Raptors, including the whistling kite, are intentionally spreading grass fires in northern Australia, the paper argues. The reason: to flush out prey and feast.
What Would We Do Without Peer Review?
There needs to be adequate due diligence, especially when selecting and approaching potential peer reviewers. This shouldn’t need to be said, but the fake peer review cases have thrown up many instances where this hasn’t occurred. I was shocked back in 2012 when the first cases came to light, and now that over 500 retractions due to fake reviews have been reported by Retraction Watch, I’m quite stunned.
h/t Rolf
What Would We Do Without Studies?
Flies really do spread germs, a new study confirmed.
What Would We Do Without Research?
When you REALLY don't want to lose weight https://t.co/YNN2GRNgjB pic.twitter.com/hCJB13bR1E
— New Real Peer Review (@RealPeerReview) November 13, 2017
The Sound Of Settled Science
WSJ, via Instapundit;
To this day, the zombie science of acid rain lives on at the EPA’s website, which falsely states that acidification of soil, streams and lakes is caused by emissions from power stations. The EPA reckons the annual cost of anti-acid-rain measures in the U.S. will reach $65 billion in 2020, but it no longer claims that the money will prevent ecosystem damage. Now it just claims to be improving public health.
In its approach to the science of global warming, the EPA under current Administrator Scott Pruitt couldn’t offer a greater contrast with the acid-rain coverup perpetrated by the EPA during the late ’80s and early ’90s. Instead of attacking dissident scientists, Mr. Pruitt’s proposal to hold red-team/blue-team appraisals would put dissenters on the same footing as consensus-supporting scientists. This will enable proper debate between both camps to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the scientific consensus on global warming.
Open debate is as crucial to science as it is to democracy. Capping sulfur-dioxide emissions is an economic pinprick compared with the multitrillion-dollar cost of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide. If people’s way of life is to be forcibly changed in an expensive attempt to decarbonize society, at the very least it should be done with their informed consent.
The Sound Of Settled Science
The Forgotten Mystery of Inertia
There’s an interesting little rant near the end.
What Would We Do Without Research?
Not Waiting for The Asteroid
Recently terminated Google engineer James Damore chooses Dr. Jordan B Peterson to give his first interview, ahead of any cable news outlet.
On Google’s own YouTube platform no less.
The Sound Of Googled Science
Your search – Google payola to professors – did not match any documents.
The Sound Of Settled Science
We are all mutants. The 3bn pieces of DNA that make us who we are were long thought to be constant, chiselled in granite like a classical monument, with only tiny changes made here and there. Scientists used to believe that DNA mutations were largely harmful.
By the late 1990s and early 2000s, as the first sequences of the human genome came rolling in, researchers realised that their view of mutations was completely backwards. Instead of being rarities that almost inevitably harm health, mutations litter the human genome. The average human carries around 400 unique mutations, and most of us are none the worse because of them.
This challenged some basic tenets of genetics, as well as they ways that scientists and physicians interpreted genetic tests.
Bacteria Found in Alzheimer’s Brains
This may turn out to be signficant;
Researchers in the UK have used DNA sequencing to examine bacteria in post-mortem brains from patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Their findings suggest increased bacterial populations and different proportions of specific bacteria in Alzheimer’s, compared with healthy brains. The findings may support evidence that bacterial infection and inflammation in the brain could contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
Stay tuned.
The Sound Of Settled Science
New research published this week in the journal Nature Physics reveals that light can behave in an even stranger “superliquid” state, in which light particles flow around objects with no friction or viscosity at all. In this state, light exhibits the dramatic effect of “frictionless flow,” bending around obstacles with no ripples or swirls whatsoever. Interestingly, this effect can be observed at room temperature and ambient pressure.
What Would We Do Without Researchers?
RoundUp has long been considered a benign alternative to harsher weedkillers. After extensive reviews, most regulatory agencies–the US Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, and those of many other nations–have come to the conclusion that it does not cause cancer. So when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the UN’s World Health Organization, declared RoundUp a probable carcinogen in 2015, there was an international outcry. Shortly after, 184 plaintiffs in California filed a legal case against Monsanto, saying that the company failed to warn them about the risks of its product. Since then, in a separate suit, hundreds more plaintiffs have claimed that RoundUp caused their cancers, citing the IARC’s findings as evidence.
About that evidence: According to a new Reuters investigation, Aaron Blair, the scientist who led the IARC’s review panel on glyphosate, had access to data from a large study that strongly suggested that Roundup did not cause cancer after all–but he withheld that data from the RoundUp review panel. Weirder still: Blair himself was a senior researcher on that study.
Party of Science
The Doctors disagree.
Having said that, I’ve really lost my ability to give a damn if people want to ruin their lives. Lord knows I’ve made some stupid decisions of my own.
What Would We Do Without Peer Review?
They’re Night Fishing
Scientists Still Can’t Explain Mysterious Radio Signals From Deep Space
The Planet Has A Fever
You are here:
Minister McKenna Wants to Hear from You!
Today is an opportunity to share your thoughts on the federal environmental review process.
In 2016, an expert panel reviewed federal EA processes as set out in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which was passed by the Harper government in 2012. The expert panel report – Building Common Ground: A New Vision for Impact Assessment in Canada – was then released in April of this year which summarizes the panel’s recommendations.
To say that this new process could cause some problems is an understatement. According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the new approach will:
The deadline to respond is May 5, so you don’t have much time. Here are some key points the Chamber has provided which could help you with your own response:
Again, go to Let’s Talk EA now and have your say before this woman destroys us all.
UPDATE: A commentator says that the comments to this initiative have been closed since November. This is not true. That initial feedback period was for the expert panel, whereas this one is a comment period on the panel’s recommendation.
As for those who think this is a waste of time, know that the Left doesn’t think this way. One of the worst aspects of the environmental review process is that the public input is dominated by activists, so much so that the process gets bogged down into nothingness. The recommendations of this panel propose to return to this state, where project development becomes too burdensome that investors will look elsewhere to put their money.
Canadian resource companies are definitely taking this seriously. You should too.
“Holistic” Is A Chinese Word for “Can’t Afford Antibiotics”
…there’s a small subset of individuals that say that they are practicing what they call “Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine” (TCVM) on animals, including horses. They say that they’re practicing according to how the ancient Chinese practiced veterinary medicine on animals, practicing in a way that’s different from the unnatural, reductionist, drug- and surgery-filled “western” medicine that most veterinarians are taught. And in some sense, I’d say that they’re right; what they are doing is certainly different. And it also has essentially nothing to do with the way that the Chinese practiced veterinary medicine on animals throughout history.
A Man Needs A Woman Like A Sheep Needs A Bicycle
Doctors grow lambs in artificial womb…