Thursday, February 22nd, 2007,
by Fred (,
history, Jamestown, science, wikipedia
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If you are a conservative, then Conservapedia should be embarrassing to you. Formed ostensibly to counteract perceived anti-Christian and anti-American bias in Wikipedia, the effort wouldn’t pass muster in a reasonably-challenging public middle school. Take, for example, the entry that came up for me when I asked for a random page:
Pilgrims
Pilgrims were people (mostly puritans) in the 1600’s that traveled to the American Colonies because of persecution in England. These settlers started the very first settlement in the American colonies, Jamestown.
It’s amazing you can get that much wrong in only two sentences. The pilgrims were mostly puritans, but they came as part of the Plymouth Company in 1620 to Massachusetts. Jamestown was established in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London, not by pilgrims. The 144 settlers did not flee Anglican persecution when traveling to Virginia. And Jamestown, while the first permanent English colony in the New World to survive, was not the first attempt. It was the 19th.
Try it for yourself - Random Conservapedia page.
Since the site’s existence hit the blogs, there have been some efforts to improve the inanity. Compare the current page on faith to what it originally said:
Faith is a uniquely Christian concept that means trust or complete confidence in something unseen. The term lacks a precise definition. In English the word comes from the Latin word “fidere”, meaning “to trust”.
The concept of faith does not exist in other major religions. While faith is mentioned 229 in the New Testament, faith is mentioned only twice in the Old Testament (KJV). In an English translation of the Koran (Islam), the concept of submission to Allah is mentioned 11 times, but faith in Allah is only mentioned once.
The term “faith” is often misused to describe the belief systems of other religions.[1]
There are clearly problems with Wikipedia. It is generally, but clearly not always, accurate. Pages on controversial topics are often riddled with bias, leading to lockdowns to prevent edit wars. It keeps the learning curve intentionally high to prevent the unwashed masses from participating. But the Conservapedia is ridiculous.
[via Pharyngula]
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Wednesday, April 12th, 2006,
by Fred (,
evolution, science
,
Want to see how short humans’ time on Earth has been, comparatively? Check out the scrollable Evolutionary Timeline, where each horizontal inch (on a 1024×768 display) represents 2 million years. The entire thing is 135 feet wide.
Note: the timeline is incomplete, and the Notes section under the timeline is utter bunk (”I think the process of evolution emphasizes the magnificance of life-energy, or creationary power.”). But it’s still cool.
[via Pharyngula]
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Tuesday, April 11th, 2006,
by Fred (,
evolution, intelligent design, science
,
The Post-Dispatch on Tiktaalik and cortisol/aldosterone
Given the age at which life emerged on Earth and the specific conditions that allow fossils to form, there will probably always be some gaps in the fossil record. Like any human activity, science reveals an imperfect picture of the world in which we live. But unlike religion, science is always subject to revision.None of that makes science better than religion, — just different. Educators and legislators needn’t abandon their religious beliefs, only refrain from forcing them into science classes where they don’t belong.
Exactly. Unless you are a young-earth creationist or an activist trying to get pseudo-scientific claptrap like creationism intelligent design into the classroom, the recent discoveries don’t emperil your worldview. The evidence for macroevolution, common ancestry and speciation is overwhelming, and the science curriculum should focus on science, not religion.
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Monday, April 10th, 2006,
by Fred (,
creationism, evolution, intelligent design, science
,
Two New Discoveries Answer Big Questions In Evolution Theory
One study produced what biblical literalists have been demanding ever since Darwin — the iconic “missing links.” If species evolve, they ask, with one segueing into another, where are the transition fossils, those man-ape or reptile-mammal creatures that evolution posits?In yesterday’s issue of Nature, paleontologists unveiled an answer: well-preserved fossils of a previously unknown fish that was on its way to evolving into a four-limbed land-dweller. It had a jaw, fins and scales like a fish, but a skull, neck, ribs and pectoral fin like the earliest limbed animals, called tetrapods.
Discovered in 2004 on Canada’s Ellesmere Island by Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago and Ted Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the 375-million-year-old Tiktaalik roseae “blurs the boundary between fish and land animals,” said Prof. Shubin. It “is both fish and tetrapod,” showing how life made the transition to land, evolving four limbs from fins.
Previously known fossils of ancient “lobe-finned fish” also seem poised between fish and tetrapods, with pectoral fins containing precursors of the humerus, radius and ulna of tetrapod armbones. But Tiktaalik (an Inuit word for shallow-water fish) makes a stronger case. Its pectoral fin still has thin, fish-like bones, but also contains the three armbones-to-be as well as a wrist-like structure and a hand-like one. The shoulder and elbow could bend, and the proto-wrist could extend, allowing the fin to support the body and propel it on land. “Tiktaalik shows us the stages in the evolution of the tetrapod body plan,” says Dr. Daeschler.
Tiktaalik is an important discovery, although it’s not the first pre-tetrapod transitional fossil. Nor is it the singular missing link creationists/ID proponents (as if there were a difference) demand. Of course, what is far more likely is a series of fossils like Tiktaalik, rather than a single missing link.
Will the creationists go away now? Not likely.
But creationists, many of whose Web sites declare “there are no transitional forms,” are not easily persuaded. John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research in Santee, Calif., says Tiktaalik “is just a variety of fish. There is still a huge gap [between fish and land-dwellers] that has to be filled.”
Add this find to the massive body of scientific evidence supporting evolution, but don’t expect those pushing intelligent design (nee creationism) to care.
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Monday, April 10th, 2006,
by Fred (,
Missouri, politics, science, Stem Cell Research
,
Maryland Governor signs stem cell bill
Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr., a Republican, signed on Thursday legislation intended to make his state a forerunner in stem cell research.Ehrlich had telegraphed his intentions on the stem cell bill, which will authorize $15 million for the research in the coming year. It had been opposed by a majority of Republican lawmakers….
The stem cell bill sets guidelines for awarding grants to conduct research using both embryonic and adult stem cells, research that supporters say holds great promise for treatment of a wide range of debilitating diseases.
States are stepping in to fill the void left by president Bush’s restriction on use of federal funds for this necessary research. Missourians will have the opportunity to do the same this November by supporting the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.
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Thursday, March 30th, 2006,
by Fred (,
abortion, Missouri, science, Stem Cell Research
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The radical anti-abortion wing of the Missouri House is ready to forego $40 million in spending on science rather than see it spent on stem cell research.
Nearly $40 million once set aside by Missouri to support life science research and commercialization could soon become a casualty of the state’s battle over the legality of embryonic stem cell research.Over the objections of Gov. Matt Blunt, the Missouri House has opted to not include the money in its version of the budget passed earlier this month. Now, many question if the Senate will restore the funds, raised from the state’s tobacco settlement.
The 2003 law that created the Life Sciences Trust Fund provides that “[p]ublic funds shall not be expended, paid, or granted to or on behalf of an existing or proposed research project that involves abortion services, human cloning, or prohibited human research.” Some legislators are concerned that the stem cell research amendment on this November’s ballot, if approved by voters, would allow some of the funds to be used for stem cell research.
If this is the House’s concern, the members should be ashamed of themselves. If the law as written bars use of funds for stem cell research, it will only be because Missourians approve a constitutional amendment that expenditure on such research becomes legal. If a clear majority of Missourians want to spend public funds on stem-cell research, a handful of anti-abortion legislators whouldn’t stand in their way.
It’s not at all clear that the 2003 law even bars use of funds on stem cell research. The law bars use of the funds on abortion services, human cloning and prohibited human research. Abortion services is defined as “performing, inducing, or assisting with abortions or encouraging patients to have abortions, referring patients for abortions not necessary to save the life of the mother, or development of drugs, chemicals, or devices intended to be used to induce an abortion.” Stem cell research does not involve abortion services.
The law defines human cloning as “the creation of a human being by any means other than by the fertilization of an oocyte of a human female by a sperm of a human male.” The type of research at issue this November does not involve the “creation of a human being.” In fact, it strictly prohibits human cloning, as the Secretary of State acknowledges. Creation of stem cells in a lab does not amount to creation of a human being.
Finally, although the constitutional amendment at issue would guarantee that Missouri lawmakers cannot prohibit certain types of research, such research is legal now. It is not prohibited in a generic sense, and it is certainly not the “prohibited human research” at issue in the Life Sciences Trust Fund law, which limits prohibited research to
a research project in which there is the taking or utilization of the organs, tissues, or cellular material of (a) a deceased child, unless consent is given by the parents in a manner provided in sections 194.210 to 194.290, RSMo, relating to anatomical gifts, and neither parent caused the death of such child or consented to another person causing the death of such child or (b) a living child, when the intended or likely result of such taking or utilization is to kill or cause harm to the health, safety, or welfare of such child, or when the purpose is to target such child for possible destruction in the future.
The Missouri House must not allow a handful of anti-abortion legislators to use irrational fear of stem cell research to block scientific progress made possible through the Life Sciences Trust Fund (whether Missouri has any business operating such a fund is another matter for another day). Unfortunately, the Senate and Gov. Blunt seem unwilling to reverse this bad decision.
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Wednesday, March 29th, 2006,
by Fred (,
evolution, FSM, intelligent design, science
,
As part of the previous post about the FSM, I went to the Discovery Institute site to see if they had a response to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They don’t, other than a Jeff Jacoby column from the Boston Globe in 1995 that makes this absurd assertion:
If intelligent design proponents were peddling Biblical creationism, the hostility aimed at them would make sense. But they aren’t. Unlike creationism, which denied the earth’s ancient age or that biological forms could evolve over time, intelligent design makes use of generally accepted scientific data and agrees that falsification, not revelation, is the acid test of scientific validity.
Except that they are peddling biblical creationism, and they don’t make use of “generally accepted scientific data”. From Judge Jones’ order in Kitzmiller:
- Although proponents of the IDM occasionally suggest that the designer
could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of the IDM, including Defendants’ expert witnesses.
- ID proponents Johnson, William Dembski, and Charles Thaxton, one of the editors of Pandas, situate ID in the Book of John in the New Testament of the Bible, which begins, “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.â€
- Professor Behe remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God.
- The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism.
And what about ID’s devotion to scientific principles?
- ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.
- What is more, defense experts concede that ID is not a theory as that term is defined by the NAS and admit that ID is at best “fringe science†which has achieved no acceptance in the scientific community.
- Accordingly, the purported positive argument for ID does not satisfy the ground rules of science which require testable hypotheses based upon natural explanations.
- In addition to failing to produce papers in peer-reviewed journals, ID also features no scientific research or testing.
So, since ID is biblical creationism, the hostility directed at its proponents makes sense. Glad we cleared that up.
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Wednesday, March 29th, 2006,
by Fred (,
evolution, intelligent design, politics, science
,
At Crosswalk.com, a good example of intellectual dishonesty
This past February the Ohio State Board of Education voted 11-4 to remove all language that was critical of evolution from its state’s science curriculum. Previously, Ohio’s public school science guidelines said that students should be free to “describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” The decision by the State Board of Education effectively eliminates that freedom. This means that science teachers and students are no longer authorized to discuss scientific evidence that questions the claims of Darwin’s theory.
No, no, no. The Ohio State School Board’s decision did not “eliminate freedom.” The previous policy is what eliminated freedom, by eliminating the freedom of local schools and science teachers to determine what should and should not be taught in their classrooms. It eliminated freedom by attempting to mandate that schools introduce creationism intelligent design critical analysis into the curriculum. It eliminated freedom through ham-handed attempts to get discredited religiosity into science classrooms.
Yes, discredited. It is simply not true, as Mr. Craven claims, that “Darwinism remains as much if not more of a philosophical idea as does Intelligent Design in terms of being testable scientific fact.” The intelligent design curriculum used in Ohio drew most heavily from creationist tracts, which have absolutely no basis in scientific analysis. Unlike Intelligent Design, macroevolution and the theory of common origins are both testable and falsifiable.
The worldwide scientific research community from over the past 140 years has discovered that no known hypothesis other than universal common descent can account scientifically for the unity, diversity, and patterns of terrestrial life. This hypothesis has been verified and corroborated so extensively that it is currently accepted as fact by the overwhelming majority of professional researchers in the biological and geological sciences (AAAS 1990; NAS 2003; NCSE 2003; Working Group 2001). No alternate explanations compete scientifically with common descent, primarily for four main reasons: (1) so many of the predictions of common descent have been confirmed from independent areas of science, (2) no significant contradictory evidence has yet been found, (3) competing possibilities have been contradicted by enormous amounts of scientific data, and (4) many other explanations are untestable, though they may be trivially consistent with biological data.
Further, although Craven clearly views the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District decision as the product of an ACLU/AU cabal, Judge Jones came to the same conclusion after considering the state of scientific evidence for macroevolution and intelligent design:
We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
Craven’s attack on the Ohio decision to eliminate ID’s back-door entry into the curriculum starts with a false premise (Ohio has eliminated freedom), mischaracterizes the scientific evidence for macroevolution, and proceeds to blatantly incorrect conclusions (that teachers are forbidden from teaching anything not specifically mentioned in the core curriculum). Weaknesses in the scientific support for macroevolution and non-Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms have long been part of the scientific curriculum. The now-rejected Ohio policy was never about a critical analysis of the scientific evidence for natural selection, common origins and macroevolution. It was about introducing unsupported falsehoods based on religion into science classes.
[via Panda’s Thumb]
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Thursday, March 23rd, 2006,
by Fred (,
2006 election, Missouri, politics, science, Stem Cell Research
,
Jo Mannies’ column notes the formation of a new pro-stem cell research PAC, Act to Cure. The new PAC’s board members include David Eagleton, nephew of retired U.S. Sen. and current WashU professor emeritus Thomas F. Eagleton, a Democrat who is honorary co-chairman of the initiative-petition drive; and retired St. Louis lawyer Bernard Frank, who has Parkinson’s disease and is a director of the St. Louis Chapter of the American Parkinson’s Disease Association.
Act to Cure joins two other PACs that have been active on the stem cell research issue, Supporters of Health Research and Treatments (a PAC formed by the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association) and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce PAC. The latter two have contributed more than $680,000 within the past year to dozens of political groups, candidates and elected officials in both parties from throughout the state. Act to Cure says that it will “focus on educating the public about ‘the voting records of various officeholders’ and the views of this year’s candidates on the stem cell issue.”
This education mission is important because opponents of the initiative continue to misrepresent what the initiative will do. According to the column:
Both PACs have gotten lots of donation requests from candidates, Schlemeier said. And opponents of embryonic stem cell research are starting to pay attention to who gets the checks. “There’s some interesting timing on when people receive money from these groups and change their perspective on the cloning issue,” said Pam Fichter, president of Missouri Right to Life.
The initiative has nothing to do with human cloning, and Missouri Right to Life should know it. In fact, the initiative text specifically states that “[n]o person may clone or attempt to clone a human being” and provides criminal penalties of imprisonment for a period of up to fifteen years and/or by the imposition of a fine of up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars. the Missouri Secretary of State’s official summary of the initiative says that it will “ban human cloning or attempted cloning.”
But it’s a lot easier to fight the initiative by talking about cloning than by opposing something that will (again from the Secretary of State’s impartial summary) “ensure Missouri patients have access to any therapies and cures, and allow Missouri researchers to conduct any research, permitted under federal law.”
I was proud to sign the petition seeking to place the initiative on the November ballot. You can join the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures or call 800-829-4133.
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