Category: Science

The Sound Of Settled Science

Dogblogging Unsettled Science 15 Comments

This large scale data collection involved 9938 dogs;

 In many countries, the vast majority of male dogs are castrated routinely to prevent the overpopulation which has crowded many shelters and forced them to euthanize countless numbers of dogs. However neutering male dogs has also become a routine suggestion of many veterinarians when their clients tell them that their dog has shown aggression—especially toward family members, or for a variety of large or active breeds. So this recent study sought to see if there were any behavioral benefits or problems associated with neutering, and to see if the age at which the dog was neutered made any difference. […]

 

As in previous studies, the new data clearly shows that the positive behavioral effects that were expected from neutering dogs did not occur, and if anything, the behaviors of neutered male dogs tended to be considerably less desirable. Of the 100 behaviors assessed 40 showed statistically significant differences between the castrated and intact dogs. Only four of these behaviors showed a more positive outcome as a result of neutering. Neutered dogs were less likely to urine mark indoors, or to howl when left alone. Neutered dogs, when off leash, were also more likely to return when called, and also tended to reliably fetch tossed items. That’s it for the positive effects of neutering. The other 36 behaviors were all more negative in neutered male dogs.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 56 Comments

NatGeo;

Stone tools found in the Philippines predate the arrival of modern humans to the islands by roughly 600,000 years—but researchers aren’t sure who made them.

 

The eye-popping artifacts, unveiled on Wednesday in Nature, were abandoned on a river floodplain on the island of Luzon beside the butchered carcass of a rhinoceros. The ancient toolmakers were clearly angling for a meal. Two of the rhino’s limb bones are smashed in, as if someone was trying to harvest and eat the marrow inside. Cut marks left behind by stone blades crisscross the rhino’s ribs and ankle, a clear sign that someone used tools to strip the carcass of meat.

 

But the age of the remains makes them especially remarkable: The carved bones are most likely between 631,000 and 777,000 years old, with researchers’ best estimate coming in around 709,000 years old. The research—partially funded by the National Geographic Society—pushes back occupation of the Philippines to before the known origin of our species, Homo sapiens.

But that’s not all.

  …it’s an open question how these hominins crossed open ocean.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 21 Comments

Shaken Baby Syndrome

…in the late 1990s, Plunkett — a forensic pathologist in Minnesota — began to have doubts about the diagnosis. He started investigating cases in which children had died in a manner similar to the way accused caregivers had described the deaths of the children they were watching — by short-distance falls. What he found alarmed him. In 2001, Plunkett published a study detailing how he had found symptoms similar to those in the SBS diagnosis in children who had fallen off playground equipment. It was a landmark study. If a short-distance fall could produce symptoms similar to those in SBS cases, the SBS diagnosis that said symptoms could only come from shaking was wrong. By that point, hundreds of people had been convicted based on SBS testimony from medical experts. Some of them were undoubtedly guilty. But if Plunkett was right, some of them almost certainly weren’t.

 

Naturally, defense attorneys began asking Plunkett to testify. He obliged. The same year his study was published, Plunkett testified in the trial of Lisa Stickney, a licensed day care worker in Oregon. She had been charged with murder for the death of a young boy in her care. According to Stickney, she was in another room when she heard a thud. She rushed over and found the boy on the floor near an overturned chair, with blood coming from his head. But according to prosecutors, an autopsy showed the boy had the symptoms that conventional wisdom held could only have come from violent shaking. Thanks in large part to Plunkett’s testimony, Stickney was acquitted.

 

The acquittal was another landmark moment in the SBS story. Plunkett was now a threat to SBS cases all over the country. The office of Deschutes County, Ore., District Attorney Michael Dugan responded with something unprecedented — it criminally charged an expert witness over testimony he had given in court.

Of course they did — he was a denier.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Genetics Science Unsettled Science 22 Comments

Andrew Sullivan;

For many on the academic and journalistic left, genetics are deemed largely irrelevant when it comes to humans. Our large brains and the societies we have constructed with them, many argue, swamp almost all genetic influences.

 

Humans, in this view, are the only species on Earth largely unaffected by recent (or ancient) evolution, the only species where, for example, the natural division of labor between male and female has no salience at all, the only species, in fact, where natural variations are almost entirely social constructions, subject to reinvention. We are, in this worldview, alone on the planet, born as blank slates, to be written on solely by culture. All differences between men and women are a function of this social effect; as are all differences between the races. If, in the aggregate, any differences in outcome between groups emerge, it is entirely because of oppression, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. And it is a matter of great urgency that we use whatever power we have to combat these inequalities.

 

Reich simply points out that this utopian fiction is in danger of collapse because it is not true and because genetic research is increasingly proving it untrue.

Pfft. Even a Neanderthal knows this.

 

The Sound Of Settled Science

The "W" Word Unsettled Science 7 Comments

…an endless stream of anthropologists have assured us that race is just a social construct, that ancient peoples made pots not war, that Aryan conquests in India and Europe were Nazi delusions, that the caste system was imposed on the egalitarian Indians by British colonialists, and many other agreeable suppositions.
As Fitzgerald’s friend Hemingway ended The Sun Also Rises, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Via Kathy Shaidle

The Shale Boom: 100 Million Years In The Making

Science 16 Comments

At Oilprice;

There have always been hints that volcano eruptions in dinosaur times could be linked to shale oil and gas resources, said study lead author Cin-Ty Lee, professor and chair of Rice’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences.
Now the study by Lee, graduate student Hehe Jiang, and Rice undergraduates Elli Ronay, Jackson Stiles and Matthew Neal, in collaboration with Daniel Minisini at Shell, suggests that volcanic ash and the nutrients carried in it may have increased the efficiency of biological productivity and organic carbon preservation in the Cretaceous period.
In those times, the climate on Earth resembled that of greenhouse, sea levels were high, much of western North America lay beneath a shallow ocean, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was more than ten times higher than it is today.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 11 Comments

Science News;

The abundance of recent discoveries of dinosauromorphs, a group that includes the dinosaur-like creatures that lived right before and alongside early dinosaurs, does more than call diagnostic features into question. It is shaking up long-standing ideas about the dinosaur family tree.
To Nesbitt, all this upheaval has placed an even more sacred cow on the chopping block: the uniqueness of the dinosaur.
“What is a dinosaur?” Nesbitt says. “It’s essentially arbitrary.”

The Sound Of Settled Science

Climate Cult Unsettled Science 13 Comments

This is not the melting we were promised;

The surprises began almost as soon as a camera was lowered into the first borehole, around December 1. The undersides of ice shelves are usually smooth due to gradual melting. But as the camera passed through the bottom of the hole, it showed the underside of the ice adorned with a glittering layer of flat ice crystals–like a jumble of snowflakes–evidence that in this particular place, sea water is actually freezing onto the base of the ice instead of melting it.
“It blew our minds,” says Christina Hulbe, a glaciologist from the University of Otago in New Zealand, who co-led the expedition. The Ross Ice Shelf is considered more stable, at present, than many of West Antarctica’s other floating shelves–and this observation could help explain that: if a few inches of sea water periodically freezes onto the bottom of its ice, this could buffer it from thinning more rapidly.

What Would We Do Without Peer Review?

Unsettled Science 17 Comments

Studies say;

Recently, more than 270 psychologists set out to repeat 100 experiments to see if they could generate the same results. They successfully replicated only 39 of the 100 studies.
Over several years, failed attempts to replicate published studies have caused generally accepted bodies of research to be called into question — or rejected outright.
One example is the idea that your willpower is a limited resource that, like a muscle, becomes exhausted when it is used. Another is that power posing — standing like a superhero for two minutes — makes you feel bolder, reduces stress hormones and increases testosterone. Both have fallen aside due to failed replications.
These aren’t dusty, arcane findings limited to academic journals; a TED talk by social psychologist Amy Cuddy on the effectiveness of power posing has been viewed over 45 million times and is near the top of the list of the most popular TED talks of all time.

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