brief summary of the content of each book. I don’t claim that the books mentioned are necessarily the best, but I think anyone who wants to join the discussion needs to be familiar with some of these. Let me know what you would add to the list! Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

Why trust in “science” is becoming unwise

In case you wondered: "China is also spending lavishly around the world to win supremacy in science — which includes becoming the biggest national sponsor of open access journals published by both Springer Nature and Elsevier, owner of The Lancet." Read More ›

New Intelligent Design YouTube Channel

I’ve been writing intermittently about ID for quite a few years now. In the past I have posted some of my articles on this page. Although I haven’t written anything for a good while, I still follow this area very closely. Recently I set up a YouTube channel that I intend to use alongside my blog. Both the blog and the channel are called Design Disquisitions. These days especially, I think some material lends itself more readily to video format, and I wish to engage with other people interested in ID and evolution in a conversational manner. I’ll be posting videos that will feature conversations with other people, and I’ll also be putting together some presentations and short talks on Read More ›

When science becomes religion, science journalists write the scriptures

Asked at Aeon, “Are we part of a dying reality or a blip in eternity? The value of the Hubble Constant could tell us which terror awaits." Bet on them all being wrong. That’s probably the only thing that has happened lots of times before. Read More ›

What will the long-term effect be of science journals playing useful idiots around COVID-19?

Some of us have been reflecting on the effect of the COVID-19 panic on the public estimation of science. Here’s an article on the "useful idiot" problem among science journals. Read More ›

Frank Turek looks at Scientism of the gaps

To summarize Scientism of the Gaps: No mountain too high, no river so wide that sheer chaos cannot contrive to create an inextricably interlinked system that seamlessly navigates it. Even though chaos never works that way in your own life, you must believe — if you are really science-friendly — that it works that way at the foundation of all of life, the entire universe and all that. Read More ›

Professional skeptic Michael Shermer takes on Stephen C. Meyer and his Return of God Hypothesis

In an age when the Raging Woke parasitize the world of ideas, banning everyone from Frank Turek through Richard Dawkins from public life (when not out setting fires and assaulting the non-Woke), it is worth nothing that Shermer’s 2020 book Giving the Devil His Due, is a defense of intellectual freedom. Read More ›

At The Scientist: Trofim Lysenko and “stamping out science” Yes… yesterday. Sure. But what about today?

From this distance, to whatever extent Lysenko thought epigenetics was a feature of life forms, he was right. To whatever extent Darwinians opposed the idea, they were wrong. The rest is totalitarianism, whether of Lysenkoists or Darwinists. To get some idea how that sort of thing plays out today, consider the current COVID-19 debacle: The lab leak theory has always been a reasonable idea, not a conspiracy theory. Yet it was treated as a conspiracy theory for purely political reasons… Read More ›