Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 554

Social science hoax papers is one of RealClearScience’s top junk science stories of 2018

We knew about the “rape culture in dogs” paper that got taken seriously but did you know about this one?:

Hoaxers Reveal That Some Social Science Journals Will Publish Nonsense. This year, three academics, James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian, revealed their efforts to publish blatantly ridiculous hoax papers in a variety of social science journals. … Accepted at Affilia was “Our Struggle is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism,” which essentially reworded a chapter from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Revised and resubmitted to Women’s Studies International Forum was “Stars, Planets, and Gender: A Framework for a Feminist Astronomy,” which argues “that feminist and queer astrology should be considered part of the science of astronomy.” Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghoassian showed that social science, and especially postmodernist grievance studies, are apt to publish meaningless gibberish.* Ross Pomeroy, “The Biggest Junk Science of 2018” at RealClearScience

Wow. As noted earlier, a good deal of social science is not, for any practical purpose, distinguishable from a hoax. The only significant question is whether the authors are in on it.

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See also: Sokal hoaxes strike social science again

Post-modern science 101: How gender theory “harms” pets

Objectivity is cultural discrimination

and

Nature: Stuck with a battle it dare not fight, even for the soul of science. Excuse me guys but, as in so many looming strategic disasters, the guns are facing the wrong way.

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Solzhenitsyn at 100

“Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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Rodney Stark: A social scientist who begged to differ with the “distinguished bigots” on faith and science

Social scientist Rodney Stark offers an alternative to the Sunday magazine truisms about the relationship between Christianity and science:

The basis for much of the antipathy toward Christianity is the image of the medieval Catholic Church fostered by “distinguished bigots,” as Stark calls Edward Gibbon and Voltaire among other Enlightenment notables. Stark, relying on primary source historians like the renowned Marc Bloch, shows, on the contrary, that medieval Catholicism was the breeding ground for modernity.

Most, if not all, ancient societies believed in fate. However, Yahweh gave humans the wondrous and terrifying attribute of free will, freedom. Individual freedom in the West then merged with the legacy of Athenian democracy and the Roman republican tradition to form “the new democratic experiments in the medieval Italian city-states,” as Stark reminds us.

These rival polities organized the first universities in a unique tradition of institutional learning and discourse which began at Bologna then spread to Oxford, Paris and elsewhere in Europe. From the medieval university science was born.

The distinguished philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, astonished a Harvard audience in 1925 when he said that science is a “derivative of medieval theology [since it arose] from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.”Terry Scambray, “No False Gods Before Me: A Review of Rodney Stark’s Work” at New English Review

The Sunday mag truisms are more popular because they involve no hard thinking.

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See also: Psychology: Study of religion takes evidence-based turn. Association with things most people see as positive does not, of course, make a religion “true.” It does, however, make one wonder about the perspective of psychologists who don’t seem able to recognize the pattern.

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Psychology: Study of religion takes evidence-based turn

It became impossible to ignore the fact that traditional religious lifestyles were associated with Intro of longer life and better health:

For anyone who took a college course in psychology more than a decade ago or who is even casually acquainted with the subject through popular articles, a close examination of today’s field would undoubtedly prove surprising. The science that for most of the 20th century portrayed itself as the enlightened alternative to organized religion has taken a decidedly spiritual turn.

Bowling Green State University professor Kenneth Pargament, who in 2013 edited the American Psychological Association’s Handbook of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, notes just how dramatically his profession’s attitude towards faith has changed in recent times. As a young academic interested in the connection between mental health and religion, he would “go to the library once a semester and leisurely review the journals” only to be disappointed by how little his colleagues had to say about it. But “no more,” Pargament happily reports. In fact, he adds, “it is hard to keep up with the research in the field.”

Today’s psychology tells us that faith can be very helpful in coping with major life setbacks, including divorce, serious illnesses, the death of a loved one, and even natural or human-caused disasters. Lewis M. Andrews, “Why Psychology is Turning Back to God” at Intellectual Takeout

Association with things most people see as positive does not, of course, make a religion “true.” It does, however, make one wonder about the perspective of psychologists who don’t seem able to recognize the pattern.

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See also: Templeton’s odd position: Atheists dump on them for no particular reasonAny sense of misrepresentation or threat seems like overactive imagination on the part of atheists. All the odder when it is becoming so clear that the war on science is being waged elsewhere.

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India: Is an odd mix of nationalism, science, and religion gaining ground?

A recent lecture in Mumbai raises the question:

Organized by a group called “Bharatam Reawakening,” the meeting — and the group — aim to glorify India’s past and the contributions of their ancestors to the world, even if it means taking a detour into the fantastic and the unlikely. The talk itself was titled “Vaimanika Shastra,” which means “Aeronautical Science” in Sanskrit, and at its heart is the claim that an ancient Indian civilization had developed aeronautical technology centuries before the Wright Brothers flew their first plane. A small but significant number of Indians believe that the mention of flying vehicles in Indian mythology is evidence that such technology was already created by their ancestors.

It’s just one of numerous fantastical ideas, fueled by a toxic mix of misinformation and brewing Indian nationalism, that have long percolated through Indian society. In the northwestern city of Jodhpur, one such theory suggests, there is ample evidence of an ancient nuclear war. And even the country’s own prime minister, Narendra Modi, has claimed that the Hindu god Ganesha — depicted as having the head of an elephant and the body of a human — provides evidence that ancient Indian doctors had mastered cosmetic surgery.Ruchi Kumar, “Indian Academics Confront the Threat of Nationalistic Pseudoscience” at Undark

These sorts of ideas, Kumar says, “are now creeping perilously close to mainstream scientific circles.” If so, the situation is somewhat similar to things happening in the Western world; see, for example, serious interest in reincarnation research as an outcome of transgender ideology. It is a meeting house with many chairs.

Also, a note from Undark: “Whistleblowers & Tipsters:

Corruption in science?

Academic discrimination?

Research censorship?

Government cover-ups?

Undark wants to hear about it.”

(They gonna need a bigger mailbox.)

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See also: Science journal embraces reincarnation research in support of transgender ideology

and

Which side will atheists choose in the war on science?

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Templeton’s odd position: Atheists dump on them for no particular reason

Here’s Jerry Coyne (who is beginning to “get it” about a bunch of stuff), bashing Templeton Foundation again:

Nautilus Magazine is an online site that bills itself as “a different kind of science magazine.” And indeed it is—for it’s partly supported by the John Templeton Foundation (JTF). The Foundation is largely dedicated to showing that religion and science are compatible,—even in harmony—for Sir John left his dosh to the JTF to fund projects showing how science would reveal the divine. Thus the magazine publishes accommodationist articles, like this one from last July, and now we have a new one by Brian Gallagher, editor of the Nautilus blog Facts So Romantic and a “Sinai and Synapses” (oy!) fellow.

As we see so often, quotes are taken from Einstein and even Stephen Hawking to show that they had some simulacrum of religion, although Gallagher at least admits that Einstein’s views on religion weren’t that clear. Gallagher first quotes Elon Musk, who reportedly said, “I believe there’s some explanation for this universe, which you might call God,” and then trots out Albert and StephenJerry Coyne, “A bogus reconciliation of science and religion from Nautilus” at Why Evolution Is True

Actually, Einstein had a clearly mystical bent, firmly tethered to the Western tradition. Hawking was s naturalist atheist who had little use for philosophy, despite the philosophical underpinnings of science. His stance embarrassed some naturalists. That said, most traditional Christians would not recognize Templeton’s understanding of religion (not that it matters; the current placeholders can do what they like with Sir John’s money and may we all inherit a fortune!).

Still, it’s odd hearing the foundation that gave the Templeton Prize (2011) to Sir Martin Rees thought of as “religious” in any narrow sense. See, for example, Rees’s notion that we I’ve in a computer sim or maybe a multiverse. The most puzzling thing is, his views are widespread in cosmology, so what would change? Bernard d’d’Espagnat (2009) and Francisco j. Ayala (2010) preceded him. He was followed by a politically correct array of religious figures (Dalai Lama 2012, Desmond Tutu 2013, Tomáš Halík 2014 (an outlier of sorts), Jean Vanier 2015, Jonathan Sacks 2016, Jonathan Sacks 2016, Alvin Plantinga 2017, and Abdullah II of Jordan (2018). Some choices seem to recognize the role of science (Dalai Lama, Alvin Plantinga) but any sense of misrepresentation or threat seems like overactive imagination on the part of atheists. All the odder when it is becoming so clear that the war on science is being waged elsewhere.

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See also: Proponent of multiverses and “our universe as possible simulation” wins this year’s Templeton Prize There will be cyborgs on Mars! says well-known astronomer

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Could giant marine animals have been wiped out 2.6 million years ago by a supernova?

Superenova remant/NASA

In a puzzling extinction, something took out giant shark Megalodon and 36% of big marine animals generally.

From ScienceDaily:

A supernova 2.6 million years ago may be related to a marine megafaunal extinction at the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary where 36 percent of the genera were estimated to become extinct. The extinction was concentrated in coastal waters, where larger organisms would catch a greater radiation dose from the muons.

According to the authors of the new paper, damage from muons would extend down hundreds of yards into ocean waters, becoming less severe at greater depths: “High energy muons can reach deeper in the oceans being the more relevant agent of biological damage as depth increases,” they write.

Indeed, a famously large and fierce marine animal inhabiting shallower waters may have been doomed by the supernova radiation.

“One of the extinctions that happened 2.6 million years ago was Megalodon,” Melott said. “Imagine the Great White Shark in ‘Jaws,’ which was enormous — and that’s Megalodon, but it was about the size of a school bus. They just disappeared about that time. So, we can speculate it might have something to do with the muons. Basically, the bigger the creature is the bigger the increase in radiation would have been.”

Megalodon/Sergiodlarosa(CC BY-SA 4.0)

 

The KU researcher said the evidence of a supernova, or series of them, is “another puzzle piece” to clarify the possible reasons for the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary extinction.

“There really hasn’t been any good explanation for the marine megafaunal extinction,” Melott said. “This could be one. It’s this paradigm change — we know something happened and when it happened, so for the first time we can really dig in and look for things in a definite way. We now can get really definite about what the effects of radiation would be in a way that wasn’t possible before.” Paper. (paywall) – Adrian L. Melott, Franciole Marinho, Laura Paulucci. Hypothesis: Muon Radiation Dose and Marine Megafaunal Extinction at the End-Pliocene Supernova. Astrobiology, 2018; DOI: 10.1089/ast.2018.1902 More.

Discussions about extinction these days don’t tend to focus so much on what the life form was supposed to be doing wrong but more on environment change that is too swift to adapt to. That makes sense, of course. But one wonders whether, one of these days, we will observe an extinction somewhat like this: The female spiders’ brains are infected by a virus that causes them to eat the males before rather than after mating. It’s something we’d have to see to believe but it could, after all, happen.

Earliest “land animals” were actually victims of a prehistoric Pompeii, say researchers

 looping millipede death-trail/Anthony Shillito

That’s the view of some researchers of the Ordovician trackways from 455 million years ago. They eyed the tracks skeptically because all other trackways on land dated from about 420 mya (Silurian era), and they found something interesting. From ScienceDaily:

What they discovered is that the trackways occur within volcanic ash that settled under water, and not within freshwater lake and sub-aerial sands (as previously thought). This means that the site is not the oldest evidence for animal communities on land, but instead “is actually a remarkable example of a ‘prehistoric Pompeii’,” says Shillito — a suite of rocks that preserve trails made by distressed and dying millipede-like arthropods as they were overcome by ash from volcanic events.

Further investigation proved that this was the case. In the course of their study, they found 121 new millipede trackways, all within volcanic ash with evidence for underwater or shoreline deposition.

Volcanic ash is known to cause mass death in some modern arthropod communities, particularly in water, because ash is so tiny it can get inside arthropod exoskeletons and stick to their breathing and digestive apparatus. Shilllito and Davies noticed that most of the trails were extremely tightly looping — a feature which is commonly associated with “death dances” in modern and ancient arthropods.

This study, published in Geology, overturns what is known about the earliest life on land and casts new light onto one of the key evolutionary events in the history of life on Earth. Shillito notes, “It reveals how even surprising events can be preserved in the ancient rock record, but — by removing the ‘earliest’ outlier of evidence — suggests that the invasion of the continents happened globally at the same time.” Paper. (paywall) – Anthony P. Shillito, Neil S. Davies. Death near the shoreline, not life on land: Ordovician arthropod trackways in the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, UK. Geology, 2018; DOI: 10.1130/G45663.1 More.

Now it gets even more interesting. Why would it have happened globally at the same time?

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See also: First transitional land fossils never walked on their legs?

Transition to land remake: Now starring … the trilobite

and

Early tetrapod (“fishapod”) sheds light on transition to land—maybe

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Smithsonian: The asteroid strike was only one factor in dinosaur extinction

Chicxulub impact crater/ NASA, JPL

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and produced cataclysmic disruptions that, it is believed, killed off about 75% of species (the K/Pg extinction). But many researchers think there must have been other factors at work. For example,

Fish, turtles, amphibians and crocodylians all generally fared better than strictly terrestrial organisms. “People have been observing this pattern since at least the 50s, and probably before,” Holroyd says. But the resilience of waterbound species had never been quantified in detail before, and the new analysis is revealing that the solution to the extinction pattern puzzle may have been right in front of us all along.

The surprise, Holroyd found, was that the difference between the survivors and the extinct of the K/Pg event mimicked a pattern that has held true for tens of millions of years before and after the asteroid impact. Species living on land, particularly large species, tend not to persist as long as those living in freshwater environments. Terrestrial species often go extinct at a greater rate than those in aquatic environments even without a massive catastrophe to take them out of the picture. Species that lived in and around freshwater habitats appear to have persisted longer even when there wasn’t a crisis, and when the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous struck in full force, these organisms had an advantage over their purely terrestrial neighbours. Brian Switek, “We Still Don’t Know Why the Reign of the Dinosaurs Ended” at Smithsonian Magazine

Pat Holroyd hopes that as more pieces of the puzzle are filled in, we will learn more about why aquatic life forms are at less risk of extinction.

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See also: The Atlantic: “Nastiest feud in science” erupts over dinosaur extinction theory

See also: In the past, the field has been littered with speculations such as that dinosaurs were dumber than mammals and did not look after their young. But we now know that some dinosaurs did look after their young and that the capacity to do so is much older than formerly thought. Also that placental mammals are not uniformly smarter than all other life forms.

Extinction: Had the dinosaurs been dying out before the big K-T extinction?

Dino diminuendo (They were dying out before the asteroid hit.) That might help account for why all dinosaurs disappeared but only a large proportion of other vertebrates.

Smoking did not kill the dinosaurs, but dark matter might have contributed

Dinosaurs doomed by egg-laying?

Size helped largest dinos survive longer?

Do mass extinctions happen every 26 million years or so?

Study: Two years’ darkness provides clue to total dinosaur extinction

and

We can’t understand evolution without understanding stasis and extinction

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Remarkable vid of a mouse embryo developing

This series of videos from McDole et al. shows the development of a mouse embryo, captured using adaptive light-sheet microscopy, and highlights cell division (part A), cell movements (part B) and tissue dynamics (parts C, D) during embryogenesis.

Paper. McDole, K., Guignard, L., Amat, F., Berger, A., Malandain, G., Royer, L.A., Turaga, S.C., Branson, K., and Keller, P.K. (2018). In Toto Imaging and Reconstruction of Post-Implantation Mouse Development at the Single-Cell Level. Cell. 175. (paywall)

Hat tip: Evolution News and Science Today:

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