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Mercury Orbital Science Begins
June 18, 2011
Now that the MESSENGER spacecraft has settled into its orbit, systematic detailed observations are coming in. The Carnegie Institution has posted preliminary findings from the orbital science tour, rejoicing that “Tens of thousands of images reveal major features on the planet in high resolution for the first time,” and confessing that the data are confirming some predictions and revealing surprises.
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Feedback
May 25, 2011
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Cosmology, Mythology, and Heaven
May 16, 2011
Stephen Hawking’s recent comment that heaven is a fairy tale (see The Guardian) started blogger keystrokes clicking.  But one might ask, what does he know about it?  Are the opinions of a cosmologist any better than those of a theologian?     Hawking told The Guardian that he considers the brain like a computer that […]
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Weird Evolution Tricks
May 13, 2011
Evolution is a strange theory; it goes forwards, backwards, sideways and nowhere, fast or slow, up or down, inside out and outside in.  Here are some examples that contradict the slow, gradual picture of progress that was so popular in Victorian England. Re-using lost genes:  Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are claiming that evolution […]
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Science Jelly Beans
April 23, 2011
Time to clear the deck again.  Here’s a collection of sweet and sour news nuggets readers may wish to munch on. Fossils: big early spider:  An exquisitely preserved spider has been found in Chinese Jurassic strata; see picture on National Geographic News.  This pushes the origin of its genus back 130 million years, according to […]
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Biomimetics: Who Is Imitating Whom?
April 19, 2011
Biomimetics is a cutting-edge branch of applied science that looks for ways to imitate nature to solve engineering problems.  Sometimes, though engineers invent things then find that nature had a similar solution all along.  Other times, there is overlap, with engineers inventing things that affect nature, or nature guiding engineering that is already in progress.  […]
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Dubious Darwinian Inferences Unquestioned
April 12, 2011
Science was invented to stop jumping to conclusions.  Leaps of faith from small clues to grand explanations were to be replaced by slow, careful, methodical investigations of raw data until rational inferences could be drawn.  Do the following research examples do justice to that ideal? Smelly dinobird air space:  The news media are chortling over […]
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Weird Science Tolerated by Science Reporters
March 25, 2011
What are the boundaries between science and pseudoscience?  Before answering, look at some of the stories that made headlines on science news sites recently. Legendary science:  Siberia plans to study the Yeti, reported PhysOrg.  Yeti has nothing to do with extra-terrestrial intelligence; it’s the popular name of a legendary abominable snowman locals report having seen […]
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Limits of Science Noted
March 19, 2011
Biology used to be simple to classify: plants and animals.  Up to the 1990s, that transmogrified into eukaryotes and prokaryotes.  Then the prokaryotes got split into archaea and bacteria.  But now, according to New Scientist there are debates about opening up a fourth kingdom of life – with the realization that 99% of cell species […]
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Surprises in Science Never End
March 14, 2011
In a perfect world of scientific knowledge, scientists would understand everything and be able to predict everything according to their best theories.  The number of surprises that continue to turn up, however, show that we remain far from that perfect world.  Paleoecology: Chilly dinosaurs:  “It has long been thought that the climate of the Mesozoic, […]
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What Scientists Don’t Know and How They Don’t Know It
March 4, 2011
In light of another huge science scandal, questions rise about what scientists know.  Several recent stories cast doubt on the infallibility of the scientific method – and even the ability of scientific inquiry to solve some mysteries. Fraud exposed:  92 peer-reviewed papers published over a decade, now found out to be fraudulent?  How is that […]
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Taking Control of Natural Selection
March 1, 2011
Are humans evolving?  If so, should they?  Two recent articles asked these questions as if natural selection is something we should no longer allow to push us around.  We should take control of it for our own good.  But then, it wouldn’t be natural selection, would it?     On the BBC News, Olly Bootle […]
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Anthropology: a Science in Crisis
February 16, 2011
Students memorize the different -ologies of science – geology, biology, paleontology and others – often without knowing the history of the fields.  An impression is sometimes given that each branch of science has equal validity.  Some recent articles indicate that anthropology (the study of man) is struggling with internal squabbles and external credibility.     […]
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Metaphors of Evolution
February 1, 2011
If Will Rogers never met a man he didn’t like, science never metaphor it didn’t force.  The history of science is replete with examples of metaphors not only trying to explain phenomena, but actually driving scientific research.  Many times thoughtless metaphors have said more about current social values than science.     So argued Mary […]
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Evolutionary Magic
January 31, 2011
What do evolutionists do when data bring surprises to their claims?  They find new ways for evolution to work magic.  See if these stories illustrate that or not. Plant-animal partnership:  One could hardly find two groups of organisms more disparate than plants and animals, but an article on PhysOrg claims that both groups hit on […]
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