https://www.scivillage.com/ Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:31:19 +0000 MyBB https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20280.html Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:39:53 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20280.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZXKQ_d9K68]]>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZXKQ_d9K68]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20250.html Wed, 22 Apr 2026 04:16:05 +0000 Magical Realist]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20250.html

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]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20215.html Sat, 18 Apr 2026 01:10:45 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20215.html https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/04/1...unication/

EXCERPTS: Facilitated communication, or “FC,” is the supposed ability of people who can’t speak and are severely handicapped to “communicate” by having a “helper” guide them in pointing out letters or words. [...] And indeed, I thought FC had been discredited a long time ago. [...] But no, it’s reemerged with the publication of new bestselling novel, Upward Bound, touted by, among others, the New York Times, which lately has a real penchant for woo.... (MORE - details)]]> https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/04/1...unication/

EXCERPTS: Facilitated communication, or “FC,” is the supposed ability of people who can’t speak and are severely handicapped to “communicate” by having a “helper” guide them in pointing out letters or words. [...] And indeed, I thought FC had been discredited a long time ago. [...] But no, it’s reemerged with the publication of new bestselling novel, Upward Bound, touted by, among others, the New York Times, which lately has a real penchant for woo.... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20195.html Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:46:12 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20195.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/only...00373.html

INTRO: A major, new examination of the replicability and reliability of published social and behavioral science experiments has found that only about half of previously published results can be replicated by new studies.

That’s one of the main conclusions from the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) project, which involved an analysis of thousands of scientific studies published in 62 different journals between 2009 and 2018. The large-scale, international project was funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The reanalyses focused on research in the fields of criminology, economics, educational science, health sciences, leadership, marketing, organizational behaviour, psychology, political science, public administration and sociology. The results are contained in three papers published this week in the highly respected journal Nature... (MORE - details)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10203-5

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09844-9

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-10078-y
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COMMENT: But it's not like the humanities truly need reliable science research to complement, undergird, bolster or legitimize their theories and communal prescriptions. Politics, managerial policymakers, institutions, and appearance-conscious industries slash businesses exploitative of do-gooderism have been more than willing to accept such at face value. "It sounds noble."
_]]> https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/only...00373.html

INTRO: A major, new examination of the replicability and reliability of published social and behavioral science experiments has found that only about half of previously published results can be replicated by new studies.

That’s one of the main conclusions from the Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) project, which involved an analysis of thousands of scientific studies published in 62 different journals between 2009 and 2018. The large-scale, international project was funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The reanalyses focused on research in the fields of criminology, economics, educational science, health sciences, leadership, marketing, organizational behaviour, psychology, political science, public administration and sociology. The results are contained in three papers published this week in the highly respected journal Nature... (MORE - details)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10203-5

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09844-9

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-10078-y
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

COMMENT: But it's not like the humanities truly need reliable science research to complement, undergird, bolster or legitimize their theories and communal prescriptions. Politics, managerial policymakers, institutions, and appearance-conscious industries slash businesses exploitative of do-gooderism have been more than willing to accept such at face value. "It sounds noble."
_]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20163.html Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:27:46 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20163.html https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we...-20260410/

EXCERPTS: . . . It does sound terrifying. When Harari told the same story on The Daily Show, the audience gasped. But the thing about that story — which he also repeated in a New York Times op-ed — is that it’s wildly misleading.

[...] Harari is either so worried about the sneaky capabilities of AI that he’s built an impenetrable fortress, or his website is broken.

So I couldn’t get answers, but I have a guess. His version of the story is not made up; it is nearly identical to the one OpenAI published in the GPT-4 system card. “System cards” are like product labels for AI models, detailing their training, failures, and safety breaches. GPT-4’s system card tells the story without mentioning the prompts and interventions from the humans.

System cards are presented as if they’re offering information the company is required to disclose for consumer safety — like the side effects in a pharmaceutical commercial — when, in fact, the companies volunteer them. So why would a company make their product sound scarier than it is? Perhaps because this is the best advertising money can’t buy. People like Harari and others repeat these accounts like ghost stories around a campfire. The public, awed and afraid, marvels at the capabilities of AI.

“Four billion years of evolution have demonstrated that anything that wants to survive learns to lie and manipulate,” Harari told a rapt audience of industry and political leaders at January’s Davos conference, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, perhaps offering a skewed view of evolution. “The last four years have demonstrated that AI agents can acquire the will to survive and that AIs have already learned how to lie.”

Suddenly, I understood the racing heart of the modern AI horror genre. It’s not intelligence we fear, but desire. A machine that knows a lot doesn’t scare us. A machine that wants something does. But can it? Want things? Can it crave power? Thirst for resources? Can it acquire the will to survive?

[...] Does he think, I asked, that Claude has a survival instinct? “Any sufficiently intelligent agent that has the ability to create subgoals will realize that it needs to survive in order to achieve the goals we gave it,” Hinton said. “So even if it is never externally given the goal of surviving, it will derive this goal.”

It was an interesting argument, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I asked Melanie Mitchell, a computer scientist at the Santa Fe Institute who studies AI.

“It’s a very old argument,” she said. “It was the basis of a lot of the existential-risk arguments that have been going on for maybe 30 years. The idea is that you give a system a goal, and then it comes up with so-called instrumental subgoals. To achieve its goal of — in the famous example — manufacturing paper clips, it has to have subgoals of self-preservation, resource accumulation, power accumulation, and so on. Why do we think that’s how an agent is going to operate? To a lot of people that seems obvious; it’s the ‘rational’ thing to do. But that’s not how humans operate. If I ask you to get me a cup of coffee, you don’t start trying to accumulate all the resources in the world and doing everything you can to make sure you’re not going to be stopped. It’s an assumption about the way intelligence works that isn’t really correct.”

Where did we come up with this caricature of AI’s obsessive rationality? “There’s an article I love by [the sci-fi author] Ted Chiang,” Mitchell said, “where he asks: What entity adheres monomaniacally to one single goal that they will pursue at all costs even if doing so uses up all the resources of the world? A big corporation. Their single goal is to increase value for shareholders, and in pursuing that, they can destroy the world. That’s what people are modeling their AI fantasies on.” As Chiang put it in the article in The New Yorker , “Capitalism is the machine that will do whatever it takes to prevent us from turning it off.”

We fall for the illusion that AIs have a self-preservation instinct, Mitchell said, because they use language so effectively. “Think about other AI systems,” she said. “There’s Sora, which generates videos. When you ask Sora to generate a video, you don’t worry that it’s like, ‘Oh my God, now I have to make sure I’m not going to be shut off, now I have to make sure that I get all the resources I need to make this video.’ We don’t think of it as a conscious, thinking entity, because it’s not communicating with us in language.”

So today’s AI systems show no evidence of having developed their own goals or desires, or the will to survive. The stories we hear are just stories or, more to the point, marketing copy. But should they scare us, not as truths but as warnings? I knew exactly who to ask... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we...-20260410/

EXCERPTS: . . . It does sound terrifying. When Harari told the same story on The Daily Show, the audience gasped. But the thing about that story — which he also repeated in a New York Times op-ed — is that it’s wildly misleading.

[...] Harari is either so worried about the sneaky capabilities of AI that he’s built an impenetrable fortress, or his website is broken.

So I couldn’t get answers, but I have a guess. His version of the story is not made up; it is nearly identical to the one OpenAI published in the GPT-4 system card. “System cards” are like product labels for AI models, detailing their training, failures, and safety breaches. GPT-4’s system card tells the story without mentioning the prompts and interventions from the humans.

System cards are presented as if they’re offering information the company is required to disclose for consumer safety — like the side effects in a pharmaceutical commercial — when, in fact, the companies volunteer them. So why would a company make their product sound scarier than it is? Perhaps because this is the best advertising money can’t buy. People like Harari and others repeat these accounts like ghost stories around a campfire. The public, awed and afraid, marvels at the capabilities of AI.

“Four billion years of evolution have demonstrated that anything that wants to survive learns to lie and manipulate,” Harari told a rapt audience of industry and political leaders at January’s Davos conference, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, perhaps offering a skewed view of evolution. “The last four years have demonstrated that AI agents can acquire the will to survive and that AIs have already learned how to lie.”

Suddenly, I understood the racing heart of the modern AI horror genre. It’s not intelligence we fear, but desire. A machine that knows a lot doesn’t scare us. A machine that wants something does. But can it? Want things? Can it crave power? Thirst for resources? Can it acquire the will to survive?

[...] Does he think, I asked, that Claude has a survival instinct? “Any sufficiently intelligent agent that has the ability to create subgoals will realize that it needs to survive in order to achieve the goals we gave it,” Hinton said. “So even if it is never externally given the goal of surviving, it will derive this goal.”

It was an interesting argument, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I asked Melanie Mitchell, a computer scientist at the Santa Fe Institute who studies AI.

“It’s a very old argument,” she said. “It was the basis of a lot of the existential-risk arguments that have been going on for maybe 30 years. The idea is that you give a system a goal, and then it comes up with so-called instrumental subgoals. To achieve its goal of — in the famous example — manufacturing paper clips, it has to have subgoals of self-preservation, resource accumulation, power accumulation, and so on. Why do we think that’s how an agent is going to operate? To a lot of people that seems obvious; it’s the ‘rational’ thing to do. But that’s not how humans operate. If I ask you to get me a cup of coffee, you don’t start trying to accumulate all the resources in the world and doing everything you can to make sure you’re not going to be stopped. It’s an assumption about the way intelligence works that isn’t really correct.”

Where did we come up with this caricature of AI’s obsessive rationality? “There’s an article I love by [the sci-fi author] Ted Chiang,” Mitchell said, “where he asks: What entity adheres monomaniacally to one single goal that they will pursue at all costs even if doing so uses up all the resources of the world? A big corporation. Their single goal is to increase value for shareholders, and in pursuing that, they can destroy the world. That’s what people are modeling their AI fantasies on.” As Chiang put it in the article in The New Yorker , “Capitalism is the machine that will do whatever it takes to prevent us from turning it off.”

We fall for the illusion that AIs have a self-preservation instinct, Mitchell said, because they use language so effectively. “Think about other AI systems,” she said. “There’s Sora, which generates videos. When you ask Sora to generate a video, you don’t worry that it’s like, ‘Oh my God, now I have to make sure I’m not going to be shut off, now I have to make sure that I get all the resources I need to make this video.’ We don’t think of it as a conscious, thinking entity, because it’s not communicating with us in language.”

So today’s AI systems show no evidence of having developed their own goals or desires, or the will to survive. The stories we hear are just stories or, more to the point, marketing copy. But should they scare us, not as truths but as warnings? I knew exactly who to ask... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20147.html Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:17:28 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20147.html https://quillette.com/2026/04/08/a-costl...formation/

EXCERPTS: It is important to realise that there would be no tort litigation around this issue had the IARC not determined that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen” in 2015. Before that finding was announced in the British journal Lancet Oncology, there was little concern about the safety of this chemical. It has been in use for over fifty years and it is the most popular weedkiller worldwide.

But unlike other regulatory agencies, the IARC does not assess risk, it assesses hazard—the possibility that a substance or agent might cause cancer. This means that IARC considers carcinogenicity in the abstract, divorced from consideration of the ways in which humans are exposed to carcinogens in the real world.

[...] If this were all there is to be said about the IARC determination regarding glyphosate, the agency’s assessment could just be dismissed as an idiosyncratic judgement. Other regulatory agencies—like the US EPA, Health Canada, the European Food Safety Authority, the European Chemicals Agency, and over a dozen other national and international agencies—all found glyphosate to be safe and not carcinogenic. However, evidence has emerged suggesting that IARC’s glyphosate determination is deeply flawed.

[...] Kate Kelland, an award-winning reporter, formerly of Reuters, obtained an early draft of the chapter of the IARC’s glyphosate report dealing with the rodent evidence. She found that, after the working group met, changes were made that strengthened the interpretation of what were previously weak findings.

Confronted with these irregularities, the IARC criticised Kelland on its website, but refused to rebut the scientific critique of its rodent deliberations. Unfortunately, dozens of articles pointing out these abuses have done little to diminish the IARC’s stature or the trust accorded to its glyphosate determination... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://quillette.com/2026/04/08/a-costl...formation/

EXCERPTS: It is important to realise that there would be no tort litigation around this issue had the IARC not determined that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen” in 2015. Before that finding was announced in the British journal Lancet Oncology, there was little concern about the safety of this chemical. It has been in use for over fifty years and it is the most popular weedkiller worldwide.

But unlike other regulatory agencies, the IARC does not assess risk, it assesses hazard—the possibility that a substance or agent might cause cancer. This means that IARC considers carcinogenicity in the abstract, divorced from consideration of the ways in which humans are exposed to carcinogens in the real world.

[...] If this were all there is to be said about the IARC determination regarding glyphosate, the agency’s assessment could just be dismissed as an idiosyncratic judgement. Other regulatory agencies—like the US EPA, Health Canada, the European Food Safety Authority, the European Chemicals Agency, and over a dozen other national and international agencies—all found glyphosate to be safe and not carcinogenic. However, evidence has emerged suggesting that IARC’s glyphosate determination is deeply flawed.

[...] Kate Kelland, an award-winning reporter, formerly of Reuters, obtained an early draft of the chapter of the IARC’s glyphosate report dealing with the rodent evidence. She found that, after the working group met, changes were made that strengthened the interpretation of what were previously weak findings.

Confronted with these irregularities, the IARC criticised Kelland on its website, but refused to rebut the scientific critique of its rodent deliberations. Unfortunately, dozens of articles pointing out these abuses have done little to diminish the IARC’s stature or the trust accorded to its glyphosate determination... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20128.html Mon, 06 Apr 2026 02:24:28 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20128.html https://theness.com/neurologicablog/brai...ill-wrong/

EXCERPT: Back to the video at hand – the author begins with an unsourced vague claim, but one that is not uncommon in the “new age” subculture, that our brains are mostly just receivers for a vast intelligence that comes from somewhere outside the brain. He states this as if it is a scientific fact. He then goes on to muse about some new age nonsense regarding being on a higher or lower “frequency” and therefore attracting good thoughts or bad thoughts.

Is there any plausibility or evidence for the notion that some of the information that comes to our brain originates somewhere outside the brain? By this I do not mean through the known senses, but that part or all of the “mind” is a non-physical phenomenon, and the brain is a conduit for the mind, interfacing it with the physical body.

This is one formulation of what is known as dualism, which I have written about here many times – that mind and brain are not entirely one phenomenon, but two. My position, which tracks with the consensus opinion of neuroscientists, is that the mind is what the brain does. There is only the brain. The mind is not software running on the brain – it is the brain, simply describing our perception of what the brain is doing.

That sci-fi trope of a “consciousness” being transferred from one body to another, or into an object, is simply impossible. Just as you cannot “upload” yourself into a computer. At best you can make a copy that replicates some of your mental functions, but it is in no meaningful way you. You are your brain.

How do we know this is true? This is, far and away, the best inference from all available data... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://theness.com/neurologicablog/brai...ill-wrong/

EXCERPT: Back to the video at hand – the author begins with an unsourced vague claim, but one that is not uncommon in the “new age” subculture, that our brains are mostly just receivers for a vast intelligence that comes from somewhere outside the brain. He states this as if it is a scientific fact. He then goes on to muse about some new age nonsense regarding being on a higher or lower “frequency” and therefore attracting good thoughts or bad thoughts.

Is there any plausibility or evidence for the notion that some of the information that comes to our brain originates somewhere outside the brain? By this I do not mean through the known senses, but that part or all of the “mind” is a non-physical phenomenon, and the brain is a conduit for the mind, interfacing it with the physical body.

This is one formulation of what is known as dualism, which I have written about here many times – that mind and brain are not entirely one phenomenon, but two. My position, which tracks with the consensus opinion of neuroscientists, is that the mind is what the brain does. There is only the brain. The mind is not software running on the brain – it is the brain, simply describing our perception of what the brain is doing.

That sci-fi trope of a “consciousness” being transferred from one body to another, or into an object, is simply impossible. Just as you cannot “upload” yourself into a computer. At best you can make a copy that replicates some of your mental functions, but it is in no meaningful way you. You are your brain.

How do we know this is true? This is, far and away, the best inference from all available data... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20072.html Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:14:49 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20072.html Decolonization of knowledge
- - - - - - - - - -

Treating myths as science
https://quillette.com/2026/03/26/treatin...on-canada/

EXCERPTS: In the early 2000s, I spent much of my time over the course of several years fighting the incursion of religion into science classes in the United States. At the time, the main target of religious fundamentalists was evolution. [...] Let’s fast forward 25 years [...] A colleague recently forwarded me the current B.C. high school science curriculum for grades nine and twelve. It includes an embarrassing amalgam of religious gobbledygook and anti-science rhetoric..

[...] You may wonder how religious fundamentalism could so effectively creep into the curriculum in a progressive place like British Columbia. The answer is simple. The religious nonsense being inserted into the curriculum has nothing to do with Christian fundamentalism; rather, it is Indigenous religious nonsense. And in the current climate, Indigenous “knowledge” is held to a different standard from scientific knowledge—or, rather, to no standard at all.

[...] To be clear: This postmodern perspective isn’t science. It is, at best, anti-science. Cultural and intuitive beliefs are—and should be—irrelevant to our understanding of the cosmos. Science has taught us to conform our beliefs to the reality of nature, as determined by falsifiable evidence, not the other way around. It is fine to teach Indigenous mythological storytelling in a social science or history class but it is not appropriate to teach it as if it is science... (MORE - details)
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Of course, Krauss has a presence in the Epstein Files (eerie "dah-doo-doo-doo-doo" whistling theme in the background). So postcolonial morality and justice quickly get this privileged crusader and his complaints and Western bias cancelled just from that alone. Adios, Lawrence! ]]> Decolonization of knowledge
- - - - - - - - - -

Treating myths as science
https://quillette.com/2026/03/26/treatin...on-canada/

EXCERPTS: In the early 2000s, I spent much of my time over the course of several years fighting the incursion of religion into science classes in the United States. At the time, the main target of religious fundamentalists was evolution. [...] Let’s fast forward 25 years [...] A colleague recently forwarded me the current B.C. high school science curriculum for grades nine and twelve. It includes an embarrassing amalgam of religious gobbledygook and anti-science rhetoric..

[...] You may wonder how religious fundamentalism could so effectively creep into the curriculum in a progressive place like British Columbia. The answer is simple. The religious nonsense being inserted into the curriculum has nothing to do with Christian fundamentalism; rather, it is Indigenous religious nonsense. And in the current climate, Indigenous “knowledge” is held to a different standard from scientific knowledge—or, rather, to no standard at all.

[...] To be clear: This postmodern perspective isn’t science. It is, at best, anti-science. Cultural and intuitive beliefs are—and should be—irrelevant to our understanding of the cosmos. Science has taught us to conform our beliefs to the reality of nature, as determined by falsifiable evidence, not the other way around. It is fine to teach Indigenous mythological storytelling in a social science or history class but it is not appropriate to teach it as if it is science... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Of course, Krauss has a presence in the Epstein Files (eerie "dah-doo-doo-doo-doo" whistling theme in the background). So postcolonial morality and justice quickly get this privileged crusader and his complaints and Western bias cancelled just from that alone. Adios, Lawrence! ]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20067.html Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:37:21 +0000 Ostronomos]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20067.html I outsmarted a diabolical genius back in 2013 that inadvertently proved the existence of God. The conversation can be found here:


Mailing List 'D' Respondent No. 11
An actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment or any other Altered State Of Consciousness, challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics and its mystic cosmogongy) anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its...
www.actualfreedom.com.au

The entirety of mankind's prosperity hinges on a single dialog. One that reveals ultimate truth. The culprit's name was Richard Parker (born 1947). This parallels the so-called Great Genius prophecy. Many of history's greatest geniuses came from humble beginnings. This rings true to this day. Think of Christopher Langan among those.

I began an ignorant fool years ago and then found a way to temporarily enhance my intellect and now I am a genius. I understand that there is no shortage of skeptics among you. However, I can assure you this is factual. In this day and age there is no excuse for atheism. Given that we are exposed to a massive amount of media.]]> I outsmarted a diabolical genius back in 2013 that inadvertently proved the existence of God. The conversation can be found here:


Mailing List 'D' Respondent No. 11
An actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment or any other Altered State Of Consciousness, challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics and its mystic cosmogongy) anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its...
www.actualfreedom.com.au

The entirety of mankind's prosperity hinges on a single dialog. One that reveals ultimate truth. The culprit's name was Richard Parker (born 1947). This parallels the so-called Great Genius prophecy. Many of history's greatest geniuses came from humble beginnings. This rings true to this day. Think of Christopher Langan among those.

I began an ignorant fool years ago and then found a way to temporarily enhance my intellect and now I am a genius. I understand that there is no shortage of skeptics among you. However, I can assure you this is factual. In this day and age there is no excuse for atheism. Given that we are exposed to a massive amount of media.]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20043.html Wed, 25 Mar 2026 01:10:32 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20043.html How ‘tiny shortcuts’ are poisoning science
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-t...g-science/

EXCERPT: The public no longer believes that scientists merely make honest mistakes on the long and winding road to truth. Instead, scientists are increasingly seen as partial, ideological agents, activists in an armchair, or, worse still, simply fraudsters who fabricate or manipulate data and tweak the specifications of their empirical models to get their desired results.

The credibility crisis of science is not about scientific progress invalidating previously held scientific beliefs, which is intrinsic to the very nature of scientific revolutions. Rather, the crisis has been caused by scientists who deliberately publish overconfident, misleading, and often simply false empirical results based on research designs or model specifications they have intentionally specified to give the desired results.

We call this practice “tweaking.” In extreme cases, published results rely on manipulated or outright fabricated data. Whether tweaked, manipulated, or fabricated, the results often cannot be replicated — not even if replication analysts use identical research designs... (MORE - details)

---

The American Psychological Association plays both sides of the gender debate
https://www.city-journal.org/article/ame...rming-care

INTRO: In a recent New York Times guest essay, journalist Jesse Singal explained how U.S. medical associations—through a combination of mission drift, ideological zeal, and institutional incentives—became enthusiastic supporters of medical transition for gender-dysphoric minors.

Some associations have recently revised their positions. Last month, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a position statement rejecting surgical interventions for minor patients, citing challenges to the evidence for these procedures. The American Medical Association soon followed suit. These decisions, as Singal notes, have created renewed attention to other medical association policy statements on “affirming care.”

Unlike some peer organizations, the American Psychological Association (APA) appears to be attempting a “split the difference” communications strategy. It presented one face in response to Singal, and another to the trans activist community—all while denying the contradictions between the two. It thus embodies many of the institutional failures Singal laments.

The APA attempted this ploy when Singal asked the association for a comment for his Times op-ed... (MORE - details)]]> How ‘tiny shortcuts’ are poisoning science
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-t...g-science/

EXCERPT: The public no longer believes that scientists merely make honest mistakes on the long and winding road to truth. Instead, scientists are increasingly seen as partial, ideological agents, activists in an armchair, or, worse still, simply fraudsters who fabricate or manipulate data and tweak the specifications of their empirical models to get their desired results.

The credibility crisis of science is not about scientific progress invalidating previously held scientific beliefs, which is intrinsic to the very nature of scientific revolutions. Rather, the crisis has been caused by scientists who deliberately publish overconfident, misleading, and often simply false empirical results based on research designs or model specifications they have intentionally specified to give the desired results.

We call this practice “tweaking.” In extreme cases, published results rely on manipulated or outright fabricated data. Whether tweaked, manipulated, or fabricated, the results often cannot be replicated — not even if replication analysts use identical research designs... (MORE - details)

---

The American Psychological Association plays both sides of the gender debate
https://www.city-journal.org/article/ame...rming-care

INTRO: In a recent New York Times guest essay, journalist Jesse Singal explained how U.S. medical associations—through a combination of mission drift, ideological zeal, and institutional incentives—became enthusiastic supporters of medical transition for gender-dysphoric minors.

Some associations have recently revised their positions. Last month, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a position statement rejecting surgical interventions for minor patients, citing challenges to the evidence for these procedures. The American Medical Association soon followed suit. These decisions, as Singal notes, have created renewed attention to other medical association policy statements on “affirming care.”

Unlike some peer organizations, the American Psychological Association (APA) appears to be attempting a “split the difference” communications strategy. It presented one face in response to Singal, and another to the trans activist community—all while denying the contradictions between the two. It thus embodies many of the institutional failures Singal laments.

The APA attempted this ploy when Singal asked the association for a comment for his Times op-ed... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20030.html Mon, 23 Mar 2026 15:52:04 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20030.html https://academeblog.org/2026/03/13/the-a...ottleneck/

INTRO: Peer-reviewed scholarship remains the central currency of academic life. It advances careers, drives innovation, informs policy, stimulates economies, and lays the groundwork for the next generation of inquiry. Yet the very system designed to vet and disseminate knowledge increasingly drains enthusiasm from scholars—especially early-career investigators—by subjecting them to burdensome, time-consuming, and often pointless article submission portals. The problem is not peer review. It is the bureaucratic machinery that now precedes it... (MORE - details)]]> https://academeblog.org/2026/03/13/the-a...ottleneck/

INTRO: Peer-reviewed scholarship remains the central currency of academic life. It advances careers, drives innovation, informs policy, stimulates economies, and lays the groundwork for the next generation of inquiry. Yet the very system designed to vet and disseminate knowledge increasingly drains enthusiasm from scholars—especially early-career investigators—by subjecting them to burdensome, time-consuming, and often pointless article submission portals. The problem is not peer review. It is the bureaucratic machinery that now precedes it... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20008.html Thu, 19 Mar 2026 16:48:35 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-20008.html Ridley: Ehrlich's anti-human legacy
https://rationaloptimistsociety.substack...man-legacy

INTRO: The butterfly biologist turned rock-star eco-pessimist, Paul Ehrlich has died at the age of 93. That in itself is remarkable because in 1970 he forecast that within the coming decade “100-200 million people per year will be starving to death” and “by 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people”. Furthermore, by 1980 the life expectancy of the average American would have fallen 42 years as a result of cancer caused by pesticides.

Yet he not only lived more than 50 years longer than 42; he lived to be one of more than 8 billion people in a world where global life expectancy has increased at the average rate of seven hours per day since he forecast it would collapse. Meanwhile, famine has all but gone extinct, with death rates from mass starvation down to a tiny fraction of what they were in the 1960s. Here are the astounding numbers: in the 1960s, 29.7 million people out of a population of 3 billion died in famines that killed more than 100,000 people each. In the 2010s, 1.1 million out of a population of more than 8 billion died in such episodes: a decline of 99% in the death rate.

In short, Ehrlich was wrong. Not, as the New York Times said in its obituary this week, “premature”, but radically, completely, spectacularly wrong. He was wrong as soon as he put pen to paper and went on being wrong for decades afterwards. He shot to fame with a best-selling book in 1968, The Population Bomb, whose prologue dismissed all hope for humankind: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

Yet something did prevent that. Even as he wrote these words, the world’s population growth rate was falling. New strains of wheat and rice developed by agronomists like Norman Borlaug were starting to transform the productivity of agriculture and India was on the way to banishing famine and becoming a food exporter within a few short years. The amount of food available has increased faster than population on every continent over the last 60 years even as the land area devoted to farming has begun to fall. As so often with environmental pessimism, Ehrlich’s warning was already out of date when it was made.

For the rest of his life Ehrlich remained adamant that he was not so much wrong as…right... (MORE - details)]]> Ridley: Ehrlich's anti-human legacy
https://rationaloptimistsociety.substack...man-legacy

INTRO: The butterfly biologist turned rock-star eco-pessimist, Paul Ehrlich has died at the age of 93. That in itself is remarkable because in 1970 he forecast that within the coming decade “100-200 million people per year will be starving to death” and “by 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people”. Furthermore, by 1980 the life expectancy of the average American would have fallen 42 years as a result of cancer caused by pesticides.

Yet he not only lived more than 50 years longer than 42; he lived to be one of more than 8 billion people in a world where global life expectancy has increased at the average rate of seven hours per day since he forecast it would collapse. Meanwhile, famine has all but gone extinct, with death rates from mass starvation down to a tiny fraction of what they were in the 1960s. Here are the astounding numbers: in the 1960s, 29.7 million people out of a population of 3 billion died in famines that killed more than 100,000 people each. In the 2010s, 1.1 million out of a population of more than 8 billion died in such episodes: a decline of 99% in the death rate.

In short, Ehrlich was wrong. Not, as the New York Times said in its obituary this week, “premature”, but radically, completely, spectacularly wrong. He was wrong as soon as he put pen to paper and went on being wrong for decades afterwards. He shot to fame with a best-selling book in 1968, The Population Bomb, whose prologue dismissed all hope for humankind: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

Yet something did prevent that. Even as he wrote these words, the world’s population growth rate was falling. New strains of wheat and rice developed by agronomists like Norman Borlaug were starting to transform the productivity of agriculture and India was on the way to banishing famine and becoming a food exporter within a few short years. The amount of food available has increased faster than population on every continent over the last 60 years even as the land area devoted to farming has begun to fall. As so often with environmental pessimism, Ehrlich’s warning was already out of date when it was made.

For the rest of his life Ehrlich remained adamant that he was not so much wrong as…right... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-19987.html Tue, 17 Mar 2026 15:21:38 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-19987.html Another journal drinks the Kool-Aid: “There is no consensus on biological sex”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/03/1...gical-sex/

INTRO: Ecology Letters, which I thought was a reasonably respectable journal, has now accepted a “viewpoint” article arguing that there is no consensus on biological sex, and that a definition based on gamete size—a consensus if ever there was one—is just viable as “multivariate” definition that incorporates a combination of chromosomes, genetics, and morphology.

They’re wrong and misguided in many ways, but, as Colin Wright notes in a tweet at bottom, there are so many mistakes and misconceptions in this paper that it would take a full reply to the journal to correct them. I’ll just tender a few comments here... (MORE - details)

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Scare science: Claims about the human health dangers of microplastics are collapsing
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/...ollapsing/

INTRO: Since the rise of MAHA in US policy, journalists have been starting to question the findings of activist scientists, and instead of amplifying their campaigns and scary conclusions (as scandals and crises make better headlines), they are shining a spotlight on the nonsense being published, propagated and promoted on behalf of some undisclosed funders and special interests.

In particular, in 2026, journalists are starting to wake up to the poor research, bad methodology and lack of integrity of scientists publishing their insignificant findings and questionable conclusions from “research” on microplastics and nanoplastics claimed to be present in humans and the environment.

The realization of bad science was slow to arrive. The Firebreak was one of the few sources to report last October about the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) literature review that concluded that almost all published microplastic and nanoplastic studies were littered with mistakes, poor methodologies and unjustifiable conclusions... (MORE - details)]]> Another journal drinks the Kool-Aid: “There is no consensus on biological sex”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/03/1...gical-sex/

INTRO: Ecology Letters, which I thought was a reasonably respectable journal, has now accepted a “viewpoint” article arguing that there is no consensus on biological sex, and that a definition based on gamete size—a consensus if ever there was one—is just viable as “multivariate” definition that incorporates a combination of chromosomes, genetics, and morphology.

They’re wrong and misguided in many ways, but, as Colin Wright notes in a tweet at bottom, there are so many mistakes and misconceptions in this paper that it would take a full reply to the journal to correct them. I’ll just tender a few comments here... (MORE - details)

---

Scare science: Claims about the human health dangers of microplastics are collapsing
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/...ollapsing/

INTRO: Since the rise of MAHA in US policy, journalists have been starting to question the findings of activist scientists, and instead of amplifying their campaigns and scary conclusions (as scandals and crises make better headlines), they are shining a spotlight on the nonsense being published, propagated and promoted on behalf of some undisclosed funders and special interests.

In particular, in 2026, journalists are starting to wake up to the poor research, bad methodology and lack of integrity of scientists publishing their insignificant findings and questionable conclusions from “research” on microplastics and nanoplastics claimed to be present in humans and the environment.

The realization of bad science was slow to arrive. The Firebreak was one of the few sources to report last October about the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) literature review that concluded that almost all published microplastic and nanoplastic studies were littered with mistakes, poor methodologies and unjustifiable conclusions... (MORE - details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-19964.html Fri, 13 Mar 2026 18:56:34 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-19964.html https://theness.com/neurologicablog/crea...erarchies/

EXCERPT: The problem with both of these concepts – kind and macroevolution – is that they suffer from a fatal demarcation problem. There are lots of demarcation problems in science, anytime we are trying to categorize a messy continuum of nature. What’s a planet, or species, or continent? The difference is, the YEC argument is contingent on there being a sharp demarcation – evolution can proceed to this amount, but no further. Evolution can account for this degree of change, but no further. The problem is, they never state any reason, based on any valid principles, as to why. They simply assert that kinds are inviolate.

But at the core of their claims is a complete misunderstanding of what evolutionary science actually claims. Ironically, when they say that dogs can only evolve into more dogs, and never into cats – they are correct. Evolutionary scientists agree with this statement, especially if you take a cladistic approach to taxonomy. By definition a clade is one species and all of its descendants. This is why it is cladistically correct to say that people are fish. Once the eukaryotic clade evolved, everything that descends from it are still eukaryotes. So humans are eukaryotes, and animals, vertebrates, fish, lobe-finned fish, reptiles, mammals, and primates. It is correct, for example, to say that all descendants of fish are still fish, but you have to count humans as fish. What you cannot ever do is go back up the cladistic tree. You cannot undo evolution. You also cannot make a lateral move to another unrelated clade. So an animal cannot evolve into a plant.

The YEC misunderstanding of this concept renders all of their arguments as to why evolutionary scientists are wrong into strawman arguments. No one ever said a dog can evolve into a cat – in fact scientists say this is impossible. It is not part of evolutionary thinking.

What creationist do is grossly underestimate how much change can occur within a clade, because they are stuck on the concept of “kinds”. Functionally what is a kind? It’s one of those things that you vaguely sense. You know it when you see it. Everyone knows what dinosaurs look like – they have a dinosaurish vibe. This is why they falsely argue that birds could not have evolved from dinosaurs. Actually, it is more correct to simply say that birds are dinosaurs – they are a subclade within the dinosaur clade. Birds are also reptiles, because dinosaurs are a subclade within reptiles, which are a subclade within fish, etc. It’s nested hierarchies all the way down. But birds look like a different kind than dinosaurs, so this violates their vague sense of what a kind is. They then mock this idea by analogizing it to a dog evolving into a cat – this this is a false analogy. Dogs and cats are different subclades of mammals, and you cannot evolve from one clade into another, only into subclades within your existing clade.

Stephen J. Gould also discussed this idea and zoomed in on an important concept that is highly misunderstood. Over evolutionary time we expect that disparity (not diversity, the amount of differences, but disparity, the degree of difference) decreases. This seems counterintuitive, but it makes sense once you fully internalize the concept of nested hierarchies. Multicellular life achieved maximal morphological disparity soon after the Cambrian explosion, and from that point forward we only see variations of the various body plan themes. Over evolutionary time the nested hierarchy structure of the tree of life means that we see variations on progressively constrained themes. Evolution is constrained by its history, so the more evolutionary history a lineage has, the more constrained its future evolution. If we look at the entire history of evolution, we see this increasing constraint play out as decreasing disparity. At most disparity can stay the same, but extinction is like a ratchet slowly decreasing disparity... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://theness.com/neurologicablog/crea...erarchies/

EXCERPT: The problem with both of these concepts – kind and macroevolution – is that they suffer from a fatal demarcation problem. There are lots of demarcation problems in science, anytime we are trying to categorize a messy continuum of nature. What’s a planet, or species, or continent? The difference is, the YEC argument is contingent on there being a sharp demarcation – evolution can proceed to this amount, but no further. Evolution can account for this degree of change, but no further. The problem is, they never state any reason, based on any valid principles, as to why. They simply assert that kinds are inviolate.

But at the core of their claims is a complete misunderstanding of what evolutionary science actually claims. Ironically, when they say that dogs can only evolve into more dogs, and never into cats – they are correct. Evolutionary scientists agree with this statement, especially if you take a cladistic approach to taxonomy. By definition a clade is one species and all of its descendants. This is why it is cladistically correct to say that people are fish. Once the eukaryotic clade evolved, everything that descends from it are still eukaryotes. So humans are eukaryotes, and animals, vertebrates, fish, lobe-finned fish, reptiles, mammals, and primates. It is correct, for example, to say that all descendants of fish are still fish, but you have to count humans as fish. What you cannot ever do is go back up the cladistic tree. You cannot undo evolution. You also cannot make a lateral move to another unrelated clade. So an animal cannot evolve into a plant.

The YEC misunderstanding of this concept renders all of their arguments as to why evolutionary scientists are wrong into strawman arguments. No one ever said a dog can evolve into a cat – in fact scientists say this is impossible. It is not part of evolutionary thinking.

What creationist do is grossly underestimate how much change can occur within a clade, because they are stuck on the concept of “kinds”. Functionally what is a kind? It’s one of those things that you vaguely sense. You know it when you see it. Everyone knows what dinosaurs look like – they have a dinosaurish vibe. This is why they falsely argue that birds could not have evolved from dinosaurs. Actually, it is more correct to simply say that birds are dinosaurs – they are a subclade within the dinosaur clade. Birds are also reptiles, because dinosaurs are a subclade within reptiles, which are a subclade within fish, etc. It’s nested hierarchies all the way down. But birds look like a different kind than dinosaurs, so this violates their vague sense of what a kind is. They then mock this idea by analogizing it to a dog evolving into a cat – this this is a false analogy. Dogs and cats are different subclades of mammals, and you cannot evolve from one clade into another, only into subclades within your existing clade.

Stephen J. Gould also discussed this idea and zoomed in on an important concept that is highly misunderstood. Over evolutionary time we expect that disparity (not diversity, the amount of differences, but disparity, the degree of difference) decreases. This seems counterintuitive, but it makes sense once you fully internalize the concept of nested hierarchies. Multicellular life achieved maximal morphological disparity soon after the Cambrian explosion, and from that point forward we only see variations of the various body plan themes. Over evolutionary time the nested hierarchy structure of the tree of life means that we see variations on progressively constrained themes. Evolution is constrained by its history, so the more evolutionary history a lineage has, the more constrained its future evolution. If we look at the entire history of evolution, we see this increasing constraint play out as decreasing disparity. At most disparity can stay the same, but extinction is like a ratchet slowly decreasing disparity... (MORE - missing details)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-19937.html Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:41:02 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-19937.html What science should learn from the Epstein files
- - - - - - - - - -

Epstein paid for a conference of top scientists in 2006. His motives are now clear
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-572...conference

EXCERPTS: Some 100 feet below the ocean's surface, Stephen Hawking peeked through the circular porthole of a submarine and saw the brilliant blue tropical water. It was March 2006, and the famous astrophysicist, accompanied by one of his ever-present nurses, sat strapped in his wheelchair, enjoying the view of coral reefs and colorful fish off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was his first undersea experience, and he had Jeffrey Epstein to thank for it.

[...] The "Confronting Gravity" conference was billed as a chance to discuss key issues in fundamental physics and cosmology and was described as a place where participants could "meet, discuss, relax on the beach, and take a trip to the nearby private island retreat of the science philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein."

"It was an excellent conference," said Alan Guth, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who attended the event. In fact, Epstein would go on to describe it as one of his top five professional achievements. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, then with Case Western Reserve University, organized the event. He maintained an almost 15-year friendship with Epstein...

The 2006 Virgin Islands conference illustrates how Epstein used philanthropy to build relationships with scientists and academic institutions. NPR spoke to scientists and searched through the Department of Justice documents on Epstein to understand how he built his network of prominent scientists. Epstein's interests spanned fields including theoretical physics, evolutionary biology and computer science, and he funded conferences, research programs and individual scientists.

"Jeffrey was interested in interesting people," Krauss told NPR. [...] But if the idea was to keep Epstein's private life a secret, it wasn't entirely effective. There were hints.

Guth said that during the conference, Epstein "was around but was really quite inconspicuous. He did not act as a host. He acted as a bystander." However, "we probably never saw him without three or four young women," Guth said.

[...] Peebles attended the conference with his wife. He vividly recalls a coffee break between talks at the Ritz where he and others "noticed several young women, maybe five, maybe 10," who seemed out of place. "Several of us asked each other, 'What are they doing here?'"

"I can only tell you they were younger than the youngest women in our meeting," he told NPR. "Were they 15 or 30? I have no idea."  Speaking to NPR, Krauss said the young women were Hawking's nurses...

[...] Peter Woit, a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, didn't attend the 2006 conference. His name appears twice in the Epstein files but only in passing — both times on emails that included a general list of scientists. There is no indication of any direct involvement, though he does know several people who were connected to Epstein.

In a recent post on his blog, Woit concluded: "Epstein used his mysteriously acquired wealth to pursue his two great interests in life: the sexual exploitation of young women and hanging out with celebrity scientists."

[...] Woit said it is his sense that Epstein thought of himself as a "philosopher king" who liked to "share his brilliant ideas with these brilliant people and they would come and hang out with him." ... Epstein was eager to engage on the leading science topics of the day but had only a cursory understanding of them. Still, Woit concedes that "scientists love to have somebody who is willing to talk to them." (MORE - missing details)]]> What science should learn from the Epstein files
- - - - - - - - - -

Epstein paid for a conference of top scientists in 2006. His motives are now clear
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-572...conference

EXCERPTS: Some 100 feet below the ocean's surface, Stephen Hawking peeked through the circular porthole of a submarine and saw the brilliant blue tropical water. It was March 2006, and the famous astrophysicist, accompanied by one of his ever-present nurses, sat strapped in his wheelchair, enjoying the view of coral reefs and colorful fish off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was his first undersea experience, and he had Jeffrey Epstein to thank for it.

[...] The "Confronting Gravity" conference was billed as a chance to discuss key issues in fundamental physics and cosmology and was described as a place where participants could "meet, discuss, relax on the beach, and take a trip to the nearby private island retreat of the science philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein."

"It was an excellent conference," said Alan Guth, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who attended the event. In fact, Epstein would go on to describe it as one of his top five professional achievements. Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, then with Case Western Reserve University, organized the event. He maintained an almost 15-year friendship with Epstein...

The 2006 Virgin Islands conference illustrates how Epstein used philanthropy to build relationships with scientists and academic institutions. NPR spoke to scientists and searched through the Department of Justice documents on Epstein to understand how he built his network of prominent scientists. Epstein's interests spanned fields including theoretical physics, evolutionary biology and computer science, and he funded conferences, research programs and individual scientists.

"Jeffrey was interested in interesting people," Krauss told NPR. [...] But if the idea was to keep Epstein's private life a secret, it wasn't entirely effective. There were hints.

Guth said that during the conference, Epstein "was around but was really quite inconspicuous. He did not act as a host. He acted as a bystander." However, "we probably never saw him without three or four young women," Guth said.

[...] Peebles attended the conference with his wife. He vividly recalls a coffee break between talks at the Ritz where he and others "noticed several young women, maybe five, maybe 10," who seemed out of place. "Several of us asked each other, 'What are they doing here?'"

"I can only tell you they were younger than the youngest women in our meeting," he told NPR. "Were they 15 or 30? I have no idea."  Speaking to NPR, Krauss said the young women were Hawking's nurses...

[...] Peter Woit, a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Columbia University, didn't attend the 2006 conference. His name appears twice in the Epstein files but only in passing — both times on emails that included a general list of scientists. There is no indication of any direct involvement, though he does know several people who were connected to Epstein.

In a recent post on his blog, Woit concluded: "Epstein used his mysteriously acquired wealth to pursue his two great interests in life: the sexual exploitation of young women and hanging out with celebrity scientists."

[...] Woit said it is his sense that Epstein thought of himself as a "philosopher king" who liked to "share his brilliant ideas with these brilliant people and they would come and hang out with him." ... Epstein was eager to engage on the leading science topics of the day but had only a cursory understanding of them. Still, Woit concedes that "scientists love to have somebody who is willing to talk to them." (MORE - missing details)]]>