From 2014 but still pungent:
The “scientific” label comes freighted with assumptions that a matter is factual, proven, and settled. Yet the dust-bin of science is filled with once-settled “facts” that stand as reminders that scientific conclusions can be wrong—very wrong; think of geocentrism, spontaneous generation, luminiferous aether, and the fixity of time and space, to name but a few. They should give us pause anytime we hear that some current conclusion—global warming, Darwinian evolution, overpopulation, fill-in-the-blank—is a settled scientific fact beyond dispute. As someone once quipped, he who is wedded to the science of the day will soon find himself a widower.
In some cases, scientific error is due to inadequate testing and verification. For example, the Aristotelian belief that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones was the scientific consensus until Galileo actually tested it, 2,000 years later!
In other cases, ideology and researcher bias are to blame. Take the fossil record. Ian Tattersall, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, once confessed that “the [evolutionary] patterns we perceive are as likely to result from our unconscious mindsets as from the evidence itself.” Likewise, Richard Leakey disclosed that his father, paleontologist Louis Leakey, had the habit of fitting fossils into a pre-conceived line of descent.
Regis Nicoll, “Unsettling Science” at Salvo
Note: Enjoy this piece while you can. Stories from Salvo have been known to disappear behind a paywall at some point. Of course, the subscription is well worth the money.
See also: Honeybees, astonishingly, are not going extinct Science writer Hank Campbell vs. the apocalypse industry: Instead of dying out, there are now 10 honeybees for every human on the planet – more than 25 years ago. And that is just in one species. There are over 25,000 species of bees, we just don’t try to count them all because the others are not part of a billion dollar industry, like sending honeybees around in trucks to pollinate almond farms.
Dang. Another apocalypse shot to hell.
and
Horizontal gene transfer as a serious blow to claims about universal common descent. Trust our stalwart physics color commentator Rob Sheldon to draw the logical conclusion about horizontal gene transfer between plants and insects: If plants and insects can exchange genes (and who knows what else can?), what are we to make of dogmatic claims about universal common descent?
Another great moment in Cancel Culture threatened…