Monthly Archives: February 2011
Rescue Proteins Leave Evolutionists In The Ditch
| February 28, 2011 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
Put intuition aside for a moment and imagine a scenario where E.coli knockout strains that have been deleted for conditionally essential genes are rescued by proteins taken from a protein library composed of >106 de novo designed sequences. The prevailing assumption- that functional proteins are constrained to a very small subset of possible sequences- would… more
Thrifty gene is bankrupt science? Or, why you should always be suspicious when you hear …
| February 28, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology, Genetics |
As Globe & Mail medical reporter Carolyn Abraham tells it (February 25, 2011): Since James Van Gundia Neel proposed it almost 50 years ago, the thrifty-gene hypothesis has reigned as the dominant explanation for soaring rates of obesity and diabetes among many aboriginal groups. Native communities where diabetes didn’t exist in the first half of… more
Darwin and doomsday: Christian de Duve gets hold of the weeping prophet Jeremiah’s robes
| February 28, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
I was just reading Warwick University sociologist Steve Fuller’s comment* on the evolutionary psychologist’s insistence on deriving all human characteristics from kinship with apes: Corresponding to this removal of metaphysical privilege is a tendency for Darwinists to treat the [128] most distinctive features of the human condition as by-products or pathologies, in either case implying… more
Teaching as if the student had a mind
| February 28, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Cosmology |
Contrary to the spirit of this catalogue of bitches against critical thinking in the school system, I offered to answer a schoolkid’s questions. I do write children’s science sometimes, but am sure glad I don’t teach for a living. Doubtless there’s some state somewhere in the US where I’d get fired for saying this, below,… more
E. O. Wilson’s abandonment of evolutionary psychology theory is Discover’s #3 story of annual 100
| February 28, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
Yes, the abandonment was recounted in “E.O. Wilson’s Theory of Altruism Shakes Up Understanding of Evolution” by Pamela Weintraub. Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson’s 1975 Sociobiology was thought to give evolutionary psychology some respectability. Wilson, who learned his trade studying social insects, promoted the idea of kin selection – that people are genetically programmed (“bred… more
Reflections on the grossly intolerant
| February 27, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Science |
Re British science czar John “grossly intolerant” Beddington facing off against scholar and political correctness zapper Frank Furedi - both angling off original science thinker Freeman Dyson: Set me thinking. When I was young (yes, forty years ago), two issues my paper explored were breastfeeding and palliative care. Fashionable? Haw. more
Freeman Dyson: ” … science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries”
| February 27, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Informatics |
In a review of a very interesting-sounding book on information systems through the ages, beginning with African drumming (James Gleick: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood), Freeman Dyson discusses information theory. The story of the drum language illustrates the central dogma of information theory. The central dogma says, “Meaning is irrelevant.” Information is… more
Scholar warns: “Be grossly intolerant” is fast backward to the Middle Ages
| February 27, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Science |
Frank Furedi, author of On Tolerance: The Life Style Wars and foe of political correctness in academic life, replies powerfully to science czar “Intolerance” Beddington at Spiked (21 February 2011). Comparing Beddington’s protective views on homosexuality with the hostile ones shown by Ryszard Legutko, leader of Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party, he writes, No… more
More on Britain’s “be grossly intolerant” science czar’s demands of scientists
| February 27, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Science |
In “Beddington goes to war against bad science” (Research Fortnight , 14-02-2011), John Dwyer and Laura Hood advise us that Selective use of science ‘as bad as racism or homophobia,’ and Government Chief Scientific Adviser John Beddington is stepping up the war on pseudoscience with a call to his fellow government scientists to be “grossly… more
John Beddington and Intolerance of Pseudo-Science
| February 27, 2011 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
It is good to see the growing impatience of religiously motivated pseudo-science. Too often science has been, and continues to be, religion’s handmaiden. In fact it is surprising there hasn’t been a stronger backlash. But now it may be coming on too strong—the backlash may be more of whiplash. Witness Government Chief Scientific Adviser John… more
Sacred Cows? Just in time. Fire up the barbecue, folks
| February 27, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Books of interest |
Norbert Smith, a.k.a. “Doc Gator”, author of Passive Fear and many children’s books has edited a collection of essays called Sacred Cows in Science, mostly on controversial issues in science: Science was at one time defined by its method. Carefully controlled experiments, provisional conclusions, and considered debate once defined the field. But those days have passed. Today,… more
Origin of life: Is this the kindergarten of science or its dotage?
| February 26, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Origin Of Life |
In “A Romp Into Theories of the Cradle of Life” (February 21, 2011), New York Times science writer Dennis Overbye sounds like a man who knows a comic scene when he sees one: Two dozen chemists, geologists, biologists, planetary scientists and physicists gathered here recently to ponder where and what Eden might have been. Over… more
Neuroscience: Further to the dangers of heeding negative expert opinion uncritically …
| February 26, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Neuroscience |
Earlier, I had mentioned the problem created by negative expert opinion, when dealing with children who are missing all or parts of their brain. A friend kindly sent me this in response, from one of the Cambridge Journals. Note the line in the abstract below, “The relative rarity of manifest consciousness in congenitally decorticate children… more
Coffee!! But no more or you won’t sleep: More on madding (or not-so-madding) crowds
| February 25, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
Here I commented on the reality of human crowds, as I have experienced them: Largely passive waves, moving along, but intelligently anxious to hurt no one. The harmlessly mentally ill are simply tolerated. Occasional boors (and couples who insist on airing private business in public) suffer social reproach. Given the multicultural diversity of the setting… more
The Magic Of The 100-billion-computer Organ
| February 25, 2011 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
In his 1987 seminal work entitled Impossibility In Medicine the American psychiatrist Jean Goodwin presented to the world the following acutely insightful vista of the brain: “Despite many assertions to the contrary, the brain is not “like a computer.” Yes, the brain has many electrical connections, just like a computer. But at each point in a… more
Start your day with a great new vid of the molecular machinery of life
| February 25, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design, Molecular Animations |
here: Every cell a densely populated ocean. I’d be interested to know whether wave mechanics can be used to interpret many of the behaviours of life forms. more
Man is ever a wolf to man! – or maybe sometimes just another slowly moving barrier against the wind?
| February 24, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
Last Friday night, I was crammed tight into the Toronto subway along with thousands of other warm bodies moving slowly north. The train slowed to inchworm pace and we received a message: Personal injury at track level. You know as well as I do what that means. Everyone did. Thousands of us were dumped out… more
Pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”? No, guys, that’s just an illusion. You are really pledging your selfish genes
| February 24, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Atheism, Darwinism, Ethics |
A friend writes to advise me of a “vicious” review by Scott Atran of Sam Harris’s latest book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values in the most recent issue of National Interest, which – he tells me – otherwise focuses on foreign and defense policy. Atran, an anthropologist connected with U Michigan,… more
Coffee’s up!! Evolutionary psychology now gives us its latest: The EP romance series
| February 24, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
(targeting customers of the more familiar bodice-ripper and cherry-chomp brands) David Brooks, who used to know tripe when he saw it, now gives us this, praising pop evolutionary psychology: Brain science helps fill the hole left by the atrophy of theology and philosophyA core finding of this work is that we are not primarily the products… more
On the non-evolution of Irreducible Complexity – How Arthur Hunt Fails To Refute Behe
| February 24, 2011 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
I do enjoy reading ID’s most vehement critics, both in formal publications (such as books and papers) and on the, somewhat less formal, Internet blogosphere. Part of the reason for this is that it gives one something of a re-assurance to observe the vacuous nature of many of the critics’ attempted rebuttals to the challenge… more