A new study finds that an increasing number of scientific papers are having to be retracted because of possible fraud. [Read more…]
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Religious people (at least the sophisticated ones) have abandoned trying to argue as evidence that god provides explanations for how things work. They have realized that this is a losing strategy as science has made god redundant as an explanation for anything, and that signs of god’s power seem to show a notable inverse correlation to the advance of science. [Read more…]
One of the most beautiful experiments in evolutionary biology is the one by Michigan State University’s Richard Lenski and his team, most recently Zachary Blount, who started out in 1988 with a single strain of E. Coli bacteria, separated it into twelve genetically identical lines, and then did experiments on them to see how each strand evolved. By now 55,000 generations have occurred, a crucial fact since in evolution it is the number of generations that is the appropriate measure of time, not years. [Read more…]
Science journalism plays an extremely important role in translating the almost impenetrable jargon and style of journal articles into languagethat can be digested by the general public. Hence it is important that they convey accurately and in a balanced way the main conclusions of the research. But in order to make their work appealing to the general public, scientists make often make passing claims in their papers that are not as well supported by their data but catch the eye of journalists who then give them undue weight. Seth Mnookin has pointed out recent examples where this practice has caused widespread public misunderstanding of the results of research. [Read more…]
The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is notoriously rude, egotistical, inconsiderate, and insensitive to the needs and feelings of those around him, even those who are closest such as Dr. Watson. Does that make him a sociopath? Or even a psychopath? [Read more…]
Thanks to physicsphdstu in a comment to the earlier post on mixing and unmixing in fluids, this video explains in further detail, using a variety of experiments, what is going on. The experiments are conducted by G. I. Taylor, a pioneer in this area of research. [Read more…]
Most of us are familiar with the fact that with solid objects, it is harder to start things moving than it is to keep it moving. A similar phenomenon occurs with fluids, where we use the term viscosity to indicate the frictional effects. With most fluids, keeping it stirred is easier or stays the same when compared to starting to stir it. [Read more…]
Mathematics has always been a beautiful discipline, but its appeal is of an austere kind that takes some effort to fully appreciate. But computers and simulations now enable people to create visualizations of the beauty that they could formerly only create in their minds. The beautiful patterns generated by the Mandelbrot set is one example. [Read more…]