Science

From Avi Loeb at Nature, on the achievements and limitations of Mayan astronomy: So why, I wondered, didn’t the Mayans go further and infer aspects of our modern understanding of astronomy? They determined the orbital periods of Venus, Mars and Mercury around the Sun, but Earth was at the centre of their Universe. I came to appreciate how limiting prevailing world views can be. … I noticed this bias recently while assessing a PhD thesis. The student was asked to test whether a data set from a large cosmological survey was in line with the standard cosmological model. But when a discrepancy was found, the student’s goal shifted to explaining why the data set was incomplete. In such a culture, Read More ›

  The millions were just “other losses,” of course. Simon Ings’ Stalin and the Scientists: a History of Triumph and Tragedy examines what happened to physics and biology under Stalin: Scientists throughout history, from Galileo to today’s experts on climate change, have often had to contend with politics in their pursuit of knowledge. But in the Soviet Union, where the ruling elites embraced, patronized, and even fetishized science like never before, scientists lived their lives on a knife edge. The Soviet Union had the best-funded scientific establishment in history. Scientists were elevated as popular heroes and lavished with awards and privileges. But if their ideas or their field of study lost favor with the elites, they could be exiled, imprisoned, Read More ›

From Andrea Gawrylewski at Scientific American: Richard Dawkins, we are informed, wants all prominent scientists to move to New Zealand: The two largest nations in the English-speaking world have just suffered catastrophes at the hands of voters—in both cases the uneducated, anti-intellectual portion of voters. Science in both countries will be hit extremely hard: In the one case, by the xenophobically inspired severing of painstakingly built-up relationships with European partners; in the other case by the election of an unqualified, narcissistic, misogynistic sick joke as president. In neither case is the disaster going to be short-lived: in America because of the nonretirement rule of the Supreme Court; in Britain because Brexit is irreversible. No, we are not making this up Read More ›

Here: Multicopy plasmids potentiate the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria As well as allowing horizontal gene transfer, the increased copy number of plasmids could accelerate evolution. Here, it is shown that… More. One can browse four articles for free, include the above. Perhaps they are hoping to accommodate non-Darwinian evolution more formally. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Sheldon, our physics and physics colour commentator, responds based on his personal experiences to the news from Nature that many scientists “stunned” by the Trump win: There’s been a lot of hyperventilating by the intelligentsia about the consequences of a Republican sweep of House, Senate and Presidency. Many fear that Republicans in general, and Trump in particular are “anti-science” and will put America back in the stone age. For those of you new to American politics, I’d like to dispel that myth and throw some cold water on the hysteria. First, universities and research scientists are by no means neutral politically. I’ve lost 3 jobs at universities both public and private, in part for being a Republican. Sociologists who measure Read More ›

Why? Doesn’t that speak poorly of the powers of the scientific method? From Jeff Tollefson, Lauren Morello& Sara Reardon at Nature: Republican businessman and reality-television star Donald Trump will be the United States’ next president. Although science played only a bit part in this year’s dramatic, hard-fought campaign, many researchers expressed fear and disbelief as Trump defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton on 8 November. “Trump will be the first anti-science president we have ever had,” says Michael Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society in Washington DC. “The consequences are going to be very, very severe.” Trump has questioned the science underlying climate change — at one point suggesting that it was a Chinese hoax Read More ›

From Marek Kohn at New Scientist, in a review of Chris Knight’s Decoding Chomsky: Researchers have devised different ways to create firebreaks between values and data. According to anthropologist Chris Knight, Chomsky’s strategy was as radical as his politics – and he developed it in order to enable himself to sustain his left-wing political commitments. In his new book Decoding Chomsky, Knight (who mounts his own critique from a position on the radical left) argues that Chomsky needed to deny any connection between his science and his politics in order to practise both while based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an institution that was heavily funded by the US military. … This required detaching language from society altogether. Chomsky Read More ›

LiveScience publishes stale dated origin of life theories from 2007 in 2016 It’s not their fault. No serious new developments in the intervening years. From Ker Than at LiveScience, a rehash of competing origin of life theories, concluding with: Trying to recreate an event that happened billions of years ago is a daunting task, but many scientists believe that, like the emergence of life itself, it is still possible. “The solution of a mystery of this magnitude is totally unpredictable,” said Freeman Dyson, a professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University in New Jersey. “It might happen next week or it might take a thousand years.” More. But then we learn, Editor’s Note: This article was first published in 2007. Read More ›

From Helen Thomson at New Scientist: In recent years it has become clear that hallucinations are much more than a rare symptom of mental illness or the result of mind-altering drugs. Their appearance in those of sound mind has led to a better understanding of how the brain can create a world that doesn’t really exist. More surprising, perhaps, is the role they may play in our perceptions of the real world. As researchers explore what is happening in the brain, they are beginning to wonder: do hallucinations make up the very fabric of our reality? (paywall) More. Of course in a world where the war on falsifiability is the new cosmology, objectivity is just evidence that a guy is Read More ›

From Rochelle Poole at Science: On the first day of my first field expedition, my adviser abruptly shifted all the field resources to a different topic that didn’t match my experience or career ambitions, ignoring our rigorous research plans—and my growing objections. Such a capricious change was unacceptable, I said, but my adviser countered my resistance. “I have the power to do this,” he said. “This is how science works; you are just naïve.” To some extent he was right: Ph.D. advisers wield the power to create or destroy research careers, and students typically have few—if any—ways to protect themselves from advisers who misuse this responsibility, especially during remote fieldwork. I was upset, but he was the field manager, so Read More ›

From Kendall Powell at Nature: But some data and anecdotal evidence suggest that scientists do face more hurdles in starting research groups now than did many of their senior colleagues 20–30 years ago. Chief among those challenges is the unprecedented number competing for funding pools that have remained stagnant or shrunk in the past decade. “The number of people is at an all-time high, but the number of awards hasn’t changed,” says Jon Lorsch, director of the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) in Bethesda, Maryland. “A lot of people with influence on the system recognize this is a serious problem and are trying to fix it.” Young scientists and senior scientists alike feel an acute pressure to Read More ›

A recent article tries to tackle some important and often-missed points of social psychology. [Unbridled skepticism] has given rise to a belief that what we think about ourselves and our lives together cannot be held with any confidence until objective, scientific insight into these problems is obtained. The result of taking such a stance on our knowledge in this realm is that we become thoroughly unsure of the only seat of experience available to us: ourselves. Doubt penetrates to the deepest level such that we begin to wonder if we are merely mirages, and the scientific method is seen as the sole means of reassurance that this is not the case. In consequence, the prospect of making genuine discoveries, ones Read More ›

From Lauren Griffin at The Conversation, we learn: Having a more complete understanding of when and why liberals and conservatives trust science helps avoid oversimplifications. It’s an important stopgap using oversimplified assumptions to denigrate those who disagree with us politically. None of this is to suggest that the anti-science viewpoints exhibited by Republican politicians on issues such as climate change should be ignored. Nor is it an argument that since “both sides” can fall for anti-science rhetoric, it can be waved away. Rather, these findings indicate that, in theory, it’s possible liberals and conservatives could work together to encourage politicians to base policy recommendations on sound science, at least on some issues. Maybe even more importantly, understanding the social and Read More ›

From Gareth Cook at Scientific American, reviewing Alan Schwarz’s ADHD Nation: According to the American Psychiatric Association, about 5 percent of American children suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), yet the diagnosis is given to some 15 percent of American children, many of whom are placed on powerful drugs with lifelong consequences. This is the central fact of the journalist Alan Schwarz’s new book, ADHD Nation. Explaining this fact—how it is that perhaps two thirds of the children diagnosed with ADHD do not actually suffer from the disorder—is the book’s central mystery. The result is a damning indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, and an alarming portrait of what is being done to children in the name of mental health. Read More ›

Recently, we have covered the war on falsifiability and objectivity. A friend points us to a back to a 2003 paper that gives us t he lowdown on “post-normal science,” where common-sense approaches need not make sense any more: Post-Normal Science (PNS) is a new conception of the management of complex science-related issues. It focuses on aspects of problem solving that tend to be neglected in traditional accounts of scientific practice: uncertainty, value loading, and a plurality of legitimate perspectives. PNS considers these elements as integral to science. By their inclusion in the framing of complex issues, PNS is able to provide a coherent framework for an extended participation in decision-making, based on the new tasks of quality assurance. The Read More ›