The eerie silence

I recently read a book, "The Eerie Silence", by physicist Paul Davies. Paul Davies is the head of project SETI. The book is about the search for extraterrestrial life/intelligence. Of course, to-date, there has been no hint of any life whatsoever outside our own planet. Nevertheless,  the 50-year old project SETI, apparently now privately funded, is alive. There are many excellent reviews of the book on the Internet, for example, on the Guardian (see here and here), the New York Times, Goodreads, Science News, and others. The book is, indeed, interesting. It debunks UFO stories, discusses the issue of whether life is a commonplace in this galaxy (or in the universe)--with no conclusions, of course, the issues of habitable zone and multiple biospheres on Earth, the probability of intelligent life elsewhere (and Drake's "equation"), the need for less anthropocentric search methods, the possible ways that aliens might communicate with us (which may be far from what we currently think of or use), the inability we might have in even recognizing advanced extraterrestrial technology, various philosophical issues, what would happen if we ever recognized that life existed, and an optimistic conclusion.

Now, all that is great, we need to be optimistic, we need to keep searching and wondering and, as is well known, the answer to the question "is there life elsewhere" would be profound regardless of whether it is positive or negative. But the book is rather long and tends to get a bit boring at times. Drake's "equation" for instance is hardly anything remarkable. It's just a back-of-the-envelope calculation that anyone with high school knowledge can think of (except that data may be missing, and they still are). At times, there are diversions towards religion, history or philosophy. What I found remarkably shallow is the author's claim that it was monotheistic religions (and, by this, he means the Abrahamic religions) are conducive to science. Namely, Davies claims, in the book and elsewhere, that, as opposed to Hinduism, the Abrahamic religions hold that the universe had a beginning. He also claims

The Greek philosophers taught that humans could come to understand the world by the existence of reason, which achieved its most disciplined form in the rules of logic and mathematical theorems that followed therefrom. They asserted that the world wasn't arbitrary or absurd, but rational and intelligible, even if confusing and complicated. However, Greek philosophy never spawned what today we would understand by the scientific method, in which nature is `interrogated' via experiment and observation, because the Greek philosophers' touching belief that the answers could all be deduced by pure reason alone.

Meanwhile, monotheism increasingly shaped the Western world view during the formative stages of science. Judaism represented a decisive break with almost all contemporary cultures by positing an unfolding cosmic narrative based on linear time.

The concept of linear time, and a universe created by a rational being and ordered according to a set of immutable laws, was adopted by both Christianity and Islam, and was the dominant influence in Europe at the time of Galileo. The early scientists, who were deeply religious, regarded their work as uncovering God's plan for the universe, as revealed through hidden mathematical relationships. What we now call the laws of physics they saw as thoughts in the mind of God. Without belief in a single omnipotent rational lawgiver, it is unlikely that anyone would have assumed that nature is intelligible in a systematic, quantitative way, mirrored by eternal mathematical forms.

Davies' claims suffer from a number of historical and logical inaccuracies.

1. It is true that ancient scholars had not fully developed the scientific method, but it is not true that they only relied on things they could do in their heads. Indeed, the name of Archimedes is never mentioned in the book. Neither is any mention of the Antikythera mechanism. It is true that these things belong, perhaps, to the domain of engineering, but it is clear that nobody could have built them by thinking only, without any kind of experimentation. The claim that "nature [was not] `interrogated' via experiment and observation does not seem to be correct.
2. When Davies speaks of monotheistic religions, he means the Abrahamic ones. There have been other monotheistic religions which are not included in his `reasoning', for instance, Zoroastrianism.
3. Davies speaks of what--he thinks--monotheistic religious scientist achieved several centuries after these religions were invented, but he never mentions what happened, for example, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Who got rid of all work in mathematics and reason, up to that point, if not the new monothestic religion (or the particular version which the emperors adopted)? 
4. The claim that "linear time" and "universe which has a single beginning" are both mentioned by monotheistic religions does not imply that monotheism implies these concepts. It is, merely, an accident that these concepts were adopted by the Jews (and hence by Christians and Muslims). The implied implication is not valid. 
5. "Early scientists were deeply religious." We've heard this argument many times. But why is not Davies considering the obvious fact that those scientists had to be religious in order to be allowed to do what they were doing. Yes, some of them believed in god (there was no alternative anyway), some did not, but everyone had to pretend and behave as if they actually believed. So we will never know the truth. Imagine, for instance, the future historian who will claim that "in 20th. c. America, every president was highly religious and always appeared to pray in public". We, of course, know that without appearing to be religious they stand no chance of getting elected.

This is a weak point of the book. Other than that, I liked it, but, as I said, I could have read the same things in half the space.

Davies seems to be a smart person. So let us examine why he often digresses to praise monotheism. Well, there are several reasons, among which I can identify at least two:

1. First, he's director of SETI which is privately funded, so he needs to please donors. Many of them (by virtue that they come from a religious country) are probably religious.
2. Second, he probably likes awards. For example, he's a recipient of the Templeton prize. This is a very peculiar prize because it is given to all kinds of people, including ones who have caused harm. The prize has been criticized by Richard Dawkins ("[the Templeton prize is] usually [given] to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion"),  Sean  Carroll (people cannot take Templeton research grants when they do not support Templeton's beliefs) and Martinus Veltman ("the Templeton prize bridges the gap between sense and nonsense")

Davies' claims that monotheism is conducive to science gives religionists ground to support their irrational beliefs. Some Muslims believe that the Quran contains science and they sometimes quote Davies as scientific support of this ridiculous claim.

On the Christian front, Davies seems to be a friend of John Lennox who likes to use "mathematics" and "logic" and "science" to support his religious claims. (The worst of all, in this conversation, is that Davies and Lennox, a physicist and a mathematician, discuss "specified complexity", a bogus concept invented by William Dembski for the sole purpose of promoting creationism.)

Last but not least, I can't fail but notice that the website (mentioned in the Eerie Silence) IETI (invitation to extraterrestrial intelligence, created because if--they claim--aliens get in touch with us, they might do so over the Internet) contains 100 individuals (inviting aliens) among which a certain Sohail Inayatullah who "brings an Islamic and Indian tantric perspective to understanding the Other, space travel, and alternative futures."

The upshot of all this is that, by trying to please everyone, including those who have nothing to do with science, one ends up having their work used for the purposes of the those who do nonsense.

How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science

The following great article appeared in the  The Guardian, Monday 9 December 2013, and contains a number of accurate and important points. Many people in Academia would agree with it, but few would dare speak about it. I reproduce it below verbatim. Please notice that the emphasis is mine. Note, in particular, how the author speaks about the concept of "impact factor" (a gimmick!), and how it urges scientists (including administrators) to seek the truth, rather than fall victims of a fake-bonus practice. Indeed, one's achievements should NOT be measured as a function of impact factor and other silly criteria (like the h-index), but as a function of one's research and scholarship. But this would pose extra work for the heads of university divisions, for the committees deciding on one's promotion, and for the funding agencies. But, hey, learning something about the work of the person you judge ain't that bad, right?

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The incentives offered by top journals distort science, just as big bonuses distort banking

by Randy Schekman

The journal Science has recently retracted a high-profile paper reporting links between littering and violence. Photograph: Alamy/Janine Wiedel

I am a scientist. Mine is a professional world that achieves great things for humanity. But it is disfigured by inappropriate incentives. The prevailing structures of personal reputation and career advancement mean the biggest rewards often follow the flashiest work, not the best. Those of us who follow these incentives are being entirely rational – I have followed them myself – but we do not always best serve our profession's interests, let alone those of humanity and society.

We all know what distorting incentives have done to finance and banking. The incentives my colleagues face are not huge bonuses, but the professional rewards that accompany publication in prestigious journals – chiefly Nature, Cell and Science.

These luxury journals are supposed to be the epitome of quality, publishing only the best research. Because funding and appointment panels often use place of publication as a proxy for quality of science, appearing in these titles often leads to grants and professorships. But the big journals' reputations are only partly warranted. While they publish many outstanding papers, they do not publish only outstanding papers. Neither are they the only publishers of outstanding research.

These journals aggressively curate their brands, in ways more conducive to selling subscriptions than to stimulating the most important research. Like fashion designers who create limited-edition handbags or suits, they know scarcity stokes demand, so they artificially restrict the number of papers they accept. The exclusive brands are then marketed with a gimmick called "impact factor" – a score for each journal, measuring the number of times its papers are cited by subsequent research. Better papers, the theory goes, are cited more often, so better journals boast higher scores. Yet it is a deeply flawed measure, pursuing which has become an end in itself – and is as damaging to science as the bonus culture is to banking.

It is common, and encouraged by many journals, for research to be judged by the impact factor of the journal that publishes it. But as a journal's score is an average, it says little about the quality of any individual piece of research. What is more, citation is sometimes, but not always, linked to quality. A paper can become highly cited because it is good science – or because it is eye-catching, provocative or wrong. Luxury-journal editors know this, so they accept papers that will make waves because they explore sexy subjects or make challenging claims. This influences the science that scientists do. It builds bubbles in fashionable fields where researchers can make the bold claims these journals want, while discouraging other important work, such as replication studies.

In extreme cases, the lure of the luxury journal can encourage the cutting of corners, and contribute to the escalating number of papers that are retracted as flawed or fraudulent. Science alone has recently retracted high-profile papers reporting cloned human embryos, links between littering and violence, and the genetic profiles of centenarians. Perhaps worse, it has not retracted claims that a microbe is able to use arsenic in its DNA instead of phosphorus, despite overwhelming scientific criticism.

There is a better way, through the new breed of open-access journals that are free for anybody to read, and have no expensive subscriptions to promote. Born on the web, they can accept all papers that meet quality standards, with no artificial caps. Many are edited by working scientists, who can assess the worth of papers without regard for citations. As I know from my editorship of eLife, an open access journal funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Max Planck Society, they are publishing world-class science every week.

Funders and universities, too, have a role to play. They must tell the committees that decide on grants and positions not to judge papers by where they are published. It is the quality of the science, not the journal's brand, that matters. Most importantly of all, we scientists need to take action. Like many successful researchers, I have published in the big brands, including the papers that won me the Nobel prize for medicine, which I will be honoured to collect tomorrow.. But no longer. I have now committed my lab to avoiding luxury journals, and I encourage others to do likewise.

Just as Wall Street needs to break the hold of the bonus culture, which drives risk-taking that is rational for individuals but damaging to the financial system, so science must break the tyranny of the luxury journals. The result will be better research that better serves science and society.

European Comission's blunder

As "a Nadder" puts it, the following video is a hilariously inept and patronising ad by the European Commission, "trying" to encourage women to pursue careers in science. It's so inappropriate that makes you wonder if those guys have any brains at all. Here it is:

So not just Sweden, but the whole Europe is obsessed with gender. They try to come up with quick and dirty fixes for, say, the discrepancy between the number of women and men in the university (or in engineering, science,...), that the results are often so demeaning to the women themselves, let alone that it is more scientific to watch MacDonald's hamburger ads than the video above. Just plain stupid.

The Pope is more influential than any scientist

"Like it or not, the Pope is more influential than any scientist", says the New Scientist (December 2010).

In an article about the Pope's tacit approval of condom use to prevent the spread of HIV, it is also mentioned that prominent scientists have urged the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences to endorse genetically modified (GM) crops.

The Catholic Church has yet to officially back GM. But if it does, it would be a welcome shift away from a gimlet-eyed obsession with sexual morality into areas that could genuinely improve the lives of billions. Like it or not, the Pope is more influential than any scientist. Supporters of GM should hope he sees the light.

 A quick search in New Scientist's archives shows how often scientists try to get the Pope's endorsement:

• Three prominent US scientists have asked Pope Benedict XVI to clarify the Roman Catholic church's view on Darwinism.
• Could it be that the Vatican is about to enter the age of enlightenment?  
• Will the papacy ever come to terms with progress in reproductive science, or will the new pope follow in his predecessors footsteps?
• The Catholic church's demonising of the technologies that facilitate test-tube babies is making it look out of touch and irrelevant.

The Pope's opinion matters for millions of people in the world. They would rather listen to him, a scientifically-illiterate individual, about all kinds of important things, rather than listen to scientists. Religion is interfering with so many important things in this world and this is a really sad state of affairs.

The moral landscape

New book by Sam Harris, dealing with the question whether science can determine morality, human values. The last bastion of theists, namely that without belief in the supernatural there is no way for people to behave ethically, is challenged by Harris who defends his position apparently well. I just bought the book and am reading it, so I am not yet in a position to offer my personal views. A review by Michael Schermer which just appeared in the Scientific American is positive. Another review by Massimo Pigliucci which just appeared in the latest edition of the Skeptic is more negative.

What is important for me is mostly that the question can be asked and the dogmatic view be challenged. Almost certainly, morality has nothing to do with these people, or these ones, or these ones, or these ones, or these ones. And, certainly, the hypocrisy of Blair is not an answer but means for providing further divide between those who believe and those who don't, whatever the verb may mean.

Oh, by the way, for those who asked me recently, I don't only read books or articles I only agree with.

Promoters of Science and Mathematics need to understand Science and Mathematics

In my previous posting I talked about a case of someone who feels the need to introduce religion into science.
Changing gears now, I would like to talk a bit about those people who do like science and mathematics but are not qualified to promote them.

Take, for instance, the case of someone writing an article about the need to use Probability Theory, say, in estimating the risk for the purposes of insurance. For example, how much should a chemical factory pay to insure against the possibility of explosion? To answer this, one needs to know both the details of the factory operation (and enough chemical engineering) as well as enough mathematics and probability. Also, one needs to have some data.

Suppose now that a science lover writes an article in an applied mathematics/statistics journal promoting the need to use mathematical models for problems as the one I described above. But let's say that his main argument is this:

"We need to use mathematics when we take decisions (such as deciding the level of insurance payment), and not leave matters to politicians. For if we don't use mathematics and science we may make horrible mistakes. For example, there is a well-known case in the State of Indiana where, in 1897, they almost passed a law saying that π = 9.2376. My main concern  is to show that mathematics needs to be done before laws and regulations are passed so that we avoid mistakes such as the equivalent of having to use π = 9.2376 in our calculations."

My question is this: Would you publish an article whose purpose was to promote the need of use of mathematics for the purpose of not overestimating π? What would you say to the author of such an article? Is this not a poor, very poor, reason for doing mathematics? Would you not tell the author to try harder to come up with a better reason? Or tell him or her that enthusiasm for mathematics is not, by itself, sufficient enough to warrant publication?

More generally: While it is easy to dismiss people (such as the one in my previous posting) claiming that religion and science should be taught and done together, we should not encourage promoters of science without proper understanding of the subject. Just as Shallit wrote, science writers need to know science, so should promoters of science understand what they are promoting. Otherwise, weak arguments like the above can leave the door of science open to anyone from clueless politicians to religious fundamentalists.

What is your opinion on the matter?

A paper with 2789 authors

I came across this physics paper by browsing the arXiv.org e-Print archive tonight. It is titled
"Readiness of the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter for LHC Collisions"
and has 2789 authors! Yes, that's right:
Two thousand seven hundred and eighty nine authors!

The papers is 31 pages long. Seven of these pages are devoted to the listing of the authors' names. Actually, all letters of the alphabet are there: there is at least one author whose family name starts with any given letter. It takes another 4 pages to list the authors' affiliations. One of the authors is marked as deceased at the time of submission of the paper. (Considering their number, this must be a not-so-unlikely event.)

I wish I knew whether this is a world record.

Neanderthal genes 'survive in us'

A fascinating report:

Many people alive today possess some Neanderthal ancestry, according to a landmark scientific study.
The finding has surprised many experts, as previous genetic evidence suggested the Neanderthals made little or no contribution to our inheritance.
The result comes from analysis of the Neanderthal genome - the "instruction manual" describing how these ancient humans were put together.
The genomes of 1% to 4% of people in Eurasia come from Neanderthals.
But the study confirms living humans overwhelmingly trace their ancestry to a small population of Africans who later spread out across the world.
The most widely-accepted theory of modern human origins - known as Out of Africa - holds that the ancestors of living humans (Homo sapiens) originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago.
A relatively small group of people then left the continent to populate the rest of the world between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.
While the Neanderthal genetic contribution - found in people from Europe, Asia and Oceania - appears to be small, this figure is higher than previous genetic analyses have suggested.
"They are not totally extinct. In some of us they live on, a little bit," said Professor Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at London's Natural History Museum, is one of the architects of the Out of Africa theory. He told BBC News: "In some ways [the study] confirms what we already knew, in that the Neanderthals look like a separate line.
"But, of course, the really surprising thing for many of us is the implication that there has been some interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans in the past."
John Hawks, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, told BBC News: "They're us. We're them.
"It seemed like it was likely to be possible, but I am surprised by the amount. I really was not expecting it to be as high as 4%," he said of the genetic contribution from Neanderthals.
The sequencing of the Neanderthal genome is a landmark scientific achievement, the product of a four-year-long effort led from Germany's Max Planck Institute but involving many other universities around the world.
The project makes use of efficient "high-throughput" technology which allows many genetic sequences to be processed at the same time.
The draft Neanderthal sequence contains DNA extracted from the bones of three different Neanderthals found at Vindija Cave in Croatia.
Retrieving good quality genetic material from remains tens of thousands of years old presented many hurdles which had to be overcome.
The samples almost always contained only a small amount of Neanderthal DNA amid vast quantities of DNA from bacteria and fungi that colonised the remains after death.
The Neanderthal DNA itself had broken down into very short segments and had changed chemically. Luckily, the chemical changes were of a regular nature, allowing the researchers to write software that corrected for them.
Writing in Science journal, the researchers describe how they compared this draft sequence with the genomes of modern people from around the globe.
"The comparison of these two genetic sequences enables us to find out where our genome differs from that of our closest relative," said Professor Paabo.
The results show that the genomes of non-Africans (from Europe, China and New Guinea) are closer to the Neanderthal sequence than are those from Africa.
The most likely explanation, say the researchers, is that there was limited mating, or "gene flow", between Neanderthals and the ancestors of present-day Eurasians.
This must have taken place just as people were leaving Africa, while they were still part of one pioneering population. This mixing could have taken place either in North Africa, the Levant or the Arabian Peninsula, say the researchers.
The Out of Africa theory contends that modern humans replaced local "archaic" populations like the Neanderthals.
But there are several variations on this idea. The most conservative model proposes that this replacement took place with no interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals.
Another version allows for a degree of assimilation, or absorption, of other human types into the Homo sapiens gene pool.
The latest research strongly supports the Out of Africa theory, but it falsifies the most conservative version of events.
The team also identified more than 70 gene changes that were unique to modern humans. These genes are implicated in physiology, the development of the brain, skin and bone.
The researchers also looked for signs of "selective sweeps" - strong natural selection acting to boost traits in modern humans. They found 212 regions where positive selection may have been taking place.
The scientists are interested in discovering genes that distinguish modern humans from Neanderthals because they may have given our evolutionary line certain advantages over the course of evolution.
The most obvious differences were in physique: the muscular, stocky frames of Neanderthals contrast sharply with those of our ancestors. But it is likely there were also more subtle differences, in behaviour, for example.
Dr Hawks commented that the amount of Neanderthal DNA in our genomes seemed high: "What it means is that any traits [Neanderthals] had that might have been useful in later populations should still be here.
"So when we see that their anatomies are gone, this isn't just chance. Those things that made the Neanderthals apparent to us as a population - those things didn't work. They're gone because they didn't work in the context of our population."
Researchers had previously thought Europe was the region where Neanderthals and modern humans were most likely to have exchanged genes. The two human types overlapped here for some 10,000 years.
The authors of the paper in Science do not rule out some interbreeding in Europe, but say it was not possible to detect this with present scientific methods.

The second law of thermodynamics is against the Bible

Several years ago, the members of the Christian Coalition of America, headed by a certain Ralph Reed, stated:

"We don't like the implications of [the second law of Theormodynamics], and we will not rest until it has been reversed in the courts."

"What do these scientists want us teaching our children? That the universe will continue to expand until it reaches eventual heat death? That's hardly an optimistic view of a world the Lord created for mankind. The American people are sending a strong message here: We don't like the implications of this law, and we will not rest until it has been reversed in the courts."
"Why can't disorder decrease over time instead of everything decaying? Is that too much to ask? This is our children's future we're talking about."

"My daughter's schoolbooks tell her that we live in a world ruled by disorder. That's a direct contradiction of what it says in the Bible, about how everything is going to get better, and we'll all live happily up in heaven after the End Times."

"This is America, and in this country, we have the God-given right to change laws we don't think are Christian. We are united in our demands that the second law of thermodynamics be repealed, and our voice will be heard no matter what. That's just a plain fact, and nothing anybody says can ever change it."

This is the kind of idiocy requires no further comments.
[Credit to a Nadder! ]

Don't Cite Works You Haven't Read

Taken from
Recursivity: Don't Cite Works You Haven't Read:

I couldn't agree more with what Shallit says below.

It's something you teach your graduate students: Don't cite works you haven't read.

I have worked with co-authors who, when working on their version of a joint paper, they add citations to a number of papers I am not familiar with. This is fine, as long as they (i) have read the papers themselves and (ii) tell me what the papers are about, i.e. give me a summary. If they have not read a paper then I expect them to tell me why they think that the paper is relevant and agree on which of us should read it and explain to the other. If these conditions are not met, we end up with a paper which violates the rule: "none of the authors have read some of the papers cited". This is bad. We can't tell students not to violate this rule when, at the same time, we do it ourselves.

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It's something you teach your graduate students: Don't cite works you haven't read.

It's a rule with good reasons behind it. First, it's a bad idea to rely on someone else's summary of another work. Maybe they summarized it incorrectly, or maybe there is more there you need to consider. Second, as a scholar, it's your obligation not to spread misinformation. Maybe the page numbers or the volume are given incorrectly.

Like all rules, there are occasional exceptions. Maybe it's a really old and obscure work that you've tried to get a copy of, but failed. In that case, you can cite the work but mention that you haven't actually been able to find a copy. (I've done this.) That way, at the least the reader will be warned that you're relying on someone else's citation.

And now, from Paris, comes a spectacular case of why citing works you haven't read is a bad idea. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévi has been caught citing and praising, in his new book De la guerre en philosophie, the work of the philosopher "Jean-Baptiste Botul". Only problem? Botul doesn't actually exist. He is the creation of journalist Frédéric Pagès.

Now, maybe Lévy did actually read Botul's book La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. But if so, despite the big warning signs (Botul's school is called "Botulism") he failed to recognize it as a big joke, which raises even more questions about his perspicacity.

Maybe I need to tell my graduate students another rule: Don't cite works that you suspect may be a hoax.

The Earth now spins (a tiny bit) faster

Indeed, due to the recent earthquake in Chile, the distribution of mass on the Earth has slightly changed, most likely resulting in slightly shorter days by 1.26 microseconds. It has been estimated that the Earth figure axis has moved by about 8 centimeters.

Similar effects have been caused to the Earth by previous earthquakes, like the 2004 Indian Ocean quake.

But because of tidal effects of the moon, the length of a day increases at an average of 15 microseconds per year, so neither earthquake will have any significant long lasting effect.

From 10-35 to 1027

1. A very nice zoom-in/zoom-out gadget showing, in a nutshell, what's in the universe at all scales, from the size of the universe itself down to Planck's length. Click here and then on "play" (from 10²⁷ to 10^-35).
2. This one is specific for biological objects (from 10^-2 to 10^-12).
3. And here is a zoom-in into Mandelbrot's set 10²¹⁴ times (this is more exponents than in 1. and 2. above).
   

(All taken from a Nadder!)

Evolution in lifeless proteins

Very intereresting!

Scientists have shown for the first time that "lifeless" prion proteins, devoid of all genetic material, can evolve just like higher forms of life. In other words, they are subject to mutation and natural selection.

An angry creationist

As we all now well know, a Mr Ray Comfort, a religious parasite (also known as the banana man because he explains creationism by peeling bananas), has created a new version of Darwin's Origin of Species with his own introduction, and his protégés are now handing them out at college campuses in the US. There has been a huge uproar about this act of barbarism, including lots of comments in the Amazon site which screwed up with a mixup of the original Darwin's book and Comfort's idiocy. I found the following comment, by an angry creationist/intelligent-designist, very amusing [emphasis is mine]:

In response to Mr. Rimmel: Would you seriously take the time and read the Bible, let's say, the NASB or New King James translation, for yourself and not rely on what others say before you make statements that undermine honesty and integrity? You will find that God is the author of Science and He upholds true science. You will be astounded at all the scientific information to be found in the Bible. And a good site to investigate yourself would be Answers In Genesis as well as www.icr.org, with many scientists putting their work out there for you and I to intelligently sift and seperate, coming to conclusions that are well grounded. You will do yourself justice if you give the time to check these out. And if you don't believe that Ray Comfort is credible, then why are you so concerned with what he wrote only in the introduction? If it is not credible to you, it will not be credible to other thinkers, so relax and let it die down on its own. You have nothing to lose by Mr. Comfort speaking his mind on the works of Darwin, do you? If Darwin's work is unbeatable, then it should stand up to Ray Comfort in the least, don't you agree? I hope you do go digging for yourself. Sharpen that shovel and go, Mr. Rummel!!

This made me laugh, hysterically. This person claims (let's read again) that there is a lot of scientific information in the Bible. Like what? Quantum Mechanics? Biology? Mathematics? Physics? Last time I read the bible (and I do review it from time to time), not only I could see no science, but I saw hatred, psychological and physical terror, inaccuracies, contradictions (the list is endless). Check it out for yourself in a simplified version. Or, if you want more in-depth analysis of Bible monstrosities, look here, for example. It's funny, but Muslims, also believe that the Quran is full of science. But think about it, even for a minute. Have you seen *any*, no matter how simple, mathematical or scientific argument in the Bible (say the Pythagorean theorem), with proof? Not really. The Bible has no science, no mathematics, no logic, no rationality. It is a collection of stories (some very gruesome indeed), such as the Odyssey. The difference is that the Oddyssey is a piece of literature, which the Bible isn't (as far as I can tell by reading the parts of the Bible written in Greek; I don't know ancient Hebrew).

And if you want to read the Genesis, as the reader above suggests and you have no time, I suggest reading Crumb's version. Science you will not learn, but, at least, you will be entertained.

Charles Freeman

I'm looking forward to getting hold of a copy of Charles Freeman's new book, "A New History of Early Christianity".


The book was just published by Yale University Press and there are not many reviews around. A description of the book, taken from Yale U.P., is as follows:

The relevance of Christianity is as hotly contested today as it has ever been. "A New History of Early Christianity" shows how our current debates are rooted in the many controversies surrounding the birth of the religion and the earliest attempts to resolve them. Charles Freeman's meticulous historical account of Christianity from its birth in Judaea in the first century A.D. to the emergence of Western and Eastern churches by A.D. 600 reveals that it was a distinctive, vibrant, and incredibly diverse movement brought into order at the cost of intellectual and spiritual vitality. Against the conventional narrative of the inevitable 'triumph' of a single distinct Christianity, Freeman shows that there was a host of competing Christianities, many of which had as much claim to authenticity as those that eventually dominated. Tracing the astonishing transformation that the early Christian church underwent - from sporadic niches of Christian communities surviving in the wake of a horrific crucifixion to sanctioned alliance with the state - Charles Freeman shows how freedom of thought was curtailed by the development of the concept of faith. The imposition of 'correct belief', and an institutional framework that enforced orthodoxy were both consolidating and stifling. Uncovering the church's relationships with Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman society, Freeman offers dramatic new accounts of Paul, the resurrection, and the church fathers and emperors.

Judging from his earlier book, "The Closing of the Western Mind: the Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason", where Freeman gives a superb account of how, around the 4th c. AD, there was a phase transition: whereas science and reason was thriving in the early AD years as a direct continuation of the ancient Greek tradition, something happened in the 4th c., and rationality was suddenly lost; science was condemned and even thinking was considered dangerous. We all know what followed for hundreds of years to come. In the words of Freeman himself,

My thesis is that Christianity was heavily politicised by the late Roman empire, certainly to the extent that it would have been unrecognisable to Jesus. Note the linking of the church to the empire's success in war, opulent church building and an ever narrowing definition of what beliefs one had to hold to be saved. (Hand in hand with this went an elaboration of the horrors of hell, a radical and unhappy development which can only have discouraged freedom of thought.) My core argument is that one result of the combination of the forces of authority (the empire) and faith (the church) was a stifling of a sophisticated tradition of intellectual thought which had stretched back over nearly a thousand years and which relied strongly on the use of the reasoning mind.
I did not depend on Gibbon. I do not agree with him that intellectual thought in the early Christian centuries was dead and I believe that the well established hierarchy of the church strengthened not undermined the empire. After all it was the church which survived the collapse of the western empire. Of course, Gibbon writes so eloquently that I could not resist quoting from him at times but my argument is developed independently of him and draws on both primary sources and recent scholarship.
On the relationship between Christianity and philosophy I argue that there were two major strands of Greek philosophy , those of Plato and Aristotle. The early church did not reject Greek philosophy but drew heavily on Platonism to the exclusion of Aristotle. In the thirteenth century Christianity was reinvigorated by the adoption of Aristotelianism , notably by Thomas Aquinas. It seems clear that Christianity needed injections of pagan philosophy to maintain its vitality and a new era in Christian intellectual life was now possible. I don't explore it in this book. Even so, when one compares the rich and broad intellectual achievements of the `pagan' Greek centuries with those of the Middle Ages, it is hard to make a comparison in favour of the latter. Where are the great names? (The critic who mentioned the ninth century philosopher Erigena should also have mentioned that he was condemned as a heretic.)
When one reads the great works of second and third century AD thinkers such as Plutarch, Galen, Ptolemy and Plotinus, which are remarkable for their range and depth, one cannot but feel that much has been lost in the west by the fifth century. Something dramatic happened in the fourth century. In 313 Constantine brought the traditional policy of Roman toleration for different religious beliefs to its culmination by offering Christians (who had condemned the pagan gods as demons) a privileged place within the empire alongside other religions. By 381 the Christian emperor Theodosius when enforcing the Nicene creed condemns other Christians as `foolish madmen.. We decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious names of heretics . . .they will suffer in the first place the chastisement of divine condemnation, and in the second the punishment which our authority , in accordance with the will of heaven, shall decided to inflict'.If this is not a `closing of the western mind' it is difficult to know what is. It goes hand in hand with a mass of texts which condemn rational thought and the violent suppression of Jewish and pagan sacred places. There is no precedent for such a powerful imposition of a religious ideology in the Greco-Roman world. The evidence of suppression is so overwhelming that the onus must be on those who argue otherwise to refute it.
Some readers have related my book to the present day- I leave it to them to do so if they wish -it is important to understand ANY age in which perspectives seem to narrow and religion and politics become intertwined as they certainly did in the fourth century. After all American Christianity was founded by those attempting to escape just such political straitjackets. Christianity has never been monolithic or static. In fact,as my book makes clear, one of my heroes is Gregory the Great who, I believe, brought back spirituality, moderation and compassion into the Christian tradition after the extremes of the fourth century. It is the sheer variety of Christianities which make the religion such an absorbing area of study.
I hope Amazon readers will continue to engage with my arguments whether they agree with them or not. Keep the western mind open and good reading!

The shroud of Turin and the blood of St Gennaro

The Shroud of Turin: It is a linen cloth showing the back and front of a bearded man with long hair, his arms crossed on his chest, marked by what appears to be rivulets of blood from wounds in the wrists, feet and side. The man appears to have been physically hurt in a manner consistent with crucifixion. Believers assume that the shroud is the cloth placed on the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his burial:

Radiocarbon dating [c.f. P.E. Damon et al: Radiocarbon dating of the shroud of Turin, Nature 337, 611-615, 1989] shows that the shroud was made during the middle ages. Nevertheless, believers claim that the carbon measured by scientists was due to some fire deposits. They claim that Basically the shroud has some strange properties and characteristics that cannot be reproduced by human hands. But, a few days ago, a professor of Organic Chemistry, Luigi Garlaschelli, announced that he managed to create a copy of the shroud by wrapping a specially woven cloth over one of his students, painting it with pigment, baking it in an oven (which he called a "shroud machine") for several hours, then washing it.

The blood of St Gennaro: St Gennaro is the patron saint of Naples. Faithful gather three times a year to witness the alleged liquefaction of a sample of his dried blood kept in a sealed glass ampoule. We know little about St Gennaro's life who lived in the 3d c. CE. According to legend, his blood was saved by a woman called Eusebia just after the saint's death. During the liquefaction ceremonies, the archbishop holds up the vial and tilts it again to demonstrate that liquefaction has taken place. (There is a procession which makes its way through streets lined with shops selling religious items.) The announcement of the liquefaction is greeted with a 21-gun salute at the 13th-century Castel Nuovo. The ampoules remains exposed on the altar for eight days, while the priests move or turn them periodically to show that the contents remains liquid. During this time, the faithful kiss the ampoule. (But, recently, they stopped the kisses due to swine flu fears.)
In an article published by Luigi Garlaschelli et al. [c.f. L. Garlaschelli, F. Ramaccini and S. Della Salla: The blood of St Januarius, Chemistry in Britain 30, 2, 123 , 1994], the authors announce that they can replicate the liquefaction phenomenon and conclude that:

Further tests to investigate the real nature of the holy "blood" without opening the ampoule come readily to mind: for example, molecular absorptions and fluorescence spectroscopy, and Raman scattering measurements, made with modern electronic instruments by qualified spectroscopists. Controlled temperature increments and shock tests also represent non-destructive analytical methods by which our or alternative hypotheses might be verified or disproved. Whether these simple tests will be allowed to go ahead wholly depends upon the Catholic Church. At present however, given that the phenomenon has been replicated, it would be rather too naive to consider it irreproducible or unexplainable.

CONCLUSION:
-- Has science proved that these centuries' old "miracles" are reproducible?
Well, yes!
-- Will that stop any of the faithful from believing in them?
Not at all. As is usual in these cases, those who believe will believe even more strongly. In religious matters, it doesn't matter what you prove or not. Whoever wants to believe he or she will believe no matter what. For them, proofs, science and logic are utterly irrelevant.

Teachings from the Old Testament

DEUTERONOMY: WHEN TO STONE YOUR SON
21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

This is what the Torah teaches. Now, both Jews and Christians (and, I think, Muslims, too) accept the Torah (or whatever they call it) as one of their religious texts. Stoning in Judaism has been abandoned. But stoning in Islam is still practiced, but only for adultery. The question that arises, if one thinks rationally, is:

Why do religious texts remain unaltered if their teachings are considered dangerous (stoning, hanging) or obsolete (eating certain foods)? Every Jew and Christian, despite the fact they do not (hopefully) still practice stoning, will tell you that the Torah (almost identical to the so-called Old Testament) shall remain unaltered. Why? How can they explain the numerous stupidities, brutalities, nonsense written in it?

Many will maintain that religion and science can be reconciled (and even certain scientists--see, e.g., John Lennox--will tell you that religion is compatible with science) . Wrong! In science, everything is put to test. A theory is tested with experiment, an experiment gives rise to a new theory and hypothesis. Logic is applied. Science never considers anything settled. It constantly rejuvenates itself. This is not the case with religion, as the example above shows: irrelevant, dangerous and obsolete texts will be held as authoritative forever. No questions asked.

Science and Pseudoscience

I just came across the page on Science and Pseudoscience by Jason Rosenhouse. In it, he states:

Many professionals respond to pseudoscience by ignoring it. This is a mistake, if for no other reason than the fact that funding decisions are made by politicians, who must be sensitive to their constituents, many of whom take pseudoscientific ideas very seriously indeed. It is not a good thing that a phony psychic passing off simple parlor tricks as communication with the dead has one of the highest rated shows on television. Nor is it good that many learn what they know of modern science from right-wing showmen like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity (who once shamelessly described Darwinism as "liberal science".) Ultimately, the only way to defeat such nonsense is to confront it vigorously.


I couldn't agree more. It is, indeed, a mistake to ignore these pseudo-scientists. Thank you, Jason, for putting it so eloquently.

On the same page, one can find a collection of reviews and essays by Jason. They look well-written and plan to read them in detail.

Astronomy and the Vatican

The Vatican maintains an astronomical observatory. Besides some resident astronomers, the Pope himself occasionally visits it.



What good does this make to the Vatican? Has there ever been a discovery there not made anywhere else? The Vatican claims that science is not incompatible with religion but it hasn't always been so. Recall that the (catholic christian) church refused for centuries to acknowledge the fact that the earth is not the centre of the universe. In the early 17th century they condemned Galileo for writing about this fact. More than 300 years later (in 1992) Pope John Paul II apologised officially for this condemnation.

So it takes 3 centuries for a religious organisation (like the catholic church) to recognise a scientific fact. This is not good enough. Not good enough for science. Science can immediately adjust a theory, turn a model upside down if incorrect, perform new experiments,... In short, the scientific method works in faster time scales. And science does not need the approval or disapproval of a religious organisation in order to proceed. Simply, science does not care about religion, regardless of whether the latter is compatible or not with the former. It is irrelevant.

The h factor

Academic and research administrators have an interest in reducing one's work into a single number. Ideally, they claim, they could use a single number to decide whether researcher A is better than researcher B. The actual reasons behind such claims are that the majority of administrators (academic department chairmen, directors funding agencies, heads of laboratories, etc) cannot understand each researcher's work, and also want to minimize their time in giving a judgment: they can, with the click of a button, order researchers in a line a button and finish their work in five minutes.

In fact, there is a "science" being developed, called "bibliometrics" (see here, here, here and here) aiming at producing such indices. The most (in)famous of these indices is the h factor (not the x factor--this is a TV programme--see below). The h factor is defined as follows: If a researcher has n papers cited n times each then his or her h factor is at least n. In fact the h factor is the largest such n.

For example, if a researcher has written one paper which is cited 1000 times and 9 other papers which are cited once each then his h factor is 1. If researcher B has written 3 papers, each cited twice, then her h factor is 2. Hence B is better than A (an administrator would conclude).

A recent report by Robert Adler (Probabilist of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology), John Ewing (Executive Director, American Mathematical Society, and Peter Taylor (Probabilist, University of Melbourne) show that "citation data provide only a limited and incomplete view of research quality, and the statistics derived from citation data are sometimes poorly understood and misused; [r]esearch is too important to measure its value with only a single coarse tool". It's an interesting read.

However, I admit that the report may not be as much fun as an x factor episode:

Just to make things clear, the guy in this video is not looking for an h factor, but an x factor. (Some colleagues tell me it's more or less the same thing though.)