Yesterday I spent some time with year 13 students from Otumoetai High School, over in Tauranga. We were talking about human evolution & at the end of the session one of the students asked me a question about arrowheads. I wasn’t able to answer it then, but I’ve had a bit of time since to […]
Continue readingCategory: critical thinking
captain cook & global warming – who’d have thought?
This one comes directly from the pages of Ben Goldacre’s BadScience blog – an excellent example of why media reports on science need to be read (listened to?) carefully and with your critical thinking antennae twitching: Here is a cautionary tale for anyone working in research. “Captain Cook and Lord Nelson seem unlikely figureheads in […]
Continue readinghow to argue against a scientific theory…
… and also, how not to. This is an excellent essay by the Sensuous Curmudgeon. I’ll list his key points here, but you really should go over and read the whole thing.
Continue readingwells’ 9th question
Almost at the end of Wells’ list we come to ourselves: Q: HUMAN ORIGINS. Why are artists’ drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident — when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked […]
Continue readingcharles darwin’s thoughts on the large hadron collider
Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday may be fast approaching, but this has not stopped him keeping up to date with the latest scientific advances. Yesterday when I visited him at his blog, I found he had written an item on the large hadron collider (LHC) – or, more correctly, a piece on the hysteria that this […]
Continue readingpseudoscience? bad science, anyway
Here’s an interesting little press release, about a study that purports to show that women find the sound of fast cars (&, by extension, the men driving them) very exciting! Gosh, that’ll push up the sales of luxury cars… (And thanks to Orac, where I originally saw the story.) But does this study really show what’s […]
Continue readingthe 8th ‘question’ on wells’ little list
Q: MUTANT FRUIT FLIES. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution — even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory? I don’t know that a lot of textbooks actually do […]
Continue readingcreationism – misconception or worldview?
My brother sent me an e-mail yesterday, saying "This should wind you up…" with a link to an article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper. He was right, it wound me up all right.
Continue readingwells again – this time, darwin’s finches
Naturally, Wells had to include ‘Darwin’s finches’ in his list of evolutionary icons. He asks: DARWIN’S FINCHES. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection — even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution […]
Continue readinga follow-up on peppered moths
One of my readers has pointed out that the most excellent Panda’s Thumb had an article on peppered moths, a wee while ago now. It includes a link to a radio interview that is well-worth listening to. Pop over there & tune in.
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