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With movements such as young-earth creationism, we certainly have seen examples of religion being shanghaied into the service of anti-science. But some recent rhetoric in opposition to environmentalism and climate change science takes the cake.
For example, E. Calvin Beisner, leader of the Cornwall Alliance (a consortium of evangelical clergy) has declared that environmental movement is “deadly to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and that believing in climate change is “an insult to God.” On November 30, 2012, in a televised discussion with his colleague Bryan Fischer, Beisner further argued that it is an affront to God to not utilize
Continue reading Is believing in climate change “an insult to God”?
Curiosity Rover: Nominee for Time’s “Person of the Year” for 2012. Image courtesy NASA.
In an announcement today, NASA poured cold water on rumors that its Curiosity rover had found life on Mars. Curiosity found evidence that it had landed on an ancient riverbed, and it identified some interesting chemical species involving chlorine, sulfur, water and organic compounds, but nothing that could be construed as clear-cut evidence for life on Mars, past or present.
All of this underscores Carl Sagan’s caution, reiterated for example in his book Billions and Billions, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It also
Continue reading Life on Mars!? Maybe we are all Martians
In a previous Math Drudge blog, on the growth in scientific fraud, we described the case of Netherlands social psychologist Diederik Stapel, who, based on an initial investigation, had been accused of serious and serial fraud in his work in the field of social psychology.
Now a more detailed report has been released on the affair. As summarized in a November 29, 2012 article in Science, the report paints a picture not only of widespread fraud, but more generally asserts that “from the bottom to the top there was a general neglect of fundamental scientific standards and methodological requirements.”
Some
Continue reading Study released on Dutch researcher’s “culture of fraud”
In an interview with GQ, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who has been mentioned as a rising star and potential U.S. presidential candidate in 2016, was asked “How old do you think the Earth is?” He responded:
At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7
Continue reading What on earth do they think? U.S. politicians on the age of the planet
A fascinating posthumous autobiography of famed mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot has just been published by Pantheon Books.
The book includes a fascinating account of his youth growing up as a Jew in the war-torn years of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Warsaw in 1924 and raised in a well-educated household whose Lithuanian roots were said to have produced “men of great learning.” His uncle, Szolem Mandelbrojt, was a star among French mathematicians in the early 20th century. In 1931 his father emigrated to Paris, to be joined by Benoit and the rest of the family in 1936. It was a
Continue reading Benoit Mandelbrot’s memoir is published
In an article being published in PLOS ONE, a leading social science research journal, two researchers (one from the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago and the other from Western University in London Ontario Canada) found that when anticipating a mathematical task or activity, persons with higher levels of mathematics anxiety experience brain activity in regions associated with threats and pain.
Some of the mathematical tasks that the subjects were asked to imagine include “Receiving a math textbook,” “Walking to a math class,” “Being given a set of addition problems to solve on paper”, and “Realizing you have
Continue reading Does math anxiety trigger pain networks in the brain?
It a ruling that has drawn international attention (and outrage), a judge in L’Aquila, Italy ruled that seven scientists and seismology experts were guilty of “manslaughter,” because on 31 Mar 2009 they assured local residents that there did not seem any imminent risk of danger from an earthquake, yet an earthquake struck a few days later, tragically killing 300 persons.
But as anyone familiar with earthquake science will attest, there is no known technology for predicting earthquakes, except in a general sense to warn that certain regions, based on regional geology and past patterns of earthquakes, appear to be more
Continue reading Italian judge rules scientists guilty of “manslaughter” for failing to predict earthquake
In an era when many critics of the scientific “establishment” claim that scientists are mostly concerned about circling the wagons to protect funding of their existing pet projects, and in the wake of the battle brewing in the U.S. over the funding of nuclear fusion research in particular, it is interesting to read comments by Robert Hirsch, a senior researcher in the fusion science field, in a speech he recently gave at a fusion workshop.
Here is a brief summary:
After decades of effort, and although a great deal has been learned and accomplished, the stark fact is no
Continue reading Fusion scientist suggests new direction for the field
Many of us were disappointed not to see any serious mention of scientific issues in the recent U.S. presidential debates. Global warming, for example, was never discussed at all, even in the last debate on foreign policy, where it would have naturally fit.
After all, even the U.S. military has now recognized the reality of global warming, and is preparing for a world where climate changes alter the geopolitical landscape in new and potentially very dangerous ways. Among the perils are increasing droughts and crop failures, as well as rising sea levels that render uninhabitable large swaths of currently
Continue reading Antiscience beliefs and U.S. politics
Recently there has been a rash of reports of scientific discoveries that, if the facts were fully known, should not have been publicized, to put it mildly. In most cases, the journalists reporting the work failed to rigorously investigate the background of the discovery to determine if it was real, sound and truly worthy of being reported in major news sources.
Some other upsetting examples are discussed in our 2011 Conversation article “When things don’t add up: statistics, maths and scientific fraud“. In addition, very recent analysis shows that deliberate scientific fraud in the biomedical areas — as
Continue reading The heart of the matter: do scientific journalists need ground rules?
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