Science

Blake Stacey is maintaining a list, at Science after Sunclipse.

From Newsweek: Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn’t lost blood. All that’s happened is his heart has stopped beating – the definition of “clinical death” – and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died? “After one hour, we couldn’t see evidence the cells had died. We thought we’d done something wrong.” In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later. But if the cells are still alive, why can’t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. ...

Bruce Flamm points out that another reason to doubt the authors of the dubious Journal of Reproductive Medicine prayer study has surfaced, with one of them being charged with plagiarism: In summary, the man who designed and supposedly conducted the prayer study resides in federal prison, and the man originally listed as lead author admits he knows nothing about the alleged research. The only remaining author has now been charged with plagiarism. . . This may be the first time in history that all three authors of a randomized, controlled study have been found guilty of fraud, deception, and/or plagiarism. Even more remarkable is the fact that the JRM has steadfastly refused to retract its physics-defying paper.Taner Edis has more at the Secular Outpost.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster has produced a FAQ about the causes of the WTC building collapses (along with other FAQs and factsheets): NIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST’s dedicated Web site, http://wtc.nist.gov. This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers. ...

David Friedman has put up a few thoughtful posts about global warming on his own blog, as well as engaged in some discussions in the comments at another blog. He summarizes his own position as: global warming is probably real, is probably but not certainly anthropogenic, is probably not going to have large effects on size and frequency of hurricanes and is probably not going to have large effects on sea level. It is a real problem but not, on current evidence, an impending catastrophe.The posts at his own blog are: “Global Warming, Nanotech, and Who to Believe”“Global Warming, Carbon Taxes, and Public Choice”“Physics, Economics, Hurricanes, and Mistakes” and the two discussions in comments on the Backseat Driving blog are: “Responding to the ’no big deal’ denialists”“The Duke lacrosse controversy and attitudes to global warming”Brian at Backseat Driving says on the first post that “Friedman responds in the comments to this post. The people replying to him in the follow-up comments do a far better job of it than I would.” In my opinion, Friedman completely wipes the floor with those who replied to him. On a related subject, Chris Mooney gives his take on William Broad’s article in the New York Times about criticism of Al Gore’s movie: Let me be clear: I have seen An Inconvenient Truth, and I found it almost entirely accurate. Gore has done a tremendous job of drawing attention to this issue and he gets the science right by and large. But my question as a point of strategy has always been: Why include the 1 to 5 percent of more questionable stuff, and so leave onself open to this kind of attack? Given how incredibly smart and talented Al Gore is, didn’t he see this coming?He points out some specific areas where Gore got it wrong (which Chris also pointed out to me in conversation at last summer’s Skeptics Society conference–this is no change of position for him). John Horgan picks up on the same Broad story, and notes that: What fascinates me about Broad’s stories is that they seemed to at least implicitly contradict the view of global warming purveyed by his Times colleague Andrew Revkin, who spoke about global warming at Stevens in December 2005. Blogging on Broad’s article last fall, I wondered, “Is there dissension at the New York Times on the issue of global warming”? I’m still wondering. Maybe I should try to get Broad and Revkin to visit Stevens again and hash this out. Brian would love that.And goes on in a subsequent post to quote from and refer to Chris Mooney’s blog post. ...

Via Will Wilkinson, the February 12, 2007 issue of The New Yorker has a nice profile of the Churchlands (PDF) which discusses their history and views on mind and brain (without once mentioning the term “eliminative materialism”): One afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. “She said, ‘Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven my car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting. Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll be down in a minute.’”Wilkinson points out that he has adopted similar use of scientific language about physical states to describe his mental states, and agrees with the Churchlands that this enhances the ability to describe what he’s feeling: I think that once one gets a subjective grasp of the difference between the effects of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, adrenaline, glucocorticoids, prolactin, testosterone, etc., monistic conceptions of pleasure and happiness become almost self-evidently false, and a kind of pluralism comes to seem almost inevitable as the trade-offs between different kinds of physical/qualitative states become apparent. Wilkinson’s blog post on the subject is here. I was also interested to see that the Churchlands are advocates of using the evidence from neuroscience in ethical and legal contexts, which brings to mind Jeffrey Rosen’s recent article in the New York Times (March 11, 2007) on “The Brain on the Stand." ...

Glen Whitman has assembled “a taxonomy of all the questions that ought to affect our choices about dealing with global warming.” His list so far includes: 1. The existence of global warming. (He assigns a 95%+ confidence level to this.) 2. Human contribution to global warming. (He assigns 90% confidence to this, but is uncertain about how much of the effect is due to human activity, though he references David Friedman’s point that this doesn’t make much difference to whether or not we should do anything about it.) 3. Magnitude of the warming effect. 4. Net harms or benefits due to warming. (He observes that the latter is often ignored.) 5. Extent of decentralized response. (How much will be done in the form of individual activity, changes in land prices, etc. to reduce negative impacts?) 6. Marginal impact of collective abatement efforts. (If all nations cooperated, how much of the negative effects could be abated or mitigated?) 7. Marginal impact of unilateral abatement efforts. (What can the United States do on its own, or at least without the assistance of emerging economies not likely to cooperate, and how much effect could that have?) To which he adds that there are many more questions about specific proposed responses, their marginal efficacy, and costs. If you have further suggestions for his list, post comments at Agoraphilia.

Glendale Community College philosophy professor Victor Reppert posted at his blog, Dangerous Idea, about whether there is a secular argument against homosexuality. He concluded that there doesn’t seem to be a plausible case (at least, not based merely on evolution), which prompted this comment from ex-Jehovah’s Witness Derek Barefoot: I agree with you partly. However, people who defend homosexuality from a naturalist perspective almost without exception also see nothing perverse about transsexulaity. That one is baffling. It is one thing to dislike some feature of one’s body that falls short of a societal ideal. A person with an unusual nose may want a usual one. A shorter than average person may understandably wish they were taller. But for someone to feel that he or she has literally been “born into the wrong body,” as transsexuals often put it, is naturalistically unfathomable. Perhaps a wasp has by mistake been born into the body of a mouse. Perhaps the tomato plant yearns in some inarticulate vegetative fashion to be an oak. Transexuality is literally a rebellion against nature, yet somehow it is included (commonly) with homosexuality. So perhaps the argument that homosexuality is just an expression of nature is called into question by the related phenomenon of transsexuality.The problem with this response is that Barefoot is making erroneous assumptions about sex in nature. There are not always well-defined boundaries between male and female. I responded in the comments: I think that Darek Barefoot’s analogies of tomato/oak and wasp/mouse are inapt–sexual differences within a species are commonly smaller than genetic and morphological differences across species. There are human individuals whose genetic makeup puts them into categories which are outside of or span the normal male/female boundaries. For example, those with XXY chromosomes may visibly appear to be male or female, and there are those who have both male and female genitalia. Further, there is far more variety to the sexes than mere duality within the animal kingdom. I recommend Olivia Judson’s book, Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation for an entertaining look at some of that variety. Transsexuality, like homosexuality, is evidence against an oversimplified view of sex in nature, not against naturalism itself.And I followed that up with another comment: I was looking for but unable to find a set of online forum postings I came across a year or two ago from an intersexed individual who was a Christian, and honestly had no idea what was appropriate dating for her. I believe the church she was involved with took the position that she was not permitted to date or have sex with anyone. It seems to me that most Christians have a real problem with the existence of such individuals, and have a very poor record of inhumane response to them. I did find this post from an individual raising the question of how religious views can make sense of such individuals. It’s an excellent and interesting question. Here’s a brief quote from that post (rest of this comment is quoted from it): The english language has no gender terms we can use for intersex people, instead why try to force them into either female or male which may not be appropriate. Here is a run down of only some intersex conditions: Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) XX (female) fetus ovaries produce a masculising hormone that results in ambigious external genitals . normally the ovaries do not produce hormones as the female is the default sex, none are needed to create a female fetus. the addition of the masculising hormone therefor creates a female with some male charactistics Testosterone Biosynthetic Defects an XY(male) fetus does not produce testosterone, therefor,as female is the default setting it is born with full female parts, or parts rudimentary malformed female parts, despite being genetically male. Androgen sensivity syndrome Testes in the abdomen, external female parts. they also grow brests but do not have cycles (note: im trying to avoid using catch words here, as im not sure what is allowed and what isnt!) Klinefelter Syndrome Genically 47 chromosomes XXY and classed as men. They are males with a female chromosome attatched, small male parts, my develop female characteristics in teenage years. Turner Syndrome 45 chromosomes, XO. Turner women have female external parts but illformed ovaries and no estrogen. “Hermaphroditism” can be EXACTLY one ovary, one teste a small penis AND a female genitalia. Their genetic makeup can be a mosaic of XY and XX genes, they truly are not male or female, but both. Roughly one in a thousand births is an intersex child. so it isnt that rare. The issue this presents to religion is that here we have a group of people who are neither here nor there and will grow up with issues to do with their sexual aurientation. What is the view of religions on say an XXY male, who looks mostly male but wishes to date other men? What is the view on a XY female who feels she is a lesbian (after all she is genitcally male) These are issues many people with intersex come up agaisnt. often their parents assign them a gender at birth and corrective surgery is given to make them into a gender (usually female) This quite often results in the girl growing up feeling male and later on reqesting a sex change. Its a tricky issue. Many Intersex people wish they had not been assigned a gender and feel their body is their right and they should have been left to choose a gender when they were older. But anyway, To me,(I am theist, not religious and very firmly rooted in science) it shows how our gentically evolved bodies can and do go wrong, for a religious person I think it presents an issue worth thinking about. I dont know of any biblical reference to intersex, nor what the christian take is on people who are not male or female but are a bit of this a bit of that, netiehr here nor there or exactly half of each gender. What is their take on how these people should “morally” behave? Heres what I think it boils down to. 1 God doesnt exist 2 God exists but is fallable and makes mistakes 3 god exists and does not make mistakes, therefor, he wishes intersex conditions to exist , but condemns them to hell if they choose the wrong aurientation later in life to what they look like externally 4. He wishes intersex to exist, either because he has no issues with gender and sexuality . ….feel free to add more…There are some further comments at Victor’s blog. ...

Richard Bennett has an interesting post about Wikipedia and the decentralization of knowledge collection titled “Teaching the hive mind to discriminate." He argues that while Wikipedia is good at accumulating the knowledge of a large number of individuals, it also collects their “prejudice, mistaken beliefs, wishful thinking, and conformance to tradition.” It is unrealistic to expect that these erroneous beliefs will automatically be weeded out because “expertise is not as widely dispersed as participation”: So the real question about information and group scaling is this: are there procedures for separating good information from false information (”discrimination”) that are effective enough to allow groups to be scaled indefinitely without a loss of information quality? It’s an article of faith in the Wikipedia “community” that such procedures exist, and that they’re essentially self-operative. That’s the mythos of “emergence”, that systems, including human systems, automatically self-organize in such a way as to reward good behavior and information and purge bad information. This seems to be based on the underlying assumption that people being basically good, the good will always prevail in any group.Readers of this blog know that I would argue that many religious and political beliefs are examples that support Bennett’s position. On a related point, Ed Felten has a recent post about how reputation systems on the Internet can be manipulated, referencing a pair of articles at Wired by Annalee Newitz. A common flaw is that the reputations of the raters themselves is either not taken into account or is easily manipulated. If there were a way of reliably weighting expertise of raters within appropriate knowledge domains, that could provide a method of discrimination to sort out the good from the bad information. This is a subject that my planned (but never completed) Ph.D. dissertation in epistemology (on social epistemology, specifically on obtaining knowledge based on the knowledge of others) at the University of Arizona should have touched upon. One philosopher who had touched on this subject at the time I was working on my Ph.D. (back in the early 1990s) was Philip Kitcher, whose book The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions (1993, Oxford University Press) contains a chapter titled “The Organization of Cognitive Labor” (originally published as “The Division of Cognitive Labor” in the Journal of Philosophy, 87(1990):5-21). ...

Congratulations to Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and to eight teachers from Dover, Pennsylvania who refused to read the anti-evolution disclaimer mandated by the Dover Area School Board that was the subject of last year’s Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board trial: Brian Bahn, Vickie Davis, Robert Eshbach, Bertha Spahr, Robert Linker, Jennifer Miller, Leslie Prall, and David Taylor. They are the 2006 recipients of the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.