Discovery Institute's Blog, page 180

Haunted by Her Smile: Terri Schiavo, Ten Years Later

At First Things, I reflect on the powerful societal divisions that our reactions to Terri Schiavo reveal. From "The Great Terri Schiavo Divide":

At the end of this month, Terri Schiavo will be ten years dead. But she is far from forgotten.

Everyone reading these words knows the story, and everyone has an opinion. What began in 1990 as a private tragedy -- a vivacious young woman stricken in the prime of life with a severe cognitive disability -- became a source of profound cultural division,...

The Place of Life and Humanity in the Cosmos: Free Public Lecture by Biologist Michael Denton

Are humans the accidental products of a blind and uncaring universe? Or are they the beneficiaries of a cosmic order that was planned beforehand to help them flourish?

Join us on March 26 on the campus of Northwest University in Kirkland, WA, as geneticist and author Dr. Michael Denton explores scientific evidence showing how both the universe and the Earth are exquisitely fine-tuned to make human life and the life of other organisms possible. The event is free and open to the public, but re...

Onion Exposé: Carl Zimmer on Why "Junk DNA" Had Better Be Real

In the New York Times Magazine, our old friend Carl Zimmer asks, at considerable length, "Is Most of Our DNA Garbage?" You don't need to read the article to know how he'll answer, though you're welcome to do so. Regarding genomes and the research of T. Ryan Gregory (University of Guelph), Carl reports:

At its most fundamental level, [life is] a mess. [Dr. Gregory's] favorite way to demonstrate this is through what he calls the "onion test," which involves comparing the size of an onion's geno...

Diffusion and Osmosis: Twin Perils in the Life of the Cell

Editor's note : Engineers and physicians have a special place in the community of thinkers and scholars who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar in very practical ways with the challenges of designing or maintaining a functioning complex system on the order of a jet airplane, or the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News & Views is delighted to present this new series, "The Designed Body," and...

In Determining Truthfulness, a Google Team Would Like to Do Your Thinking for You

New Scientist reports on a paper by a Google team, "Knowledge-Based Trust: Estimating the Trustworthiness of Web Sources." Coming from a company with a sizable and voluble contingent of progressives in its work force, the proposal sounds like a nightmare for politically incorrect Web sources:

The Internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free "news" stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix -- rank websites according to th...

The Language We Use to Describe Human Beings Is Important

I'm sure everyone would agree with the proposition that the language we use to describe fellow humans is important. For example, we loathe the N-word because its very purpose is to denigrate, dehumanize, de-equalize, and degrade. Ditto my campaign to make the V-word anathema in describing those among us who are cognitively disabled. No human being is a carrot.

Now parents of children born with disabling or terminal conditions want the UN to do away with the designation "incompatible with life...

SETI Whisperers Betray Their Dependence on Intelligent Design

A concern shared by many people today is over whether or not it's wise to send messages into deep space. If aliens receive our missives, how do we know they're friendly and won't take an unhealthy interest in our planet? Any number of science fiction films describe the catastrophic results of an unfriendly visit by extraterrestrials. Maybe they will come to serve man -- in a soufflé. Lately, these and other anxieties have been the subject of lively chatter on sites like BBC News, Live Scienc...

Life on Titan? Unlimber Your Checkbook, Uncle Sam

Forbes alerts us to work by scientists at Cornell, who are excited about the possibility of life in the freezing liquid methane seas and lakes of Saturn's moon Titan. Well, life in a certain sense.

The team theorized that Titan might be able to harbor methane-based, oxygen-free cells. They conceived a cell membrane made up of nitrogen compounds capable of functioning in liquid methane at temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero. Given this much lower freezing point for cells based on meth...

More Functions Discovered for "Jumping Genes"

As the genetic junk pile shrinks, and the treasure chest grows, it's worth considering what happened to so-called "jumping genes" since we last looked at them in 2012 and 2013. These were considered part of "junk DNA" by geneticists disinclined to look for function in something they didn't fully understand. Consisting of repetitive elements, called "Alu" sequences, jumping genes can move freely around the genome, but code for no proteins. What could they possibly be doing?

News from the Unive...

"Resurrected" Flagella Were Just Unplugged

A recent paper in Science carries the clickbait title "Evolutionary resurrection of flagellar motility via rewiring of the nitrogen regulation system." I can't blame scientists in these days of comparatively low funding for trying to attract attention to their work. But the public will eventually grow jaded if misled readers keep finding jazzy labels stuck to picayune results.

A related cheerleading story in The Scientist says that the workers didn't set out to investigate flagellar evolution...