One gets the sense that these people are not interested in being mobbed by a swarm of Wikipedia trolls. Let’s hope that’s a trend.
Science
As part of science reform, should peer reviewers be paid?
Payment would change the landscape in a number of ways. Reviewing would become less of an imposition and more of a job. Whether it would become fairer is unclear but it might become a lot faster. Many might be glad for that.
Nature: Scientists “aghast” that Biden didn’t win a landslide in the US
It’s hard to understand why these people imagine that the Big Science response to COVID-19 would be viewed by many people as a success. Many people around the world have experienced it as one panicfest after another, featuring contradictory opinions on all sorts of things shouted at us from “the science.”
Zoom meeting: Ted Davis on why Christianity is good for science
BioLogos: Drawing on information and insights from the history and philosophy of science, Dr. Davis will argue that Christian faith actually complements the picture of the world coming from the sciences, helping us to achieve a deeper understanding of both the way the world is and how we should go about understanding it…
When science becomes fiction, it often appears happy with the transformation
Re “attempts to silence naysayers”: Seriously, at least half of all Darwinism in print would likely be discredited if naysayers were given a respectful hearing. Sure, some of it is salvageable but without honest critique from outside Fort Darwin, how would you know which half?
Karsten Pultz comes to the defense of the Elsevier editors who say they did not know that the Hossjer–Thorvaldsen paper was ID-friendly
The editors need not, of course, sympathize with the ID perspective to think that evidence for it should be permitted to be discussed. At one time, that was a conventional intellectual position. But the Darwinians, as we’ve said here earlier, are an early flowering of Cancel Culture. No evidence may be discussed that may be thought to favor an Incorrect view.
Advice to experts on humility
Ballantyne is known for the concept of “epistemic trespassing,” where a scholar, convinced that his thesis explains the universe, invades other disciplines like the mad bull charging into the literary tearoom.
New England Journal of Medicine joins the chorus, demanding that Americans vote Trump out of office
Doubtless, the science journal editors believe that Trump will be defeated and they will claim some credit for that. Fair enough. But it’s possible that Trump will be reelected. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all served two terms each. And Trump won the last election despite all the polls that announced he would lose. Should that happen, the journal editors will be in the unhappy position of being widely seen to be ignored.
Pushback at StatNews against politicizing science. Rob Sheldon weighs in
Sheldon: The editors of Science and Nature compromised their scientific objectivity years ago. They promoted papers that big pharma wanted, they suppressed papers that made big pharma look bad. They were complicit in the coverup of not just tobacco and sugar lobbies, but vaccines and Darwinism and global warming… So of course this produced cognitive dissonance, since it violated some of the very basic tenets of objective science.
What happened when someone tried making “wisdom” a science
The problem with naturalizing wisdom is that wisdom isn’t natural. It necessarily comes from a perspective beyond our own troubles in our own time.
Some researchers arrive at an important truth about “consensus science”
Researchers: “When individuals are fully independent, even under highly unfavorable circumstances a consensus provides strong evidence for the correctness of the affirmed position. This no longer remains the case once dependence, polarization, and external pressure are introduced. With such interventions, the probability of a false consensus increases dramatically.
” “Shut up, he explained” is not consensus, it’s false consensus.
Science writer mourns the slow suicide of science
Alex Berezow: “Political partisanship. There was a time when scientists knew better than to deal in politics. That time is now gone. Openly cheering for one side of the political spectrum over the other, scientists and science media outlets are gambling with their reputation.” Well, from an international perspective, here’s the obvious problem: If the US Prez is THAT important, science ain’t what it used to be.
Religion, science, … and the religion of science facing COVID-19
In fact, during the COVID crisis, a great deal of the blather for science made no sense at all, a fact that is becoming more and more evident. People won’t immediately give up believing in science as a result. Rather, they will begin to treat it as the superstition of the social elite. It doesn’t make sense and doesn’t need to. It is wisely got around wherever possible.That’s not what science used to be but that;s what many policy decisions have made it.
Will “science” please stand down?
Because what our betters really want is that their nonsense, whatever it stems from and wherever it leads, always be dressed up as “science.”
And now… New Scientist tells us herd immunity is “bad science”… Rob Sheldon responds
Rob Sheldon: We have the data to improve our models and the much-attacked Greater Barrington declaration suggests that we should, since the DATA from Sweden show that lockdowns are neither necessary nor even helpful. But this author suggests that the models are perfect, and therefore the data must be rejected in the name of science, of course. He is displaying, even in his own scientific subfield, the same TRUST in science, that we disparaged in Nature. The disease of deification begun by Darwin is far more pervasive than anyone wants to admit. You might say that herd immunity hasn’t yet been reached.