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Adult Stem Cells Race Ahead; Embryonics Falter

Major advances are being made with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), stem cells reconstituted from adult tissues, while interest in embryonic stem cells (ES) seems to be drying up.     Both Nature and Science reported advances in iPS technology last week.  Nature reported that the number of factors needed to reconstitute pluripotent stem cells […]

Scientists Bemoan Research Fraud

A commentary entitled “Repairing research integrity” published in Nature June 181 struck a nerve.  Three letters to the editor in the July 31 issue said the problem is worse than Titus, Wells and Rhoades indicated when they said many issues of research fraud go unreported, and suggested principles to fix the problem.     The […]

How Much Is Known About Climate History?

Scientific papers on earth history can seem very erudite and confident, filled with jargon and named periods that appear carved in stone.  Every once in awhile, though, a surprise discovery raises questions about how sound their timelines and models really are.  Get a load of this opening to a review by Jacqueline Flückiger,1 an environmental […]

What Can Science Really Know?

Two book reviews on philosophy of science appeared in the leading general-science journals Nature and Science last week.  Both of them downplayed the oft-told triumphalist portrayal of science as a progressive path toward infallible knowledge – the picture most students get in school.     In Nature,1 N. David Mermin (Cornell) gave a surprising reprimand […]

Adult Stem Cells May Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Muscular dystrophy leaves children and adults in a nearly helpless state.  Parents watch in agony as their children suffer rapid and progressive weakness.  Attempts to support research, like the annual Labor Day events Jerry Lewis has held for over 40 years, have betrayed their inability to find a cure by the very fact of their […]

Why Academic Freedom Is Dangerous

Barbara Forrest has a tough case on her hands.  The veteran creationist-fighter has to convince the people of Louisiana that they did a bad thing by passing the Academic Freedom Bill, because academic freedom when it comes to discussing intelligent design and evolution is dangerous (cf. 05/12/2008, bullet 3).  The bill passed by 94-3 in […]

Evolutionist Learns from “Neo-Creationists”

Neo-creationists: the Intelligent Design (ID) people as well as the active old creationists, are still to be despised and expelled, thinks an evolutionist.  That doesn’t mean, though, that they aren’t making some good points.     The evolutionist is Gordy Slack, a science writer from Oakland, California, who previously wrote a book about the Dover […]

Darwinist Intolerance Continues Unabated after Expelled

Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has ranked #12 in documentaries after 3 weeks.  It could easily rank much higher after the DVD comes out.  Has the scientific community shown any signs of remorse over their treatment of individuals and groups who question Darwinism, as illustrated in the film? ICR expelled:  On April 24, […]

Veggie Tales of Human Evolution

Evolutionists may not know who our human ancestors were, but they know they were vegans.  That seems to be the essence of a couple of new twists on the human evolution saga. Pear-shaped tones:  Paranthropus has been called the “Nutcracker Man” because of robust teeth assumed strong enough to munch on nuts and seeds.  Enter […]

Darwinian Ethics Launch Unexplored Blessings or Curses

For a theory ostensibly restricted to biology, evolution sure has a lot of supporters interested in politics and ethics.  Look at what leading Darwinists are promoting.  Some of them are rushing headlong where angels fear to tread.  Where they will end up is anyone’s guess.  Their potential for changing life, culture, religion, education – even […]

Can Hardwired Humans Have Rational Choice?

Two articles recently claimed that we humans are “hardwired” for certain processes.  Fairness:  Science Daily reported on work by UCLA psychologists that suggest humans are “hardwired for fairness.”  A sense of contempt arises when games appear rigged unfairly, they found.  The psychologists found a particular region of the brain was activated during this response, but […]

Darwinism and Logic: How Strong a Grip?

Science and logic are inseparable.  Whether one approaches the study of nature from reason (rationalism) or evidence (empiricism), logical inferences and deductions are essential for understanding – or for claiming one’s scientific work produces understanding.  When it comes to the reigning evolutionary perspective, though, how can a blind, chancy process like evolution produce reason, laws […]

Big Science Fights Its Customers

Has “Big Science” lost contact with the public it serves?  Several recent reports show the scientific establishment (as represented by the leading journals) taking positions at polar opposites of the majority, and wagging the dog of the body politic. Chimeras:  Even though ethicists have called it “a monstrous attack on human rights,” to blend human […]

Psychology Without Darwin

Can psychology kick the Darwin habit?  For years it has been conventional to express all human actions in Darwinian terms.  We struggle with city life, for instance, because we evolved to hunt prey in the savannah – not the Georgia kind, but the African plains where we first climbed down from the trees to walk […]

Adulterers: Evolution Made Us That Way

Two articles that appeared the same day on Live Science are a study in contrasts.  One was titled, “Surviving Infidelity: What Wives Do When Men Cheat.”  The other was titled, “Are Humans Meant to Be Monogamous?”  The thread that tied them together was evolution.     The first article admitted the distress, shame, and sense […]
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