The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?" (New Yorker, December 13, 2010), Jonah Lehrer reported,

Many results that are rigorously proved and accepted start shrinking in later studies.

[ ... ]

... now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It's as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn't yet have an official name, but it's occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades.

[ ... ]

For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?

Suggestions for names, with rationale, gladly accepted at Uncommon Descent. Also, any idea why it is happening?

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Non-materialist neuroscientists must often deal with the claim that their work is “unscientific,” despite the fact that, for example, the placebo effect, for example, is one of the best attested effects in medicine and the fact that there Is mounting evidence for researchable psi effects. The problem arises because, as Susan Hack puts it, "scientism" enables assessors to avoid evaluating evidence in favor of evaluating whether the evidence "counts as science".

1. Using the words "science," "scientific," "scientifically," "scientist," etc., honorifically, as generic terms of epistemic praise.

And, inevitably, the honorific use of "science" encourages uncritical credulity about whatever new scientific idea comes down the pike. But the fact is that all the explanatory hypotheses that scientists come up with are, at first, highly speculative, and most are eventually found to be untenable, and abandoned. To be sure, by now there is a vast body of well-warranted scientific theory, some of it so well-warranted that it would be astonishing if new evidence were to show it to be mistaken - though even this possibility should never absolutely be ruled out.

Always remember that Ptolemy's model of the solar system was used successfully by astronomers for 1200 years, even though it had Earth in the wrong place.

2. Adopting the manners, the trappings, the technical terminology, etc., of the sciences, irrespective of their real usefulness. Here, Hack cites the "social sciences", quite justifiably, but evolutionary psychology surely leads the pack. Can anyone serious believe, for example, that our understanding of public affairs is improved by the claim that there is such a thing as hardwired religion or evolved religion? No new light, just competing, contradictory speculation.

3. A preoccupation with demarcation, i.e., with drawing a sharp line between genuine science, the real thing, and "pseudo-scientific" imposters. The key, of course, is the preoccupation. Everyone wants real science, but a preoccupation with showing that a line of inquiry is not science, good or bad - apart from the evidence - flies in the face of "The fact is that the term 'science' simply has no very clear boundaries: the reference of the term is fuzzy, indeterminate and, not least, frequently contested."

4. A corresponding preoccupation with identifying the "scientific method," presumed to explain how the sciences have been so successful. " we have yet to see anything like agreement about what, exactly, this supposed method is." Of course, one method would work for astronomy, and another for forensics. But both disciplines must reckon with evidence, to be called "science".

5. Looking to the sciences for answers to questions beyond their scope. One thinks of Harvard cognitive scientist Steve Pinker's recent claim that science can determine morality. Obviously, whatever comes out of such a project must be the morality of those who went into it.

6. Denying or denigrating the legitimacy or the worth of other kinds of inquiry besides the scientific, or the value of human activities other than inquiry, such as poetry or art. Or better yet, treating them as the equivalent of baboons howling for mates, or something. It discredits both arts and sciences.

Here's Hack's "Six Signs of Scientism" lecture.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Ma's gene does different things to pa's copy" Jessica Hamzelou (26 January 2011) reports for New Scientist on a knockout study of mice where

Most of our genes are expressed in pairs – one copy inherited from each parent. But pairs of so-called imprinted genes have just one copy "switched on".

So they knocked out a gene called Grb10 in females and mated them with normal males. The gene was expressed "only in the brain and spinal cord."* How did this influence behaviour?

Mice lacking the paternal gene groomed their mates so much that the latter lost their whiskers and fur.

So far so good. The gene helps regulate mouse behaviour. Now wait for the klunk:

Humans have the same gene, so there is a possibility that it might be influencing our own social behaviours, he adds.

"Possibility" "might" Their caution is well advised, but the question is, why bother? Humans differ from mice precisely in that we adjust our behaviour to real or perceived circumstances, and that difference greatly reduces the importance of any similarities. In other words, if a human mother brushed her kid's hair until it fell out, she would soon be in a supervised parenting program.

A study author comments,

"The most interesting human parallel is Silver-Russell syndrome," says Gudrun Moore, a geneticist at University College London's Institute of Child Health. Ten per cent of people with this growth disorder have two copies of a maternal chromosome and no copies from the father. "These individuals have not been tested for overtly dominant behaviour, though they do have speech delay, learning difficulties and lower IQ," Moore says.

Ah, just the combination of traits for dominant behaviour in a human: speech delay, learning difficulties and lower IQ ...

A real possibility, of course, is that an enterprising researcher will do a study of such persons, find "dominant behaviour" (acting out frustrations aggressively in this case), and we will soon be nearing about a new "violence gene". Book deal to follow? (Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature09651)

(*A different experimental population with the sexes reversed showed that the gene expressed itself everywhere but the brain.)

See also:

Read more!

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Over a century after the publication of World of Life, science historian Michael Flannery has just published a new biography of Alfred Russel Wallace, whom he has suggested as a proper patron of the intelligent design community. Wallace, Darwin's co-theorist (who had twice Darwin's field experience), was shunned by the Victorian science elite gathered around Darwin because he was not a materialist atheist.

Discovery Institute Press announces

In a new biography published by Discovery Institute, Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life, University of Alabama science historian Michael Flannery tells how Wallace grew disenchanted with natural selection as a theory capable of explaining life's complexity. Wallace (1823-1913) concluded that many features of living organisms could best be explained as the product of design by a "directive Mind."

Critics of ID frequently attack the theory as a "science stopper." Flannery shows that on the contrary, it was Alfred Wallace's commitment to open inquiry that led him to the conclusion that far from being random and undirected, as Darwin insisted, evolution manifests scientifically detectable evidence of intelligent guidance. Biology, Flannery argues, is in the process of catching up with the prescient Wallace.

[ ... ]

Unlike Darwin, Wallace was also a vocal opponent of pseudo-scientific racism and eugenics.

(Wallace had actually lived among people living in nature; he did not view them from a distance and then go home to write about their similarities to baboons, as the upper crust Darwin did.)

This brief excerpt gives a sense of the book:

Can the real Wallace be found? If so, what might we learn in that rediscovery? It is worth stating the thesis hee at the outset: Wallace, in developing his unique brand of evolution, presaged modern intelligent design theory. Certainly no Christian creationist, Wallace's devotion to discovering the truths of nature brought him through a lifetime of research to see genuine design in the nat1 world. And this indeed became Wallace's heresy, a heresy that exposes the metaphysical underpinnings of the triumphant Darwinian paradigm more than it does Wallace's commitments to spiritualism or science. The image of Darwinism reflected in the image of natural selection's co-discoverer is indeed an interesting one. But it all began oddly enough in an obscure village far from th seats of learning or science.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "The challenge of the great cosmic unknowns" ( New Scientist 24 January 2011),
Dan Falk reviews Richard Panek's The 4% Universe: Dark matter, dark energy, and the race to discover the rest of realityuote>As he nears the present day, Panek weaves together two separate yet closely related storylines. In the first, he takes us to sophisticated laboratories around the world where researchers are trying to isolate particles of dark matter. Their best guess is that dark matter is made of WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), which were created at the time of the big bang and are now fiendishly difficult to detect.

In the second storyline, we join the hunt for dark energy, which began in the late 1990s when two teams of researchers studying distant supernova explosions reached a stunning conclusion: that the expansion of the universe is not slowing down, but speeding up. The Amazon site features an interview with Panek:

Q: Sounds like science is a pretty straightforward process of discovery and follow-up.

Panek: Straightforward, maybe. Pretty, no. As I show in The Four Percent Universe, the discoveries involved a lot of behind-the-scenes rivalries that sometimes turned ugly—rivalries that continue to this day. But in a way, these rivalries have been good for the science. When scientists who would like nothing more than to prove one another wrong wind up agreeing on a weird result, their peers can't help but take the result seriously. Astronomers hate to say it—they're as superstitious as anyone else, and they think they’ll jinx their chances - but there are Nobel Prizes at stake here.

Q: So this is real. Astronomers actually believe that 96 percent of the universe is "missing"?

Panek: Yes. They call it the ultimate Copernican revolution. Not only are we not at the center of the universe, we're not even made of the same stuff as the vast majority of the universe.

Hmmm.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In New Atlantis, Raymond Tallis tackles free will:

This essay is an attempt to persuade you of something that in practice you cannot really doubt: your belief that you have free will. It will try to reassure you that it is not naïve to feel that you are responsible, and indeed morally responsible, for your actions. And it will provide you with arguments that will help you answer those increasing numbers of people who say that our free will is an illusion, or that belief in it is an adaptive delusion implanted by evolution.

The case presented will not be a knock-down proof — indeed, it outlines an understanding of free will that is rather elusive. It is of course much easier to construct simple theoretical proofs purporting to show that we are not free than it is to see how, in practice, we really are. For this reason, the argument here will take you on something of a journey.

That journey will provide reasons for resisting the claim that a deterministic view of the material universe is incompatible with free will. Much of the apparent power of deterministic arguments comes from their focusing on isolated actions, or even components of actions, that have been excised from their context in the world of the self, so that they are more easily caught in the net of material causation.

I don't know that his theory works exactly, but it's interesting that an atheist is trying it.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Jeremiah the doomster insists that science education has been going downhill ever since it started, so presumably there is no bottom to the hill. That said, any kind of education could in fact be declining at a given time, and Jeremiah fulfills his duty in causing us to pause to wonder.

Here, for example, is the report by13 Howard Hughes Medical Institute professors on how to “change the culture of science education.” Their concern is commendable, but their report is the usual wish list for things that won’t and can’t happen. For example, they quote

“We’re trying change the mindset of the research faculty. There’s a sense that teaching isn’t important in review or promotion or tenure, and unless research universities take a role in making teaching important, it’s going to be very difficult to get faculty to invest more and change their methods.”

- Jo Handelsman

No research university is likely to do this. Star researchers want to research and will go elsewhere if they are cumbered with teaching - except when teaching essentially means recruiting reliable postdocs.

Friend Edward Sisson has a somewhat different, thoughtful take on it:

Read more!

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Remember when, as sociologist Dorothy Nelkin tells it,

The language used by geneticists to describe the genes is permeated with biblical imagery. Geneticists call the genome the “Bible,” the “Book of Man”and the “Holy Grail.” They convey an image of this molecular structure as more than a powerful biological entity: it is also a mystical force that defines the natural and moral order. And they project an idea of genetic essentialism, suggesting that by deciphering and decoding the molecular text they will be able to reconstruct the essence of human beings, unlock the key to human nature. As geneticist Walter Gilbert put it, understanding our genetic composition is the ultimate answer to the commandment “know thyself.” Gilbert introduces his lectures on gene sequencing by pulling a compact disk from his pocket and announcing to his audience, “This is you.”*

At ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2011), we learn that after the complete draft of the human genome was released in 2003, of the growing focus on is on the epigenome:

Whereas the genome is the same in every cell of an organism, the epigenome of every cell type is different. It is because of the epigenome that a liver cell is not a brain cell is not a bone cell.

From the genome, we learned? ...

"We learned many things from the Human Genome Project," Elgin says, "but of course it didn't answer every question we had!

"Including one of the oldest: We all start life as a single cell. That cell divides into many cells, each of which carries the same DNA. So why are we poor, bare, forked creatures, as Shakespeare put it, instead of ever-expanding balls of identical cells?

"This [epigenome] work," says Elgin, "will help us learn the answer to this question and to many others. It will help us to put meat on the bones of the DNA sequences."

You, know, it almost makes one go all religious and say: Re the “Bible,” the “Book of Man”and the “Holy Grail,” worship the creator not the creation. And recycle your CDs.

*Dorothy Nelkin, “Less Selfish Than Sacred? Genes and the Religious Impulse in Evolutionary Psychology,” in Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, eds., Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology (London: Random House, Vintage, 2001), p. 18. Quoted in Beauregard & O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain, p. 52.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Of the 25 most influential atheists featured at a student homework help site, it's curious how many are best known or widely known for pushing Darwinism.

(I'm sure Larry Krauss, at #11, is as solid a brass-footed fish as you could hope for, but he is best known for preaching the end of all things, including science, so he's not in tonight’s lineup.)

How about, instead:

#1 Richard Dawkins ("Darwin's Rottweiler", 'nuff said)

#4 Daniel Dennett (winner of Darwin look-alike contest) and the Darwinist education award: "If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods- that the earth is flat, that "Man" is not a product of evolution by natural selection-then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity.")*

#7 Michael Shermer (skeptical of everything except Darwinism, I gather, but as Dennett would assure him, Darwin answers all needs)

#12 Edwin O. Wilson, prophet of Social Darwinism, oops, make that sociobiology, no wait, "evolutionary psychology" is the new brand name. To see the reason for continual rebranding, see #4 above.

Read more!

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

At Slashdot "News for Nerds.Stuff that Matters" we learn:

eldavojohn writes

"A common argument one might encounter in intelligent design or the arduous process of resolving science with religion is that the physical constants of our world are fine tuned for life by some creator or designer. A University of Alberta theoretical physicist claims quite the opposite when it comes to the cosmological constant. His paper says that our ever expanding universe has a positive cosmological constant and he explains that the optimum cosmological constant for maximizing the chances of life in the universe would be slightly negative: 'any positive value of the constant would tend to decrease the fraction of matter that forms into galaxies, reducing the amount available for life. Therefore the measured value of the cosmological constant, which is positive, is evidence against the idea that the constants have been fine-tuned for life.'"[Links at site.]

Well, when we find a good many of Stephen Hawking’s other universes, we can see whether any are negatively constanted, and if so, whether they have more life.

Also, just up at Colliding Universes, my blog on competing theories of our universe:

• Word on the street: The clock did SO start at the Big Bang
• Why cosmologists should avoid being armchair philosophers
• Origin of life: “If pigs could fly” chemistry slammed
• Coffee!! Early modern scientists had fun!
• Antimatter in the air on a stormy day?
• Origin of life: Simple cells inevitable?
• Jathink? Guy says materialism “not the most viable philosophy
• Origin of life: How will we know we arrived if we …
• Exoplanets: Aren’t we at risk of running out of hype?
• Influential atheist cosmologists, and why they might be
• Sugars for life: About face! Left turn!
• Past life forms on a moon of Saturn?
• Before the Big Bang: Loop quantum gravity?
• Cosmology’s little wars: what’s a universe or two,…

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A kind reader writes,

I just watched ‘Dinosaur Wars’ on PBS. Wow. They should have had Ben Stein narrate it and called it a prequel to Expelled.

He adds, “Makes me think that the US should have a separation of science and state as well as church and state. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you take the time to watch.”

Alas, reader, my computer’s sound system is currently playing deaf, so “watch” is all I can do. With most TV, that’s a blessing, not with this though.

From the site,

In the late 19th century, paleontologists Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh uncovered the remains of hundreds of prehistoric animals in the American West, including dozens of previously undiscovered dinosaur species. But the rivalry that developed between them would spiral out of control, permanently damaging their careers and threatening the future of American paleontology.

Good to talk about, but remember, no one was proposing to subject Darwinism as the mechanism of change over time to a detailed audit. That unforgivable betrayal of "atheism on the public payroll" is what will get a scientist expelled today.

Oh, by the way, an accompanying backgrounder article at the site is called "Darwinism and the American West." Remember that next time you hear the claim that Darwinists "don't call themselves Darwinists. Creationists invented the term to discredit them." So PBS is "creationist" then?

So much too-hot-to-handle news early in the day, I better have another cuppa ...

PS: Here’s a man who was long the odd man out for doubting the popular modern dino-bird theory of the origin of birds, but was vindicated when the history turned out to be messier than the story.

Denyse O'leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

No more smidgeons of evidence puffed up and blazoned everywhere, then retakes and this-time-it's-trues, all in the glorious cause of lighting a shining path to the future - endless worship at Darwin's shrine!

This Tiktaalik story, for example, mainly shows how much hasty-wrong-conclusion evolutionary science is simply a Darwin cult (too bad the cult practises human sacrifice too).

Skinny: "Missing link "Tiktaalik was actually Johnny come lately, the new kid in town.

So where are the fish that turned into tetrapods? According to Nature, they must exist in the "'ghost range' — that is, a period of time during which members of the groups should have been present but for which no body fossils have yet been found." Shubin's arguments that these fossils confirm a "specific prediction" of evolution appear to have been wrong. (But don't expect a correction from PBS anytime soon.)

No, because the yuppie public believes, and what else matters?

What if we just "Dimenticare Darwin", as Giuseppe Sermonti advised (= forget the guy; he's past tense). How much mental energy would be freed from defending the ol' Brit toff from racism and wrong predictions and such, and put toward figuring out what really happened?

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From "Rocky exoplanet milestone in hunt for Earth-like worlds" (Jason Palmer, BBC News, 10 January 11), we learn,

Astronomers have discovered the smallest planet outside our Solar System, and the first that is undoubtedly rocky like Earth.

Measurements of unprecedented precision have shown that the planet, Kepler 10b, has a diameter 1.4 times that of Earth, and a mass 4.6 times higher.

However, because it orbits its host star so closely, the planet could not harbour life.

The discovery has been hailed as "among the most profound in human history".

One can't help wondering why, actually. Well, because

"We want to know if we're alone in the galaxy, simply put - and this is one link in the chain toward getting to that objective.

"First we need to know if planets that could potentially harbour life are common, and we don't know if that's true - that's what Kepler is aiming to do."

Okay, but can we please leave the "most profounds" (the phrase is used twice in a short report) out for now?

Otherwise, what phrases will we haveleft when we find an extrasolar planet that can host life?

While we are at it, the phrase "a planetary missing link", used in the story, doesn't really work. If the conventional explanation of planet formation is correct, Kepler 10b isn't a long-sought link between one planet and another. And if we do find a planet that harbours life, it won't be a link either - any more than Earth is a "link" between Venus and Mars.

A friend writes to say,

We had total failure at finding Earth-like planets that might support our Darwinian assumption (and massive expenditure) that we are not unique in the universe. But now we've found something other than a giant-gas planet so we are less discouraged than before. But it turned out to be a solid chunk of iron at 1300 degrees orbiting a few solar radii above the star, so it isn't what we were looking for, which is discouraging again. But we'll call it "rocky" anyway and maybe our luck will return.

One hopes so. A summer planet would be nice.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

On a recent list of the 25 most influential atheists, three key cosmologists come up.

#5 Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is one of the world’s great theoretical physicists. His trade-press book A Brief History of Time took the world by storm in the late 1980s. In it he raised the prospect of a self-creating universe, which he has since developed at length. The theme he keeps pounding is the extraneousness of the God hypothesis.

Wrote a bit about him. With his new take on M-theory, he is now mainly famous for staying famous. But that’s still pretty famous.

# 9 Steven Weinberg

The premier living Nobel laureate physicist, Steven Weinberg is one of the great scientists of our time. He is also a remarkably good writer, as demonstrated in his popular books on physics, which advance an atheistic view of the universe. According to him, science’s greatest cultural achievement is to eradicate religion.

Never tracked him much. His “pointless” universe seems like too much religion in science class to me (and he now admits it was a foolish thing to say).

He’s right. Just because he has religion on the brain ... Don’t bet on his fellow atheists making an issue out of whether other religions get equal treatment with his in tax-funded schools.

# 11 Lawrence Krauss

When the television networks need a well-credentialed and well-spoken scientist to discuss the relation between science and religion, Lawrence Krauss is their man.* A physicist with solid credentials as well as a ready pen, who has written a string of successful popular science books, Krauss has effectively used this platform to promote atheism.

Clashed with him, actually. I disagreed that sci fi film makers created a big problem by using unrealistic physics. Hello? That’s why it’s called science fiction.

Well you should have heard him in response ...

(*Now that sounds to me like damning with faint praise, but I digress. )

It all raises an interesting question: What would cosmology look like if there wasn’t an obsessive need to come up with a cosmology that bypasses a beginning, which suggests an argument for the existence of God?

Today’s cosmology strikes me as a carnival of improbable ideas festooned with equations.

Look, when physicists concentrate on physics, I don’t know near enough to critique it. These guys make my job easy, that’s for sure. With luck, I'll get a book out of it.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Science journalist John “End of Science” Horgan asked last month (December 8, 2010), "Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!":

When people doubt free will, they are more likely to behave badly. After reading a passage from a book that challenged the validity of free will, students were more likely to cheat on a mathematics exam. Others were less likely to let a classmate use their cell phone. “Some philosophical analyses may conclude that a fatalistic determinism is compatible with highly ethical behavior,” the psychologist Jesse Bering comments in an article on these studies, “but the present results suggest that many laypersons do not yet appreciate that possibility.”

It's not surprising that people who have been told that there is no free will do not "appreciate the possibility" of highly ethical behavior. There would be no point in even describing it as highly ethical behaviour.

Horgan wants to be a materialist atheist but still have free will, as if such a position were even possible. One can understand a non-materialist atheist assuming free will, of course, but the non-materialist does not claim to have a theory by which the movement of elementary particles accounts for everything.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A friend reminds me of cosmologist Paul Davies' essay, "Is Anybody Out There?" (April 10, 2010), which provides some interesting information on funding patterns for SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence:

Most of the funding today comes from private donations through the SETI Institute, a private nonprofit founded in 1984 in Mountain View, Calif. The jewel in its crown is the Allen Telescope Array, a $35 million dedicated network of 42 small dishes in northern California, with about $30 million of the funding contributed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The goal is to ultimately increase the network to 350 dishes. Donors on other projects have included David Packard and Bill Hewlett (co-founders of Hewlett-Packard) and Gordon Moore (co-founder of Intel).

The US government hasn't funded SETI since 1993. Davies offers imaginative ways for the super-rich to look for aliens:

On purely statistical grounds any visitation is likely to have been a very long time ago. To pluck a figure out of midair, imagine that an alien expedition passed our way 100 million years ago. Would any traces remain?

Not many. However, some remnants might still persist. Buried nuclear waste could be detectable even after billions of years. Large-scale mineral exploitation such as quarrying leaves distinctive scars that, in the case of Earth, would eventually become obscured by overlying strata but would still show up in geological surveys. Space probes parked in orbit round the sun might lie dormant yet intact for an immense period of time. Scientists could look for such hallmarks of alien technology on Earth and the moon, in near space, on Mars and among the asteroids.

Davies' (not entirely serious, I suspect) suggestions, intriguing as they are, still remind me - I must admit - of a woman doing Internet searches on an ex-boyfriend and turning up accidentally at gatherings and restaurants he has sometimes frequented. And the reality is that, if he had died in the meantime, she might not even be one of the people that anyone would think to notify. So she could be haunting a ghost, to say nothing of haunting her own real life.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

"Hipster bird species evolving to tune out urban sounds", according to Wendy Zuckerman (New Scientist 07 January 2011):

Call them the urban new breed. We know birds raise their voices to make themselves heard in the noisy big city, but for the first time there is evidence that they may even be evolving as a result of city living.

"Urban birds might be becoming genetically distinct, which is the first step towards becoming a new 'urban' species," says Dominique Potvin of the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Apparently, urban birds sing more loudly to attract mates, and are assumed to be evolving as a result: "The city is pushing these birds to evolve."

Is it? Another scientist, Hans Slabbekoorn, suggest that it is possible that the birds "might be just calling louder under noisier conditions."

A friend has suggested moving the urban birds to a rural setting and seeing what happens.

Study of birds adapting to urban life is most interesting, but in most cases calling minor changes "evolution" seems a stretch to me. They are probably better seen as the way a hardy species avoids extinction or extirpation via minor, reversible adjustments.

I’d be interested to see what happens to the Toronto area Canada geese who no longer migrate and spend the winter gobbling lawns. In a century, will they otherwise differ significantly from their virtuous rural cousins?

Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.2296

Denyse O'leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A friend points to an interesting question raised by committed Darwinist Michael Ruse (From a Curriculum Standpoint, Is Science Religion? Chronicle of Higher Education
December 22, 2010):

But now ask yourself. If "God exists" is a religious claim (and it surely is), why then is "God does not exist" not a religious claim?

And if Creationism implies God exists and cannot therefore be taught, why then should science which implies God does not exist be taught?

Now, at first glance, the answer seems pretty obvious: If "science" really implies that, it could only be taught as an optional philosophy area, not as a core curriculum subject. Darwinists know best whether what they mean by science means that and, in most cases, the answer is probably yes.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

A friend asks a bunch of us if we are as incredulous of Darwinist attempts to explain away the Cambrian explosion as he is. Well, I always say, try me on some of the latest nonsense, and he did. It is conveniently here, in relation to the Dengying fossils in southern China (541 to 551 million years ago):

The first instance of biomineralization - i.e. the biologic use of minerals - was around 2 billion years ago when certain bacteria precipitated grains of magnetite to apparently help orient themselves in the Earth's magnetic field. However, the first animal skeletons didn't appear until right before the Cambrian explosion, at the end of the Ediacaran Period.These early shell-bearing creatures help to resolve Charles Darwin's concern over the sudden appearance of so many new animal species during the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record gives the impression of a "Creation" event, but in reality, animals had evolved prior to the explosion. They just didn't leave much for paleontologists to find until they developed the skeleton-making trait.

Reminded me of something:

The first time anyone wondered about thefts from the liquor store was on March 22, when a couple of guys appeared to be loitering with intent. However, the first theft of cash and cases of liquor didn't occur until June 29, at the end of the subsequent accounting period.This reported theft helps to resolve management's concern over the sudden disappearance of so much cash and so many cases during the night of June 29. The inventory record gives the impression of a major theft, but in reality, lots of cash and cases had gone missing prior to the reported heist. They just didn't leave much for investigators to find because they weren’t logged into inventory in the first place.

Hardline Darwinists obviously fear the Cambrian explosion the way crooks fear an honest investigator. You can play their claim game yourself:

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by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The Pope has gone on record as saying “God was behind Big Bang, universe no accident” (Philip Pullella, 2011 01 06):

God's mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident, Pope Benedict said on Thursday.

Most of the Yahoo article is the usual pop media sludge (= Pope grudgingly accepts reality while retaining a tiny corner for dumb people to pray in).

However, to their credit, the Yahooligans couldn’t quite bring themselves to say “the Pope supports evolution”. Instead:

While the pope has spoken before about evolution, he has rarely delved back in time to discuss specific concepts such as the Big Bang, which scientists believe led to the formation of the universe some 13.7 billion years ago.

Yes, and the Pope has made quite clear where he stands on the only theory of evolution currently on offer, in the public media, Darwinism: He had prayer cards put out in many languages all over Rome a few years ago, saying “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.” Some people have a really hard time accepting the significance of that.

Benedict XVI is not heedless of the politically motivated falsehoods circulated about Catholic teachings, always with the intention of confusing Christians who are trying to be faithful. Recently, some American Catholic-label politicians who tried to claim that the Catholic Church has never been certain in its stand against abortion were rebuked by the Vatican.

In fact, most popular culture isn’t sure whether to acknowledge God or the multiverse, and is simply waiting to see who wins the public relations war: Him or Them.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

I asked young astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez how things were going, after Iowa State University rejected his tenure in a case that stank to high heaven.

He replied,

Things are going well. I've started an astronomy minor program here at Grove City College and the refurbishment of the college's new (old) observatory is essentially done. Here's our observatory web page.

While it is more difficult to find the time to do research here, I have managed to squeeze out a few papers (2 in 2010).

See also:

Guillermo Gonzalez on mutual eclipse seasons in three planets during the International Year of Astronomy

Expelled astronomer publishes new paper in Royal Astronomy Society journal

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Science Warriors' Ego Trips" (Chronicle of Higher Ed, April 25, 2010) Carlin Romano, who teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania, comments on ID opponent Massimo Pigliucci’s Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk:

In an even greater disservice, Pigliucci repeatedly suggests that intelligent-design thinkers must want "supernatural explanations reintroduced into science," when that's not logically required. He writes, "ID is not a scientific theory at all because there is no empirical observation that can possibly contradict it. Anything we observe in nature could, in principle, be attributed to an unspecified intelligent designer who works in mysterious ways." But earlier in the book, he correctly argues against Karl Popper that susceptibility to falsification cannot be the sole criterion of science, because science also confirms. It is, in principle, possible that an empirical observation could confirm intelligent design—i.e., that magic moment when the ultimate UFO lands with representatives of the intergalactic society that planted early life here, and we accept their evidence that they did it. The point is not that this is remotely likely. It's that the possibility is not irrational, just as provocative science fiction is not irrational.

[ ... ]

A sensible person can side with scientists on what's true, but not with Pigliucci on what's rational and possible. Pigliucci occasionally recognizes that. Late in his book, he concedes that "nonscientific claims may be true and still not qualify as science." But if that's so, and we care about truth, why exalt science to the degree he does? If there's really a heaven, and science can't (yet?) detect it, so much the worse for science.

[ ... ]

Long live Skeptical Inquirer! But can we deep-six the egomania and unearned arrogance of the science patriots? As Descartes, that immortal hero of scientists and skeptics everywhere, pointed out, true skepticism, like true charity, begins at home.

Well said, Romano.

First. In my experience, the "science patriots" are not really patriots or skeptics either (types one can always use). They are minor politicians barking the party line, in season or out.

It's out of season now. More and more people see full bore Darwinism for what it is, and either the Darwinists address the problem or someone else will. May as well be us.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

From MSNBC we learn that a new study suggests that the universe has 300 sextillion red dwarfs:

A study suggests the universe could have triple the number of stars scientists previously calculated. For those of you counting at home, the new estimate is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's 300 sextillion.

The study questions a key assumption that astronomers often use: that most galaxies have the same properties as our Milky Way. And that's creating a bit of a stink among astronomers who want a more orderly cosmos.

[ ... ]

A second study led by a Harvard University scientist focuses on a distant "super-Earth" planet and sees clues to the content of its atmosphere — the first of this kind of data for this size planet. It orbits a red dwarf.

Red dwarf stars — about a fifth the size of our sun — burn slowly and last much longer than the bigger, brighter stars, such as the sun in the center of our solar system, said Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum.

- Seth Borenstein, "Starry starry starry night: Star count may triple" (12/1/2010, updated)

is thought of as "alarmist", if not stinky, and as challenging the idea of a "more orderly universe".

The issue here is that a traditional dictum of cosmology (not a law, just an assumption) is that the universe looks about the same anywhere we look.

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