(h) TROM - 1.2 Evolution of Everything. Something From Nothing - a conversation w/ Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss - ASU Feb 4, 2012. Only 6% of Scientists Are Republicans. Evolution and Global Warming Denialism: How the Public is Misled. Why our campaign against creationism in schools matters for science in the US | Zack Kopplin. In 2008, the summer before my sophomore year in high school, my home state of Louisiana passed a creationism law.
The misnamed and misguided Louisiana Science Education Act (pdf) allows creationism to be snuck into public schools science classrooms through supplemental materials that "critique" evidence-based, but politically controversial science, like evolution. This law also promotes the denial of climate science. Defenders of this law often claim it's only meant to teach critical thinking and provide academic freedom to teachers who want to challenge evolution scientifically. There is no scientific controversy over evolution or climate science for these teachers to discuss, though. The only reason to have this law is to sneak non-science, like creationism, into classrooms. The purpose of the law becomes even more clear if you listen to its legislative sponsor. These anti-science laws are not just a Louisiana problem; they're an American problem.
Study finds mice in New York City are evolving. Rob Ireton/CC BY 2.0 Maybe Charles Darwin didn't have to sail all the way to the Galapagos islands after all. While evolution is often thought of as playing out in the wilds of the natural world, as it turns out, urban environments are a major hotbed for species adaptations. Over centuries of development, cities have rewritten the rules of survival for the organisms that live there -- and researcher is beginning to prove that some critters are just learning to cope, they're actually undergoing genetic change. Baruch College scientist Jason Munshi-South has spent the last several years studying this phenomena of urban evolution in New York City -- particularly when it comes to the white-footed mouse.
A population of these small rodents has lived in the city's few remaining forested areas, isolated from their countryside counterparts in more rural parts of the state. Here's a rundown on the findings, from the National Geographic: Via Grist. 7 - The Theory of Evolution Made Easy.
GM Food. The Scientific Method. Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
" The chief characteristic which distinguishes a scientific method of inquiry from other methods of acquiring knowledge is that scientists seek to let reality speak for itself, supporting a theory when a theory's predictions are confirmed and challenging a theory when its predictions prove false. Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible in order to reduce biased interpretations of results. Neil deGrasse Tyson: Want Scientifically Literate Children? Get Out of Their Way. The Scientific Method Of The Mind: What Sherlock Holmes can teach us about decision making. Scientific method.
The scientific method is an epistemological system for deriving and developing knowledge. It is considered the best method for making useful and practical additions to human knowledge about the physical world, and has resulted in the technological leaps made since it developed in the western world.[1] At the core of the method is the idea that the value of a hypothesis, theory, or concept is best determined by its ability to make falsifiable predictions that can be tested against an empirical reality. The scientific method means that supernatural entities or concepts that are meaningless or logically contradictory cannot be included in a scientific hypothesis (not least because you can't put a sample of a god in a test-tube). Consequently, when carrying out investigations scientists assume a position of methodological naturalism. Humans, including scientists, are fallible and irrational apes by nature.
Ibn al-Haytham as he used to be seen on the back of an Iraqi 10 dinar note. [edit] Feynman on Scientific Method. Confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency for people to (consciously or unconsciously) seek out information that conforms to their pre-existing view points, and subsequently ignore information that goes against them. It is a type of cognitive bias and a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study.
Avoiding confirmation bias is an important part of rationalism and in science in general. This is achieved by setting up problems so that you must find ways of disproving your hypothesis (see falsifiability). [edit] We all do it... Confirmation bias is one of the traits that just comes with the human condition. There is a human tendency to favour testing the predictions of a hypothesis that only confirm or prove it, at the expense of testing any predictions that would disprove a hypothesis. In politics, confirmation bias explains, for example, why people with right-wing views buy right-wing newspapers and why people with left-wing views buy left wing newspapers. [edit] Falsifiability. Falsifiability is the ability of a theory—a working framework for explaining and predicting natural phenomena—to be disproved by an experiment or observation.[1] The ability to evaluate theories against observations is essential to the scientific method, and as such, the falsifiability of theories is key to this and is the prime test for whether a proposition or theory can be described as scientific.
Put simply, if a theory cannot be falsified, there is no point in even examining the evidence. [edit] Scientific knowledge All scientific knowledge and theories are based on two things: observation and consistent logic. A theory is a logical explanation for observations. It has been argued, most notably by Karl Popper, that the scientific method demands that a theory must at least in principle be falsifiable in order for it to be valid as science. [edit] Examples of falsifiability Until the twentieth century Newton's laws of motion were a) scientific and b) believed to be true. [edit] See also. Scientific Consensus and the Argument from Authority. I wrote last week of the challenge of answering the question of when we have enough evidence. That question is related to another, or perhaps another series of questions, because we so often lack the time and the knowledge to examine the evidence directly ourselves.
We rely instead on summary and recapitulation, taking our research at second or thirdhand, trusting those who have performed the experiments or analyzed the data and (sometimes without much thought) accepting the scientific consensus on issues we know very little about. Anyone who has ever been in an argument with an opponent who disregards consensus in one particular area – evolution, climate change, vaccination, ghosts, homeopathy, whatever – knows that the invocation of that consensus can leave one open to charges of making an argument from authority. 1) Trust the process rather than the conclusion.
As I mentioned last week, science is valuable because of the way it controls for its own limitations. What Is Peer Review? The Very Basics of Peer Review. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote an article about the role of peer review in the MMR causes autism scandal kick started by Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent 1998 study. In my other guise of Autismum I’m often locking horns with the pro-disease lobby or autism curebies who seem to see little value in peer review and have little understanding of the system at all. I know, I know: the standard advice is not to feed trolls but, sometimes, letting nonsense go unchallenged just can’t be done .
So, if what follows is a bit basic I apologise. Typical pop culture representations of scientists show them as male, lone crusaders staring down microscopes or drip dropping one garishly coloured liquid from one test tube into another. In reality, most science is a team effort and the number of hours researchers spend ‘doing’ science can be equalled by the time it takes to analyse the data collected and get the whole lot written up as a coherent study. The key points considered by peer reviewers. Science isn't a democracy: debunking the strategies of science denialism. 2.4k Shares I’ve always considered all forms of denialism, whether it’s climate change, creationism or the latest antivaccine lunacy, to be based on the same type and quality of arguments. It is essentially holding a unsupported belief that either science is wrong or, worse yet, is a vast conspiracy to push false information onto innocent humans.
One of the “tools” often used by science deniers is trying to convince the casual observer of a science democracy – that is, there is some kind of vote, and some number of “scientists” are opposed to the consensus. I’ve often joked that science deniers all get together at the World Denialist Society meetings and compare notes. They all use the same strategies, including the myth of the science democracy, which seriously doesn’t exist. Others have observed this convergence in denialist strategies.
The answer…is that creationists and climate change deniers have a lot in common — most especially in their assertions about science itself. What Is a Consensus? What Is a Consensus? Anyone who has ever pointed out that a scientific consensus exists on a certain matter has probably been meet with laughter and derision. The word consensus has practically become a punchline. It is reminiscent of the famous corollary to Godwin’s Law which states that the first person to mention Nazis has automatically lost the argument; so it frequently goes with the first person to mention consensus.
So many highly visible personalities deny and deride scientific consensus that the term has, in popular usage, become synonymous with a fatally weak argument. A common criticism I hear of scientific consensus is “science should not be decided by a vote”. The way the word use differs is that in common use, a consensus merely means the general agreement of the majority. I found a dramatic example of this when I did my Skeptoid episode on left handedness. The obvious application of consensus in today’s political climate is global warming.
Rating: 5.0/5 (24 votes cast) Richard Dawkins - The Enemies of Reason Part 1. Richard Dawkins - The Enemies of Reason Part 2. Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites. Why people reject science. The results showed that free-market ideology was an overwhelmingly strong determinant of the rejection of climate science.Image: janrysavy/iStockphoto Researchers from The University of Western Australia have examined what motivates people who are greatly involved in the climate debate to reject scientific evidence. The study Motivated Rejection of Science, to be published in Psychological Science, was designed to investigate what motivates the rejection of science in visitors to climate blogs who choose to participate in the ongoing public debate about climate change. More than 1000 visitors to blogs dedicated to discussions of climate science completed a questionnaire that queried people’s belief in a number of scientific questions and conspiracy theories, including: Princess Diana’s death was not an accident; the Apollo moon landings never happened; HIV causes AIDS; and smoking causes lung cancer.
Credit: Why We Should Choose Science over Beliefs. Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. I also believe in science as the greatest instrument ever devised for understanding the world. So what happens when these two principles are in conflict? My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true. Knowing about the existence of motivated reasoning, however, can help us overcome it when it is at odds with evidence. Take gun control. My libertarianism also once clouded my analysis of climate change. Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond? Black is white and white is black HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created in 4004 BCE.
Smoking does not cause cancer. And if climate change is happening, it is nothing to do with man-made CO2 emissions. The consequences of policies based on views such as these can be fatal. Elsewhere, the hand of powerful corporate interests can be seen. All of these examples have one feature in common.
Defining and recognizing denialism The Hoofnagle brothers, a lawyer and a physiologist from the United States, who have done much to develop the concept of denialism, have defined it as the employment of rhetorical arguments to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none,5 an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists.6 In this viewpoint, we argue that public health scientists should be aware of the features of denialism and be able to recognize and confront it.
The second is the use of fake experts. Responding to denialism. Warning Signs That Something is Not Scientific. *Some editing and language added by Barbara A. Drescher Some people promote theories and treatments that they claim to be scientific, but are not. On this website, we often refer to such dubious claims as “woo” or pseudoscience. These often troublesome theories and treatments are widely advertised on the internet, on TV, and in the psychology or self-help sections of commercial book stores. But because some material in these venues is legitimate, it is important to know how to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Here we provide a useful toolkit which can be used to identify pseudoscience. It cannot be tested. Pseudoscience is often either impossible to test or excuses are made which keep it from being tested.
The claim has no limits.In science, theories are specific and treatments have limits. Note: These warning signs were adapted from Lilienfeld, Lynn, and Lohr (2003, pp. 5-10). Lilienfeld, S.O., Lynn, S.J., & Lohr, J.M. (2003). Science deniers just don’t think: All hail the scientific method. Back when Shakespeare said you were the paragon of animals, both noble in reason and infinite in faculties, he did so during a time when physicians believed the body was filled with black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood, and all sickness and health depended on the interaction of those fluids.
Lethargic and lazy? Well, that’s because you are full of phlegm. Feeling sick? Maybe you’ve got too much blood and should go see a barber to get drained. Yes, the creator of some of the greatest works of the English language believed you could cure a fever with a knife. It’s easy to laugh at the very wrong things that people once believed, but try not to feel too superior. Your ancestors may not have had the toolset you do when it came to avoiding mental stumbling blocks or your immense cultural inheritance, but their minds worked in much the same way.
Before we had a method for examining reality, the truth was a slippery fish, which is why your ancestors were so dumb. What is at the root of denial? A Must Read from Chris Mooney in Mother Jones – denialism blog. Science is not the Enemy of the Humanities. Michael Specter: The danger of science denial. Neil deGrasse Tyson on Why Science Literacy Matters. Science was wrong before. Front Groups - The Hidden Persuaders. The Burzynski Clinic. Let’s make Houston cancer quack Burzynski pay! Homeopathy is a crock - Matt Kirshen. Horizon and is Science Under Attack. An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings – Aetiology. The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google | Violent metaphors. How Vaccine Fears Fueled The Resurgence Of Preventable Diseases : Shots - Health News. Measles epidemic: Outbreak in Wales tied to Andrew Wakefield’s discredited work.
Study Links Tobacco, Tea Party, Climate Denial,… and Fox News.
Stress, Portrait of a Killer - Full Documentary (2008) Roxanne Meadows on Human Behavior - Z-Day 2010. Nature or Nurture; How Do Genes, Environment and Free Will Affect Human Behavior? Human Connectome. 12.08.2009 - Social scientists build case for 'survival of the kindest' Epigenetics. Steven Pinker on The Blank Slate. Course | Human Behavioral Biology. We Stopped Dreaming. Brian Cox: bank bailout costlier than UK science 'since Jesus' The Universe - Multiverse Parallel Universes / Full Documentary HD.
What is the Higgs boson? The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - The Big Bang Experiment.