It's hot out there, so you may be looking for something to read on your computer instead of cutting that grass. I have a couple of suggestions below the fold. Feel free to add your own suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »

PZ Myers has a quote from J.B.S. Haldane that he admires:

My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public. - J.B.S. Haldane

Who can argue with a brilliant scientist who has lab evidence that God does not exist? Just imagine "“ J.B.S. Haldane was always justified when he assumed God would not interfere with his experiments. Now we see the "scientific" understanding of God - if God exists, he should have been goofing with J.B.S. Haldane and messing up his experiments to prevent Haldane from becoming a success!

Haldane as success = God does not exist.

We've been talking about confirmation bias, which is the tendency to seek out data that confirm one's preconceptions, while ignoring data that conflict with those preconceptions. But there is a flip-side to this phenomenon known as disconfirmation bias.
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This study looks awfully similar to the one Michael Shermer reported on, but the location and researchers are different.

Anyway, here's the basic finding:

Viewing an opposition candidate produced signal changes in cognitive control circuitry in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulated cortex (ACC), as well as in emotional regions in the insula and anterior temporal poles. The ACC is important to attention control and self-monitoring, and together with the DLPFC forms a network that monitors response conflict and, when necessary, regulates emotion.

Consider the implications for those who approach the origins debate as primarily a political issue. For example, it means that when such a critic reads something by Michael Behe, his brain actually functions differently than when he is reading something by Ken Miller or Richard Dawkins (and vice versa for the political ID proponent).

Perhaps this helps explain why both sides commonly accuse each other of misrepresentation (and worse).

From the Style article about Sylvia Mader's new text book, we read:

Meanwhile, Eugenie Scott, executive director of the Oakland-based, nonprofit National Center for Science Education, faults VCU's biology faculty for adopting a book "that skimps on evolution." While much of the debate about science curricula has centered on elementary, middle and high schools, Scott expects colleges to become the new testing ground for how evolution is discussed.

Here is a web page where you can click to read the Table of Contents of Essentials in Biology. Click on slide "˜5' and "˜6'. Sure, the three-chapter section on evolution does look a little skimpy to me. But what is wrong with Scott's complaint?

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Update: The guys have removed the image (of Pinky and Brain talking about "overthrowing Darwinism") out of concern for copyright issues. So as to make some use of this post, here's a picture of Richard Dawkins doing an Emperor Palpatine-impression (HT: Real Physics), as well as an introduction to what copyright laws say about parodies.

A typical day over at iDesign @ UCI:

Note that "Art" and "Wedge" are two members of that blog. Oh yeah, our lawyer asked me to mention that Pinky and Brain are © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. Offer not valid in Quebec, Rhode Island, or where prohibited by law.

It will be fun to discuss something like this from within The Design Matrix:

Microtubules, essential structural elements in living cells, grow stiffer as they grow longer, an unexpected property that could lead to advances in nano-materials development, an international team of biophysicists has found.

["¦]

To the surprise of the scientists, they found that the longer the filament, the more rigid it became.

Florin and his coauthors attribute the microtubules' unique properties to their molecular architecture. The nanometer-sized filaments are hollow tubes made of tubulin proteins that bind to each other in ways that give them the ability to be both flexible and stiff. Flexibility is important for microtubules as they grow and change in cells, while rigidity is important when cells need support.

"Microtubules are optimally designed to give the maximum of mechanical performance at a minimum cost for the cell," said Francesco Pampaloni, a physical chemist at EMBL.

The new finding about the microtubules' properties could provide insights into using the filaments as models for the development of nano-materials.

PT guest commentator Mark Isaak's blog The Larger Issue of Bad Religion has generated some lively back and forth. Today PZ Myers also weighs in over on Pharyngula with A Good Start, and it's rather fascinating to watch a gaggle of evangelical atheists attempt to define the criteria for what they could consider to be a "good" religion… Hint: so far not even Buddhism or Taoism pass muster.

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Jim Sparks, the biology professor who accused a mainstream biology textbook of advocating creationism for simply mentioning the Creation Research Institute, has not had his employment with the Virginia Commonwealth University renewed (HT: Salvador). According to the dean, Robert D. Holsworth, Sparks was hired on an as-needed basis, and that the discontinuation of his employment had nothing to do with the textbook controversy. But that hasn't stopped Sparks from spreading his net of accusation, implying that the university itself is part of the creationist conspiracy:

In an e-mail message yesterday, Sparks asserted that his criticism of the textbook "may only be the tip of the spear" in the debate over creationism at VCU.

"I expect additional complaints will arise from students, since the faculty will likely be subject to a certain climate of fear that arises from having one's colleague dismissed for enjoying the constitutional guarantee of a free press," Sparks wrote.

This is the risk of hyping the threatiness of intelligent design: As the original "threat" is defeated, the fanatics are going to start looking for new threats to keep them occupied. Or, as ID critic Lenny Flank recently put it in one of his self-conscious moments: "We're a room full of highly motivated well-trained big-game hunters armed with large-caliber weapons, who suddenly find themselves without a live target. So we begin to fidget a bit, glance sideways at the person next to us and say, 'ya know, I never *did* like the way that guy looks at me "¦.'"

Update: More information from Salvador in the comments.

Yet another example illustrating that creationists aren't the only one lobbying public education. From the LA Daily News:

[School lobbyist Steve] Barr said he became convinced of the need to organize parents after traveling to Sacramento last month to testify in favor of the Los Angeles Unified School District reform bill. He was baffled, he said, when he saw 50 parents who had been bused to the state capital by the LAUSD claiming to represent the views of all district parents.

As long as you have a single system to which everyone is compelled to pay, you will have special interest groups trying to influence how everyone's money is spent, and what everyone's children are taught. Blaming creationists for all the problems with the educational system is easy, and lets you pretend that by fighting a common enemy, you and your friends are actually solving the problem. But this is a problem that is inherent in the system, and which cannot be laid at the feet of any particular group trying to infleunce the education of their own children - and, by implication, those of everyone else.