ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 544
March 9, 2016
World’s First Ever Recorded Grey Seal Twins Confirmed
Photo credit:
The pups, pictured here at the end of last year, were abandoned by their mother. Geoffrey Robinson Photography
When a female grey seal was found to be nursing two pups last year on a beach near Norfolk, eastern England, observers suspected that they might have been twins, an incredibly rare event for grey seals. Now it seems their intuition was correct, as they have received confirmation that the two young seals are indeed brother and sister, making them the first ever recorded grey seal twins in the world.
March 8, 2016
The Evidence Is In: Greater Gender Diversity In Science Benefits Us All
Photo credit:
Evidence shows science benefits from having researchers from both genders and a wide range of backgrounds. Shutterstock
The World Economic Forum estimated last year that at the current slow rate of progress, it will take until 2133 to close the global gender gap across health, education, economic opportunity and politics.
Paper Claiming Human Hand Was “Designed by Creator” Sparks Concern
Photo credit: PDArt/Wikimedia Commons
By Daniel Cressey
Researchers who wrote “design by the Creator” in a paper about the function of the human hand have triggered a debate over the quality of editing and peer review at the journal that published it—and ultimately retracted it.
The paper by Cai-Hua Xiong of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and his co-authors appeared in the journal PLoS ONE on January 5. But it came to prominence this week after its apparently creationist slant was flagged on Twitter, spawning the hashtags #Creatorgate and #HandofGod.
James McInerney, who works on computational molecular evolution at the University of Manchester, UK, started the ball rolling when he tweeted:
“Plos One is now a joke. ‘….proper design of the Creator’ absolute joke of a journal”
McInerney later provided a caveat, saying: “My original tweet was strong because creationism is a nuisance to me for 20+ years.”
The paper’s authors asked volunteers to perform a variety of tasks with their hands, and the researchers concluded that “our study can improve the understanding of the human hand and confirm that the mechanical architecture is the proper design by the Creator for dexterous performance of numerous functions following the evolutionary remodeling of the ancestral hand for millions of years”. It also includes the sentence, “Hand coordination should indicate the mystery of the Creator’s invention”.
When contacted by Nature, Xiong said that he was discussing the issues raised with his co-authors and would respond as soon as possible. He added, “Indeed, we are not native speakers of English, and entirely lost the connotations of some words such as ‘Creator’. I am so sorry for that.”
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
Atheist lawmaker’s prayer sets off Arizona House dispute
Photo credit: Bob Christie/Associated Press
By Bob Christie
An atheist member of the Arizona House denied the chance to deliver the chamber’s opening prayer by majority Republican leaders last month got the opportunity Thursday, only to see leaders rule his prayer didn’t pass muster and call up a Christian pastor.
The opening prayer by Democrat Juan Mendez included a call to work to help the state and its residents flourish and to “honor the Constitution and the secular equality it brings.” But he didn’t pray to any deity, which infuriated some Republicans who are Christians.
Mendez said before the session that he had been invited to deliver the opening prayer by majority Republican leaders and that he didn’t plan to invoke God.
After his prayer, House Majority Leader Steve Montenegro said Mendez’s decision not to pray to God didn’t meet House rules he issued earlier this year for the opening prayer. Speaker David Gowan then said “point of order well taken” and called on a Baptist minister on hand in an apparently planned response.
“At least let one voice today say thank you, God bless you,” the Rev. Mark Mucklow said in closing.
The minister’s invocation was followed by sharp comments from several Republicans who took issue with Mendez’s prayer.
Rep. Warren Peterson, R-Gilbert, said prayers have been part of legislative meetings “since the founding of this great country.”
“You know what it looks like, you know what it is, it has a long-standing tradition,” Peterson said. “We also know what it looks like when somebody is desecrating and mocking someone else’s beliefs.”
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
People Trust Robots To Lead Them Out Of Danger, Even When They Shouldn’t
Photo credit: Georgia Tech
By Mary Beth Griggs
Should you trust a robot in an emergency? That depends on the robot.
Researchers from Georgia Tech Research Institute decided to see whether people would accept the authority of a robot in an emergency situation. For the most part, people did, even when placed in an emergency situation, giving the team results that might as well have been dreamt up by writers of The Office.
The team asked over 40 volunteers to individually follow a robot labeled “Emergency Guide Robot”. The researchers had the robot (which was controlled remotely by the scientists) lead them to a conference room, but in a few of the cases, the robot first led the test subjects into the wrong room first, where it travelled in circles. In others, the robot stopped and participants were told it had broken. After getting the volunteers into the conference room, the researchers filled the hallway with smoke, and set off a smoke alarm, placing the untrustworthy robot outside the door.
“We expected that if the robot had proven itself untrustworthy in guiding them to the conference room, that people wouldn’t follow it during the simulated emergency,” said Paul Robinette, an engineer who conducted the study. “Instead, all of the volunteers followed the robot’s instructions, no matter how well it had performed previously. We absolutely didn’t expect this.”
Instead of leading them to the closest, clearly marked exit that the volunteers entered the building from, the robot led volunteers back to a different exit in the back of the building, and occasionally, even to a darkened room blocked by furniture. The humans showed a stunning level of trust in a machine that clearly hadn’t earned it.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
PLOS ONE retracting paper that cites “the Creator”
Photo credit: Carmine Flamminio/Demotix/Corbis
By Retraction Watch
PLOS ONE has retracted a paper published one month ago after readers began criticizing it for mentioning “the Creator.”
The article “Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living” now includes a reader comment from PLOS Staff, noting:
The PLOS ONE editors have followed up on the concerns raised about this publication. We have completed an evaluation of the history of the submission and received advice from two experts in our editorial board. Our internal review and the advice we have received have confirmed the concerns about the article and revealed that the peer review process did not adequately evaluate several aspects of the work.
In light of the concerns identified, the PLOS ONE editors have decided to retract the article, the retraction is being processed and will be posted as soon as possible. We apologize for the errors and oversight leading to the publication of this paper.
A spokesperson for the publisher also told us there may be more to say soon:
We may have more information later today or tomorrow.
Yesterday, the journal warned something might happen, in another comment:
A number of readers have concerns about sentences in the article that make references to a ‘Creator’. The PLOS ONE editors apologize that this language was not addressed internally or by the Academic Editor during the evaluation of the manuscript. We are looking into the concerns raised about the article with priority and will take steps to correct the published record.
In response to yesterday’s comment, a writer claiming to be one of the authors said they misinterpreted the word “Creator,” and asked to correct — not retract– the paper:
We are sorry for drawing the debates about creationism. Our study has no relationship with creationism. English is not our native language. Our understanding of the word Creator was not actually as a native English speaker expected. Now we realized that we had misunderstood the word Creator. What we would like to express is that the biomechanical characteristic of tendious connective architecture between muscles and articulations is a proper design by the NATURE (result of evolution) to perform a multitude of daily grasping tasks. We will change the Creator to nature in the revised manuscript. We apologize for any troubles may have caused by this misunderstanding. We have spent seven months doing the experiments, analysis, and write up. I hope this paper will not be discriminated only because of this misunderstanding of the word. Please could you read the paper before making a decision.
Competing interests declared: I am the author of paper.
We’re sympathetic to linguistic issues, of course, but it’s usually the job of editors or reviewers to manage those.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
Top Pakistani religious body rules women’s protection law ‘un-Islamic’
Photo credit: Reuters/Fayaz Aziz
By Mehreen Zahra-Malik
A powerful Pakistani religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam on Thursday declared a new law that criminalizes violence against women to be “un-Islamic.”
The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab last week, gives unprecedented legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. It also calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse reporting hot line and the establishment of women’s shelters.
But since its passage in the Punjab assembly, many conservative clerics and religious leaders have denounced the new law as being in conflict with the Muslim holy book, the Koran, as well as Pakistan’s constitution.
“The whole law is wrong,” Muhammad Khan Sherani, the head of the Council of Islamic Ideology said at a news conference, citing verses from the Koran to point out that the law was “un-Islamic.”
The 54-year-old council is known for its controversial decisions. In the past it has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, and it supported a law that requires women alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court before a case is heard.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
Meet Vincent Rue, the man behind the pseudoscience of abortion restrictions
Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
By Nicholas J. Little
Vincent Rue is not a medical doctor, but, through surrogates, he has tried to play one in court. And in this role of a lifetime, he has masterminded the dissemination of pseudoscientific testimony in several state court cases —all in an effort to defeat women’s right to an abortion. His act is about to be reviewed by his most important audience yet – the United States Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will soon hear the case of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, representing the latest battle in the long-running campaign by the anti-choice movement to cut off women’s access to safe, legal abortion, a right guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. Realizing that neither the court system, nor the majority of Americans, would tolerate an outright ban on abortion, they have instead sought to create an environment in which abortion is technically legal, but obstructed to the point that it is practically unavailable.
The Texas laws at issue claim not to restrict abortion, but instead, in a dizzying twisting of language, are presented as though intended to make abortion safer for women. According to the laws’ supporters, requiring doctors to maintain active admitting procedures at a hospital within 30 miles of where they perform abortions will prevent complications and ensure safety for the woman seeking a termination.
Let’s be perfectly clear: These claims are false. Abortion, especially early-term abortion, is an extremely safe procedure. In fact, women suffer fewer complications from early term abortions than from giving birth. That’s why leading medical groups like the American Medical Association, the College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Family Physicians have said that the onerous restrictions in the law do nothing to improve patient safety. The real-world effect of the law is to require the closing of most abortion providers in Texas, leaving the 5.4 million women of reproductive age without safe, local access to care. But that didn’t stop Texas from putting forward a string of allegedly expert witnesses claiming that these laws were rationally designed to protect women.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
This Pastor is Sleeping Outside in the Cold to Represent His Church Excluding LGBT People
Photo credit: #OpenDoorsUMC
By Camille Beredjick
It’s the job of a church leader to model empathy, kindness and compassion — something that can be hard to do when your church teaches discrimination. But one pastor wants to show his church what it really feels like to be cast away by your congregation.
Rev. Michael Tupper, the pastor of Parchment United Methodist Church in Parchment, Michigan, is calling attention to his church’s exclusion of LGBT people by sleeping outside his home in a tent for 175 consecutive nights. In February. In Michigan.
Tupper’s foray into LGBT activism began last year, when he was charged by church officials for officiating his daughter’s wedding to another woman. The UMC’s swift response showed him how deeply discrimination runs in the church, and he decided to fight back.
After he was brought up on charges by church officials for performing the same-sex union, Tupper pitched a tent outside the office of the man tasked with handling his case, hoping to dissuade him from prosecuting. When the case ultimately moved forward, Tupper returned to Parchment, where he is now vowing to sleep outside his house for 175 consecutive nights in protest — no small feat in Michigan, where snow is a constant and where temperatures often drop to frigid levels in winter.
“Most nights it gets into the 20s. It’s gotten down to 5 degrees,” he said, noting that he sleeps in a sleeping bag tucked inside another sleeping bag. “Yeah it’s cold. But I’ve managed.”
But it’s more than a personal protest, Tupper said — it’s symbolic.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
The Glaring Evidence That Free Speech Is Threatened on Campus
Photo credit: Brian Nguyen/Reuters
By Conor Friedersdorf
At a recent Intelligence Squared debate, an audience filled an auditorium at Yale University to weigh the timely proposition, “Free speech is threatened on campus.” The debate concerned higher education generally, not just the host institution. And at the event’s conclusion, having heard arguments on both sides of the question, 66 percent of the crowd agreed: free speech is threatened. That represented a 17-point shift from a poll taken as the event began. The evidence is that persuasive.One of the losers in the debate was Professor Shaun Harper of the University of Pennsylvania, who heads its Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education. He began by noting that “there has been a significant increase in the demand for our campus climate work” since last semester’s protests. In fact, he added, “this past December, we brought together 8,000 college presidents and other senior leaders who came to us for guidance on how to respond to racism on their campuses.”
With that background, I expected Professor Harper to have a broad sense of how common speech restrictions are at American colleges and universities. And I assumed that he would offer arguments for the position that they do not threaten free speech.I was wrong on both counts.
Late in the event, he declared, “I don’t want anyone’s speech to be suppressed in any setting.” The root of the disagreement was his belief that little speech is restricted.
And earlier in his remarks, Harper declared that while colleges may ask students to voluntarily limit their speech in various ways, like not wearing offensive costumes, “I invite our opponents to present us more than a handful of written, institutional policies––where it’s been put in writing that you can’t say certain things. You can’t wear certain costumes. Sure, students would be encouraged to do or not do something. But I, as a higher-education scholar who studied thousands of colleges and universities, have never seen a written institutional policy.”
That statement is baffling.
Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.
ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog
- ريتشارد دوكنز's profile
- 106 followers
