First!

Some of the earliest humans to inhabit America came from Europe according to a new book Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture. The book puts forward a compelling case for people from northern Spain traveling to America by boat, following the edge of a sea ice shelf that connected Europe and America during the last Ice Age, 14,000 to 25,000 years ago.
“Across Atlantic Ice : The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture” Across Atlantic Ice is the result of more than a decade’s research by leading archaeologists Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Through archaeological evidence, they turn the long-held theory of the origins of New World populations on its head.

This failure in economic literature is relevant to climate science because not only are the dynamics we’ve seen in economic science demonstrated similar to climate science, but also both fields have large influences on public policy — in part due to politicians confidence in peer reviewed literature.

Say it ain’t so:

The point is that many human emotions, including nepotism, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, and ideological biases go into the peer review process. It would be refreshing if we interpreted the “peer-reviewed” sign of approval as the flawed signal that it is, particularly in areas where there seems to be a larger narrative that must be served. The peer-review process may well be the worst way of advancing scientific knowledge-except for all the others.

Foiled again! Study claiming psychotic traits linked to conservatism gets reversed…

Phys Org;

Using recent advancements in Australian telescope technology, a Monash University-led research team has made an unexpected discovery that a large group of stars are dying prematurely, challenging our accepted view of stellar evolution. […]
While the cause of this remains a mystery, the HERMES chemical analysis has revealed that premature death tends to only occur in the sodium-rich/oxygen-poor stars. The surprising thing is that our best models of these stars do not predict that they will die young.

h/t meatriarchy

Throwing phrases like “arc of the moral universe,” “right side of history,” and “settled science” on the dustbin of history:

What does the president also mean by the “right” and “wrong” side of history, other than equating his side with “right” and thus historically, morally, and logically inevitable? But history has no such predetermined Hegelian course. Roman republicanism and classical culture were certainly on the right side of history for centuries–until life in AD 500 insidiously became far more dangerous, brutish, and materially impoverished. Beheading was supposed to be the signature of past savages, not the highlight of twenty-first-century video ads for ISIS recruitment.
Did Europe come to the “end” of its history with the European Union or is the confederation’s unworkability leading to a return of centuries of national rivalries? In the 1990s, various manifestations of the so-called Schengen Agreement establishing a borderless free passage zone between sovereign European nations was declared a harbinger–later along with the Euro–of an inevitable pan-European borderless community. That one-world arc was also the dream of Roman Emperors, Napoleon, and the drafters of the League of Nations. But by 2016, Schengen, when coupled with Europe’s inability to control its borders on the Mediterranean, had proved a disaster. Was the German mark or Greek drachma relegated to the wrong side of history; or will both reemerge soon from its right side?

(h/t Instapundit)

It was one of the largest, most rigorous experiments ever conducted on an important diet question: How do fatty foods affect our health? Yet it took more than 40 years — that is, until today — for a clear picture of the results to reach the public.
The fuller results appeared Tuesday in BMJ, a medical journal, featuring some never-before-published data. Collectively, the fuller results undermine the conventional wisdom regarding dietary fat that has persisted for decades and is still enshrined in influential publications such as the U.S. government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. But the long-belated saga of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment may also make a broader point about how science gets done: it suggests just how difficult it can be for new evidence to see the light of day when it contradicts widely held theories.

Do tell.

But, consensus!

If, as seems increasingly likely, the nutritional advice on which we have relied for 40 years was profoundly flawed, this is not a mistake that can be laid at the door of corporate ogres. Nor can it be passed off as innocuous scientific error. What happened to John Yudkin belies that interpretation. It suggests instead that this is something the scientists did to themselves – and, consequently, to us.
We tend to think of heretics as contrarians, individuals with a compulsion to flout conventional wisdom. But sometimes a heretic is simply a mainstream thinker who stays facing the same way while everyone around him turns 180 degrees.

via

Safe spaces for scientists: In a sign that the nutrition space is as defensive as ever, Nina Teicholz, an author who has publicly criticized the science behind the government’s low-fat dietary advice, was recently bumped from a nutrition science panel after being confirmed by the National Food Policy Conference. […] Teicholz said she was disinvited after other panelists said they wouldn’t participate with her.

Back in 1926, when the army was designing its first-ever cockpit, engineers had measured the physical dimensions of hundreds of male pilots (the possibility of female pilots was never a serious consideration), and used this data to standardize the dimensions of the cockpit.

From as far back as the 16th century, historians taught that the Irish are the descendants of the Celts, an Iron Age people who originated in the middle of Europe and invaded Ireland somewhere between 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C.
h/t Carol

Quartz;

In 2005, John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, published a paper, “Why most published research findings are false,” mathematically showing that a huge number of published papers must be incorrect. He also looked at a number of well-regarded medical research findings, and found that, of 34 that had been retested, 41% had been contradicted or found to be significantly exaggerated.
Since then, researchers in several scientific areas have consistently struggled to reproduce major results of prominent studies. By some estimates, at least 51%–and as much as 89%–of published papers are based on studies and experiments showing results that cannot be reproduced.