Michael J. Behe's Blog, page 93
March 20, 2022
Francis Collins in the hot seat re COVID-19
Readers may know Collins from his role promoting theistic evolution and/or some ethical issues around accusations of the use of premature babies as guinea pigs.
More recently, his recent and unexpected resignation from the directorship of National Institutes of Health has created expected questions around the Institute’s handling of COVID-19:
Dr. Francis Collins, a top U.S. health official, was caught off-guard when he was asked for the first time about a report issued by members of Congress that revealed new information, including the email Collins sent urging a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, according to an email obtained by The Epoch Times.
Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) until Dec. 19, 2021, called for a “quick and devastating published takedown” of the declaration, which called for a more balanced approach to combating the COVID-19 pandemic, in an email in October 2020.
The email, sent just days after the document was authored by three epidemiologists, was made public by a congressional panel near the end of 2021.
In an appearance on Fox News just hours after the panel’s report was released, Collins was confronted about the email for the first time.
Zachary Stieber, “EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Collins Caught Off-Guard by First Questions on ‘Takedown’ Email” at Epoch Times (March 20, 2022)
If Collins was confronted about that e-mail for the first time — after a year and a half — most U.S. media have way too cozy a relationship with science bureaucrats. He and other top ‘crats not only promoted harsh lockdown measures that have probably done much more harm than good, given that the people affected were not at much risk anyway, but appear to have sought to insulate themselves by directing attacks on critics.
All we can say is, keep those hardline questions coming. We can supply Canadians, if needed:
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A new solution for Hawking’s black hole paradox? “Quantum hair”
Catchy, we gotta admit:
In 1976, Hawking suggested that, as black holes evaporate, they destroy information about what had formed them.
That idea goes against a fundamental law of quantum mechanics which states any process in physics can be mathematically reversed.
In the 1960s, physicist John Archibald Wheeler, discussing black holes’ lack of observable features beyond their total mass, spin, and charge, coined the phrase “black holes have no hair”—known as the no-hair theorem.
However, the newly discovered “quantum hair” provides a way for information to be preserved as a black hole collapses and, as such, resolves one of modern science’s most famous quandaries, experts say.
Prof Calmet said: “Black holes have long been considered the perfect laboratory to study how to merge Einstein’s theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics.
“It was generally assumed within the scientific community that resolving this paradox would require a huge paradigm shift in physics, forcing the potential reformulation of either quantum mechanics or general relativity.
“What we found—and I think is particularly exciting—is that this isn’t necessary.”
“Scientists may have solved Stephen Hawking’s black hole paradox” at Phys.org (March 18, 2022)
Here’s a puff piece for the idea:
Let’s wait and see. Our favorite line from the media release: “In the first paper, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers demonstrated that black holes are more complex than originally thought and have gravitational fields that hold information about how they were formed.”
Where, oh, where have we heard the signature tune “more complex than originally thought”? Funny how the universe in general is not devolving down into a few simple “nothing” principles …
Both the Physics Letters B paper and the Physical Review Letters paper are open access.
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The New Yorker — oh, so cleverly! — misunderstands the issues around teaching of origins
The way only urban snobs can. But the article gets one thing right:
From evolution to anti-racism, parents and progressives have clashed for a century over who gets to tell our origin stories…
A century ago, parents who objected to evolution were rejecting the entire Progressive package. Today’s parents’-rights groups, like Moms for Liberty, are objecting to a twenty-first-century Progressive package. They’re balking at compulsory vaccination and masking, and some of them do seem to want to destroy public education. They’re also annoyed at the vein of high-handedness, moral crusading, and snobbery that stretches from old-fashioned Progressivism to the modern kind, laced with the same contempt for the rural poor and the devoutly religious.
Jill Lepore, “Why the school wars still rage” at New Yorker (March 14, 2022)
The story is essentially an attack on parents who want to prevent ideologues and their train of grifters from access to their kids — in a world where most parents are forced by law to send their kids to schools we are all compelled to support by our taxes, where teachers are compelled to teach whatever curriculum is handed down.
Essentially, in many places, it is compulsory to teach common ancestry of humans and apes as a dogma and illegal to teach any evidence against it. The progressive vilifies the people who object on any grounds…
Read the article if it’s free for you; it’ll tell you what the progressive elite think is happening in that outside world into which they occasionally risk poking their noses.
Imagine people thinking that they stand for liberty or openmindedness or…
To give some idea of the culture, have a look at people who support compulsory masking when there is no rational basis for it:
Happening now: UNR students are marching to protest the end of the campus mask mandate A petition to bring masks back has over 1,500 signatures so far pic.twitter.com/K6bOZNx0AX
— Ben Margiott (@BenMargiott) February 14, 2022
These college students could be teachers’ union members teaching little kids in a few years.
They help provide an argument for ending the public school system as it is now in favor of charter and voucher schools run by people with an emotional and rational (not ideological) interest in children’s welfare. And, let us hope, a basis for an interest in evidence-based science teaching.
Anyone following recent political news will discover that an increasing number of parents in the United States are refusing to forward their children for whatever mass indoctrination rolls in on the tsunami of Woke — and getting away with it. Some are even getting powerful politicians onside.
Some time it might become possible to talk about the origin of the universe, life forms, and humans as if facts mattered more than current progressive nut-outs. – O’Leary for News
Oh, by the way, as the COVID Crazy comes out in the wash:
● Science, as such, has very little to do with the question of who goes nuts over COVID and wants life in general shut down: “The key dividing line appears to be ideology. Americans who identify as “very liberal” are much more worried about Covid than Americans who identify as “somewhat liberal” or “liberal.” Increasingly, the very liberal look like outliers on Covid: The merely liberal are sometimes closer to moderates than to the very liberal.”
● The best way to understand the Crazy in Canada is that the ridiculously Woke Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needed his very own January 6 Capitol Riot moment.
But…
the best that typically non-violent Canadians could manage was to gather en masse on and around the overpasses of the major highways cheering the truckers on to a few Convoy weeks in Ottawa, honking horns by way of insisting on an end to the madness.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says its removal tens of thousands of deaths it had attributed to COVID-19 happened because the agency was mistakenly counting deaths not related to COVID-19.
The CDC removed 72,277 deaths, including 416 among children, that were said to have been from COVID-19 from its data tracker webpage this week.
Just like that. Turns out it was just a “mistake.” Which had nothing to do with inflating a panic…
Apart from those among us who genuinely need madness — it is now over. But it will be the fault of the rest of us if we don’t learn something from the events around Trust the Science!
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March 19, 2022
Woke science journal Lancet goes to war against meat
It’s not our job to have an opinion about meat. But when anti-meat advocacy contributes to a pattern of politically driven departure from facts in a science journal’s publication choices (in this case, Lancet), it forms part of a depressing (and relevant) “Trust the Science!” pattern.
As so often, the American Council on Science and Health has the story. First, the sky is not falling and Chicken Little needs anti-anxiety meds:
Recent research has shown, for example, that the amount of land dedicated to raising animals for food has declined markedly in recent decades. Indeed, all models of GHG emissions from land-use changes indicate that they have declined by a third since 2000. Technological innovations that improve animal health, produce better feed, and optimize the animals themselves for food production could boost this global sustainability trend. Dairies and livestock operations can even collect methane from animal manure and use it as an alternative energy source, turning a potent GHG into a sustainable source of fuel…
Moreover, approximately two-thirds of the world’s agricultural land is marginal, meaning only grass grows there. The good news is that ruminant livestock converts these nutritionally useless grasses into meat and milk that contain a wide variety of nutrients humans need.
These facts should radically alter EAT-Lancet’s policy recommendations, but the scientists on the commission aren’t familiar enough with farming to properly assess the evidence. “I think they are well-intended,” Mitloehner added, “but they don’t work enough with people in agriculture to understand subtleties or these reports would read differently.”
Cameron English, “Time To Eat Bugs? The Lancet’s Science-Free Campaign Against Meat” at American Council on Science and Health (March 15, 2022)
Prediction from the coffee room: Lancet won’t take up the cause of eating bugs instead. That’s likely one Woke too far unless your job is giving advice at the UN… Even then, you only have to advocate it…
You may also wish to read: Asked by science watchdog: Why is Lancet — famed medical journal — into anti-science advocacy? Sure, “anti-science” is a loaded term. So often, it just means inconvenient science or “unacceptable views” or revelations of ties that should definitely be investigated. Or whatever. In some cases, it can mean a preference for Wokeness over facts.
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At Mind Matters News: Why researchers focus on possible life on Venus
Chemicals that we shouldn’t find unless they are produced by life forms are sparking interest in exploring Venus from both public and private sources:
And, who knows, it is even possible that the life on Venus would turn out to be organisms that somehow survived an escape from Earth during the early days of all the planets’ formation. As renowned chemist James Tour points out, origin of life is an extremely difficult problem. Once life actually exists, extremophiles are showing that it’s unwise to make rules about how it could continue to exist.
Note: Here is what life on Venus would be like for a human.
News, “Why researchers focus on possible life on Venus” at Mind Matters News (March 19, 2022)
Takehome: Extremophiles — life forms that live under extreme conditions — are showing that survival of life is a much less severe problem than origin of life.
You may also wish to read:
Is this idea too crazy?: There was life on the early Moon? Not quite as crazy as some might think. The early solar system was very different from the current one. We won’t know for sure unless NASA’s Artemis project finds microfossils on the Moon. But it’s possible that, as with Mars, early life got started but died out.
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OOL claim: RNA molecule develops complexity following Darwinian evolution
The endless search for complexity from simplicity without intelligence:
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have for the first time been able to create an RNA molecule that replicates, diversifies and develops complexity, following Darwinian evolution. This has provided the first empirical evidence that simple biological molecules can lead to the emergence of complex lifelike systems…
Although there have been many discussions about this theory, it has been difficult to physically create such RNA replication systems. However, in a study published in Nature Communications, Project Assistant Professor Ryo Mizuuchi and Professor Norikazu Ichihashi at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, and their team, explain how they carried out a long-term RNA replication experiment in which they witnessed the transition from a chemical system towards biological complexity.
The team was truly excited by what it saw. “We found that the single RNA species evolved into a complex replication system: a replicator network comprising five types of RNAs with diverse interactions, supporting the plausibility of a long-envisioned evolutionary transition scenario,” said Mizuuchi.
Compared to previous empirical studies, this new result is novel because the team used a unique RNA replication system that can undergo Darwinian evolution, i.e., a self-perpetuating process of continuous change based on mutations and natural selection, which enabled different characteristics to emerge, and the ones that were adapted to the environment to survive.
University of Tokyo, “New insight into the possible origins of life” at ScienceDaily (March 18, 2022)
A friend tips us off: The RNA replication system the researchers used (see Fig. 1a) is a single-strand RNA (host RNA) encoding an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and a reconstituted E. coli translation system. The RNA replication was occurring on account of the replicase subunit being translated and becoming active in association with EF-Tu and EF-Ts in the translation system.
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.
See, we have a bucket and we could give you a bucket of maple syrup if we could borrow a sugar maple tree, provided the sap is running at this time of year = see, we create maple syrup…
The paper is open access.
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David Berlinski, the bad boy philosopher who doubts Darwinism, is back

In a podcast If you haven’t read The Devil’s Delusion, a response to Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, well, you sure might enjoy it. Meanwhile, from the intro to the pod:
Copyright © 2022 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.We live in intellectually mediocre times, when commitment to true debate as a means of ascertaining truth — and the understanding that reasonable people can have different opinions — has been replaced by a desire among the culturally powerful to stifle heterodox thought and punish unapproved opinions.
On the Humanize podcast, from Discovery Institute’s Center for Human Exceptionalism, Wesley Smith’s guest refuses to yield to such intellectual straightjacketing. A true polymath and a Senior Fellow with the Center for Science & Culture, Dr. David Berlinski advocates heterodox ideas and thought, ranging from questioning Darwinism, to espousing the once-self-evident truth that there is such a thing as human nature. He and Wesley discuss the philosophy of mathematics, the corruption of science, and the causes of the ongoing devolution of Western society. Berlinski is stupefied to learn of the new environmental movement known as “nature rights,” which he rightly brands as “idiotic.” It’s a fascinating conversation with Berlinski, who is rightly considered one of the great minds of our time.
Evolution News, “David Berlinski on Architectural Nihilism, Human Nature and the Holocaust, and Emotivism” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 17, 2022)
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L&FP, 54: J C Wright on the haunting “Morlockery” of many today, in the neo-gnostic, nihilistic “Technoplutocracy”
Mr Wright, a noted Science Fiction/Fantasy writer [and married to another, L Jagi Lampwriter Wright] observes a pattern of our times:

Technoplutocracy is my term for our current intellectual elite, a combination of traditionally leftwing and rightwing elements [–> outdated reference], dominating our public institutions, political and legal and scholarly, corporate culture, international finance, but most particularly in our mass media and social media. Not all Morlocks are technoplutocratic elites, but all elites are Morlocks.
“Morlock,” is a strange term, tracing to pioneer Sci Fi writer H G Wells in Time Machine. As Wright describes, “[i]n Wells, the Morlock is a cannibal troglodyte who treats other human descendants [the “fair, childlike Eloi”] as cattle [–> as in, food].” So, he extends to a sadly common phenomenon of today, “[i]n my wry jest, a Morlock is an intellectual trapped in a structure of reasoning he erected, at first, to justify his inhumanity toward his fellow human beings.” Just before, he noted that he uses the term to describe: “anyone who imagines himself to be evolved beyond human norms and into the realm of moral inversion, so that all rules of right and wrong, only for oneself, are flipped downside up.”
Technoplutocacy, can be easily parsed as a compound: Techno + plutocracy, rule of wealth and power expressed through domination of key technological structures. Here, obviously, the oligarchs of the dominant Internet, Social Media, General Media and associated platforms. The ones who exploit the principle that you cannot beat free.
That is,
FIRST TECHNOPLUTOCRATIC PRINCIPLE:
IF . . .
a technology driven service such as email or video hosting or blog and related hosting,or even the older broadcast radio or television, etc. is expensive to provide but is made available free or nearly free to the first tier consumer,
THEN . . .
it is because that consumer is actually the product being marketed to the true customer, the one seeking market research and/or information to guide agit prop and lawfare etc., the better to manipulate not only the consumer but the public at large.
(And yes, this is a first principle of our era; one, we dare not ignore.)
Wright, therefore, has put his finger on a saddening feature of our times, an irresponsible irrationality and nihilism posing as avant garde intellectual sophistication that then leads to a mood that demands inversion of millennia of civilisation and moral principle preservative thereof, to suit one’s preferences. This, then leads our minds to:
The center of this philosophy . . . a desperate and hysterical sense of indefatigable guilt, guilt without cause or forgiveness, a crushing, biting, acidic, soul-destroying guilt, a guilt for the sin of being created, for breathing air, for walking in the light of the sun. To escape this causeless a neurotic sense of guilt, a causeless and neurotic sense of entitlement, a sense of moral and mental superiority, must be manufactured by those with not even a specious claim to it.
To manufacture the claim, a gnostic view of the universe is adopted, a metaphysical conspiracy theory, where everything the common man holds to be unquestionable, one must hold as an illusion.
This implies the second Technoplutocratic principle, based on crooked yardstick thinking:

THE PRINCIPLE OF MORLOCKERY
(BEING, THE SECOND TECHNOPLUTOCRATIC PRINCIPLE)
IF . . .
a significant proportion of the public* — especially the “educated” or “informed” in a democracy where +/- 5% support can be decisive — can be manipulated or intimidated into accepting or enabling crooked yardsticks in the place of self-evident, plumb-line first principles and duties foundational to sound, sustainable civilisation,
THEN . . .
such fallacies, perversities and follies will so marginalise truth, prudence and sound knowledge that lawless oligarchy can be entrenched in power and can marginalise and stigmatise soundness as though it were nonsense.
HOWEVER . . .
Eventually, unsoundness has over-the cliff ruinous consequences.
_______
* In an oligarchy, that becomes the cluster of key factions.
As in . . .

Or, more simply . . .

Where, we need to rethink our political spectrum models:

Thus, we come to the strange phenomenon of many people doubling down on and clinging to grand delusion and its irrational, perverse, chaotic absurdities:
Note that a YouTube search, at least at the time of this writing, on the word “illusion” brings a list of optical illusions, but searching “is an illusion” a list of gnostic propositions: the self is an illusion; reality is an illusion; the passage of time is an illusion; free will is an illusion; the universe is an illusion; love is an illusion; consciousness is an illusion.
Sounds familiar?
That’s what we are seeing behind a good slice of the current rhetoric of objections here at UD, folks.
Wright then highlights the key point, self-referential incoherence and tied absurdity leading to neo-gnostic, nihilistic chaos:
Now, all these are self-refuting statements, not merely illogical but obviously and blatantly so. Their purpose is not to be believed and acted upon — what action is recommended in a universe where both you and the universe are illusions, not to mention time, free will, and reality? What action is possible? — their purpose is to create a false sense of mental superiority above dullards who believe reality is real and truth is true. [And, echoing Havel in his epochal Power of the Powerless, to so impose an agenda of falsities that you break the conscience and common sense rationality of the ordinary person, through imposed, inescapable cognitive dissonance leading to conscience numbing conformity to the imposed order of neo-gnostic nihilism.]
This false sense of mental superiority is prompted and sustained by believing in paradoxes and absurdities. No one can challenge a paradox, because a paradox denies what it asserts. No one can call wrong a statement that is both wrong and right — there is no place to start.
Actually, we can point out the absurdity and insist that we shall not live by lies, absurdities and perversities of thought or deed. Thus, we build a counter culture of the truth in loving community. In so doing, we can insist on first principles of right reason and first, branch on which we sit first duties. Of course, the slander machines will be cranked up to bring us under a cynical bombardment of filth, to smear, marginalise and scapegoat.
That simply reveals the Dark Lord such slanderers actually blindly serve, one whose very name is Slanderer or Accuser.
Resemblance to the course of public affairs and discussion in recent decades is not coincidental.
Wright draws out consequences:
This false sense of mental superiority segues into a sense of moral superiority on the same basis: merely by substituting bad for good, foul for fair, vice for virtue. Saying jihadists are victims, or that police are criminals, or that property is theft, or that theft is reparations, or that men are women, is not enough. One must accuse any who fail to repeat the paradox of being uneducated, distraught, gauche, heartless, misogynist or racist, or of suffering from new mental illnesses, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia, or of being running dogs and supporters of one evil world-conspiracy or another.
Naturally, these ad hominem accusations have no basis in fact, nor are they meant to. They are meant to signal one’s nonexistent virtue, to shout down opposition, to kick over the chessboard, and change the subject.
Hence, of course,
THE TRIFECTA FALLACY OF SLANDERING THE MARGINALISED
BEING, THE THIRD TECHNOPLUTOCRATIC PRINCIPLE
IF . . .
a critical mass (our small, tipping faction) can be so influenced and programmed in a party-line as to habitually resort to using red herring distractors led away to strawman caricatures of other views and their proponents (duly soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, confuse, poison and polarise the atmosphere for discussion on key matters) — the trifecta fallacy
THEN . . .
the resulting toxic polarisation, marginalisation or “cancelling” of the despised, slandered other or his/her considerations, will tend to stabilise the ideology and cultural agenda being promoted (despite its evident fallaciousness and potentially ruinous consequences). Where of course if this is pointed out, the programmed, habitual retort is to try to turn about and project the blame and fault to the other . . . a favourite agit prop tactic of men like Hitler and Goebbels.
HOWEVER . . .
again, unsoundness can lead to ruin.
Wright concludes:
For intellects otherwise bankrupt, ad hominem is the only threadbare remnant of a once-vibrant mental life. Standing silent when one has no counterargument is not an option, for it signals no virtue and props up no sense of false self-regard. Recall that for these sad souls, the monster of neurotic and causeless guilt, a guilt for being alive, lurks in their shadow and waits at the door, claws and fangs gleaming, lusting to rend and tear. If only empty words can hold the devilish beast at bay, then empty words will be said and shouted and spewed like vomit.
These days, sadly, even honest men otherwise careful of their reputation for integrity, will applaud, or even repeat, such empty words.
Food for thought. END
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March 18, 2022
Detecting design in the case of COVID-19
Readers will be aware of the political efforts to assure the world that the COVID-19 pandemic had nothing whatever to do with the gain-of-function virus lab in Wuhan, the city in China where the disease originated.
Cornelius Hunter has a look at claims in Nature Medicine that the virus could not have been designed:
Tentative Language Turns to New-Found Confidence
But when we reach the Conclusions section this tentative language gives way to a new-found confidence: “the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus,” and “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
Finally, all shadow of doubt is removed in the Abstract: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” This claim is simply not substantiated by what they argue in the paper.
This wrapping of two weak, subjective, arguments with ersatz certainty and authority paves the way for a triumphant press release where Andersen announces, without justification, that “we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes.”
To summarize, the authors use a terrible design hypothesis, and make ever-escalating claims of certainty from two weak observations. The paper makes unscientific claims and should not have passed peer review.
Cornelius Hunter, “COVID-19 meets intelligent design” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 16, 2022)
It’s understandable that virologists are running for cover now. But turning a hapless science journal into a Trust the Science! journal is a pretty steep price to pay.
And few are fooled anymore anyway.
Meanwhile, as the Crazy winds down, typical fallout:
In the United States: Hey, the attorney general for Missouri is even trying to sue the virus lab in Wuhan. A lost cause, doubtless, but at least he isn’t suing people in Missouri for not being nuts.
And in Canada: Federal Vaccine Mandates Under Review, Says Chief Public Health Officer (= Reign of Terror crumbling);
Canada cancels pre-entry tests. The saner portion of the population has given up wearing masks in the teeth of the wind. We will eventually need to address the mental health issues of the rest but just for now … .
As the lawsuits start getting filed, it is becoming somewhat less safe to be running a Reign of Terror from a civil servant’s swivel chair:
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At Mind Matters News: Confirmed: “Secret” tunnels connect our skulls and brains
The tunnels produce immune system cells and funnel them to the brain in case of inflammation or damage:
It seems that our brains are specially protected by “highly localized and specific” systems, not just general ones. The researchers hope that this knowledge could help fight autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis.
News, “Confirmed: “Secret” tunnels connect our skulls and brains” at Mind Matters News (March 18, 2022)
Takehome: Formerly, neuroscientists believed that materials to repair the brain would be ferried up from big leg bones but the brain gets special delivery close to home.
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