Category: Unsettled Science

The Sound Of Settled Science

Science Unsettled Science 1 Comment

Intelligent Design: Michael Levin on Consciousness, Cognition, Biology, Emergence

…what she had discovered was that if you look at the nascent ectoderm that later will regionalize to become face and mouth, you know, eyes and mouth and all of that, that, um, uh, that, uh, early, early on before all the genes turn on that, um, uh, determine where all those things will go.

The bioelectric pattern within that ectoderm looks like the face. It, it shows you where all this stuff is going to go.

Fascinating stuff.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Unsettled Science 56 Comments

A recent discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) confirmed that luminous, very red objects previously detected in the early universe challenge established ideas about the origins and evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes.

Led by researchers from Penn State and utilizing the NIRSpec instrument on JWST as part of the RUBIES survey, the international team identified three enigmatic objects dating back to 600-800 million years after the Big Bang, a time when the universe was just 5% of its current age. They announced the discovery on June 27 in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The scientists analyzed spectral measurements, or intensity of different wavelengths of light emitted from the objects. Their analysis found signatures of “old” stars, hundreds of millions of years old, far older than expected in a young universe.

The Sound Of Settled Science

AI Tech Unsettled Science 4 Comments

When I was about 12, I read a book on “forensic science”, and for a time considered it as one of my career options. Little did I know, the field is more credentialist guesswork than it is solid science.

New research highlights the importance of careful application of high-tech forensic science to avoid wrongful convictions. The study was published on June 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, which has implications for a wide range of forensic examinations that rely on “vast databases and efficient algorithms,” researchers discovered that the odds of a false match significantly increase when examiners make millions of comparisons in a quest to match wires found at a crime scene with the tools allegedly used to cut them.

The rate of mistaken identifications could be as high as one in 10 or more, concluded the researchers, who are affiliated with the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE), based in Ames, Iowa.

Flashback: Bite marks, blood-splatter patterns, ballistics, and hair, fiber and handwriting analysis sound compelling in the courtroom, but much of the “science” behind forensic science rests on surprisingly shaky foundations.

Too Much Freedom

Canada’s Bolsheviks Climate Cult Unsettled Science 22 Comments

As Terence Corcoran notes, it’s no longer debatable that the productivity of the Canadian economy has taken a beating recently. The problem is that most analysts seem to believe that the problems arose from too little government oversight over the economy, not too much.

Faced with the medical pandemic, Ottawa ordered unprecedented social and economic closures to “flatten the curve” of contagion. To offset the inevitable economic decline, government spending soared and the Bank of Canada unleashed a major monetary expansion, claiming at the time that it could do so with minimal inflationary disruption. The Bank was wrong.

In Road to Freedom, Stiglitz argues that post-pandemic shortages, inflation and unemployment were the product of free-market failure rather than state interventions and bungled monetary policy. When COVID struck, everyone turned to the government to save the economy “and it worked remarkably well.” Therefore, he says, we need more government. “It wasn’t a one-time thing,” he claims. “As the world faces the existential crisis of climate change, there is no alternative but government action.”

Assume The Position

Unsettled Science 10 Comments

Daily Sceptic- Prostate Cancer Screening Doing “More Harm Than Good”, Study Finds

The largest study to date investigating the PSA (Prostate-specific antigen) blood test, which is used as a screening tool in some European countries, found it had a small impact on reducing deaths, but also led to a worrying level of over-diagnosis.

The results of the trial show that an estimated one in six cancers found by the single PSA screening were over-diagnosed leading to unnecessary treatment of tumours that would not have caused any harm in someone’s lifetime.

“However, this research highlights that a PSA test for early detection can do more harm than good – it’s simply not accurate enough and can lead to some men having tests and treatment that they don’t need.”

More here

The Sound Of Settled Science

Climate Cult Science Unsettled Science 22 Comments

Surely, no one meant this literally: Can a Butterfly in Brazil Really Cause a Tornado in Texas?

Almost everyone has heard the claim that a butterfly can flap its wings in one part of the world and cause a chain reaction of events that ultimately results in a major event on the other side of the world. For example, a butterfly wing flap in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. Indeed, this concept has permeated popular society. . .

In academia, the concept of the butterfly effect apparently first appeared in an article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by J. Smagorinsky in 1969, but the specific question “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” was introduced by Ed Lorenz at the 1972 Meeting of AAAS Section on Environmental Sciences.

Good Lord, it seems some do.

. . . existing numerical models cannot accommodate a disturbance as small as the flap of a butterfly’s wing, meaning we cannot accurately predict the resulting weather phenomena using numerical models.

But despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting the idea that a butterfly wing flap could create a tornado in Brazil, the prevailing opinion, even among many in the atmospheric science community, continues to be that it is, indeed, possible.

Down The Memory Hole

Climate Cult There Goes The Narrative Unsettled Science 20 Comments

Irreversible climate change catastrophe along with mass death will be upon us within twenty years, apparently.

Oh, wait,… that prediction was made twenty years ago.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

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