Michael Crichton testified before the Senate last week on the politicization of scientific research.

Michael Crichton testified before the Senate last week on the politicization of scientific research.

Michael Crichton testified before the Senate last week on the politicization of scientific research.

Carl Zimmer has an interesting analogy for those who still don’t understand evolution, and instead prefer to jump from “gap” to “gap.”

An article in this week’s Economist says that hurricanes are getting worse. It doesn’t offer any particular support for the theory that this is a result of global warming, though. And the sample that it shows is only over the last third of a century, so it’s entirely possible (and even likely, if one goes back further for data) that this is a periodic phenomenon, not a secular one. We’re simply heading into a near-term period of increased activity. It’s not a propitious time to own real estate near the Florida coast (as we do).

Apparently, one loses one’s verbal inhibitions as one ages.

If this isn’t valid research, it oughtta be.

Jake Gyllenhaal says that “…every man goes through a period of thinking they’re attracted to another guy.”

That’s the problem with the homosexuality debate. Everyone takes their own sensibilities and projects them onto everyone else. For the record, I’ve never “gone through a period of thinking that I was attracted to another guy,” so here’s where Mr. Gyllenhaal’s theory falls to the ground. Much of the debate over the innateness of sexual attraction occurs among people who are to some degree bisexual (which is why so many think it’s a “choice,” since for them it is, and so they assume it is for everyone). But for me, and pure homosexuals, it is clearly not.

Jay Manifold says we should teach the controversy. Meanwhile, Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne write that we shouldn’t “teach both sides,” because one side is wrong. Well, in terms of science, that’s certainly the case. And here’s an interesting essay by John Poulos, who wonders why many Christians can believe in spontaneous order in the free market, but not in biology:

And what’s true at the personal level is true at the industrial level. Somehow there are enough ball bearings and computer chips in just the right places in factories all over the country.

The natural question… is who designed this marvel of complexity? Which commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss for each retail outlet?

The answer, of course, is that no economic god designed this system. It emerged and grew by itself, a stunningly obvious example of spontaneously evolving order. No one argues that all the components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put into place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner store…

[Both of the latter links via Geek Press]

Well, OK, maybe not everything. But perhaps a third of it:

…a third of medical research articles published in major scientific journals and then cited over a thousand times in the literature are later contradicted or have major questions raised over them.

Remember this the next time you hear about a “scientific study,” particularly about politically charged issues, such as global warming. As Iain points out, this is an important point:

We acknowledge that most studies published should be viewed as hypothesis-generating, rather than conclusive.

At least one of the “four hundred scientists” that the Discovery Institute claims signed their petition against evolution says that he disagrees with it:

Davidson says he was seeking a place where people “believe in a Creator and also believe in science.

“I thought it was refreshing,” he says.

Not anymore. He’s concluded the institute is an affront to both science and religion.

“When I joined I didn’t think they were about bashing evolution. It’s pseudo-science, at best … What they’re doing is instigating a conflict between science and religion.”