Re the ENV post, Question for multiverse theorists: To what can science appeal, if not evidence?, from experimental physicist and our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon: — It is part of the 21st century deconstruction, that it is not enough to oppose the truth, but it is necessary to undermine even the possibility of holding the truth. In physics it is the multiverse. In psychology it is the denial of free will or consciousness. In biology it is denial of teleology, the necessity of naturalism. In ethics it is not “situational” anymore; it is the desire to see all ethics as “oppressive”. Consider the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on fine-tuning. I tried reading it, and it echoes the same Read More ›

From Sarah Laskow at Atlas Obscura: Of the possible plant talents that have gone under-recognized, memory is one of the most intriguing. Some plants live their whole lives in one season, while others grow for hundreds of years. Either way, it has not been obvious to us that any of them hold on to past events in ways that change how they react to new challenges. But biologists have shown that certain plants in certain situations can store information about their experiences and use that information to guide how they grow, develop, or behave. Functionally, at least, they appear to be creating memories. How, when, and why they form these memories might help scientists train plants to face the challenges—poor Read More ›

From Shawna Williams at The Scientist: Genetic variants linked to a predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease and heavy smoking are less common in older people than in younger people, researchers report today (September 5) in PLOS Biology. Their study analyzed genetic alleles in two large genomic databases to find those associated with longevity, which they used as a proxy for evolutionary fitness. “Nobody’s really had the data to measure single-generation shifts in allele frequencies in humans before,” says geneticist Jonathan Pritchard of Stanford University who was not involved in the study. “It’s an important part of understanding how evolution works to go down to the smallest scale of evolutionary change, namely, what’s happening in one generation.” More. … But how would Read More ›

From Fern Elsdon-Baker at New Scientist, reporting on that recent study of people who question evolution, It sounds startling. Nearly 30 per cent of adults in the UK say evolution can’t explain the origin of humans. That rises to nearly 50 per cent for human consciousness. Does that mean we’re increasingly following a vocal minority in the US who deny the science on fringe religious grounds? … Unexpectedly, 44 per cent felt that evolutionary processes cannot explain the existence of human consciousness. It might be tempting to assume that this is just a reflection of the number of religious believers. However, while faith does appear to amplify individual doubts about evolutionary explanations, it is not the only factor at work. Read More ›

Or are they just exposing the flaws in the system? From Benjamin Jones at Smithsonian Mag: To study life on Earth, you need a system. Ours is Linnaean taxonomy, the model started by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus in 1735. Linnaeus’s two-part species names, often Latin-based, consist of both a genus name and a species name, i.e. Homo sapiens. Like a library’s Dewey Decimal system for books, this biological classification system has allowed scientists around the world to study organisms without confusion or overlap for nearly 300 years. But, like any library, taxonomy is only as good as its librarians—and now a few rogue taxonomists are threatening to expose the flaws within the system. Taxonomic vandals, as they’re referred to within Read More ›

What pre-extinguished boffin said that? From Fern Elsdon-Baker at Guardian: We clearly need to be careful not to assume that when people say they are rejecting “evolutionary science”, they are rejecting all scientific research or indeed all of what we might think of as evolutionary science. ‘Evolution’ as a term has gained a mishmash of cultural baggage over the years, not least a strong association with ‘New Atheist’ movements. Some may just reject it out of hand because they assume you have to be an atheist to accept evolutionary science. Our data suggests that ‘genetics’ doesn’t appear to have this baggage. Furthermore, doubts about evolutionary science frequently appear to be related to the perceived limitations of evolutionary science-based explanations for Read More ›

A friend writes to draw our attention to an interesting 2014 paper Thought Experiments in Biology, by Guillaume Schlaepfer and Marcel Weber: Unlike in physics, the category of thought experiment is not very common in biology. At least there are no classic examples that are as important and as well-known as the most famous thought experiments in physics, such as Galileo’s, Maxwell’s or Einstein’s. The reasons for this are far from obvious; maybe it has to do with the fact that modern biology for the most part sees itself as a thoroughly empirical discipline that engages either in real natural history or in experimenting on real organisms rather than fictive ones. While theoretical biology does exist and is recognized as Read More ›

From Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch: “Common wisdom,” according to the authors of a new piece in Nature, “assumes that the hazard of predatory publishing is restricted mainly to the developing world.” But the authors of the new paper, led by David Moher of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, found that more than half — 57% — of the 2,000 articles published in journals they determined were predatory were from high-income countries. In fact, the U.S. was second only to India in number of articles published in such journals. We asked Moher, who founded Ottawa Hospital’s Centre for Journalology in 2015, a few questions about the new work. More. An interview with Dr. Moher follows. It’s not fair to developing Read More ›

They could just as well say that whatever created horses created unicorns too. The multiverse advocates’ project is not to undermine the evidence base as such. There just isn’t any evidence for a multiverse. Their project is rather to undermine the idea that evidence, as used in normal science, should matter in cosmology. String theory, we are told, is useful even if unconfirmed (Quanta). Supersymmetry is beautiful, lacking only supporting evidence (The Economist). The multiverse is a done deal anyway (ScienceBlogs). It bears repeating: Advocates do not merely propose that we accept faulty evidence. They want us to abandon evidence as a key criterion for acceptance of their theory. More.

From Salvo online: Zombie Killer: The “Icons of Evolution” Have Joined the Ranks of the Undead: You cannot kill all zombies simply by destroying their brains. Only intelligence will kill the really nasty ones. About fifteen years ago, I read Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution (2000). The sheer brazenness of the outdated information that continued to be paraded in decades of textbooks dealing with evolution was striking—even to a longtime textbook editor (now retired) like me. For example, Ernst Haeckel’s doctored vertebrate embryo illustrations from more than a century ago (intended to cement the idea of common descent) were the best modern evolutionary science could offer.1 Which says something about modern evolutionary science. The textbook publishing industry depends on a Read More ›

From an article in Biology Direct, Breath-giving cooperation: critical review of origin of mitochondria hypotheses: Major unanswered questions point to the importance of early ecology: Abstract: The origin of mitochondria is a unique and hard evolutionary problem, embedded within the origin of eukaryotes. The puzzle is challenging due to the egalitarian nature of the transition where lower-level units took over energy metabolism. Contending theories widely disagree on ancestral partners, initial conditions and unfolding of events. There are many open questions but there is no comparative examination of hypotheses. We have specified twelve questions about the observable facts and hidden processes leading to the establishment of the endosymbiont that a valid hypothesis must address. We have objectively compared contending hypotheses under Read More ›

This article is remarkable for its honest look at the mess the “biological species concept,” rammed into high schoolers’ heads since forever, has become. From Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta: In 2006, a hunter shot what he thought was a polar bear in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Closer examination, however, revealed brown patches on its white fur, uncharacteristically long claws and a slightly hunched back. The creature was in fact a hybrid, its mother a polar bear, its father a grizzly. Although this cross was known to be possible — the two species had mated in captivity before — this was the first documented case found in the wild. Since then, it has become clear that this was not an Read More ›

From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: We last checked in with Robert Lawrence Kuhn of the PBS series Closer to Truth as he interviewed physicist and Nobel laureate Brian Josephson who said he was “80 percent” sure of intelligent design. (BOOM.) These aren’t brand new interviews by Kuhn, but still very interesting – and concise. Now, submitted for your Labor Day enjoyment, here’s one, pointed out by a Facebook friend, with mathematician William Dembski. Dr. Dembski briefly defines the method of detecting intelligent design. It is, he says, a form of triangulation on the effects of intelligence, namely contingency, complexity, and specification. The last of those refers to the question of “Does it conform to some sort of Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The advent of farming, especially dairy products, had a small but significant effect on the shape of human skulls, according to a recently published study from anthropologists at UC Davis. … Graduate student David Katz, with Professor Tim Weaver and statistician Mark Grote, used a worldwide collection of 559 crania and 534 lower jaws (skull bones) from more than two dozen pre-industrial populations to model the influence of diet on the shape, form, and size of the human skull during the transition to agriculture. They found modest changes in skull morphology for groups that consumed cereals, dairy, or both cereals and dairy. “The main differences between forager and farmer skulls are where we would expect to find them, Read More ›

From Colin Barras at New Scientist: The evolutionary story we have written to explain our ancestors’ move from sea to land may need a rethink. A fossil fish from this era has been discovered with several of the features of land animals – yet it was only distantly related to them. Roughly 360 million years ago, one group of lobe-finned fish began evolving into four-legged, land-living animals that resulted in reptiles, amphibians and mammals like us. … However, a fossil discovered in a quarry in Ningxia, north China, now threatens that stability.More. Yeah. Real history is a bitch. Just a bitch. See also: Our favorite: The leaping blenny