ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 428

Global Thought Leaders: Religion Reigns Supreme, Richard ranks Fourth

November 27, 2016

Who has international influence? Rather than any particular field or institution, it turns out to be the individual stars of various specialist areas. This is true of all the fields of knowledge analyzed. It’s notable, however, that a particularly high number of religious thinkers are represented at the top Global Thought Leader ranking:

– Popes Francis and Benedict in first and sixth place,

– the Dalai Lama in second place and

– in fourth place the thought leader of atheists, the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

The ranking analyses more than 200 thinkers from around the world, looking at their influence in the English-speaking digital infosphere, and aggregates different criteria into one overall Thought Leader rank (full details of the method here).

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Caesarean births ‘affecting human evolution’

By Helen Briggs

The regular use of Caesarean sections is having an impact on human evolution, say scientists. More mothers now need surgery to deliver a baby due to their narrow pelvis size, according to a study.

Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births today. Historically, these genes would not have been passed from mother to child as both would have died in labour.Researchers in Austria say the trend is likely to continue, but not to the extent that non-surgical births will become obsolete.

Dr Philipp Mitteroecker, of the department of theoretical biology at the University of Vienna, said there was a long standing question in the understanding of human evolution.

“Why is the rate of birth problems, in particular what we call fetopelvic disproportion – basically that the baby doesn’t fit through the maternal birth canal – why is this rate so high?” he said.

“Without modern medical intervention such problems often were lethal and this is, from an evolutionary perspective, selection. “Women with a very narrow pelvis would not have survived birth 100 years ago. They do now and pass on their genes encoding for a narrow pelvis to their daughters.”

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Coming Out Atheist, pg 56

“When you come out as an atheist, you’ll probably be in for a round of Atheism 101 – Myths and Facts. Maybe more than one round. Even the most supportive believers often have misunderstandings about us. And the more people you come out to, the more mythbusting you’ll have ahead of you. So do some homework first. Get familiar with the common myths about atheists – that we don’t have any morality, that we left religion because we’re angry at God, that there are no atheists in foxholes, etc. And be prepared to counter them. (Several atheists have written pieces debunking the myths about us: Amanda Marcotte, Sam Harris, and Austin Cline have particularly good ones, and I’m fond of my own as well.)”

–Greta Christina, Coming Out Atheist, pg 56

Discuss!

Judge says Jewish father ‘unwise’ to take children to museum because they could learn about evolution

A family court judge told a father he was “unwise” to have taken his ultra-Orthodox Jewish children to a museum where images and exhibits depicted the theory of evolution.

Judge Judith Rowe made the remark in a judgment on a fraught custody dispute between a separated couple from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Satmar sect, which regards belief in evolution as heretical.

The May 2015 decision, which has only now been published, was the third of four in a drawn-out case that highlighted the difficulties faced by religious communities like the Satmar if they encounter modern influences.

Its members adhere to a strict 19th-century interpretation of Judaism and contact with the secular world can be taboo.

In her remarks Judge Rowe, sitting at West London Family Court, further criticised the man for telling his five-year-old son that “a mum and dad are needed to make babies”, because it was “beyond the knowledge” a child from the group would have been expected to possess by that age.

In an earlier judgment in 2014, she said the father had also been “unwise” to let his children watch televison as they would not have been used to it in their mother’s home. The family’s identity has been protected for legal reasons.

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Fake news, a fake president and a fake country: Welcome to America, land of no context

By Andrew O’Hehir

How much of the “news” is fake? How much of reality is “real”? After an election cycle driven by lies, delusions and propaganda — including lies about lies, multiple layers of fake news and meta-fake news — we are about to install a fake president, elected by way of the machineries of fake democracy.

The country that elected him is fake too, at least in the sense that the voters who supported Donald Trump largely inhabit an imaginary America, or at least want to. They think it’s an America that used to exist, one they heard about from their fathers and grandfathers and have always longed to go back to. It’s not.

Their America is an illusion that has been constructed and fed to them through the plastic umbilicus of Fox News and right-wing social media to explain the anger and disenfranchisement and economic dislocation and loss of relative privilege they feel. All of which are real, if not necessarily honorable; it represents the height of liberal uselessness to keep on quarreling about whether Trump’s fabled “white working class” suffers real economic pain or is just a cesspool of racism.

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Immune System, Unleashed by Cancer Therapies, Can Attack Organs

By Matt Richtel

As Chuck Peal lay in a Waterbury, Conn., emergency room one Sunday in early September, doctors furiously tried to make sense of his symptoms. Mr. Peal, 61, appeared to be dying, and they were not sure why.

He slipped in and out of consciousness, his blood pressure plummeted, his potassium levels soared and his blood sugar spiked to 10 times the normal level. A doctor suspected a heart attack, but uncertainty left him urgently researching the situation on his phone.

This was not a heart attack. Mr. Peal’s body was attacking itself, a severe reaction by his immune system that was a side effect of a seemingly miraculous cancer treatment aimed at saving his life.

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Fear, Then Skepticism, Over Antibiotic-Resistant Genes in Beijing Smog

By Didi Kirsten Tatlow

BEIJING — A report that Beijing’s already notorious smog contained bacteria with antibiotic-resistant genes spread through the city last week like pathogens in a pandemic disaster movie.

“Drug-resistant bacteria make people very afraid,” The Beijing Evening News said in an article reposted by Xinhua, the state news agency, after a scientific study by Swedish researchers drew interest during yet another flare-up of hazardous smog.

The study, published in October in the journal Microbiome, found antibiotic-resistant genetic material in the smog but no evidence of live bacteria capable of infecting anyone.

That did not make residents of Beijing feel much better, though.

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Why Do So Many Graduate Students Quit?

By Te-Erika Patterson

With half of all doctoral students leaving graduate school without finishing, something significant and overwhelming must be happening for at least some of them during the process of obtaining that degree. Mental illness is often offered as the standard rationale to explain why some graduate students burn out. Some research has suggested a link between intelligence and conditions such as bipolar disorder, leading some observers to believe many graduate students struggle with mental-health problems that predispose them to burning out.

But such research is debatable, and surely not every student who drops out has a history of mental illness. So, what compels students to abandon their path to a Ph.D.? Could there be other underlying factors, perhaps environmental, that can cause an otherwise-mentally-healthy graduate student to become anxious, depressed, suicidal, or, in rare cases, violent?

Research suggests that the majority of students who enter doctoral programs possess the academic ability to complete their studies, but systemic issues at schools may lead to high attrition and mental distress among graduate students. In exploring what exacerbates mental-health issues among graduate students, it may be wise to shift the focus away from labeling graduate students “deficient” to investigate how institutions themselves may be causing attrition.

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How Trump Could Wage a War on Scientific Expertise

By Ed Yong

In September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned 19 common chemicals from common antibacterial washes, because manufacturers hadn’t shown that they were safe in the long run, or any better than plain soap and water. In October, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated a rule forcing dozens of states to reduce levels of ozone and other air pollutants coming out of power plants—a move that would protect hundreds of millions of Americans from lung diseases.  In the same month, the EPA and the United National Highway Traffic Safety Administration enacted a rule that limits the carbon dioxide emissions from heavy-duty vehicles like trucks and tractors.

In a few months, these regulations could vanish, along with over 100 others designed to protect the health, safety, and welfare of Americans.

To an extent, regulations are necessary. Laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Occupational Safety and Health Act, and many others have been instrumental in improving health, saving lives, and protecting the environment. These rules are multiplying. Their opponents argue that they limit businesses, stifle innovation, add red tape, and cost jobs. Their defenders say that they boost efficiency, create employment in new sectors, and are moral imperatives regardless of costs.

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Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Pick Wants To Make Christianity A Bigger Part Of Schooling

By Rebecca Klein

Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, spoke at a 2001 conference with her husband, Dick, about using educational philanthropy to promote their conservative Christian worldview to children.

The conference was hosted by The Gathering, a group of elite Christian philanthropists. Researcher Bruce Wilson, co-founder of the website Talk To Action, unearthed the audio after going through archives on The Gathering’s website. The recordings have since become unavailable, but a cached version of the website lists the DeVoses as “general session speakers” at the conference, which carried a $1,200 per person registration fee.

This week, The Huffington Post had contacted spokespeople for DeVos, the Trump transition team and The Gathering to confirm that it was the president-elect’s education secretary pick speaking on the audio. No one responded. However, a summer 2001 newsletter that The Gathering published, and which Wilson obtained, also confirms that they were set to speak at the group’s upcoming conference.

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