A new study has found that parasites carried by rats were probably not behind the outbreak of plague in Europe.
h/t nv53

Popular Mechanics;

A new study led by geologists at the University of Johannesburg found that compounds in the Hypatia stone are distinct from anything discovered in the solar system. The researchers therefore conclude that parts of the rock formed before the solar system, and if these compounds are not presolar, the prevailing idea that the solar system formed from a nebula of homogenous gas is called into question.

‘Economists Say’ is used to coat liberal policy positions with a veneer of scientific certitude.
h/t TLH

These results indicate that higher economic status can offset lower physical attractiveness in men much more easily than in women. Neither raters’ BMI nor age influenced this effect for females rating male attractiveness. This difference explains many features of human mating behavior and may pose a barrier for male engagement in low-consumption lifestyles.

Last week WUWT laid out some breadcrumbs. Yesterday, we got back home.

The implications of the study suggests that the mechanism can have affected:
The climate changes observed during the 20th century
The coolings and warmings of around 2°C that have occurred repeatedly over the past 10,000 years, as the Sun’s activity and the cosmic ray influx have varied.
The much larger variations of up to 10°C occurring as the Sun and Earth travel through the Galaxy visiting regions with varying numbers of exploding stars.

This should be fun.

Tell me that’s not a little titillating?

By its fruit the tree is known, and the tree of expertise hasn’t been doing well lately. As Nassim Taleb recently observed: “With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers.”

We’ve noticed.

This essay by Rupert Darwall explores the expressions of public certainty by climate scientists versus the private expressions of uncertainty, in context of a small Workshop on Climate organized by the American Physical Society (APS). I was privileged to participate in this workshop, which included three climate scientists who support the climate change consensus and three climate scientists who do not–all of whom were questioned by a panel of distinguished physicists. – Judith Curry

NASA; Behemoth Black Hole Found in an Unlikely Place

…new scientific truths often win the day not so much because opponents change their minds, but because they die off.

Did they ask Julie Payette? She knows everything: Our universe should not exist, CERN antimatter study confirms…

There goes the consensus…

The new study, published in the Lancet, stunned leading cardiologists by countering decades of clinical experience. The findings raise questions about whether stents should be used so often — or at all — to treat chest pain.
“It’s a very humbling study for someone who puts in stents,” said Dr. Brahmajee K. Nallamothu, an interventional cardiologist at the University of Michigan.
Dr. William E. Boden, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, called the results “unbelievable.”