What can brain scans—functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)—tell us? To state my biases up front, magnetic resonance is one of my favorite analytical tools. When I worked in an organic synthesis lab, I used nuclear magnetic resonance at the end of each reaction to identify my compound. I owed a debt to NMR for saving my [...]
The gradual crumbling of the Darwinian consensus, and the rise of a new theoretical outlook in biology is one of the most significant but underreported news stories of our time.* It’s a scandal that science journalists have been so slow to pick up on this story. For, make no mistake about it, the story is huge. [...]
And why shouting profanities won’t change that fact. When Jenifer Stefano, state director of Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania, was on Sean Hannity’s “Great American Panel” (Fox TV) with commentator Bob Beckel, Beckel did something unusual: He lost his temper and began using profanity while insulting her. He was apparently unaware that his mike was live. “Panel” [...]
On Wednesday, I looked at a new paper by University of Chicago evolutionist Jerry Coyne, in which he declares all-out war on religion in the name of Darwin. In that post, I mainly reflected on the remarkable fact that a premier evolutionary biology journal saw fit to publish such an essay and on what that [...]
Not content with his role as self-appointed scourge of Darwinist heretics, Jerry Coyne has now declared a one-man war on religion. Wait. Let me rephrase that. Since it is by now abundantly clear that Darwinism is a very peculiar sort of science, and is in many ways more similar to an all-encompassing philosophical system or religion, [...]
Last weekend, while looking at New York City’s school district’s list of “banned words” that cover just about the whole of life, I also looked at the district’s rubber rooms—rooms where teachers who couldn’t be left alone with students used to idle away their time on full salary. More recently, due to an outcry, the [...]
Wonders never cease, and neither does the constant drumbeat of neuromania in the popular science press. Once again, this week brought a bumper crop of balderdash—this time involving the claim that our political proclivities are “hardwired” in the brain. First, there was prominent science journalist Chris Mooney, writing for New Scientist: ”Political Divides Begin in the [...]
As a wise man once observed: “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”(1) Lawrence Krauss is the latest in a long line of such scientists. Krauss is professor of physics at Arizona State University, and he has been getting a lot of mileage recently out of [...]
In “Banned words in New York City schools? ‘I’m with the banned,’ Part II,” we looked at five more of the 50 words that were to be banned from New York City school standardized tests. (Here’s the first group, from Part I.) Well, apparently, a reaction (read “uproar”) among parents has gotten the list revoked: The [...]
A stream of articles has poured forth in recent months proclaiming a crisis in higher education in this country. The basic difficulty that most of these articles point to is twofold: the cost of a college education is ballooning, while the value of a college degree—in both economic and intellectual terms—is cratering. On these two [...]