Science Media Abandons Empiricism

By failing to exercise restraint,
reporters launch themselves
into speculative fantasy islands

Once upon a time, scientists prided themselves on empirical rigor. Notions had to be subject to experimental verification. This value separated science from pseudoscience, they boasted; it elevated scientific knowledge above other modes of inquiry. Empiricism protected the good name of science from quackery and superstition. Not any more. Science reporters routinely publish things that cannot possibly be known, twisting abstruse observations into magnificent castles of speculation floating on air, held up by the phrases “could have” and “might have” and other tricks of the perhapsimaybecouldness meter. Observe some empirical evidence for this accusation.

A ‘primordial’ black hole may zoom through our solar system every decade (16 Sept 2024, Space.com). One can look in vain for any observational evidence for this outlandish claim. Darwin-loving reporter Charles Q. Choi weaves a story out of big bang theory’s speculation about primordial black holes, invisible dark matter, and moyboy speculation, relying on materialist cosmologists like Sarah Geller (UC Santa Cruz) with their computer models to hold the hot potato for him. “‘If there are lots of black holes out there, some of them must surely pass through our backyard every now and then,’ Geller said.” But if you don’t have data, why even bring it up? This is like saying, “If there are cows jumping over the moon, some of them must surely form craters every now and then.” For shame. True science is evidence based.

Earth may once have had a ring like Saturn (16 Sept 2024, New Scientist). Reporter James Woodford links arms with Ben Turner at Lie Science to promulgate this speculative notion. There are a few empirical “clues” to support the hypothesis put forth by Andy Tomkins at Monash University: craters within a certain range of latitudes and “meteorite signatures” in some limestone deposits. Adding to the narrative, Tomkins invokes climate change, saying that the shadow of rings might have cooled earth to send species to extinction, and then repeated impacts from falling ring debris finished them off. Woodford thinks he can excuse this grotesque tale by adding a disclaimer from another scientist, Birger Schmitz, who was not on the Monash circus wagon when the announcement was made:

“But the data are not yet sufficient to say that the Earth indeed had rings,” says Schmitz. He says that one way to test the hypothesis would be to search for specific grains from asteroids in the craters the team has identified and in other nearby similarly aged deposits, to see if the ring-linked craters show a clear signature.

If the data are not sufficient, it is not science! Scientific findings should be announced after a hypothesis has survived rigorous testing, not before. And due to the philosophical problem of underdetermination of theory by data, Tomkins must declare his assumptions and test all competing hypotheses to perform an inference to the best explanation.

A passing star may have kicked the solar system’s weirdest moons into place (16 Sept 2024, Live Science). Did reporter Abha Jain witness a star kicking weird moons into place? No? Then he should shut up. Scientists don’t speculate on what “may have” happened before they were even born.

Our reality seems to be compatible with a quantum multiverse (17 Sept 2024, New Scientist). Has reporter Karmela Padavic-Callaghan not read that a multiverse is not testable even in principle? Has she not learned that there are an infinite number of theories to explain any given observation? Has she not learned that correlation is not causation? Does she care about science, or is she trying to win the clickbait award at the office?

Even though the strange behaviour we observe in the quantum realm isn’t part of our daily lives, simulations suggest it is likely our reality could be one of the many worlds in a quantum multiverse.

(For the “many worlds” hypothesis, see 7 July 2007.) Well, then, we can turn this back on the reporter and tell her that she is not real. She is a figment of an evil programmer’s Matrix, or one of an infinite number of clones that look like her and believe opposite things, writing articles on their worlds that state opposite conclusions.

A wobble from Mars could be sign of dark matter, MIT study finds (17 Sept 2024, MIT News). More dark matter nonsense arises from the “science” media. MIT used to be known for its technology: ability, by observation and testing, to build things that work. Of what possible use is a speculation that “might” be a sign of mysterious, unknown stuff that nobody can prove actually exists? (See 3 Sept 2024). Oh, but they claim, clues “could” be detectable. Fine. Go gather observations, and shut up until you have something definitive. Those enjoying the comic pages might enjoy reading this fact-free article full of outlandish speculations about primordial black holes and other evidence-free hypotheses:

These primordial black holes would have collapsed an enormous amount of mass into a tiny space. The majority of these primordial black holes could be as small as a single atom and as heavy as the largest asteroids. It would be conceivable, then, that such tiny giants could exert a gravitational force that could explain at least a portion of dark matter. For the MIT team, this possibility raised an initially frivolous question.

“I think someone asked me what would happen if a primordial black hole passed through a human body,” recalls Tung, who did a quick pencil-and-paper calculation to find that if such a black hole zinged within 1 meter of a person, the force of the black hole would push the person 6 meters, or about 20 feet away in a single second. Tung also found that the odds were astronomically unlikely that a primordial black hole would pass anywhere near a person on Earth.

Tell us, dear reader, how this fact-free speculation blessed your heart today. This passes for science.

If today’s science reporters acted like this engineer, their articles would self-destruct.

Evolutionary Preposterousness

Some flowers may have evolved long stems to be better ‘seen’ by bats (17 Sept 2024, New Scientist). Reporter James Dinneen, shlooping along with the elegance of a drunken sailor, commits the usual Darwin fallacy once again: thinking that the Stuff Happens Law has a direction. It doesn’t. No flower “evolves to” do anything. And he has no empirical evidence for his tale other than the observation (suitable for creationists) that long stems work. Shamelessly he proclaims, “Echolocating bats can more easily find and pollinate long-stemmed flowers that stand out from the surrounding foliage, which may be why this floral trait evolved.” Oh, but Dinneen didn’t make this up, he counters. Nathan Muchhala and team at the U of Missouri did. Well, double shame then— shame for being a sucker for a Darwin just-so story, and shame for repeating it in public.

An Unexpected Result: The Mammalian Inner Ear is a Striking Example of Convergent evolution (17 Sept 2024, University of Wien). The brashness of the storytellers in Austria, claiming that the inner ear with all its exquisite design “is” an example of “convergent stuff happening” (see Darwin Flubber in the Darwin Dictionary) is exposed by their high perhapsimaybecouldness index.

This suggests that neutral (non-adaptive) evolution may be more important in shaping inner ear morphology than previously thought. A new study of the inner ears of a diverse group of mammals sheds new light on this issue…

This increased evolvability of the ear may have helped pave the way for adaptations to new environments and locomotor behaviors during mammalian evolution.

When they observed similarities between unrelated mammals, they should have thought, ‘Oh no! Darwinism is falsified!’. But instead, the shloopists shlooped along, saying (without watching these mammals for millions of years), “Mammals with distant evolutionary ties but similar ecological roles evolved comparable inner ear shapes.”

1st tardigrade fossils ever discovered hint at how they survived Earth’s biggest mass extinction (12 Sept 2024, Live Science). Here is how rational souls should have responded to finding tardigrades in amber: ‘Oh no! These amber pieces must be young! Such delicate tissues could not have survived intact for 82 million Darwin Years!’ But since Darwinism degrades logic, they shloop along into Storybook Land, claiming that these hardy “water bears” must have ‘evolved’ the ability called cryptobiosis (extreme inactivity) to survive mass extinctions. Too bad the dinosaurs didn’t learn their secret.

The new findings could also explain how tardigrades survived major extinction events, including the “Great Dying,” which wiped out around 90% of the planet’s species around 250 million years ago….

The authors suggest that this death-like survival state could have helped tardigrades survive several major extinction events dating back to the Permian extinction, or Great Dying, around 252 million years ago, when massive volcanic explosions triggered uninhabitable changes in the Earth’s climate.

Are they eyewitnesses to these volcanic explosions and their effects? Please, Lie Science reporters, describe for your readers how a volcano causes cryptobiosis to evolve. Tell us the specific mutations that the impersonal Tinkerer selected by chance. Go back in a time machine and watch stuff happening in this way. Otherwise this is not science. And don’t pass the hot potato to Harvard shloopist Marc Mapalo. He wasn’t there either.

“Knowing when specific tardigrades originated, such as those that have the cryptobiotic ability, can help contextualize why and how these tardigrades and their ability evolved,” study lead author Marc Mapalo, a researcher at Harvard University, told Live Science in an email.

Repeating his story makes Lie Science’s reporting team accomplices to his impersonation act.

Darwinists keeping their storytelling empire aloft.
Credit: J.B. Greene