Nobel prize winner in biology will not be publishing in major journals anymore for the same reasons I've been giving here. Publishing has become all about making a big splash to get money and prestige not doing good science. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/how-journals-nature-science-cell-damage-science Journals have been a major contributor in the ethics problem of modern science. It use to be that journals were written to sell to a very specific crowd, scientists in the field. This caused the journals to be very rigorous in their oversight on the quality of science. Today however the business model of the journals is to sell to non scientists readers. This makes the focus of the journals to publish articles that make a big splash and get a lot of press. This has the effect of reducing the quality of science being published. This is an ethical problem .
In contrast to what I was saying earlier about whether science is or isnt being taught at american universities: You might look at what Richard Feynman has to say about what he termed "cargo cult" science and the quality of science teaching in general. Not just American schools, of course, he wrote of delivering a talk when he was teaching at the U in Rio and how "no science is being taught in Brazil". Part of that was an observation of what happened in class when he asked in anyone could give him an example of polarized light. They could all recite a definition, but none could show him where to find some, tho all the time sunlight was reflecting off the ocean onto the back wall of the room. My own experience at U has been that a whole lot more time was spent in talking and memorizing (ESP in biology!!!) than on understanding and applying. Getting that seems left up to the students.
If you are a fan of Feynman why would you be putting such faith in scientists and their ethics as wells as conflating scientists with science. 'Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.' ~Richard Feynman
Which is what we have especially on this forum. Scientists are conflated with science. Science is not trusting scientists. Science is the rules put in place to keep scientists from cheating. If the rules weren't there they would cheat and they cheat even with the rules in place.
Well, I dunno. Hard to carry on a conversation with someone who makes up things about me, and plays quote mine to misrepresent someone else. I've been around scientists all my life, and you seem like you have some sort of issue with people who-like me-that you know nothing about. Says more about you than it does about anything else, you know.
At best, this is a half truth. The rules aren't to prevent scientists from cheating (though sometimes some do), but rather there are protocols that help scientists do a better job. If you're going to have to publish your exact methods and results, and someone else is most likely going to use your published methods to replicate those results, you'd better be conscientious and meticulous about it. And if you are, not only are you more immune to accusations of sloppy work, you are more immune to sloppy work in the first place. Most people in science, as in most other fields, sincerely want to do a good job. I'm not sure how you interpret Feynman. I interpret him as saying that scientists as a whole know only a little relative to all there is to know. An expert may know all that anyone knows about something, but Feynman reminds us that that still isn't much.
I have been saying this for decades, we like what makes us feel good and reinforces our belief system and culture. we incorrectly interpret this as the truth.science has nothing to do with what makes us feel good, its about coming up with theories that can be proven.people forget that through most of history science has said things that have made people mad.
Thats all interesting. But on a different note I think its fascinating that soft tissue was found in dinosaur bones, no one knows about it on a large scale ---its rather hushed---and the scientific community isn't interested in carbon dating something that has real carbon in it. Some people are evolved to have faith in evolution or it might be evolutionary science has evolved into a faith designed to stay within its doctrine..
Perhaps you just repeated things others made up? no one knows about it on a large scale - vague, but its well known by anyone with the most modest sort of interest in such things. --its rather hushed-- like a conspiracy of silence? come now. -and the scientific community isn't interested in carbon dating something that has real carbon in it. this is obviously false, and the bit about "real carbon" does not even make sense Some people are evolved to have faith in evolution or it might be evolutionary science has evolved into a faith designed to stay within its doctrine.. this is also of course false, tho perhaps it is intended as a joke? There is no "doctrine" to ToE, nor a faith, nor designed, nor so constrained, so if this is intended as a "many true words are spoken in jest" its a fail.
You might also mention that the "soft tissue" was actually fossilized tissue structure. The fossils were slightly elastic because the tissue structure wasn't solid, but there was no actual tissue in these fossils. The surprising thing was that the tissue structure was somehow preserved long enough to fossilize. Experiments show that there are some vary rare conditions (certain environmental variables like temperature, type and material of burial, etc.) that allow preservation AND facilitate fossilization. But nonetheless, this "soft tissue" wasn't tissue, it was minerals. Fossilization means replacement of the original organic material with minerals, one molecule at a time. Oh, and it was hardly "hushed", it was MAJOR news in the paleontology field, and intensively studied. Many more examples were unearthed, and studied hard. Even a layman had no difficulty following the story, it was news even outside the narrow scientific field.
Unfortunately some people have an attitude that there is a sort of agenda / conspiracy against their biblical beliefs. Never mind that educated Christians dont tend to agree with those sentiments or the literalist readings that lead to some of these attitudes. If you think that hands are raised all about in opposition-maybe in the thrall of the devil himself- then the refuge and defense is in the words of those good bible believing Christians who put out the Truth, in Creationist websites. Who is one to believe? The godly, who will not lie or misrepresent ever, or the secular satanic scientists? Easy. It is universal and inevitable so far, that all creationist arguments will be based on misrepresentation, innuendo, distortion, outright falsehoods. I had the idea that if a person could get a creationist to accept that even one of their ideas was wrong, maybe it would be a way to open the window to the possibility that more of the ideas were wrong. So far, zero success. I thought I had a chance onetime when the subject of flash frozen mammoths came up. They said there were thousands of them, all frozen in place, and that the area was tropical at the time of the big freeze. Numerous papers showing that it was tundra vegetation associated with the carcasses, that they stink horribly from advanced decay when thawed, etc etc was no avail. Sheesh,you could still have the bible be true, and not require the mammoths to be flash frozen, but, nope. What do you suppose is the psychology of those who simply cannot be wrong, and why does it go hand in hand with creationism?
What's the point here? We do have more complex brains than other creatures. That doesn't mean we will not go extinct through some natural cause or catastrophe in the future and that fact does not change our relatively more advanced status as an organism by comparison to other organisms. It just means that we are not invincible against the greater forces of nature we face.
The point as i read it is that there is no argument to be made against evolution except by making false claims. ie, ,Originally Posted by mutmekep forward thinking and complex societies are proofs of human superiority Science does not do proof, and the notion of "superiority" is one put forward by the creationists, not by science. As long as one is talking to someone who insists on false concepts of science, there is nowhere for the conversation to go.
Actually...that isn't the case. Its actual tissue with actual dna and most certainly not minerals. Not sure where you got that....been alot studied on this and we are way past that hypothosis..
Ah, right you are. The most recent material I can find, from last month, is here: http://www.natureworldnews.com/arti...rves-ancient-dinosaur-soft-tissue-fossils.htm However, there are several important points about it that you seem to misrepresent: 1) Nobody is claiming that these materials are more recent than 70 million years ago; 2) It remains the subject of intensive and highly published research, nothing hushed up about it; 3) Carbon dating of the material is still irrelevant, because carbon dating becomes useless after maybe 50,000 years; 4) There is no indication of "faith" involved. Indeed, what little can be sequenced is similar to chickens and frogs, as should be expected.
In bold above would be an oxymoronic statement. If a person truly has an evolved brain, I suggest that person will have an open mind to all potential. Further, no two brains evolve at the same rate and in the same direction therefore it's not nice to stereotype about 'evolved brains'...
Sigh. Individual brains do not "evolve". Evolution is a process of change from one generation to the next. Not from one day to the next for a single individual. Anyway, the Mother Jones article is spot on. Every factor they list is correctly described and important. I might also add that humility plays an important role. Evolution says that humans, like all species, are contingent and temporary accidents thrown off by a purposeless and directionless process. Some people just can't stoop low enough to accept that, they MUST be the Crown of Creation, however imaginary that must be.
We know the limits of each radiometric dating method, because we know the half-life of each element. Carbon-14's half life is relatively short, so that method can only be used on organic samples that are relatively recent. The absolutely oldest for which we might get a meaningful reading is 50K years, but as the sample gets closer to that limit, the readings become less reliable. If we attempt to use carbon dating on something tens of millions of years old, we get nonsensical readings. If the material is not organic, we also get nonsensical readings at any age. There are several radiometric techniques capable of dating dinosaur fossils (and the rocks they're embedded in). Not surprisingly, it's one of the stock canards of creationists to use these techniques inappropriately, either to fabricate a false age, or to attempt to reject a perfectly valid technique by deliberately misusing it.
You are in effect saying the brain doesn't have built in biases. All animals have biases, we wouldn't have survived if we didn't. Our resistance to the idea of evolution is ironic, not oxymoronic. Hard to imagine what selective pressure would incline us to imagine one species incrementally turning into another. On the other hand understanding a certain commonality with and appreciation of other species would seem to be useful.
