Silly Science Gets a Pass

It’s not just that science doesn’t know the following claims.  It cannot know them – yet few are the reporters laughing out loud.

1. Men’s faces evolved to weather punches during arguments (University of Utah, BBC News)
2. Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes (PNAS; see Live Science)
3. Sex organs evolved as an extra pair of legs (PhysOrg)
4. High status co-eds use ‘slut discourse’ to assert class advantage (PhysOrg)
5. Rats experience regret for making bad decisions (Science Daily, Science Magazine)
6. A computer passes the Turing Test (University of Reading); but it’s not the milestone it seems (New Scientist)
7. Complex mineral surfaces could be indicators of life on other planets (Astrobiology Magazine)
8. Delegating the dirty work is a key to evolution (Astrobiology Magazine)
9. Milky Way “may” have 100 million “life-giving” planets (Cornell U)
10. When nations agree, they don’t go to war (Live Science)
11. Free will stems from brain noise  (UC Davis)
12. Why haven’t we found aliens yet?  The answer could be climate change (The Conversation)
13. Standing up made human brains bigger, created philosophy (University of Sydney)

Stories like this, emanating from academia via university PR departments, commonly are passed along throughout the media with little alteration or dispute.

This is why it’s hard to take Neil deGrasse Tyson seriously when he talks about “science” as the path to knowledge (as opposed to “religious philosophy”).  Nobody questions the kind of science that gives us practical, verifiable results, but too much of what passes for science is raw speculation that is impossible to test, even in principle, or gives unquestioning allegiance to evolutionary assumptions.  The emphasis should be on evidence and logical thinking, not “scientific” thinking as if that is something unique.  All human knowledge should be based on logic and evidence, whether in history, law, science or anything else.

So where is the logic in free will coming from brain noise?  That’s illogical; it’s self-refuting.  How is a scientist going to get into the mind of a rat to see if it experiences regret?  Who is going to find 100 million “life-giving” planets, and what on earth does “life-giving” mean?  Who is going to watch an extra pair of legs develop into sex organs, or watch a man’s face take a punch and evolve better protection?  Do we need a scientist to tell us that nations that agree tend not to go to war?

All these things are so dumb they are funny.  Where are the reporters who should be laughing out loud?  They’re too busy mocking creationists, who believe that effects need a cause, and complex specified information requires an intelligent cause.  Wisdom is known by its children.  Secular science’s children are acting pretty darn foolish.