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Education

Word Choice Affects Scientific Impact
March 8, 2011
The emotional reaction to scientific ideas can change depending on the words used.  Can words manipulate public opinion?     “Wording matters,” said Jonathon Schuldt [U of Michigan] in a press release posted on PhysOrg.  His team found that opinion polls yielded a 16% difference among Republicans depending on whether they were asked if global […]
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Media

Philosophy Roundup
February 27, 2011
Philosophy of science is a broad discipline incorporating many sub-disciplines such as intellectual history, sociology, ethics, rhetoric, logic, demarcation of science from pseudoscience, classification, discovery, verification, explanation and more.  A dozen recent news stories discussed some of these topics. Medical ethics:  PhysOrg reproduced an AP story about medical research on humans in the US in […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Racial Evolution Education Proposed
February 24, 2011
Skin color provides a “handy tool for teaching evolution,” says a anthropologist at Penn State.  PhysOrg reported that professor Nina Jablonski believes “The mechanism of evolution can be completely understood from skin color.”  She proposes using the easily-observed trait in humans to teach evolution to students.  “People are really socially aware of skin color, intensely […]
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Cell Biology

Tipping Point for Embryonic Stem Cells?
February 13, 2011
At any time, courts could rule on whether funding of embryonic stem cell research can continue or must be halted.  Whichever way a decision is rendered, whether by Judge Lamberth on the legality of the NIH guidelines, or by the Court of Appeals for DC, the issue will probably wind up before the Supreme Court.  […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Darwinists Alarmed at Teachers’ Caution Over Evolution
January 29, 2011
“Creationism” refuses to die in American high schools.  Two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania sounded the alarm in Science,1 with suggestions for what to do about it.  The only suggestion off the table was to have debates about the evidence; no, that was completely out of the question: the report was focused on “Defeating […]
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Bible and Theology

Atheist Morality Theory Under Fire
January 24, 2011
Theists would naturally take issue with an atheist’s natural explanation for morals, but when evolutionists take issue in leading secular journals, it’s worth finding out why.  Both Science and Nature reviewed Sam Harris’s new book on the evolution of morality and had some concerns with his philosophy and logic.     Both reviewers recognized David […]
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Bible and Theology

Encouraging News About Iraq’s Marshes
January 18, 2011
Over seven years ago (05/01/2003), we reported on the devastation of Iraq’s ancient southern marshes by Saddam Hussein.  Azzam Alwash, an Iraqi who fled Hussein’s regime, had organized “Eden Again,” a project to try to restore the marshes after Hussein’s diversion of the rivers turned the lush ecosystem into a desert.  The extent of this […]
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Health

Earthquakes Don’t Kill: Corrupt Leaders Do
January 17, 2011
“A new assessment of global earthquake fatalities over the past three decades indicates that 83 percent of all deaths caused by the collapse of buildings during earthquakes occurred in countries considered to be unusually corrupt.”  That’s the opening statement of an entry in Science Daily.     Of course, no one can predict where a […]
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Cosmology

Scientists Debunk Scientists
January 12, 2011
What do you know?  We look to science to tell us about reality, but how confident can we be when they keep changing the tune? Undermining cosmology:  Science Daily tells us today that “Cosmology Standard Candle Not So Standard After All.”  Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope show that Cepheid variables shrink as they age, […]
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Cell Biology

Embryonic Stem Cell Advocates Push Against Evidence and Ethics
January 2, 2011
An old preacher said, “It’s never right to do wrong to get a chance to do right.”  That sums up in simple terms the ethical problems of using embryonic stem cells to cure human diseases, apparent in this quote from PhysOrg: The potent but hotly debated cells can transform into nearly any cell in the […]
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Bible and Theology

Secular Evolutionists Are a Small Minority
December 19, 2010
A new Gallup poll shows that only 16% of Americans subscribe to the view that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in the process.”  About 40% believe in Biblical creationism (recent creation within 10,000 years); that percentage climbs to 60% among churchgoers.  […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Evolutionists Endorse Sin
December 15, 2010
Crime pays in Darwinism, apparently.  Some biologists find good in what most of us find evil.  After all, in Darwinism, evil is only an illusion. Corruption:  Victims of corruption may have a different outlook on what Science Daily told its readers: Francisco �beda, an evolutionary biology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Edgar […]
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Health

Are You Too Clean?
December 8, 2010
You shower, you put on clean clothes, you wash your hands with antibacterial soap, you keep the house spic and span, you work in a clean office – and you set yourself up for disease and depression.  That’s what some scientists are proposing with the “hygiene hypothesis.”  By depriving yourself of access to your bacterial […]
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Media

Lean to the Left: Science Reporters Oblivious to Conservatism
December 5, 2010
Take any issue, and there will often be a liberal view and a conservative view.  Why is it, then, that science reporting is almost always liberal?  It’s not just that left-leaning slants on science issues predominate; the reporters and institutions often seem utterly oblivious to the idea that other positions, like conservative views, even exist.  […]
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Mammals

Science Done by Humans Is Mushy
December 3, 2010
Discoveries in science must be mediated by flawed agents: human beings.  Though the most hardened scientific realists maintain strong beliefs in external reality, the perceived reality is mediated by senses, then interpreted by minds that are not omniscient.  Those are some of the reasons that science keeps changing, as illustrated by some recent examples: Endangered […]
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