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Evolutionist attack on free will
William Egginton is disturbed by experiments that claim to show that we have no free will:

In one set of experiments, researchers attached sensors to the parts of monkeys’ brains responsible for visual pattern recognition. The monkeys were then taught to respond to a cue by choosing to look at one of two patterns. Computers reading the sensors were able to register the decision a fraction of a second before the monkeys’ eyes turned to the pattern. As the monkeys were not deliberating, but rather reacting to visual stimuli, researchers were able to plausibly claim that the computer could successfully predict the monkeys’ reaction. In other words, the computer was reading the monkeys’ minds and knew before they did what their decision would be.

The implications are immediate. If researchers can in theory predict what human beings will decide before they themselves know it, what is left of the notion of human freedom? How can we say that humans are free in any meaningful way if others can know what their decisions will be before they themselves make them?

Research of this sort can seem frightening. An experiment that demonstrated the illusory nature of human freedom would, in many people’s mind, rob the test subjects of something essential to their humanity.

You can read about the monkey experiment by Joshua I. Gold & Michael N. Shadlen in a 2000 abstract, a 2003 neuroscience review paper, and a 2007 paper.

Leftist-atheist-evolutionist Jerry Coyne responds:

Egginton goes on to ponder the obvious: if we don’t have free will, then not only conventional ideas about morality but also a lot of religious doctrine—especially the Christian idea of free choice between good and evil—go out the window.

He’s right, of course. ...

We simply don’t like to think that we’re molecular automatons, and so we adopt a definition of free will that makes us think we’re free. But as far as I can see, I, like everyone else, am just a molecular puppet.

Einstein was also a big believer in determinism, and that is one reason he had trouble accepting quantum mechanics.

The evolutionist logic here is that science implies determinism implies atheism. The proof is the monkey experiment.

The experiment requires the monkey to make a decision, while that decision is detected in two different ways. If the decision is detected one way a few seconds ahead of the second way, then it is assumed that the second is determined by the first. If you did not know about the first detection, then you might think that the second detection was an expression of free will. Thus something that appears to be free will is actually determined.

This reasoning is flawed, of course. It only shows that the decision making process in the monkey brain occurs earlier than you might guess. It does not say anything about free will.

Science says very little about free will. Quantum mechanics has the Free will theorem, but it does not tell us whether humans have free will.

If Prof. Coyne believes that he is just a molecular puppet, that's fine with me, but I don't think that he should be teaching that it is a consequence of evolutionist science or monkey experiments. posted by Roger Schlafly at 20:01:55

 
Tolman on Einstein
Here is Einstein praise from the 1917 American book, The Theory of the Relativity of Motion by Richard Chace Tolman:

Since the year 1905, which marked the publication of Einstein’s momentous article on the theory of relativity, the development of sci- entific thought has led to a complete revolution in accepted ideas as to the nature of space and time, and this revolution has in turn pro- foundly modified those dependent sciences, in particular mechanics and electromagnetics, which make use of these two fundamental concepts in their considerations. [p.5]

It was Einstein who, with clearness and boldness of vision, pointed out that the failure of the Michelson-Morley experi- ment, and all other attempts to detect motion through the ether, is not due to a fortuitous compensation of effects but is the expression of an important general principle, and the new transformation equations for kinematics to which he was led have not only provided the basis for an exact transformation of the field equations but have so completely rev- olutionized our ideas of space and time that hardly a branch of science remains unaffected. [p.195]

173. In the present chapter we shall present a four-dimensional method of expressing the results of the Einstein theory of relativity, a method which was first introduced by Minkowski, ... [p.210]

Very little of this is true. In his later years, Einstein adamantly denied that Michelson-Morley had anything to do with his 1905 work. Einstein got that "general principle" from Poincare's 1902 book, and those "new transformation equations" have always been called the Lorentz transformations since 1905 as Lorentz studied them many years before. That "four-dimensional method" was first published by Poincare, as Minkowski's earlier papers cited him.

Tolman was a little more accurate with what he co-wrote in 1909:

This possibility being excluded, the only satisfactory explanation of the Michelson-Morley experiment which has been offered is due to Lorentz,[3] who assumed that all bodies in motion are shortened in the line of their motion by an amount which is a simple function of the velocity. This shortening would produce a compensation just sufficient to offset the predicted positive effect in the Michelson-Morley experiment, and would also account for the result obtained by Trouton and Noble. It would not, however, prevent the determination of absolute motion by other analogous experiments which have not yet been tried.

Einstein[4] has gone one step farther. Because of the experiments that we have cited, and because of the failure of every other attempt that has ever been made to determine absolute velocity through space, he concludes that further similar attempts will also fail. In fact he states as a law of nature that absolute uniform translatory motion can be neither measured nor detected.

But Einstein did not go a further step at all. Here is what Poincare wrote in 1895, 10 years before Einstein:

Experiment has revealed a group of phenomena that can be summarized as follows: It is impossible to detect the absolute movement of matter, or better, the relative movement of ponderable matter in relation to the aether; all that one can find evidence of is the movement of ponderable matter in relation to ponderable matter.

The earlier post-1905 relativity papers only credit Einstein with taking an extra step, and adding to the Lorentz theory. The later papers credit him with a bold new theory.

So why did it take several years for physicists to come to the view that Einstein was boldly proposing a revolutionary idea of space and time in 1905? If he were really so bold, wouldn't they get that immediately from his paper?

I think that the answer is obvious. It is not that physicists were slow to appreciate what Einstein did. Just look at Tolman's papers. He appreciated what Einstein did. The problem is that he credits Einstein for what Lorentz, Poincare, and Minkowski did.

It is not so clear why Tolman would over-credit Einstein in this way. Tolman cites the others, and ought to have been familiar with their work. Einstein had not yet become an international celebrity in 1917. My guess is that Tolman came under the influence of Germans who were already touting Einstein as a great genius.

Regardless of Tolman's motives, it is instructive to see how he credits Einstein. He credits Einstein for things done earlier by others. Before 1909, Einstein was just credited with adding to Lorentz's theory. Only later did physicists imagine that Einstein had some bold new theory of spacetime, and attribute ideas to Einstein that he never said. posted by Roger Schlafly at 19:11:12

 
Great American discoveries
MSNBC lists:

Eight great American discoveries in science

The discovery team, headed by Tim White of the University of California of Berkeley, said Ardi may be ancestral to Lucy. Such findings have brought scientists closer to identifying the common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans.

Ardi was found in Africa, not the USA. What that team did was to blockade access to the scientific data for 17 years, while they built a case for Ardi being a missing link. Afterwards, others found evidence that Ardi was not a human ancestor at all.

The list also says:

Then, in 1929, Hubble announced that the universe is expanding, based on observations of starlight from distant galaxies. The finding formed the basis of inflationary big-bang theory.

The expansion had already been discovered in 1927 by LeMaitre in Europe. That discovery was the basis of the big bang, but not the inflationary hypothesis, which did not come until the 1980s.

There is no mention of great American discoveries such as the atom bomb, or the Michelson–Morley experiment showing that the speed of light is the same in different frames of reference. Einstein said that Michelson–Morley was crucial for the invention of special relativity, but admitted that it played no role in his own work on the subject. posted by Roger Schlafly at 21:16:17

 
Why scientific evidence is less valid in law
Vox Day argues:

For there are at least three reasons scientific evidence is not only considered less reliable by the courts than eyewitness testimony, but it is CORRECTLY considered less reliable than eyewitness testimony.

1. The dynamic nature of science.
2. Science is not scientific evidence.
3. Science is not, as actual scientists keep trying to remind the science fetishists, in the business of providing proof.

No, I don't think that those are the reasons at all. The main reason is that the American legal system is based on holding individuals personally accountable for their actions and testimony. Testimony from a live witness may be right or wrong, but it at least has the merit that it is understandable to the jury and the witness can be punished if he is lying.

The 6A in the Bill Of Rights says that a man has the right to face his accusers. He cannot be convicted solely based on disembodied scientific evidence. There are reasons for that. It is not that science changes too much, or that science cannot prove anything. If we authorized non-scientist judges and juries to imprison people based just on alleged evidence on a piece of paper, then soon corrupt officials would be faking those pieces of paper. Even with live testimony, a lot of supposedly scientific evidence given in court is not very scientific as it is. posted by Roger Schlafly at 17:07:43

 
Draining the tub
A global warming advocate claims to debunk some myths:

1) Draining water spins differently in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere

It is true that there is an apparent force caused by the earth’s rotation called the Coriolis Force ... What is NOT TRUE is that the Coriolis Force causes rotation in a sink or toilet bowl.

I do not agree with this explanation. It is true that the sink effect was demonstrated under lab conditions in 1908. In my experience, most but not all Northern hemisphere sinks drain counter-clockwise. So either I have been lucky, or this website is wrong.

There are a lot of websites on this issue, but none answer the following empirical question: Is there an ordinary off-the-self sink or bathtub that consistently drains counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the southern?

The magnitude of the applicable Coriolis force is small, but there is also an instability in the fluid flow equations. Only an experiment can settle this issue in a convincing manner.

The Myth No. 5 seems to be just a gripe about terminology, not science.

I am trying to get to the bottom of this bathtub issue. In the meantime, I am not impressed with these global warming blowhards who are always lecturing everyone about science. The site does not have a scientific resolution of the water draining question. posted by Roger Schlafly at 19:40:15

 
The Greatest Physics Paper
Discover Magazine listed in 2006 the five greatest physics papers, based on a reader survey:

(1) A. Einstein, Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitaetstheorie, Annalen der Physik 49 (1916), 769-822.

(2) I. Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. 1687

(3) P. A. M. Dirac, The quantum theory of the electron, Proc. R. Soc. London A 117 610-612 (1928); The quantum theory of the electron Part II Proc. R. Soc. London A 118 351-361 (1928).

(4) A. Einstein, B. Podolsky and N. Rosen, Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Phys Rev 47, 777 (1935).

(5) E. Noether, “Invariante Variationsprobleme,” Nachr. v. d. Ges. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen 1918, pp235-257.

The Einstein 1916 paper is the more famous general relativity paper. It had a similar content to one that Hilbert published at the same time. I think that a much more important general relativity paper was written by Grossmann in 1913. More important cosmological models were found by Schwarzchild, De Sitter,

The Einstein 1935 paper was just a philosophical comment on an aspect of quantum mechanics. It is widely cited by people who don't believe in quantum mechanics, but it did not influence much other physics. Here is a recent video by David Gross explaining that a lot of people have done experiments over the last couple of decades trying to show that there is some merit to Einstein's 1935 argument, but all such attempts have failed. Gross got the 2004 Nobel prize in physics, but not for string theory, which is his specialty now.

I liked Lee Smolin's vote:

Its hard to disagree with the choise of Newton’s Principia, but here are two for second best:

The Astronomia Nova, by Johannes Kepler, 1609, which proposed his first two laws. This one book combined bold physical intuition and insight (including the first proposal that the orbits were the result of a force from the Sun to the planets) with painstaking calculation and data analysis, leading to momentuous and far reaching conclusions.

The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), Galileo, April 1610 which reported on the discoveries he had just made with the telescope, including the mountains on the Moon, the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter and the existence of many more stars. The book is brief, written in an elegant but straightforward style, and it electrified both academics and ordinary people throughout Europe and beyond. By both introducing a new technology and giving the first convincing evidence for Copernican astronomy, this book made the Newtonian revolution inevitable.

No publication in physics, even by Newton or Einstein, has so decisively and abruptly altered the direction of physics than either of these books.

Kepler and Galileo were not at the same level. Kepler's book was hard science, while Galileo's was soft science. These two books demonstrated the biggest advance in astronomy in 1300 years, by far. posted by Roger Schlafly at 19:06:56

 
String theorist denies gravity
The NY Times reports on a goofy new theory of gravity:

So says Erik Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, whose contention that gravity is indeed an illusion has caused a continuing ruckus among physicists, or at least among those who profess to understand it. Reversing the logic of 300 years of science, he argued in a recent paper, titled “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton,” that gravity is a consequence of the venerable laws of thermodynamics, which describe the behavior of heat and gases. ...

Dr. Verlinde is not an obvious candidate to go off the deep end. He and his brother Herman, a Princeton professor, are celebrated twins known more for their mastery of the mathematics of hard-core string theory than for philosophic flights. ...

Some of the best physicists in the world say they don’t understand Dr. Verlinde’s paper, and many are outright skeptical. ...

“We’ve known for a long time gravity doesn’t exist,” Dr. Verlinde said, “It’s time to yell it.”

The string theorists have already gone off the deep end. They are the ones who are always claiming that string theory implies gravity, but the claim is bogus. So it makes sense that one of them would deny gravity. posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:47:27

 
The Democrat war on science
Adler writes:

The Bush Administration was often accused of waging a “war on science” ... So a “pro-science,” Democratic Administration would change things, right?  Not really.  As the Los Angeles Times reports, allegations of science politicization persist.  “We are getting complaints from government scientists now at the same rate we were during the Bush administration,” says Jeffrey Ruch of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

It will be interesting to see how the Bush-hating science activists respond to this.

Fox News reports:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden revealed his plans to improve relations between America's space exploration agency and the Muslim world to Al Jazeera before Congress, the Washington Examiner reported.

Bolden called a couple of lawmakers with the news on June 28, after his interview with the Middle East news organization but before it aired, the newspaper reported.

"He ran down some of the things from the president's new space policy, and mentioned outreach to Muslims," Rep. Pete Olson, the top Republican on the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics recalled to the newspaper. "That stunned me. I didn't believe it."

Bush did not do anything like this. posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:27:01

 
Einstein was not humble
Sepp Hasslberger writes:

A committee of scientists hailed professor Albert Einstein (1879-1955) as the most important scientist of the 20th century. Another committee of 100 humanistic thinkers and religious leaders chose Einstein's own essays on the theory of relativity as the most important humanistic work in the same century! At his death in 1955 president Dwight D. Eisenhower hailed him as the most important scientist of the century and the most humble man that ever lived, 45 years before the century was closed (1)

1. Beckhard, A. Albert Einstein. Ernst G Mortens Publ., Oslo,1962

No, Einstein was not humble. He was an extreme egomaniac. He spent his whole life seeking credit and publicity for himself, in a way that was far in excess of what was typical for scientists. This should be apparent to anyone who has read any of the Einstein biographies.

Hasslberger also has many links to people who say that Einstein was wrong because of various alleged inconsistencies in relativity. There are no such inconsistencies. Those people all have some mathematical misunderstanding. The consistency of relativity can be proved. The theory may someday proved to be inaccurate for some reason, but it will take some new experiment to prove it.

Here is a NASA page about Einstein being wrong, but it really has nothing to do with Einstein. It is only vaguely related to the twin paradox, but even that has little to do with Einstein.

Einstein is sometimes said to be humble based on quotes like this:

Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

But this is just Einstein saying that he is not greater than God. What he did not do was to reasonably credit his fellow scientists and mathematicians.

He is another claim that Einstein was humble:

In his usual humble way, Einstein explained how he reinvented physics: "I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of Relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up." On Relativity, he said: "Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality."

This is an attempt to get credit for what he did not do. Einstein did not invent relativity, and he had no new ideas about space and time. You can read Einstein's famous 1905 paper to see what he is claiming. He has no references to previous work. He presents the work of others as if it is his own. And he does not claim to have a new theory of space and time as Minkowski claimed in 1908. After Minkowski died in 1909, Einstein got famous by claiming to have invented what Minkowski published. posted by Roger Schlafly at 10:03:37

 
String theorists say God without blushing
Physicist Michio Kaku writes:

Einstein said that the harmony he sees could not have been an accident. ... I work in something called String Theory which makes the statement that we are reading the mind of God. It’s based on music or little vibrating strings thus giving us particles that we see in nature. The laws of chemistry that we struggled with in high school would be the melodies that you can play on these vibrating strings. The Universe would be a symphony of these vibrating strings and the mind of God that Einstein wrote about at length would be cosmic music resonating through this nirvana… through this 11 dimensional hyperspace -— that would be the mind of God. We physicists are the only scientists who can say the word “God” and not blush.

Kaku says a lot of kooky things without blushing. He is probably the leading physics popularizer today. None of this stuff has any connection with reality. Physicists should repudiate some of this nonsense because Kaku is making them look silly. posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:53:14

 
Natural selection has not explained giraffes
Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have cited the giraffe as proof of natural selection. But this has never been scientifically demonstrated, as pointed out here:

Most people assume that giraffes' long necks evolved to help them feed. If you have a long neck, runs the argument, you can eat leaves on tall trees that your rivals can't reach. But there is another possibility. The prodigious necks may have little to do with food, and everything to do with sex.

The evidence supporting the high-feeding theory is surprisingly weak. Giraffes in South Africa do spend a lot of time browsing for food high up in trees, but elsewhere in Africa they don't seem to bother, even when food is scarce.

SciAm blogger John Horgan writes:

The philosopher Daniel Dennett once called the theory of evolution by natural selection "the single best idea anyone has ever had." I'm inclined to agree. But Darwinism sticks in the craw of some really smart people. I don't mean intelligent-designers (aka IDiots) and other religious ignorami but knowledgeable scientists and scholars.

Take, for example, the philosopher Jerry Fodor of Rutgers University and the cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini of the University of Arizona in Tucson. In What Darwin Got Wrong (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, reviewed here), these self-described atheists argue that the theory of natural selection is "fatally flawed." ...

I lump Darwin's secular critics into two camps: Some, such as the left-leaning biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin (who are cited by Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini), fear the political implications of Darwinian theory. If we accept evolutionary explanations of human nature, they suggest, we may come to believe that many insidious modern "-isms"—unbridled capitalism, racism, sexism and militarism—were highly probable outcomes of evolution and thus not easily subject to change. Given how genetic theories have been employed in the past, these concerns have merit.

Other critics object to Darwinism for precisely the opposite reason. They fear that evolutionary theory, even when buttressed by modern genetics and molecular biology, does not make reality probable enough. ...

Early in his career, the philosopher Karl Popper (yes, cited by F and P-P) called evolution via natural selection "almost a tautology" and "not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research program." Attacked for these criticisms, Popper took them back. But when I interviewed him in 1992, he blurted out that he still found Darwin's theory dissatisfying. "One ought to look for alternatives!" Popper exclaimed, banging his kitchen table.

Natural selection seems to give a satisfying explanation for giraffes, but you probe a little deeper, and you learn that it really explains nothing at all about giraffes. I agree with Popper that it is more of a metaphysical research program. posted by Roger Schlafly at 19:14:54

 
Weyl on Einstein
The great mathematician Hermann Weyl starts his 1922 book, Space-Time-Matter, with this:

EINSTEIN'S Theory of Kelativity has advanced our ideas of the structure of the cosmos a step further. is as if a wall which separated us from Truth has and greater depths are now exknowledge, regions of which we had not even a presentiment. It has brought us much nearer to grasping the plan that underlies all physical happening. ...

Space and time are commonly regarded as the forms of existence of the real world, matter as its substance. A definite portion of matter occupies a definite part of space. It is in the composite idea of motion that these three fundamental conceptions enter into inti-mate relationship. Descartes defined the objective of the exact sciences as consisting in the description of all happening in terms of these three fundamental conceptions, thus referring them to motion. Since the human mind first wakened from slumber, and to give itself free rein, it has never ceased to feel the profoundly mysterious nature of time-consciousness, of the progression of the world in time, -- of Becoming. It is one of those ultimate metaphysical problems which philosophy has striven to elucidate and unravel at every stage of its history. The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science "more geometrico". Matter was imagined to be a substance involved in every change, and it was thought that every piece of matter could be measured as a quantity, and that its characteristic expression as a "substance" was the Law of Conservation of Matter which asserts that matter remains constant in amount throughout every change. This, which has hitherto represented our knowledge of space and matter, and which was in many quarters claimed by philosophers as a priori knowledge, absolutely general and necessary, stands to-day a tottering structure. First, the physicists in the persons of Faraday and Maxwell proposed the "electromagnetic field", contradistinction to matter, as a reality of a different category. Then, during the last century, the mathematician, following a differ-ent line of thought, secretly undermined belief in the evidence of Euclidean Geometry. And now, in our time, there has been un- loosed a cataclysm which has swept away space, time, and matter hitherto regarded as the firmest pillars of natural science, but only to make place for a view of things of wider scope, and entailing a deeper vision.

This revolution was promoted essentially by the thought of one man, Albert Einstein.

This is exaggerated, but I guess that it reflects some of the excitement about relativity at the time. Weyl must have been a buddy of Einstein to say such silly things. The book does not mention Poincare or Grossmann. I would take his praise for Einstein more seriously if he some specific arguments as to why Einstein's relativity work was any better than that of the others. But he does not seem to make any attempt to be historically accurate.

Here is how he explains special relativity:

Lorentz and Einstein recognised that not only equation (16) [4D wave equation] but also the whole system of electromagnetic laws for the aether has this property of invariance, namely, that these laws are the ex- pression of invariant relations between tensors which exist in a four- dimensional affine space whose co-ordinates are t, xl, x2, x and upon which a metrical structure the form (17). [p.165]

But this is false. Neither Lorentz nor Einstein had 4-dimensional space, or tensors, or the metric structure. They had primitive notions of invariance, but not the notion that you would expect.

Then he gives Einstein all the credit, but acknowledges that the big ideas came from Minkowski:

The solution of Einstein (vide note 6, 1905), which at one stroke overcomes all difficulties, is then this : the world is a four-dimensional affine space whose metrical structure is determined by a non-definite quadratic form which has one negative and three positive dimensions. ... The adequate mathematical formulation of Einstein's discovery was first given by Minkowski (vide note 7, 1908) : to him we are indebted for the idea of four-dimensional world-geometry, on which we based our argument from the outset. [p.173]

This doesn't make any sense. If Minkowski discovered the four-dimensional world-geometry in 1908, then how did Einstein use it to solve a paradox in 1905? Einstein did not, of course.

Here is some more over-the-top praise for Einstein:

The physical purport of this is that we are to discard our belief in the objective meaning of simultaneity; it was the great achievement of Einstein in the field of the theory of knowledge that he banished this dogma from our minds, and this is what leads us to rank his name with that of Copernicus. [p.174]

Poincare wrote about this 5 years earlier in 1900. He credited Lorentz with the closely related concept of local time.

We are indebted to Minkowski for recognising clearly that the fundamental equations for moving bodies are determined uniquely by the principle of relativity if Maxwell's theory for matter at rest is taken for granted. He it was, also, who formulated it in its final form (vide note 12). [p.196]

Yes, Minkowski realized this clearly in 1908, as did Poincare in 1905. Lorentz and Einstein did not. Einstein's relativity was not sufficient to deduce the theory of moving bodies from the theory of matter at rest.

It is strange that Weyl never mentions Poincare. Perhaps Weyl preferred to read German papers. It is not possible that he had not heard of Poincare's contributions.

It is also strange that Weyl give Einstein so much credit for special relativity when the book's arguments come from Lorentz or Minkowski.

Perhaps Weyl is one of those responsible for falsely inflating Einstein's reputation. A lot of people read Weyl's book, and figured that he knew what he was talking about.

I edited this paragraph from the Wikipedia article on the Lorentz transformation:

The Lorentz transformation was originally the result of attempts by Lorentz and others to explain observed properties of light propagating in what was presumed to be the luminiferous aether; Albert Einstein later reinterpreted the transformation to be a statement about the nature of both space and time, and he independently re-derived the transformation from his postulates of special relativity.

It is amazing that people say such nonsense. Maybe it partially came from Weyl's book. The Lorentz transformation had nothing to do with the aether. Einstein did not make it a statement about the nature of both space and time any more than anyone else, and he did not "independently" re-derive it. By his own admission, he learned it from Lorentz, altho he denies that he read Lorentz's later papers.

Weyl was a great genius, and probably understood relativity better than anyone at the time. He is right that the key concepts are the 4D geometry, indefinite metric, and tensors. Lorentz did not have these concepts, and Einstein was no better. Weyl's comments about Einstein are historically inaccurate because it is evident from Einstein's papers that he did not understand those concepts until after everyone else did. Weyl was a mathematician and theoretical physicist, not a historian. posted by Roger Schlafly at 16:56:13

 
Fastest Case of Human Evolution
More evidence that humans are still evolving:

Tibetans live at altitudes of 13,000 feet, breathing air that has 40 percent less oxygen than is available at sea level, yet suffer very little mountain sickness. The reason, according to a team of biologists in China, is human evolution, in what may be the most recent and fastest instance detected so far.

Comparing the genomes of Tibetans and Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group in China, the biologists found that at least 30 genes had undergone evolutionary change in the Tibetans as they adapted to life on the high plateau. Tibetans and Han Chinese split apart as recently as 3,000 years ago, say the biologists, a group at the Beijing Genomics Institute led by Xin Yi and Jian Wang. The report appears in Friday’s issue of Science.

If confirmed, this would be the most recent known example of human evolutionary change. Until now, the most recent such change was the spread of lactose tolerance — the ability to digest milk in adulthood — among northern Europeans about 7,500 years ago. But archaeologists say that the Tibetan plateau was inhabited much earlier than 3,000 years ago and that the geneticists’ date is incorrect.

Just a few years ago, evolutionists said that this was impossible.

The paper is also claiming genes for long life:

Scientists studying the genomes of centenarians in New England say they have identified a set of genetic variants that predicts extreme longevity with 77 percent accuracy.

You'll want to wait for that to get replicated.

Update: (July 9, 2010) I am not the only one who is suspicious of that last study. The NY Times just reported:

A study on the genetics of centenarians that was published last week in Science, a leading scientific journal, has come under criticism from geneticists who say it has obvious weaknesses, is probably incorrect and should not have been published in a premier journal.

The study, which received broad press coverage, said that 150 genetic variants predictive of longevity had been identified among New England centenarians and that a test based on those variants could predict who would live to extreme old age.

This is a funny subject. There is wild enthusiasm for bogus results, and a strange reluctance to admit the obvious. The journals should require more evidence for these over-simplistic genetic explanations, because so many of them have failed. posted by Roger Schlafly at 12:28:50

 
Dirac had Einstein's disease
Scientific American magazine has temporarily reprinted The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature by Paul Dirac in 1963:

In this article I should like to discuss the development of general physical theory: how it developed in the past and how one may expect it to develop in the future. One can look on this continual development as a process of evolution, a process that has been going on for several centuries.

The first main step in this process of evolution was brought about by Newton. Before Newton, people looked on the world as being essentially two-dimensional-the two dimensions in which one can walk about-and the up-and-down dimension seemed to be something essentially different. Newton showed how one can look on the up-and-down direction as being symmetrical with the other two directions, by bringing in gravitational forces and showing how they take their place in physical theory. One can say that Newton enabled us to pass from a picture with two-dimensional symmetry to a picture with three-dimensional symmetry.

Einstein made another step in the same direction, showing how one can pass from a picture with three-dimensional symmetry to a picture with four dimensional symmetry. Einstein brought in time and showed how it plays a role that is in many ways symmetrical with the three space dimensions. ...

The special theory of relativity, which Einstein introduced, requires us to put all the laws of physics into a form that displays four-dimensional symmetry.

I am not sure which is goofier -- the Newton step or Einstein's.

Einstein missed the idea of a 4-dimensional symmetry. He used the Lorentz transformation, just like Lorentz and others years before, but he did not have the idea of a 4-dimensional spacetime or a symmetry group in 1905. He did not even understand these ideas when Poincare and Minkowski published them, and did not appreciate them until at least 1908 when lots of physicists did.

Dirac had Einstein's disease, and searched for grand top-down theories without paying much attention to experiment or the work of others:

This view provides us with another way in which we can hope to make advances in our theories. Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future. A good many people are working on the mathematical basis of quantum theory, trying to understand the theory better and to make it more powerful and more beautiful. If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them. It may well be that the next advance in physics will come about along these lines: people first discovering the equations and then needing a few years of development in order to find the physical ideas behind the equations. My own belief is that this is a more likely line of progress than trying to guess at physical pictures.

Of course, it may be that even this line of progress will fail, and then the only line left is the experimental one. Experimental physicists are continuing their work quite independently of theory, collecting a vast storehouse of information.

Dirac is famous for his early work, before he developed this attitude. Like Einstein, he wasted the later part of his life on dead-end ideas.

SciAm has podcasts on Dirac here and here.

Here is an amusing 1929 Dirac interview:

"What do you like best in America?", says I.

"Potatoes," says he.

"Same here," says I. "What is your favorite sport?"

"Chinese chess," says he. ...

"This is the most important thing yet, doctor," says I. "It shows that me and you are more alike than I thought. And now I want to ask you something more: They tell me that you and Einstein are the only two real sure-enough high-brows and the only ones who can really understand each other. I wont ask you if this is straight stuff for I know you are too modest to admit it. But I want to know this --- Do you ever run across a fellow that even you can't understand?"

"Yes," says he.

"This well make a great reading for the boys down at the office," says I. "Do you mind releasing to me who he is?"

"Weyl," says he.

Hermann Weyl may well have been the greatest genius actively working at the time. He produced at a higher level than Dirac or Einstein. He was primarily a mathematician but he wrote seminal books on relativity and quanturm mechanics. I will post some of his funny ideas on relativity. posted by Roger Schlafly at 11:03:39

 
Bogus arguments for supersymmetry
Czech string theorist Lubos Motl writes:

By far the most important argument in favor of supersymmetry is the fact that it seems to be implied by string theory, the only known - and, most likely, the only mathematically possible - consistent unifying theory of fundamental forces including gravity.

No, string theory does not unify any of the forces, and has not been shown to be consistent. If that is not wacky enough, here is his second most important argument for supersymmetry:

The cosmological constant problem has often been presented as the greatest mystery of the contemporary high-energy physics. However, the role of supersymmetry has often been obscured.

In the Planck units, the observed cosmological constant is very tiny, something like 10^{-123}. An easy way to cancel the cosmological constant would be to have an exact supersymmetry. In that case, arguments showing that the C.C. is still equal to zero can work. The vacuum graphs (loops) with bosons would cancel against their superpartners.

However, SUSY is broken and the SUSY breaking scale is at least 300 GeV or so. Is that enough to make the cosmological constant tiny?

Well, it's not. The most natural value of the cosmological constant is something like 10^{-60} times the natural value that you would predict from the SUSY breaking at 300 GeV. And SUSY breaking can't be much lower than 300 GeV because the superpartners would otherwise be easily seen without big colliders - but they're not seen.

So with SUSY, the numerical problem survives. In fact, SUSY makes things more controllable so the statement that the natural value of the C.C. is different than the observed one becomes even more justifiable by mathematics.

Nevertheless, there is one point that pretty much everyone overlooks: 10^{-60} is less unnatural than 10^{-123}. By requiring low-energy SUSY, the fine-tuning problem for the cosmological constant has been reduced by 63 orders of magnitude or so. So much (10^{63} times) higher a fraction of the vacua with low-energy SUSY have a chance to predict a tiny enough vacuum energy so that it agrees with the observations.

Only a string theorist would brag about an experimental prediction that is only wrong by 63 orders of magnitude.

The Asymtotia string theorist blogger writes:

Here’s the really odd thing about all this (and an explanation of the post title): While this is a school on Quantum Gravity, after talking with the students for a while one learns that in most cases the little they’ve heard about string theory is often essentially over 20 years out of date and almost always totally skewed to the negative, to the extent that many of them are under the impression that string theory has nothing to do with quantum gravity at all! It is totally bizarre,

They are right. String theory has nothing to do with quantum gravity. I challenged him to cite the scientific paper that shows some connection, and he ignored it. There are string theorists who speculate that they may someday solve the problem of quantum gravity, but they have almost nothing so far, unless you want to count being wrong by 63 decimal places. posted by Roger Schlafly at 19:46:44

 
Stein on Poincare
Howard Stein wrote an unpublished essay on Physics and Philosophy Meet: the Strange Case of Poincaré:

Let me begin with a remark about the culminating event, Poincaré’s memoir of 1905/6 on the dynamics of the electron. I am by no means the first one to comment on that paper: there is a well known controversy over the question whether or not it de- serves to be considered as containing a statement of the special theory of relativity -- and if not, why not? -- i.e., the question, how does Poincaré’s theory differ from Einstein’s? That such a controversy should be possible at all is certainly a little odd; so prima facie, the case is strange. But I have not seen it pointed out just how strange; I know of nothing like it in the entire history of physics. There have been many instances of work inade- quately appreciated at first, on account of what might be called philosophical precon- ceptions or prejudices; but here we have to deal with a great work by a great scientist and philosopher of science whose own author failed to appreciate its true worth.

I think Stein is correct that there is no other example in the history of science like Poincare and relativity. There are lots of examples of geniuses who did get credit because their work was ignored. But Poincare was not ignored, he published more of the theory than Einstein, and he continues to be downplayed by physicists and historians to this day.

Stein goes on to discuss Poincare's physics and philosophy, and why the Poincare story is puzzling. He says Poincare did not believe in the aether, and objected to any argument depending on the aether. But "he does not suggest (explicitly, at any rate) that an electromagnetic theory of light can be formulated without an ether altogether." Stein attributes this to "Poincaré’s philosophical mistake", and explains:

And this is the crucial difference, as I see it, between Poincaré’s relation to the special theory of relativity and Einstein’s. Both of them discovered this theory -- and did so independently. So far as its mathematical structure is concerned, Poincaré’s grasp of the theory was in some important respects superior to Einstein’s. But Einstein “took the theory seriously” in the sense that he looked to it for NEW INFORMATION about the physical world -- that is, in Poincaré’s language, he regarded it as “fertile”: as a source of new “real generalizations” -- of empirically testable consequences. And in doing so, Einstein attributed physical significance to the basic notions of the theory itself in a way that Poincaré did not.

If Stein were correct, then it would indeed be puzzling that Poincare could discover relativity and not understand it. Stein justifies his conclusion by saying that Einstein found in 1915 that relativity affects the Mercury perihelion, and that Einstein badmouthed Poincare in 1911.

Stein has many references to Poincare's 1908 book, but obviously did not notice that it proposes using relativity to explain that Mercury perihelion deviation. Poincare was 7 years ahead of Einstein, even on Stein's best example.

It is absurd to suggest that Einstein took the physical applications of relativity more seriously. The best relativity experiments of the time were those of Kaufmann and others on relativistic mass. Those started in 1901, before Einstein said anything on the subject. Poincare considers them carefully in his 1905 paper, and admits that they might prove the theory wrong. Einstein ignores such matters.

Einstein badmouthing Poincare says more about Einstein than Poincare. Einstein obviously felt very threatened by Poincare, because recognition of Poincare's originality would be very damaging to his own reputation. It is bizarre for Stein to cite this Einstein remark as evidence that Einstein had some better understanding than Poincare. Stein could only say something so silly if he had a basic premise that Einstein was omniscient.

It seems to me that Stein is just applying his own philosophical prejudices. Even if he were right, he is still just saying that Poincare should be denied credit for relativity because of some obscure philosophical issues.

Much as these folks try, they are unable to give a coherent argument for crediting Einstein. Stein even has to add a footnote at the end of his essay admitting that he has had trouble convincing people that Poincare made a mistake, because there is no clear explanation of just what the mistake was.

Why would anyone be convinced by Stein's argument? Stein is essentially saying that Poincare independently discovered relativity theory and had a superior grasp of the theory, but Einstein should get the credit because of some philosphical argument that takes 24 pages to explain. Regardless of what that argument is, it would make more sense to credit Poincare with relativity, and credit Einstein with that philosophical argument, if indeed Einstein had some sort of superior philosophical view. But then Einstein would not be the world's greatest genius if all he did was to take Poincare's theory more seriously and to attribute physical significance to it. posted by Roger Schlafly at 14:53:21

 
The hunt for the God particle
The UK Guardian reports:

The idea of a hidden world might sound absurd, but physicists have good reason to believe it exists. Even with today's most advanced telescopes, astronomers can see only 4% of what makes up our cosmic neighbourhood. The rest is invisible to us, revealing itself only by the effects it has on the galaxies we can see. Around 70% of the unseen universe is labelled as "dark energy", a mysterious force that drives the expansion of the universe, making galaxies race away from us. The remaining quarter is chalked up as "dark matter", an obscure substance that clings to galaxies and exerts an unmistakable gravitational pull on them. The word "dark" means we cannot see it, but it also means scientists haven't the faintest clue what it is. ...

"Once you start considering these ideas actively, there's no theoretical reason to rule out a very interesting, dynamic and diverse dark or hidden world," says Neal Weiner, a physicist at New York University. "It leads to all sorts of conversations about the possibilities of dark people and dark planets. Now that is extremely unlikely, but it's something to think about. Once you open the box, it's not obvious where it will end." ...

The uncertainty over what exists in the hidden world has done nothing to dampen physicists' enthusiasm for the idea. John March-Russell, a theoretical physicist at Oxford University, says proof of a hidden world could become the central plank of a scientific revolution that rivals any in history. When Copernicus put the sun at the centre of the solar system in the 16th century, and when Charles Darwin described evolution in the 19th century, they both knocked humans down a peg or two. The discovery of a hidden world would force us to reassess our place once more. The cosmos as we know it – with all its stars and planets – might turn out to be nothing more than a mediocre microcosm of a far richer and more complicated universe.

"Just as the Copernican revolution told us that the Earth isn't special, the same could be true for everything that we've so far discovered," says March-Russell. "All of this stuff around us, the stuff of our reality, is it the dominant and most complex part of the universe? It might not be."

This nonsense about knocking human down a peg comes up a lot. I call it the Copernican-Freudian-Gouldian pedestal principle. I posted about it here, here, and here. Dark energy is probably the quantum vacuum, or what used to be called the aether. Dark matter is probably some sort of heavy neutrino. Finding these will not knock man off the pedestal.

There is an embarrassing correction at the end. The original said:

When Copernicus put the Earth at the center of the solar system in the 16th century, and when Charles Darwin described evolution in the 19th century, they both knocked humans down a peg or two.

The correction is still not right. Copernicus put the Sun near the center of the universe, but not at the center. posted by Roger Schlafly at 08:15:46

 
Latest Superstring Revolution
The June 2010 Scientific American Magazine reports:

"Twistor" Theory Reignites the Latest Superstring Revolution
A simple twist of fate: An old idea from Roger Penrose excites string theorists

In the late 1960s the renowned University of Oxford physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose came up with a radically new way to develop a unified theory of physics. Instead of seeking to explain how particles move and interact within space and time, he proposed that space and time themselves are secondary constructs that emerge out of a deeper level of reality. But his so-called twistor theory never caught on, and conceptual problems stymied its few proponents. Like so many other attempts to unify physics, twistors were left for dead.

In October 2003 Penrose dropped by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., to visit Edward Witten, the doyen of today’s leading approach to unification, string theory. Expecting Witten to chastise him for having criticized string theory as a fad, Penrose was surprised to find that Witten wanted to talk about his forgotten brainchild.

A few months later Witten posted a dense 97-page paper that tied together twistors and strings—bringing twistors back to life and impressing even the harshest critics of string theory. In the past few years theorists have built on Witten’s work and rethought what space and time are. They have already spun off calculational techniques that make child’s play of the toughest problems in ordinary particle physics. “I have never been more excited about physics in my life,” says string theorist Nima Arkani-Hamed, who recently moved to the institute from Harvard University to immerse himself in the emerging field. “It is developing at a blistering pace right now, with a group of roughly 15 people in the world working on it day and night.”

The history of string theory is marked by revolutions. There is never any progress in relating string theory to the real world or in making testable predictions. Just revolutions. I thought that the landscape was the third string theory revolution, but maybe it is twistor duality.

You know a subject is bogus when its leaders are always talking about revolutions and paradigm shifts.

One reader comments:

This is yet another instance where nonsensical speculations promoted by influential theorists fail to make connection with physical reality. There is no shred of observational evidence that what this article tries to sell has any merit whatsoever. Hypotheses that cannot be falsified belong to pseudo-science.

Another comment:

One suggestion: I would recommend referring to these various concepts which have not yet been experimentally tested as "hypotheses" or "concepts" rather than "theories", at least in public.

We already have enough trouble in the schools, with people of a certain persuasion claiming that evolution is "just a theory", and creationism is "creation science". As I said, just a suggestion.

No, it is a mistake to describe string theory as something that has not yet been experimentally tested. It has no hypotheses waiting to be tested. If this commenter is so concerned about creationism masquerading as science, why isn't he similarly concerned about string theory? The answer is that the string theorists are all atheists.

There are things that string theorists argue about, as you can see in this 2004 Smolin-Susskind debate.

For the most part, string theorists refuse to debate their critics. The popular physics preprint server has even been configured to show trackbacks to blogs supporting string, but not to the Not Even Wrong blog. posted by Roger Schlafly at 10:07:27

 
Only 20k human genes
I have commented before that the Human Genome Project vastly overestimated the number of human genes. Now Hawks explains:

While doing some other research, I ran across a remarkable short paper by James Spuhler, "On the number of genes in man," printed in Science in 1948.

We've been hearing for the last ten years how the low gene count in humans -- only 20,000 or so genes -- is "surprising" to scientists who had previously imagined that humans would have many more genes than this.

So here's the next to the last line of Spuhler's article:

On the basis of these speculations there are then some 19,890-30,420 gene loci in man.

Wow. 50 years of research, billions of dollars, many Nobel prizes, stunning technological advances, and a worse human gene count than a 1948 estimate. The project leaders should have just admitted that they were not really finding the genes. posted by Roger Schlafly at 10:33:31

 
Wisdom of Feynman
From another blog:

"I do not understand why journalists and others want to know about the latest discoveries in physics even when they know nothing about the earlier discoveries that give meaning to the latest discoveries"

Richard Feynman (quoted by G.F.Giudice, "A Zeptospace Odyssey", Oxford University Press 2010)

posted by Roger Schlafly at 08:22:51

 
No medical cures from human genome project
The popular leftist-atheist-evolutionist blog Pharyngula writes:

Nicholas Wade of the NY Times has written one of those stories that make biologists cringe — it just gets so much wrong. It's a look back at the human genome project, and I was turned off at the first paragraph. ... he makes this error-filled statement:>

The barely visible roundworm needs 20,000 genes that make proteins, the working parts of cells, whereas humans, apparently so much higher on the evolutionary scale, seem to have only 21,000 protein-coding genes.

Humans aren't high on the evolutionary scale…there is no evolutionary scale. We aren't the pinnacle of anything. It's also weird to see people still expressing astonishment that we "only" have about 20,000 genes.

What is astonishing is that evolutionist professors can deny that humans are high on the evolutionary scale.

Wade also says:

… despite all the hype, the contribution of the genome to human health has been pretty negligible. In other words, from a purely medical point of view, there isn’t much to celebrate.

The human genome project is loved and hated for the same reason -- it is a reductionist approach to the never-ending nature-nuture debate. posted by Roger Schlafly at 19:09:33

 
Naming denialists
Megan Scudellari writes in the British journal Nature:

Scientists regularly debate hypotheses and interpretations, sometimes feverishly. But in the public sphere, a different type of dissension is spreading through media outlets and online in an unprecedented way—one that challenges basic concepts held as undeniable truths by most researchers. 'Science denialism' is the rejection of the scientific consensus, often in favor of a radical and controversial point of view. Here, we list what we see as a few of today's most vocal denialists spreading ideas that counter the consensus in health fields.

This is a scurrilous approach for a scientific journal. Some of those listed back up what they say with cites to scientific articles. They have legitimate opinions based on the research they cite. If they are wrong, then Nature could publish an article demonstrating their error. But it is not scientific to just publish an article with name-calling about how they are in a minority.

See Michael Fumento's reply.

It is true that the BMI of people who live the longest is in the overweight range, that swine flu was declared a pandemic only by changing the definitions, and the optimistic mainstream predictions for embryonic stem cell therapies have failed. We need people pointing these things out, without the science establishment branding them denialists. posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:31:07

 
Vladimir I. Arnold dies
From Arnold's obituary:

A similar approach can also be applied to the motion of planets. If Earth were the only planet to circle the Sun, its orbit would follow a precise elliptical path, but the gravity of the other planets disturbs the motion. Scientists found that it impossible to calculate the precise motion of the planets over very long periods of time or even prove that Earth will not one day be flung out of the solar system.

Henri Poincare was the first to show the possibility of planetary orbits being chaotic.

Poincare and Arnold were geniuses. Einstein never did any mathematical physics with this depth. posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:03:11

 
String theory predictions
The June 2010 Scientific American magazine describes 12 Events That Will Change Everything. One of the 12 is possibility that the new Swiss particle collider will discover the extra dimensions of string theory. The author gives it a 50-50 chance. The online reader poll is similarly split.

But the string theory gurus are now less optimistic:

John Hockenberry, the panel’s moderator, asked Greene if he thought experimental evidence would come during his lifetime.

“I’d be surprised,” said Greene.

“And in your lifetime?” Hockenberry asked Kachru.

“…I’d be surprised,” conceded the young physicist reluctantly.

I think that the possibility is zero, as the theory has already been determined to be a big washout. But whether that is true or not, I don't see how the 6 or 7 extra dimensions could "change everything". A nuclear war or a global pandemic are 2 of the 12 things that might change everything. Those effects will be obvious to everyone. But how will anything be changed by someone saying that extra dimensions could help explain some particle collision? It is likely that someone else will find an explanation that is just as good, but does not use the extra dimensions.

The discover of quantum mechanics in the 1920s really did change everything, but most of the philosophical implications are fallacious. There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics, and not all of them are probabilistic or observer-dependent. posted by Roger Schlafly at 12:07:38

 
Evolutionism requires opposition to all religion
Leftist-athiest-evolutionist Jerry Coyne (Why Evolution Is True) attacks all scientists who seek accommodation with religious believers. He writes on his blog:

Yes, one can believe in both evolution and God. Evolution is a well-confirmed scientific theory. Christians and other people of faith need not see evolution as a threat to their beliefs.

This is like saying “Gazelles and other antelopes need not see lions as a threat to their lives.”

So I guess Coyne is admitting that atheism is essential to evolutionism, and the goal of all good evolutionists is to wipe out religion.

Coyne follows up with this:

There are people of faith who see the theory of evolution and scientific cosmology as contrary to the creation narrative in Genesis. But Genesis is a book of religious revelations and of religious teachings, not a treatise on astronomy or biology.

According to Augustine, the great theologian of the early Christian church, it is a blunder to mistake the Bible for an elementary textbook of astronomy, geology, or other natural sciences. As he writes in his commentary on Genesis:

“If it happens that the authority of sacred Scripture is set in opposition to clear and certain reasoning, this must mean that the person who interprets Scripture does not understand it correctly.”

But who can say what the book of Genesis was supposed to mean?  I’ll give you ten to one that, when it was written, it was a treatise on astronomy and biology, at least as far as those things were understood by denizens of the Middle East two millennia ago.

And, frankly, I’m tired of Augustine being trotted out in these kinds of discussions, as if his interpretation of the Bible was obviously the correct one. I could trot out other theologians who would say the opposite.

The significance of St. Augustine's view is that it has been the view of the Roman Catholic Church for 1500 years, and that it is the theology of most Christians today.

The Middle East had many outstanding treatises on astronomy and biology two millennia ago. The ancient Babylonians and the Greeks could predict eclipses and the retrograde motion of the planets. They had observed and catalogued thousands of species of plants and animals. No, they did not think that Genesis was a treatise on astronomy and biology. Genesis is nothing like their scientific treatises. Coyne acts as if Darwin's book was the first scientific book ever written.

A Wash. Post book review says:

Fully half of these top scientists are religious. Only five of the 275 interviewees actively oppose religion. Even among the third who are atheists, many consider themselves "spiritual." ...

Creationist attacks on evolution "have polarized the public opinion such that you're either religious or you're a scientist!" a devout physicist complains.

I don't know whether that is true about creationists or not, but it is certainly true about the leading evolutionists like Dawkins and Coyne. posted by Roger Schlafly at 16:13:49

 
Schulmann on Einstein, and how Einstein still makes money
I just watched an interview of Einstein biographer and archivist Robert Schulmann by John McLaughlin. Schulmann agreed that it is "certainly true" Einstein's big 1905 papers would be rejected today. The viewer is led to believe that such radical papers would not survive the stodgy editors and reviewers of today.

In fact much more radical physics papers get published today all the time. Eg, see this.

It probably is true that Einstein's 1905 papers would be rejected, but only because the editors would require him to give references to the work in the field. Einstein describes the work of others without giving his sources. Modern papers are nearly always required to have references. Of course Einstein's papers would not seem so radical if he did that.

Apparently there is a lot of money in maintaining Einstein's legacy. AP reports:

Albert Einstein is among the world's top-earning dead people, and an Israeli university that holds rights to his image is asking General Motors Co. to pay for putting the physics pioneer in a magazine ad.

The Detroit automaker grafted the Nobel Prize-winning German scientist's head onto the body of a buff, shirtless man in a Nov. 30 ad in People magazine.

The ad had the slogan "Ideas Are Sexy Too."

On May 19, Hebrew University of Jerusalem filed suit against GM in U.S. District Court for central California. The suit quotes Forbes magazine in 2008 as saying Einstein earned $18 million a year, fourth among deceased celebrities. He died in 1955.

GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney tells The Detroit News that GM paid for rights to Einstein's image.

It used to be that someone had to be in the business of licensing his image while he was still alive, in order for those rights to be enforceable after death. It seems crazy for some Hebrew university to be able to control Einstein's image.

With that kind of money at stake, you can be sure that someone like Schulmann will only be allowed to say positive things about Einstein. None of the official biographers and archivists will say correctly just what Einstein did that was original. posted by Roger Schlafly at 07:59:01

 
Ardi not a hominid
The breakthru of the year last year was a missing link named, but now it seems that Ardi may have been just an ape:

The fossil skeleton known as Ardi, hailed in some quarters as the scientific “breakthrough” of 2009, has now drawn critics who dispute claims that the species lived in dense woodlands rather than grassy plains, which have been long considered the favored habitat of early prehumans and perhaps account for their transition to upright walking.

Another scientist has stepped forward to challenge Ardi’s classification as a member of the human lineage after the divergence from African apes. Its primitive anatomy, he contends, suggests a species predating the common ancestor of the human and chimpanzee family trees.

I was suspicious when I found out that they kept Ardi secret for 17 years. I am also suspicious that they never seem to find any ape fossils. Every time they find an ape-like fossil, they claim that it is a human ancestor and get lot of publicity. No one cares about ape fossils. The researchers have too much incentive to classify the fossils as hominids.

Update: John Hawks has a discussion of some of the Ardi problems. posted by Roger Schlafly at 07:59:01

 
Martínez on Einstein
Alberto A. Martínez writes:

Throughout the decades, Einstein made many comments and declarations concerning the origins of relativity theory. He was interviewed by biographers, psychologists, historians, physicists, journalists, and others. He voiced many details to friends, family members, and even to the public at large. We also have letters and recollections by his colleagues and contemporaries. Thus, we know of so many clear-cut influences that it would take us too far afield to review them here. To mention just a few as examples, some of the major influences, among many others, were: Lorentz’s work on electrodynamics, the ether-drift experiments, a key experiment by Fizeau, the admittedly crucial writings of Hume and Mach, and to some extent, those of Poincaré.

And Einstein denied that he read Lorentz's later works, that he ever read any of Poincare, and that he was influenced by Michelson-Morley.

Einstein did not just misrepresent his work in 1905, by not citing the previous work. He spent his whole life lying about it. The discovery of relativity is carefully documented as one of the great breakthrus of mankind, and yet everyone accepts Einstein's phony story about it. posted by Roger Schlafly at 16:32:00

 
Censorship is not the answer to health scares
A UK essay says:

‘How could this have happened?’ asks a splenetic editorial reflection on the MMR-autism controversy in the current issue of Vaccine, the leading scientific journal in the field of immunisation. The authors - Gregory Poland of the Mayo Clinic and Ray Spier from the University of Surrey – proceed to blame everybody but the scientific authorities for the scare that was launched in a notorious (and now withdrawn) Lancet paper by the former Royal Free gastroenterology researcher Andrew Wakefield who was finally struck off the medical register this week on charges of serious professional misconduct. ...

After a brief standoff with Elsevier, when Charlton refused to back down on his editorial independence, he was sacked this month as editor of Medical Hypotheses. Now that those who call for a clampdown on scientists who express sceptical views about global warming or the scaremongering about AIDS seek to extend the label of ‘denialism’ to include those, like Wakefield, who ‘deny’ the consensus that childhood vaccines are safe and effective, the editors of Vaccine seem to want to restrict the expression of such views in the media.

I think that the preoccupation with silencing Wakefield by the medical establishment is bizarre. Isn't it enough just to prove him wrong?

No, dissenting views on vaccines, AIDS, global warming, evolution, and a few other subjects are not tolerated. The more that certain views are censored, the more that people will legitimately complain that they are not getting the full story. posted by Roger Schlafly at 17:04:52

 
Astronomer Copernicus reburied as hero in Poland
AP reports:

FROMBORK, Poland — Nicolaus Copernicus, the 16th-century astronomer whose findings were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical, was reburied by Polish priests as a hero on Saturday, nearly 500 years after he was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

His burial in a tomb in the cathedral where he once served as a church canon and doctor indicates how far the church has come in making peace with the scientist whose revolutionary theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun helped usher in the modern scientific age.

Copernicus, who lived from 1473 to 1543, died as a little-known astronomer working in a remote part of northern Poland, far from Europe's centers of learning. He had spent years laboring in his free time developing his theory, which was later condemned as heretical by the church because it removed Earth and humanity from their central position in the universe.

No, his findings were never condemned as heretical. His book was published with the endorsement of the Catholic Church. About 75 years later, it said that nine sentences had to be corrected. That's all. Catholics were always free to study his book and use its model.

The corrections were not because of a "central position" argument. The Earth was not at the center in the Ptolemaic model either. There was a medieval belief that the Earth was stationary, but not that it was at the center of the universe. posted by Roger Schlafly at 07:28:05