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New class of galaxy mainly dark matter?

From Rachel Feltman at Washington Post: But now scientists have found something entirely new: a galaxy with the same mass as the Milky Way but with only 1 percent of our galaxy’s star power. About 99.99 percent of this other galaxy is made up of dark matter, and scientists believe it may be one of many. The galaxy Dragonfly 44, described in a study published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is 300 million light years away. If scientists can track down a similar galaxy closer to home, however, they may be able to use it to make the first direct detection of dark matter. More. See also: Dark matter skeptics wanted These people should really talk. Follow UD News Read More ›

Most science findings wrong or useless?

From Ronald Bailey at Reason: “Science, the pride of modernity, our one source of objective knowledge, is in deep trouble.” So begins “Saving Science,” an incisive and deeply disturbing essay by Daniel Sarewitz at The New Atlantis. … And then there is the huge problem of epidemiology, which manufactures false positives by the hundreds of thousands. In the last decade of the 20th century, some 80,000 observational studies were published, but the numbers more than tripled to nearly 264,000 between 2001 and 2011. S. Stanley Young of the U.S. National Institute of Statistical Sciences has estimated that only 5 to 10 percent of those observational studies can be replicated. “Within a culture that pressures scientists to produce rather than discover, Read More ›

Reinventing the human story

Again: From Science 2.0: Redefining Homo — Does Our Family Tree Need More Branches? … Is it brain size; limb, hand and foot proportions; the ability to communicate or use tools? How do the added complexities of new Homo species found in Asia further rewrite the history of the genus and other hominins? In the September issue, EARTH Magazine delves into the challenges that have arisen as scientists still ask, “What makes a human, human?” Read at: http://bit.ly/2bC63Yf.More. Follow UD News at Twitter!

Rob Sheldon on the new Earth-like planet

From Jacob Aron at New Scientist, A planet just 30 per cent more massive than Earth orbits in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, which is just 4.25 light years away. How Earth-like is it really? … The planet – Proxima b – was discovered by astronomers who spent years looking for signs of the tiny gravitational tug exerted by a planet on its star, after spotting hints of such disruption in 2013. Proxima Centauri is 4.25 light years from Earth, making it slightly closer than the binary star system of Alpha Centauri, which the Proxima star is thought to loosely orbit. More. From Rob Sheldon I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Years ago, people didn’t put this type of Read More ›

From Undeniable: The “vague language of prejudice”

From Douglas Axe’s Undeniable: Only a very few research scientists have the opportunity to work against that disjoined view by openly studying life as something clearly and cleverly designed. I am one, and I can count the others on my fingers. There are more who would like to have ths opportunity, as shown every now and then by a paper th at gets past the policing system of an establishment science journal. A recent example is a description oft the architecture of the human hand as being “the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way.” Infractions like this almost always bring out the whistle-blowers, which almost always brings reprimand. Everyone must Read More ›

BBC: Your evolution fix on why bullying pays

From Brit tax TV: All the other chimps feared Frodo, which helped his rise to the top. He even pushed himself on his own mother, and fathered a sickly infant with her, who would not survive for long. “He was aggressive towards all of the other chimps,” says anthropologist Michael Wilson of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who first met Frodo in 2001. “A lot of the other males had a bare patch of fur on their lower back side from where Frodo would bite them.” Many other primates show similar behaviour to Frodo’s. His actions hint at something rather dark about our shared ancestry with chimpanzees. They suggest that bullying your way to the top has a long Read More ›

String theory defeated but never wrong

From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit at his blog, Not Even Wrong: The “SUSY Bet” event in Copenhagen took place today, with video available for a while at this site. It appears to be gone for the moment, will put up a better link if it becomes available. An expensive bottle of cognac was presented by Nima Arkani-Hamed to Poul Damgaard, conceding loss of the bet. On the larger question of the significance of the negative LHC results, a recorded statement by Gerard ‘t Hooft (who had bet against SUSY), and a statement by Stephen Hawking (not in on the bet, but in the audience) claimed that if arguments for SUSY were correct, the LHC should have seen something, so they Read More ›

Our solar system just right for life?

From Daily Galaxy: “After measuring alpha in around 300 distant galaxies, a consistency emerged: this magic number, which tells us the strength of electromagnetism, is not the same everywhere as it is here on Earth, and seems to vary continuously along a preferred axis through the Universe,” said Webb. “The implications for our current understanding of science are profound. If the laws of physics turn out to be merely “local by-laws”, it might be that whilst our observable part of the Universe favors the existence of life and human beings, other far more distant regions may exist where different laws preclude the formation of life, at least as we know it. “If our results are correct, clearly we shall need Read More ›

Earlier than thought: Oxygen on Earth

Oxygen should be on the stock market; the numbers go up and down all the time. From ScienceDaily: Geologists are using new direct methods to measure the Earth’s oxygenation. They identified, for the first time, exactly how much oxygen was in Earth’s atmosphere 813 million years ago — 10.9 percent. This finding, they say, demonstrates that oxygenation on Earth occurred 300 million years earlier than previously concluded from indirect measurements. … “Diversity of life emerges right around this time period,” Benison said. “We used to think that to have diversity of life we needed specific things, including a certain amount of oxygen. (The findings) show that not as much oxygen is required for organisms to develop.” More. Paper. (paywall) – Read More ›

Condescension news: Why the public does not “trust” “science”

From Richard P. Grant at Guardian: How many science communicators do you know who will take the time to listen to their audience? Who are willing to step outside their cosy little bubble and make an effort to reach people where they are, where they are confused and hurting; where they need? Atul Gawande says scientists should assert “the true facts of good science” and expose the “bad science tactics that are being used to mislead people”. But that’s only part of the story, and is closing the barn door too late. Because the charlatans have already recognised the need, and have built the communities that people crave. More. How convenient that the world is divided neatly between “charlatans” and Read More ›

U Chicago gets one thing right, at least

A friend writes that letters sent to the incoming class of 2020 make it clear the University of Chicago isn’t a fan of trigger warnings or safe spaces. From John Miltimore at Intellectual Takeout: Letters sent to the incoming class of 2020 make it clear the University of Chicago isn’t a fan of trigger warnings or safe spaces. … The University of Chicago recently made it clear to its crop of incoming students that academic freedom and inquiry remain pillars at the institution, and that the university does not support “so-called” trigger warnings or offer safe spaces that allow students “to retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own. Here is how the university welcomed its incoming class Read More ›

Flying Spaghetti Monster vs. ID

From Got Questions: Answer: Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (also known as Pastafarianism) is a “religion” created by a man named Bobby Henderson. Mr. Henderson created this satire in protest of the Kansas State Board of Education’s decision to teach intelligent design as an alternative to the theory of evolution. In essence, he was asking, “If foolish religious ideas like that of Intelligent Design have to be given equal time in high school biology classes, then why can’t other foolish religious ideas be taught alongside with it?” So, in protest, he made up a silly set of religious beliefs and demanded that they be given equal time in biology classes alongside the theories of evolution and Intelligent Design. His point seems to Read More ›

What’s wrong with social science today?

From O’Leary for News at MercatorNet: Social science, our “science of us”, is more susceptible to self-deception than other sciences. It is very much softer than particle physics and it has been especially hard hit by recent scandals. One factor may be the almost universally admitted progressive bias that makes frauds and hoaxes easy to perpetrate. There’s a technical term for that: “confirmation bias”, a tendency to attach more weight to evidence that confirms one’s own view. Much social science research seems to exist in order to provide evidence for theses that are already believed because they confirm the progressive worldview of the researchers. This background is helpful in understanding the fate of whistleblowers in the field, including Mark Regnerus (an Read More ›

Shocka! “Evolution” and sex difference in sports interest

From ScienceDaily: The take-home points from this review are that the sex difference in sports interest is (1) substantial and widespread, (2) partly due to evolutionary pressures that differentially affected males and females, and (3) unlikely to be fully overturned by socialization. These points challenge the bedrock assumptions of many scholars and policy makers. Most notably, Title IX is a U.S. law that prohibits sexual discrimination in educational opportunities, including sports, and Title IX is generally implemented under the assumption that females’ sports interest is intrinsically equal to that of males. The present research indicates that this implementation may require revision. More. (paywall) Paper. – Robert O. Deaner, Shea M. Balish, Michael P. Lombardo. Sex differences in sports interest and Read More ›