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There seems to be renewed interest in the now debunked paper by Gregory Paul. It has recently been touted by P.Z. Myers , even mistakenly referring to him as a "social scientist." He also seems to be unaware (or unwilling to accept) that the paper has been skinned alive.

Recently some more interesting facts have come to my attention. Regarding the Times article Peez links to:

“I was simply reporting the story as best I could,” correspondent Gledhill emailed Chalcedon. “I am not a social scientist myself so cannot comment on whether the study had flaws … if the Times had not reported it, it is likely that the study would have languished undiscovered .…”

Ms. Gledhill described Paul as a “social scientist,” which he is not. She explained the oversight: “I was not aware of [his] background. However, it is not the case that we would publish views of anyone who contacted us. What made his views reportable in the Times was the fact that they had already been accepted in the form of a paper in the Journal of Religion and Society. Of course, if he had sent that paper directly to us and it had not been in the journal, I would not have reported it. And I am afraid that, working on a deadline and unable to reach him, I made the assumption he was a social scientist because reading the Web page of the journal, which to all intents and purposes appears to be a respectable academic journal, made it clear that they published articles by social scientists.” (We are grateful to Ms. Gledhill for discussing this matter so forthrightly.)

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Welcome JJS P.Eng., a new blogger at Telic Thoughts, drinks are on the fossil record.

general note: site will be comming down for some updates, which will include comment paging for easier navigation of long threads, the update is scheduled for 12/13/2008 04:13:02

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

In a recent post , I took issue for several reasons the following comment on Wesley Elsberry's blog that were specifically about me:

I pointed out that the mammalian middle ear ossicular chain is an IC system providing an impedance-matching function, and that the impedance-matching goes away if you remove any of the parts. Nelson tried to deny that this qualified as IC, at least in part because the fossil record is clear that the system evolved.

Wesley Elsberry has since admitted that the last part is unsubstantiated:

at least in part because the fossil record is clear that the system evolved.

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Welcome Techne, a new contributor to Telic Thoughts. Drinks are on you this time.

Wesley Elsberry has a post up that he touts whenever something negative is posted about me on the internet, I wanted to examine some of Elsberry's claims. He writes:

I pointed out that the mammalian middle ear ossicular chain is an IC system providing an impedance-matching function, and that the impedance-matching goes away if you remove any of the parts. Nelson tried to deny that this qualified as IC, at least in part because the fossil record is clear that the system evolved.

Not surprisingly, that is completely false.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thought I'd list in one post some of the recent news that supports Front-Loading, related to the prediction of deep homology.

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Believing in ghosts and little green men from outer space appears a touch easier than having faith in God, according to a survey.
The researchers found that while 54 per cent of us are convinced the Almighty exists, 58 per cent believe in the supernatural.
The findings, maybe somewhat unsurprisingly, have been issued to mark the DVD release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe. The film stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson who made the TV series such a success.

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