Science

Here’s a recent exchange between me and a well-known journalist: Dear Mr. Dembski: I got your email from [snip]. I’m a science writer who has written for the usual suspects: New York Times (book review, op-ed, magazine, week in review), The Atlantic, Discover, Omni, Wall Street Journal, many others. You can google me, but the NY Times and WSJ block search engines, and that’s where most of my journalistic stuff is. . . . I am not sympathetic to ID or creationism, but I’m thinking of writing a piece–not yet sure for whom–about how silly the neo-Darwinists have become, Dawkins and Dennett come to mind. It seems to me the evolutionists have fielded the wrong team, and despite the recent Read More ›

Ten years ago it seemed to some that we had good evidence for life on Mars. Here’s how things look today: http://www.physorg.com/news74002665.html.

Professor Ratzinger goes back to school. After Islam last year, Darwin topic this year Evolution will be the focus of the upcoming seminar between the pope and his former students in Castel Gandolfo. Meanwhile, Jesuit scholar Christian W. Troll has updated his analysis of progressive Muslim thinkers by Sandro Magister ROMA, August 2, 2006 – This year’s Ratzinger-Schülerkreis seminar will focus on “Schöpfung und Evolution”, creation and evolution. The private meeting is set for Saturday, September 2, and Sunday, September 3, at the Pontifical Villa in the pope’s summer residence of Castel Gandolfo (see photo). The Ratzinger-Schülerkreis, that is the ‘Ratzinger Students’ Circle’, brings together once a year the old theology professor, now pope Benedict XVI, and his former students Read More ›

As the debate over how to teach evolution continues, two new radio commercials promoting www.standupforscience.com and the online petition to “Stand up for Science, Stand up for Kansas” will air this weekend across Kansas. One ad features molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, explaining that “it is imperative to understand both the evidence for and against a scientific theory… as a scientist, I am standing up for science education policies that require students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence that supports Darwin’s theory, as well as the scientific evidence that challenges it.” The second commercial features Kansas public school science teacher Jill Gonzalez Bravo who was also recently interviewed for the ID The Future Podcast about her support Read More ›

Questions: (1) Leaving aside Calvinism, is Howard Van Till a Christian at all? Would he even accept that designation? (2) Given that he has veered so far from Calvin College’s statement of faith, is it legitimate for him to maintain his formal affiliation with the school as “professor emeritus”? Are professors emeritus held to the same standards as nonretired faculty?  FROM CALVINISM TO FREETHOUGHT: The Road Less Traveled by Howard J. Van Till Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Emeritus Calvin College Presented 5/24/2006 for the Freethought Association of West Michigan Lightly edited 5/26/2006 Precis: Born into a Calvinist family, shaped by a Calvinist catechism training, educated in the Calvinist private school system, and nurtured by a community that prized its Calvinist Read More ›

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060714/sc_afp/swedenspainscience_060714171218

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – A Swedish-led team of scientists has discovered 400,000-year-old DNA in bear teeth, the Uppsala University in Sweden said.
The team, made up of Swedish, Spanish and German researchers, discovered the remains of the bear in a cave in Atapuerca, northern Spain.

“It is usually hard to find DNA that is older than 100,000 years, and work on fossilized DNA mostly focuses on material that is a few tens of thousands of years old, at most,” team leader Anders Goetherstroem said in a statement.

He said the find “pushed back the frontier” concerning the age of DNA that scientists could work with. “It means that it will be possible to subject a large number of extinct animals to DNA analysis,” he said.

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Graeme Hunter (a philosophy professor at the University of Ottawa examines Michael Shermer’s recent piece on confirmation bias published in Scientific American: . . . Shermer tells us – or rather science does and Shermer is only its messenger – that opinionated people actually suffer from what is called a “confirmation bias”, which Shermer defines as a condition in which “we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence.” Members of political parties, it seems, are particularly prone to this disorder. Not Shermer, though, as he tells us in the jocular, self-deprecating manner that makes his article such a joy to read: “Pace Will Rogers, I am not a member of Read More ›

Faith Project Director The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for the post of Faith Project Director. The FPD’s duties will include: **developing materials pertaining to evolution and religion for print and web; **representing NCSE to the faith community, in print and in person; **serving as liaison between NCSE and professional theological societies and religious organizations; **speaking to the press about issues involving evolution education and challenges to it; **counseling teachers, administrators, parents, and others facing challenges to evolution education. Candidates should have either formal academic training in or extensive informal knowledge of theology, particularly as it relates to science. A record of involvement in or Read More ›

Michael Shermer has a piece on confirmation bias in the current SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (go here). He writes: . . . In science we have built-in self-correcting machinery. Strict double-blind controls are required in experiments, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know the experimental conditions during the data-collection phase. Results are vetted at professional conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Research must be replicated in other laboratories unaffiliated with the original researcher. Disconfirmatory evidence, as well as contradictory interpretations of the data, must be included in the paper. Colleagues are rewarded for being skeptical. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We need similar controls for the confirmation bias in the arenas of law, business and politics. Judges and lawyers should call Read More ›

Should public schools censor scientific evidence just because it challenges Darwin’s theory of evolution? Or, should teachers present ALL the scientific evidence, including both the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory? The overwhelming majority of Americans believe that when biology teachers present the scientific evidence supporting Darwin’s theory of evolution, they should also teach the scientific evidence against it. According to the Kansas State Board of Education: “Regarding the scientific theory of biological evolution, the curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory.” However, there are some in Kansas, and around the country, now using their voices to Read More ›

Check out SALVO: http://www.salvomag.com. It’s hard-hitting and in-your-face without being ponderous. I love the “fake” ads, like The Center for Human Enhancement’s ad that features a stylized human head with the caption “be perfect” and the recommendation to “visit upgrademe.com.” Denyse O’Leary as well as other allies have pieces in the premier issue (autumn 2006), which is now out. The first issue focuses on the materialist reduction of soul.

Weinberg has a knack for seeing through pretensions. His reference to Sontag’s “piety without content” reminds me of Martin Gardner’s “loyal liars” in his delightful and depressing theological novel The Flight of Peter Fromm (available from Prometheus — I’m going to be using it in my apologetics course this fall). MR. WEINBERG: In my experience most physicists are not particularly religious. A few are – no question about it. But most are not. In fact, I would say they’re not so much irreligious as simply uninterested in this subject. They don’t know enough or think enough about religion to qualify as atheists. And but I think that’s not so limited to physicists. In my experience many Americans think of religion Read More ›

http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/index.html

Peer review is the bedrock of scientific publication (for Nature’s position on peer review, see our Guide to Authors). It is widely considered essential for improving submitted papers and enhancing the credentials of scientists as well as those of the journals in which they choose to publish.

But, like any process, peer review requires occasional scrutiny and assessement. Has the Internet bought new opportunities for journals to manage peer review more imaginatively or by different means? Are there any systematic flaws in the process? Should the process be transparent or confidential? Is the journal even necessary, or could scientists manage the peer review process themselves?

Nature’s peer review process has been maintained, unchanged, for decades. We, the editors, believe that the process functions well, by and large. But, in the spirit of being open to considering alternative approaches, we are taking two initiatives: a web debate and a trial of a particular type of open peer review. Read More ›

As some of you may recall I wrote that I was experimenting with laboratory propagation of volvariella volvacea (Chinese Straw Mushrooms). Recently, among several other lines of R&D, I was experimenting with hydrogels as a nutrient media. So far I’ve been using them as an agar replacement with mixed results. I think the mixed results are due to uneven moisture distribution in the fine powder form I was using but that’s neither here nor there. Since the hydrogels can be loaded with nutrients at room temperature (the big advantage over agar) I decided to play around with another sterilant that would decompose at temperatures required to melt agar. I’ve been extremely successful using ampicillin at 1mg/20ml to prevent bacterial contamination in agar cultures – haven’t had a single bacterial infection in hundreds of agar plates. Ampicillin however breaks down quickly at temperatures over 60C so it must be added to agar at a critical stage after it’s cooled down (agar melts at 95C) some but before it solidifies (about 40C). This requires pouring fast and keeping a 60C water bath on the bench. However, ampicillin is so inexpensive it can be considered free of cost compared to wide spectrum antibiotics that survive pasteurization and autoclave temperatures. Once poured, ampicillin plates must be refrigerated until use as ampicillin in solution breaks down quickly at room temperature (a matter of days).

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For those looking to see if ID returns false positives (ASSUMING that indeed there is additional CSI involved in this immunity, which is apparently unknown at this time).

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0602382103v1

Spontaneous regression/complete resistance (SR/CR) mice resist very high doses of cancer cells that are lethal to WT mice even at low doses. In this study, we show that this resistance is mediated by rapid infiltration of leukocytes, mostly of innate immunity, in both primary and repeated challenges. Formation of rosettes with infiltrating natural killer cells, neutrophils, and macrophages was required for the subsequent destruction of cancer cells through rapid cytolysis. Highly purified natural killer cells, macrophages, and neutrophils from the SR/CR mice independently killed cancer cells in vitro. The independent killing activity by each subset of effector cells is consistent with the observation that the resistance was abolished by depleting total infiltrating leukocytes but not by depleting only one or two subsets of leukocytes. The resistance was completely transferable to WT recipient mice through SR/CR splenocytes, bone marrow cells, or enriched peritoneal macrophages, either for prevention against subsequent cancer challenges or eradication of established malignancy at distant sites.

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