David F. Coppedge – Page 271

David Coppedge, B.S. Education, B.S. Physics, founded Creation-Evolution Headlines in late 2000 as a way to share science news he was encountering at NASA. It has grown into a highly-trusted source of news and commentary critical of the pro-Darwin consensus, providing analysis of breaking news of interest to creationists and evolutionists, without the Darwin spin. He has authored over 7,000 entries at CEH since its inception.

David worked as a system administrator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 14 years as a member of the Cassini team. For 9 of those years at JPL, he was Team Lead System Administrator, responsible for most of the ground system computers for the historic mission to Saturn. In this role he got to know many of the world's leading planetary scientists. In addition, he led JPL tours and was a Cassini outreach speaker to civic groups and astronomy clubs.

David is a board member and science consultant for Illustra Media and an Associate with Logos Research Associates. His sharing of Illustra DVDs led to his firing from JPL in 2012. This led to a court trial, assisted by the Discovery Institute and Alliance Defending Freedom. It ended with a lone judge ruling against him without explanation.

Coppedge now devotes more time to Creation-Evolution Headlines and other creation ministries. He also writes for the Discovery Institute, a leading think tank for intelligent design, where he has written over 1,700 articles.

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Awards

Chewing on Evolutionary Stories

July 3, 2011

Fish chew by sending their food on an assembly line to the back of the mouth. Mammals chew by positioning food for the teeth. Can evolution explain this difference? Science Daily was sure of it. “Evolution has made its marks -- large and small -- in innumerable patterns of life,” The article said. “New research from Brown University shows chewing has evolved too.” When one looks for the evidence that chewing has evolved, though, one only finds blanks with the assumption that evolution must have done it.

Awards

Can evolutionary theory explain terrorism?

July 2, 2011

In military strategy, it is vital to know what the enemy is up to. Can evolutionary theory help? An interdisciplinary team at the University of Miami got their heads together and appealed to an evolutionary notion called the “Red Queen” hypothesis, and claimed it provides a “Pattern in Escalations in Insurgent and Terrorist Activity” that is neutral regarding the good guys and the bad guys. It resembles, they argue, how pedators and prey evolve in nature. They offer their model as a way military planners can have the ability “to estimate not only the number of fatalities but how often attacks that result in fatalities will take place.” They applied their pattern prediction to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How robust is this notion, and should evolutionary theory take credit for it?

Awards

The Evolution of… Come Again?

July 1, 2011

Science news articles speak freely of the evolution of this or that, but the fine print often shows a disconnect with the evolution explanation. Can one speak of the evolution of something that has not changed for millions or years? The details in the following stories raise questions whether anything significant has evolved in the […]

Biology

Cells Have Dimmer Switches

June 30, 2011

A metaphor has been emerging among biophysicists: cells have rheostats or dimmer switches. The metaphor implies that some cellular regulatory processes are not just on or off; they have continuous ranges of values that can be finely tuned for the need of the organism. It's been years since our first report that gene expression is […]

Amazing Facts

Complex Arthropod Eyes Found in Early Cambrian

June 29, 2011

Complex eyes with modern optics from an unknown arthropod, more complex than trilobite eyes, have been discovered in early Cambrian strata from southern Australia. The exquisitely-preserved imprints of the eyes in shale were reported by Lee et al. in Nature. The abstract started by quoting Darwin and affirming evolution, but then revealed evidence that complex eyes go further back in the fossil record than previously thought possible.

Biology

A Tale of Two Pollens

June 29, 2011

Ambiguity is a bad word in science. Scientists want to be objective. To scientific realists, scientific truth is “out there” in the world, waiting to be discovered. The 20th century tempered scientific realism somewhat from its extreme form (scientism, the belief that science is the only reliable guide to truth). Knowledgeable scientists are more or less aware of the role of paradigms, social pressure and webs of belief that can affect interpretations of scientific data. But there is still a widespread perception that science “finds” truth in the world. Whether that happens can be pondered while exploring two recent stories about fossil pollen that arrived at opposite conclusions: one (by evolutionists) that supports old-earth geology (and “climate change” politics), and one (by creationists) that undermines it, finding fundamental biases among evolutionists who refuse to accept the implications of the data.

Biology

Avoid Confusion: Disbelieve Paleoanthropologists

June 28, 2011

If you care about the true history of the human race, don’t believe paleoanthropologists. They are clueless and confused. Every solution they come up with creates new problems, and their boastful announcements are likely to be overturned. That’s the gist of a commentary in PNAS by Bernard Wood, who wrote, “The origin of our own genus remains frustratingly unclear.” He ought to know; he’s an eminent paleoanthropologist himself.

Bible and Theology

NOMA Still Isn’t Working

June 26, 2011

Science journals and websites continue to act as if religion is a subcategory of the science department. If Stephen Jay Gould thought that NOMA was a good idea to keep peace between science and religion (see 11/05/2006), nobody paid any attention. Scientism has taken over the world. Teen religion: In “Teens Maintain Their Religion,” Medical […]

Awards

Flap Over Flight Evolution

June 26, 2011

Birds flap their wings when they run up ramps. It takes less energy than flying. This is uncontroversial; it is observable, and science can measure the energy cost. But for at least eight years now, Ken Dial at the University of Montana has been claiming that this behavior explains the origin of flight in birds (01/16/2003, 12/22/2003). When he first came out with this hypothesis in 2003, Elisabeth Pennisi in the journal Science said, “I imagine people will continue to argue about the origin of bird flight for a long time.” There’s been very little argument in the media over the years, though (05/01/2006, 9/22/2007, 1/25/2008); in fact, the BBC News just gave another plug for Dial’s hypothesis with no criticism at all.

Biology

Political Science 101: Doubt Scientific Claims

June 25, 2011

Science goes through a chain of messengers from data to consumer. In between are fallible scientists, who speak often in incomprehensible jargon and often only partially understand what they observe, but often wish to gain notoriety with a major discovery (or need to publish or perish). Next, the institutional press offices decide what is significant and try to digest the jargon to layman level. The predigested stories are then delivered to science reporters, who sometimes sensationalize the filtered stories to make a name for themselves. Finally, the media outlets, prone to peer biases, dress up the products to grab the eyes of readers of their newspapers, magazines, or web pages. How much of the real scientific data remains at the end of this game of Telephone? Sometimes the bias is clearly evident, but often the product is delivered with all the presumptive authority of science. Once in awhile, a reporter comes clean about the dirty work involved.

Awards

If This Is Evolution, What Is Trivia?

June 24, 2011

Some science news articles appear confident about evolution, but offer little evidence except trivial change . Sometimes, they even offer evidence that contradicts their expectations. If this is evolution, what is trivia?

Issues

Wrong Again: Planetologists Embarrassed

June 23, 2011

In most careers, being wrong too often is grounds for dismissal. False prophets in ancient kingdoms were stoned or shamed out of town. Only in science, it seems, can experts consistently get it wrong, and not only keep their jobs, but be highly esteemed as experts. Among the guiltiest of the lot are planetary scientists, whose predictions have been consistently wrong for almost every planetary body studied since the dawn of the space age. Their orbital mechanics is solid; they do get their spacecraft to arrive at the right place at the right time with uncanny accuracy. But what the missions reveal is often completely different from what scientists had told the public they expected to find. This has been true of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, comets, asteroids, and most of the moons of the solar system, where hasty revisions have had to be made after spacecraft data falsified the predictions. Here are some recent examples of “theory fail” in planetary science.

Amazing Facts

Follow the Leader: Nature

June 21, 2011

Ever since biomimetics (the imitation of nature) gradually emerged around 2002 and really took off in 2005, it has not slowed down. Over 90 previous entries in these pages have reported teams all over the world seeking out natural designs for ideas. The reports have accelerated in recent years to the point where there is only space for short summaries that give a taste of the wide variety of engineering work taking inspiration from plants, animals, and even cells. You yourself might inspire some inventor. Here are a few more highlights from recent adventures in biomimetics.

Darwin and Evolution

Humans Are Devolving

June 21, 2011

“We are all mutants,” proclaimed a headline on Science Daily. “First Direct Whole-Genome Measure of Human Mutation Predicts 60 New Mutations in Each of Us.” The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute press release reported 60 new mutations per individual, received from parents – a “striking value” the article characterized the “unexpected findings”.

Cell Biology

Stem Cell News

June 20, 2011

Stem cells continue to be hot subjects for research. They are divided into two basic “political” parties: embryonic stem cells (ES), which raise ethical issues about tampering with human life, and adult stem cells (AS), found throughout the body, which have no ethical issues and show the most progress for therapy. The latter include the induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), coaxed from adult cells to recover the ability to differentiate into multiple tissue types. Even though AS is leading, some scientists are still demanding federal funding for ES.

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