It’s easy: less scientific rigor, and get rid of pesky controls.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It’s easy: less scientific rigor, and get rid of pesky controls.
This week’s collection of carnivals:
Anyone else feel that it’s a shame CoE hasn’t hit #66 yet?
Otherwise, you got your open thread right here.
It’s Pride Week at UMM, so it’s timely to mention the dissection of Paul Cameron’s latest mangling of science and statistics. Cameron, if you’ve never heard of him, is an anti-gay bigot who publishes sloppy analyses to ‘prove’ that homosexuals are bad people, and has recently published yet another of his screeds in the Journal of Biosocial Science.
Apparently, homosexuality is contagious. Am I at risk if I attend any of the gay pride events this week? Will Hedwig and the Angry Inch turn me into a transsexual? Knowing that the author is Paul Cameron reassures me that my wife and I have nothing to worry about.
A few months ago, I saw the movie, What the bleep do we know? at the library. I checked it out. I thought it might be worth dissecting for a blog post. I watched it. I wanted to lie down afterwards and pour lye in my ear until it dribbled out my eye sockets, just to scour the stupidity out of my brain. It’s this horrible pseudo-profundity delivered by quacks, gladhanding physicists who think being in a movie makes them rockstars, and a dead Atlantean warrior, all stitched together with a boring plot about a deaf photographer searching for meaning in her life. The whole thing was so dreary and superficial that I couldn’t work up the energy to even complain about it, and did my best to forget it.
Unfortunately, The Disgruntled Chemist had to remind me. At least we share the same low opinion of that piece of mushy dreck.
I am very disappointed. There is this site called How Stuff Works that I’ve run into a few times, that has nice, short, kid-friendly summaries of, obviously enough, how stuff works. I hadn’t used it much, but it seemed like a cool idea…until a reader suggested I take a look at the section on how evolution works.
It’s terrible.
The author has a very, very poor understanding of basic biology, and it looks like the essay was simply spun off the top of his head, with a few quick glances at some websites. The author, Marshall Brain, is an electrical engineer and computer scientist, and it shows, embarrassingly enough.
The whole general introduction is thin and strange and far from how a biologist would discuss it, but rather than going over everything, I’ll focus on one section as an example, a summary of “Holes in the theory“. While giving far too much emphasis to problems than is appropriate, this section has another serious flaw: his holes ain’t holes. All this section is is an airing of the author’s ignorance.
The best analysis of American Heart Journal prayer study that I’ve seen yet is over at Rhosgobel. It uses solid methodology, and its results are clear: prayer didn’t help, and might even have hurt.
I’ve read the paper. It was hard. Every time I saw the word “prayer” on the page (and it’s used like several times per paragraph), my eyes would cross and I’d giggle, and then I’d get cranky because millions of dollars were wasted on this stupid, if well done, study. There was absolutely no justification given for this work, other than “Many patients report using private or family prayer to cope with this stressful experience [coronary artery bypass graft].” No mechanism was discussed. Its closing paragraph simply disavows any interpretations about religion…in a study whose sole motivation is a widespread religious belief.
The whole thing is based on a wild-assed guess plucked out of thin air, with an expectation that no matter which way it turned out, the results would be meaningless. That isn’t science, and it doesn’t matter that they carefully followed the forms of a scientific study—it was a waste of time. It wasn’t going to change medical or social practice, and wasn’t going to lead to any insight on how to better heal people. No one is going to discourage people from praying because of its result, although if the data had skewed the other way, you just know we’d never hear the end of it.
Here’s another bunch who don’t understand science: an article on research on prayer. You know, the creationists are always complaining that all those scientists out there (waves hand vaguely towards the nearest university) are biased and reject supernatural phenomena out of hand, and that their weird metaphysical research program can’t get any funding. Can we just face the fact that there are plenty of crackpot scientists and sloppy bureaucrats in the world, and that lots of nonsense gets funded and studied?
(More below the fold)
I’m staring at that thing, and all I see is some cracks in a flood-damaged wall.
The church was flooded by Hurricane Katrina; causing some drywall in the building to buckle into an image that church members believe is an image of Jesus on the cross.
Touching it causes miracles, they say—the blind see (or, at least, the myopic think their vision is a little better), kidneys start working (maybe), but the most important miracle of all is…
Church leaders say it really doesn’t matter if you believe any of the testimonials about people being healed. But what is a fact, is that more and more people are coming to the church everyday.
…the church’s bottom line is improved! Hallelujah! And the new church members are all natural-born suckers! Pass the collection plate!
Check out these compendia of blogginess and comment on them, or anything else that strikes your fancy.
Nah, I thought this has got to be a joke:
The Pentagon’s defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions.
But no…there is actually a DARPA call for proposals.
DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs, possibly enabled by intimately integrating microsystems within insects, during their early stages of metamorphoses. The healing processes from one metamorphic stage to the next stage are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface to insects, as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects. Once these platforms are integrated, various microsystem payloads can be mounted on the platforms with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sense local environment, and scavenge power. Multidisciplinary teams of engineers, physicists, and biologists are expected to work together to develop new technologies utilizing insect biology, while developing foundations for the new field of insect cyborg engineering. The HI-MEMS may also serve as vehicles to conduct research to answer basic questions in biology.
The final demonstration goal of the HI-MEMS program is the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific target located at hundred meters away, using electronic remote control, and/or global positioning system (GPS). Although flying insects are of great interest (e.g. moths and dragonflies), hopping and swimming insects could also meet final demonstration goals. In conjunction with delivery, the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed. The insect-cyborg must also be able to transmit data from DOD relevant sensors, yielding information about the local environment. These sensors can include gas sensors, microphones, video, etc.
Although the idea of having a remote controlled dragonfly is very cool, I am very pessimistic, and have to dash a little cold water on the plan.
