Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 196

Christian Scientific Society webinar May 29: Topic is space aliens

Free with registration.

“The title is “Is there intelligent life in outer space? What are the stakes?” The full details of the schedule, bios of the speakers, and titles and abstracts of their talks can be found at this link. The format of the event will allow for plenty of time for questions to the speakers and general discussion.”

Aliens in the news!   

Our topic of “Is there intelligent life in outer space?” for our upcoming webinar (see this link) seems to be very timely, as alien life is popping up all over the news in the past few months.

See this summary of the US government giving credibility to reports of alien advanced technology.A major report on UFOs is due to be released by the US government in June, right after our meeting.Claims have been made again of evidence for microbial life on Mars. A Harvard professor asserted recently that a strange object flying past the solar system was an alien artifact.Astrophysical Journal recently published an article arguing for multiple extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.

Are you willing to put your money on the certainty of your beliefs, whether for or against extraterrestrial life? 

See also: At Science: Water bears most likely did not survive a crash land on the moon. What impact does the test have on panspermia, the hypothesis that life might travel between planets via comets? “some parts of a meteorite impacting Earth or Mars would experience lower shock pressures that a tardigrade could live through, Traspas says.”

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At Science: Water bears most likely did not survive a crash land on the moon

Takehome point: There turns out to be at least something that this incredibly hardy species is believed not to have survived. That would be the crash land on the moon of Israeli satellite Beresheet with tardigrades aboard.

According to Wired, there were water bears (tardigrades) aboard:

Someone decided to test whether the water bears (tardigrades) could have survived:

Traspas and her supervisor, Mark Burchell, a planetary scientist at the University of Kent, wanted to find out whether tardigrades could survive such an impact—and they wanted to conduct their experiment ethically. So after feeding about 20 tardigrades moss and mineral water, they put them into hibernation, a so-called “tun” state in which their metabolism decreases to 0.1% of their normal activity, by freezing them for 48 hours.

They then placed two to four at a time in a hollow nylon bullet and fired them at increasing speeds using a two-stage light gas gun, a tool in physics experiments that can achieve muzzle velocities far higher than any conventional gun. When shooting the bullets into a sand target several meters away, the researchers found the creatures could survive impacts up to about 900 meters per second (or about 3000 kilometers per hour), and momentary shock pressures up to a limit of 1.14 gigapascals (GPa), they report this month in Astrobiology. “Above [those speeds], they just mush,”

Traspas says. Jonathan O’Callaghan, “Hardy water bears survive bullet impacts—up to a point” at Science

The water bears were above mush speed, it appears.

What impact does the test have on panspermia, the hypothesis that life might travel between planets via comets?

Traspas, however, says it shows panspermia “is hard,” but not impossible. Meteorite impacts on Earth typically arrive at speeds of more than 11 kilometers per second. On Mars, they collide at least at 8 kilometers per second. These speeds are well above the threshold for tardigrades to survive. However, some parts of a meteorite impacting Earth or Mars would experience lower shock pressures that a tardigrade could live through, Traspas says.

Jonathan O’Callaghan, “Hardy water bears survive bullet impacts—up to a point” at Science

Well, when we meet up with the aliens, they could well be water bears (tardigrades).

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Big (?) Surprise: Cool, glitzy papers less likely to be replicated

Well, it’s good that some are seeing it as a crisis and not just as the way business is done:

Summary: Researchers have uncovered another problem with a number of recent scientific research papers; citing data that is unable to be replicated. The study reveals non-replicable data is cited 153 times more because the findings they lay out are deemed more interesting.

UCSD, “A New Replication Crisis: Research That Is Less Likely to Be True Is Cited More” at Neuroscience News

Of course. The papers that are unlikely to be replicated are mostly going to be stuff that people want and need to believe that isn’t necessarily so. Or not demonstrated via the sources that gave rise to the paper, anyway.

The paper is open access.

Papers in leading psychology, economic and science journals that fail to replicate and therefore are less likely to be true are often the most cited papers in academic research, according to a new study by the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management…

The paper reveals that findings from studies that cannot be verified when the experiments are repeated have a bigger influence over time. The unreliable research tends to be cited as if the results were true long after the publication failed to replicate.

“We also know that experts can predict well which papers will be replicated,” write the authors Marta Serra-Garcia, assistant professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School and Uri Gneezy, professor of behavioral economics also at the Rady School. “Given this prediction, we ask ‘why are non-replicable papers accepted for publication in the first place?’”

UCSD, “A New Replication Crisis: Research That Is Less Likely to Be True Is Cited More” at Neuroscience News

To begin any kind of serious analysis, we would need to classify the papers by general theme and general drift. That might give us a picture of what type of finding is too readily believed. But is it a picture anyone wants? Who, that has any say in the process, can really afford it?

You may also wish to read: Why it’s so hard to reform peer review Robert J. Marks: Reformers are battling numerical laws that govern how incentives work. Know your enemy!

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“Neo-Darwinism is alive and well” according to article? On what planet?

This abstract proclaims the good news (for Darwinists):

The Modern Synthesis (or “Neo-Darwinism”), which arose out of the reconciliation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Mendel’s research on genetics, remains the foundation of evolutionary theory. However, since its inception, it has been a lightning rod for criticism, which has ranged from minor quibbles to complete dismissal. Among the most famous of the critics was Stephen Jay Gould, who, in 1980, proclaimed that the Modern Synthesis was “effectively dead.” Gould and others claimed that the action of natural selection on random mutations was insufficient on its own to explain patterns of macroevolutionary diversity and divergence, and that new processes were required to explain findings from the fossil record. In 1982, Charlesworth, Lande, and Slatkin published a response to this critique in Evolution, in which they argued that Neo-Darwinism was indeed sufficient to explain macroevolutionary patterns. In this Perspective for the 75th Anniversary of the Society for the Study of Evolution, we review Charlesworth et al. (1982) in its historical context and provide modern support for their arguments. We emphasize the importance of microevolutionary processes in the study of macroevolutionary patterns. Ultimately, we conclude that punctuated equilibrium did not represent a major revolution in evolutionary biology – although debate on this point stimulated significant research and furthered the field – and that Neo-Darwinism is alive and well.

Zachary B. Hancock, Emma S. Lehmberg, Gideon S. Bradburd, “Neo-darwinism still haunts evolutionary theory: A modern perspective on Charlesworth, Lande, and Slatkin (1982)” at Evolution (May 17, 2021)

But this story just rolled through the mill an hour ago: Attack on Darwinism at AAAS’s flagship mag “Science” re racism and sexism. Let’s pass over the question of why Cool People never noticed that stuff about Charles Darwin for nearly a century and a half. Noticing now? Good. Then what does Agustín Fuentes suppose should replace Darwinism? A war on science? A war on math? A war on people who think getting right answers is a good thing? What’s supposed to be the next step?

Something isn’t right with this instrument panel.

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Attack on Darwinism at AAAS’s flagship mag “Science” re racism and sexism

Yes, it’s sort of like the space aliens landed but this one is real:

Today, students are taught Darwin as the “father of evolutionary theory,” a genius scientist. They should also be taught Darwin as an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices that warped his view of data and experience. Racists, sexists, and white supremacists, some of them academics, use concepts and statements “validated” by their presence in “Descent” as support for erroneous beliefs, and the public accepts much of it uncritically.

“The Descent of Man” is one of the most influential books in the history of human evolutionary science. We can acknowledge Darwin for key insights but must push against his unfounded and harmful assertions. Reflecting on “Descent” today one can look to data demonstrating unequivocally that race is not a valid description of human biological variation, that there is no biological coherence to “male” and “female” brains or any simplicity in biological patterns related to gender and sex, and that “survival of the fittest” does not accurately represent the dynamics of evolutionary processes. The scientific community can reject the legacy of bias and harm in the evolutionary sciences by recognizing, and acting on, the need for diverse voices and making inclusive practices central to evolutionary inquiry. In the end, learning from “Descent” illuminates the highest and most interesting problem for human evolutionary studies today: moving toward an evolutionary science of humans instead of “man.”

Agustín Fuentes , ““The Descent of Man,” 150 years on” at Science

Fine. Let’s pass over the question of why Cool People never noticed that stuff about Charles Darwin for nearly a century and a half.

Noticing now? Good. Then what does Agustín Fuentes suppose should replace Darwinism? A war on science? A war on math? A war on people who think getting right answers is a good thing? What’s supposed to be the next step?

Let’s see what is allowed to be published in Science about On the Origin of Species, the central Darwinian text.

By the way, Agustin Fuentes seems, from his site, linked at his name, to be mainly interested in the evolution of religion.

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Did the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 bya support or suppress life?

A new paper says it’s not clear:

Scientists have long thought that there was a direct connection between the rise in atmospheric oxygen, which started with the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 billion years ago, and the rise of large, complex multicellular organisms.

That theory, the “Oxygen Control Hypothesis,” suggests that the size of these early multicellular organisms was limited by the depth to which oxygen could diffuse into their bodies. The hypothesis makes a simple prediction that has been highly influential within both evolutionary biology and geosciences: Greater atmospheric oxygen should always increase the size to which multicellular organisms can grow.

It’s a hypothesis that’s proven difficult to test in a lab. Yet a team of Georgia Tech researchers found a way — using directed evolution, synthetic biology, and mathematical modeling — all brought to bear on a simple multicellular lifeform called a ‘snowflake yeast’. The results? Significant new information on the correlations between oxygenation of the early Earth and the rise of large multicellular organisms — and it’s all about exactly how much O2 was available to some of our earliest multicellular ancestors.

“The positive effect of oxygen on the evolution of multicellularity is entirely dose-dependent — our planet’s first oxygenation would have strongly constrained, not promoted, the evolution of multicellular life,” explains G. Ozan Bozdag, research scientist in the School of Biological Sciences and the study’s lead author. “The positive effect of oxygen on multicellular size may only be realized when it reaches high levels.”

“Did Earth’s Early Rise in Oxygen Support The Evolution of Multicellular Life — or Suppress It?” at Georgia Tech Earth and Atmosphere Sciences (May 14, 2021)

The paper is open access.

So if the value of oxygen is dose-dependent, life probably had even less time to work with to become large and complex.

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Timely reminder from the New Atlantis that you are not Galileo

A new book on Galileo thumps the tub for “science,” with predictable results, says a reviewer:

In his new book Galileo and the Science Deniers, [Mario] Livio presents the famed astronomer’s life as a parable for our own time. He returns throughout the book to climate change, creationism, and rejection of public experts as examples of a “striking similarity between some of the religious, social, economic, and cultural problems that a person in the seventeenth century had to struggle with, and those we encounter in the twenty-first.”

All this is a stretch to say the least, based on a simplistic view of how science works and its role in governing human affairs. Strangely, this same naïveté is shared by science’s loudest critics, who claim to debunk science by unmasking its human side. By perpetuating the myth of a science free of human judgment and flaws, Livio ironically winds up giving fodder to this cadre of contrarians, gadflies, and cranks — who also have the notable habit of comparing themselves to Galileo…

On Livio’s account, the parallel between Galileo’s day and ours is plain: In both, there is widespread rejection of “the interpretation of the results” of scientific studies “almost solely on the basis of religious or political ideology.” Once one is in the grip of a theory like this, the contextual details hardly matter, only that both cases represent inadequate appreciation for science’s authority. All this, in other words, is based on an idealized vision — an ideology, one might say — in which science describes the world independently of human values, speaks in a unified voice across disciplines, and offers up unambiguous prescriptions for action. This bears little relation to scientific practices of the real world, the collection of human activities we can actually go out and observe.

Tess Doezema, “You Are Not Galileo” at The New Atlantis

Even Galileo wasn’t “Galileo,” for crying out loud. And science isn’t well served by uncritical fans of the concept itself, apart from day-to-day realities.

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Wort und Wissen conference May 28-30, 2021

Register here. Fine speakers, all Zoom from Europe, ID-friendly, and inexpensive:

Note: This is all Central European Time. Time zones.

Lineup:

Friday
10:20 Introduction
10:30 Dr. Peter Borger: Role of transposons in brain and learning activities
11:30 End of first session
17:00 Introduction
17.10 Dr. Royal Truman: Neurophysiology: interface to the mind
18:10 Break
18.30 Dr. Marius Keute: Neuronal Oscillations – building blocks of complex brain activity
19:30 End of second session
Saturday
9:00 Introduction
9:10 Dr. Peter Line: Is it logical to believe the human nervous system evolved?
10:10 Break
10:30 Sheena Tyler: Neurodegenerative diseases: the healing pathways
11:30 End of third session
17:00 Intro
17:10 Dr. Peter Borger: Role of transposons in brain and learning activities (repeat)
18:10 Break
18:30 Prof. Dr. Nigel Crompton: How the Self controls its Brain
19:30 End of fourth session
Sunday
9:00 Introduction
9:10 Dr. Royal Truman: Neurophysiology: interface to the mind (repeat)
10:10 Break
10:30 Dr. Marius Keute: Neuronal Oscillations – building blocks of complex brain activity (repeat)
11:30 End of fifth session
17:00 Introduction
17:10 Dr. Peter Line: Is it logical to believe the human nervous system evolved? (repeat)
18:10 Break
18:30 Denyse O’Leary: The naturalist myths we learn from media – stuff we know that ain’t so
19:30 End of conference
Organization: Dr. Boris Schmidtgall, Dr. Royal Truman, Dr. Sandra Mohr

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Bill Dembski on what John Archibald Wheeler got right and wrong about “it from bit”

In a chapter in a forthcoming book, Mind and Matter: Modern Dualism, Idealism and the Empirical Sciences (Discovery Institute Press), design theorist William Dembski explores the strengths and weaknesses of John Archibald Wheeler’s perspective that the universe is, at bottom, information:

Dembski takes issue with Wheeler’s approach: “It’s one thing to say that measurement requires information. It’s another thing to say that the thing being measured is created by the observer doing the measuring. That seems a bit much, and the ontological status of these observers raises thornier questions than it resolves.” P1 Indeed. In such a world, how did the observers who take these measurements come to exist? Also, to what extent is the view that reality is bits an artifact of how we measure it? … Dembski wants to establish more firmly than Wheeler could that nature is indeed, at bottom, informational. He goes on to introduce and defend informational realism.

News, “It from bit: What did John Archibald Wheeler get right—and wrong?” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: Dembski agrees that the universe is, at bottom, information but proposes “informational realism” as a sounder approach to unpacking the idea. More later.

You may also wish to read: Spooky action at a distance makes sense in the quantum world. Einstein never liked quantum mechanics but each transistor in your cell phone is a quantum device.

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Ann Coulter: I will NOT be scienced!

Coulter takes issue with the virtuous pursuit of nonsense and misdirection in the fight against COVID-19. In passing, she adds,

In response to the obvious question, WHY DIDN’T ANY OTHER SCIENTISTS SPEAK UP?, Wade says: “Perhaps because in today’s universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the community’s declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.”

Ann Coulter, “I Will Not Be Scienced!” at AnnCoulter.com

It’s the same on many other issues, as we know well. What’s going to be interesting to see is whether Science, as a concept, takes a beating after the COVID crazy — in the sense that “Trust the Science!” descends from mantra to double entendre to joke.

Remember the Marches for Science and all that? Seems like a different world now.

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