Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 90

March 27, 2022

At Mind Matters News: Unexplained — maybe unexplainable — numbers control the universe

For example, brilliant physicist Richard Feynman called 1/137, the fine structure constant, “a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man”:

In Carl Sagan’s Contact, the extraterrestrials embedded a message in the irrational number pi (the circumference of a circle divided by its radius). But some other numbers are critical to the structure of our universe too — and why they are critical does not make obvious sense.

➤ Perhaps the most fundamental and mysterious one is the fine structure constant of the universe:

A seemingly harmless, random number with no units or dimensions has cropped up in so many places in physics and seems to control one of the most fundamental interactions in the universe.

Its name is the fine-structure constant, and it’s a measure of the strength of the interaction between charged particles and the electromagnetic force. The current estimate of the fine-structure constant is 0.007 297 352 5693, with an uncertainty of 11 on the last two digits. The number is easier to remember by its inverse, approximately 1/137.

If it had any other value, life as we know it would be impossible. And yet we have no idea where it comes from.

PAUL SUTTER, “LIFE AS WE KNOW IT WOULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT THIS HIGHLY UNUSUAL NUMBER” AT SPACE.COM (MARCH 24, 2022)

Many famous scientists have reflected on 1/137

News, “Unexplained — maybe unexplainable — numbers control the universe” at Mind Matters News (March 26, 2022)

Takehome: Nobelist Wolfgang Pauli (1945) is said to have remarked, “When I die, my first question to the devil will be: What is the meaning of the fine structure constant?” At any rate, he thought about it a great deal during his life.

You may also wish to read: Why the unknowable number exists but is uncomputable. Sensing that a computer program is “elegant” requires discernment. Proving mathematically that it is elegant is, Chaitin shows, impossible. Gregory Chaitin walks readers through his proof of unknowability, which is based on the Law of Non-contradiction.

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Published on March 27, 2022 19:18

Richard Weikart gets noticed at National Review

Note especially “the demoralizing development of Darwinism:

We owe a great debt to the intellectual historian Richard Weikart of California State University, Stanislaus, for a series of excellent documentary historical studies on the particularly horrific and tragic ascendancy of these scientistic beliefs and ideas in Germany, where Darwinism took very deep ideological root. His From Darwin to Hitler was reviewed in the print edition of National Review (“Murderous Science,” March 28, 2005). Of course Weikart is not original in the conceptual scheme he has recognized, documented, and deplored: Studies of first-rank intellectual importance on the demoralizing development of Darwinism have over the last 80 years been published in English by eminent scholars such as Jacques Barzun (1941), Richard Hofstadter (1944), Gertrude Himmelfarb (1959), Richard Spilsbury (Providence Lost, 1974), and Thomas Nagel (2012), whose outstanding philosophical critique Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (2012) I reviewed in National Review.

But Weikart has doggedly and rightly concentrated on the Darwinian intellectual bacillus as it inspired, affected, and accelerated the modern German tragedy of 1870–1945. Darwin himself wrote with optimism and praise to a German scholar in 1868: “The support which I receive from Germany is my chief ground for hoping that our views will ultimately prevail.” Prevail they did in Germany, owing not least to the explosive, histrionic rhetorician Nietzsche. And the world bled and wept at the outcome, commencing “the second Fall of Man,” as the philosopher Sidney Hook called history from 1914 onward.

M. D. Aeschliman, “Darwinian Racism: The Angry Ape” at National Review (March 27, 2022)

Now that Aeschliman brings the subject up, why is there a Darwin-in-the-schools lobby?

You may also wish to read: Richard Weikart: Scientists “Should Not Be Immune From Critique” It looks as though the thesis of Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism is getting a broader audience.

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Published on March 27, 2022 18:26

March 26, 2022

Sabine Hossenfelder on experiments that could prove Einstein wrong

His theories predict countless things accurately but his key theory of general relativity doesn’t mesh with quantum mechanics:

The most important reason physicists think that general relativity must be wrong is that it doesn’t work together with quantum mechanics. General relativity is not a quantum theory, it’s instead a “classical” theory as physicists say. It doesn’t know anything about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle or about particles that can be in two places at the same time and that kind of thing. And this means we simply don’t have a theory of gravity for quantum particles. Even though all matter is made of quantum particles.

Let that sink in for a moment. We don’t know how matter manages to gravitate even though the fact that matter *does gravitate is the most basic observation about physics that we make in our daily life.

This is why most physicists currently believe that general relativity has a quantum version, often called “quantum gravity”, just that no one has yet managed to write down the equations for it. Another reason that physicists think Einstein’s theory can’t be entirely correct is that it predicts the existence of singularities, inside black holes and at the big bang. At those singularities, the theory breaks down, so general relativity basically predicts its own demise.

Sabine Hossenfelder, “These Experiments Could Prove Einstein Wrong” at BackRe(Action) (March 26, 2022)

Significantly, no experiment could prove Darwin wrong. But that’s not because he’s right; it’s because Darwinism has become a cultural way of seeing the world and, as such, isn’t usually testable.

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Published on March 26, 2022 20:10

The Babylon Bee is in Twitter Jail…

For your Saturday evening amusement, here are some of their latest stories:

Babylon Bee Writers Trying To Slowly Tunnel Out Of Twitter Jail Behind Poster Of Gina Carano “Some of the most ruthless and dangerous people on the planet are residents here in Twitter Jail,” said Warden Parag Agrawal. “We have Trump and O’Keefe in isolation. Alex Jones is in and out of the hole… I would be very surprised if these Babylon Bee pests escaped.”

Taliban Spokesman Finally Banned From Twitter After Sharing Babylon Bee Headline “Warda has apologized for the irresponsible tweet and has promised to stick to promoting the slavery and subjugation of women according to Sharia Law in the future.”

Adam Confused By New Creature God Put In Garden As He Is Not A Biologist

Kindergartener Granted PhD In Biology After Correctly Distinguishing Boy From Girl

Do You Know More About Basic Human Biology Than Biden’s SCOTUS Nominee? Take The Simple, One Question Quiz!

The Bee has not yet been kicked off YouTube.

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Published on March 26, 2022 19:17

Is intelligent design theory getting ahead?

Casey Luskin debated this topic on Justin Brierley’s show, Unbelievable, with Adam Shapiro, a historian of science and religion.

David Klinghoffer fills us in:

Adam Shapiro is a science historian who has cast stones at intelligent design in the past, and missed. Back In July 2020 he offered the strange criticism that ID proponents could have redeemed themselves by prejudging with regard to the COVID-19 virus and concluding (in the absence of needed evidence) that it was of natural origins, thus rejecting “the Chinese lab myth.” That critique has not aged well.

David Klinghoffer, “Debate: “Is Intelligent Design Advancing?”” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 24, 2022)

Yes, he actually said that: “Proponents could have demonstrated the apolitical nature of their claim if they had debunked the Chinese lab myth using their methods. Instead, they have doubled down against Darwin.” (July 16, 2020)

It’s pretty obvious by now, and has been for some time, that the lab leak theory of the origin of COVID-19 is a very reasonable one. But you can be sure of one thing: It wouldn’t have counted in ID’s favor that ID proponents would refuse to rule out the lab leak theory.

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Published on March 26, 2022 18:45

At Mind Matters News: Memory leans more on the brain’s electric field than on neurons

MIT researchers compare the electric field to an orchestra conducting the neurons as players:

The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT offers an interesting new model of how memories are processed in the brain. Using two macaques playing a game while their brain activities were recorded, the researchers suggest the orchestra as a model. The neurons are the players and the electric field is the conductor:

As the brain strives to hold information in mind, such as the list of groceries we need to buy on the way home, a new study suggests that the most consistent and reliable representation of that information is not the electrical activity of the individual neurons involved but an overall electric field they collectively produce.

Indeed, whenever neuroscientists have looked at how brains represent information in working memory, they’ve found that from one trial to the next, even when repeating the same task, the participation and activity of individual cells varies (a phenomenon called “representational drift”). In a new study in NeuroImage, scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and the University of London found that regardless of which specific neurons were involved, the overall electric field that was generated, provided a stable and consistent signal of the information the animals were tasked to remember.

NEWS, “NEURONS ARE FICKLE. ELECTRIC FIELDS ARE MORE RELIABLE FOR INFORMATION.” AT THE PICOWER INSTITUTE (MARCH 14, 2022)

If the researchers’ model is verified in further research, memories are not “located” in any particular cells in the brain but in an electrical field generally. It will be interesting to see how this model meshes with a quantum approach to the brain.

News, “Memory leans more on the brain’s electric field than on neurons” at Mind Matters News

Takehome: The neurons associated with our memories may change; it’s the electric field that holds the memories together, the neuroscientists say. That’s a very different picture of memories than the idea that memories are “stored” in the brain. It’s not quite like that … It’s closer to the quantum world.

You may also wish to read:

What neuroscientists now know about how memories are born and die. Although we know more about memories than we used to, just manipulating them is not easy and may be unwise. Where, exactly are our memories? Are modern media destroying them? Could we erase them if we wanted to?

and

Researchers can’t explain: Memories drift from neuron to neuron Memories are supposed to stay put in the neurons that lay them down. A recent study, published at Nature, shows that they move a lot… The mobile memories are only one of many recent remarkable neuroscience finds that have been challenging textbook wisdom.

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Published on March 26, 2022 18:02

March 25, 2022

Universities? Do poor science career prospects contribute to far out theory and Cancel Culture?

That’s not a topic Stony Brook astrophysicist Paul Sutter addresses in his discussion of the poor career prospects of science postdoc in academia but the story he tells makes one wonder:

One option is to dramatically increase the number of tenured professorships and long-term research associate positions, to ensure that postdocs can find a secure home in academia. But another, seemingly harsher approach could be the tough medicine we need: Severely cut the number of available postdocs. Placing junior scientists in temporary positions that have poor odds of leading to a long-term career is unfair to them, especially when departments aren’t transparent about the fruits those labors will bear. If there’s going to be intense competition, it’s better to have it earlier, when people are better able to pivot into new directions. It’s one thing to produce scores of Ph.D.s for every one open position; it’s quite another to delay that cliff until scientists are in their mid-30s.

Paul Sutter, “Universities Are Failing the Next Generation of Scientists” at Undark (March 24, 2022)

Far out theory (e.g., “Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang…) may be one way of standing out in the crowd — and Cancel Culture is definitely a way of thinning that crowd. Sutter’s suggestions are worth pondering.

Readers may know Stony Brook astrophysicist Paul Sutter from his writings in the discipline.

See, for example, Astrophysicist: Stop looking for extraterrestrial civilizations. And accept that ‘Oumuamua was a natural object, though a very mysterious one. Paul Sutter is not saying that ET isn’t out there but that evidence of biosignatures (life) is more useful than technosignatures (intelligent life).

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Published on March 25, 2022 20:12

At Mind Matters News: Imaging studies fail badly at linking brain and behavior

Aha! news stories about what brain imaging reveals about human behavior are probably based on studies whose findings would not be confirmed by further research:

Brain imaging has shed much light on medical conditions in recent decades. So it was hardly good news for neuroscientist Scott Marek at the University of Washington when the results of a study linking brain function with intelligence in 2000 children produced very counterintuitive results. He and his colleagues had divided the sample into two groups of 1000 and run the same analysis on each — and they did not match. At first, he told Nature, “I stared out of my apartment window in depression, taking in what it meant for the field.”

Then the team decided to study the problem, using the three key studies in this type of research, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, Human Connectome Project (HCP) and the UK Biobank, amounting to 50,000 scans. The results were sobering:

As a result, the conclusions of most published ‘brain-wide association studies’ — typically involving dozens to hundreds of participants — might be wrong. Such studies link variations in brain structure and activity to differences in cognitive ability, mental health and other behavioural traits. For instance, numerous studies have identified brain anatomy or activity patterns that, the studies say, can distinguish people who have been diagnosed with depression from those who have not. Studies also often seek biomarkers for behavioural traits.

“There’s a lot of investigators who have committed their careers to doing the kind of science that this paper says is basically junk,” says Russell Poldrack, a cognitive neuroscientist at Stanford University in California, who was one of the paper’s peer reviewers. “It really forces a rethink.”

Ewen Callaway, “Can brain scans reveal behaviour? Bombshell study says not yet” at Nature (March 17, 2022) The paper requires a fee or subscription.

The challenged field is not brain imaging as such but a specific subset of brain imaging — brain wide association studies (BWAS) — that attempts to account for human behavior differences as differences in the human brain. Such studies, often of psychiatric conditions, were the Next Step for neuroimaging: showing that human behavior is based on simple, identifiable brain states. But that’s not what happened:

News, “Imaging studies fail badly at linking brain and behavior” at Mind Matters News (March 25, 2022)

Takehome: Such studies, often of psychiatric conditions, were the Next Step for brain imaging: showing that human behavior is based on simple, identifiable brain states.

You may also wish to read: No, fMRI brain scans are NOT reading our minds. After reading her perceptive essay about the problems in fMRI imaging in neuroscience, I’m sad that a gifted student has doubts about a career in the field. Neuroscience badly needs skeptics to show how unreliable technology, biased handling of data, and materialism’s conceptual mess frustrate science. (Michael Egnor)

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Published on March 25, 2022 20:08

Scientists tarred in Maori “ways of knowing” uproar resign from New Zealand’s Royal Society

One of them, Garth Cooper (himself part Maori), wrote about his decision. Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has the story, quoting from the letter:

. . . An NCEA (NZ’s public examination system) working group referred to science as a “Western European invention”. We strongly objected to that particular characterization since science is universal. One recent extreme of some astonishing views being introduced, for example, claims that “to insist Māori children learn to read is an act of colonisation” [see here].

. . .The inherent bias against students in suggesting that rather than a sound grounding in mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics, there is to be parity with non-scientific systems such as mātauranga Māori, will be massively counterproductive for all students, but especially biased against Māori.

Māori are good students when they are afforded the proper opportunity to learn, and I have specific knowledge and experience of this based on my past formal roles in Māori education. Their right to unbiased access to optimal education, if they wish, should be protected vigorously.

Jerry Coyne, “Garth Cooper explains why he resigned from New Zealand’s Royal Society” at Why Evolution Is True (March 24, 2022)

Yes, but a good education in science for Maori children would interfere with the goals of the war on science and the war on math — producing the dreaded result that the Maori students grow up into competent critics of the establishment who know nonsense when they hear it. In the view of some, there are already far too many people like that around.

You may also wish to read:

New Zealand’s Royal Society grudgingly lets off two scientists who critiqued “Indigenous ways of knowing” taught as science Jerry Coyne: As I said, the controversy over the hegemony of MM [Indigenous ways of knowing taught as science] in science continues, and if I know anything about New Zealand educational politics, MM will worm its way into science class. All the new RSNZ statement does is exculpate two scientists unfairly accused of misbehavior and harm for saying that MM, while worthy of being taught, is not coequal with modern science.

Jerry Coyne on the war on math, science, in New Zealand – and falling scores

and

Maori creationism is okay In New Zealand schools; Objectors could be booted from NZ’s Royal Society.

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Published on March 25, 2022 19:48

Why are “skeptics” the most gullible people around?

Readers will perhaps recall Brian Miller’s fact check of an overblown RNA origin of life claim which, if true, might have netted the researchers a Nobel. Curiously, neurologist Steven Novella fell for it. Brian Miller has the story:

Novella is a prominent atheist who jumped at the chance to promote the secular creation narrative of life’s origin. In his blog post, he even included a figure from an article published in the journal Cell depicting the RNA world hypothesis. The diagram includes a long RNA chain folded into an enzyme-like structure (aka ribozyme) that can perform biologically relevant functions such as replicating RNA templates. The diagram depicts the journey of the ribozyme and neighboring peptides into modern cellular machinery.

However, Novella’s depiction of the experiment is completely inaccurate. The RNAs did not fold into ribozymes that replicated other RNAs or directly performed any other function. Instead, the investigators supplied all the cellular machinery to manufacture proteins. They also supplied the “host” RNA that encoded the information to generate proteins that replicated RNA templates. The “translation-coupled RNA replication (TcRR) system” did not generate anything truly novel or grow in biologically relevant complexity. The RNAs solely acquired mutations that altered the translated replicase’s efficiency and accuracy.

Brian Miller, “Yale’s Steven Novella Falls for Origin-of-Life Hype” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 24, 2022)

And the irony:

The irony of Novella’s pollyannish description of the research is that he is a host of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast…

If Novella had consistently applied his hype-detection tools to the press release from the University of Tokyo, he would have described the research in dramatically different terms.

Brian Miller, “Yale’s Steven Novella Falls for Origin-of-Life Hype” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 24, 2022)

But he won’t, of course. His skepticism only points in one direction.

Note: Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor has been known to clash with Novella on matters more closely related to the discipline. See, for example, Tales of the mind: A neurologist encounters the house of mirrors Materialism is an intellectual trap, out of which neuroscience needs to climb. Neurologist Steven Novella refutes himself. He first asserts that everything he knows is an illusion. Then he insists that his illusions slap him in the face with reality.

By the way, the University of Tokyo paper is open access.

You may also wish to read:

So why aren’t the RNA OOL researchers in the running for the Nobel Prize? When a story is the one people need to believe, they don’t ask for detailed demonstrations of how it could have happened that way. Chances are, they don’t even want them because then they would be responsible for knowing that it didn’t really happen.

and

OOL claim: RNA molecule develops complexity following Darwinian evolution. Bottom line: A lot of the machinery that supposedly spontaneously created complexity was in fact borrowed. We’re told that James Tour gets quite angry about what amounts to cheating in the claims about origin of life.

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Published on March 25, 2022 19:12

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