…and this is a 
There is a site called ScienceBlog, at scienceblog.com. Note that it is a little different from scienceblogs.com — it lacks the "s". There are a few other differences, too: it's a site that simply reprints press releases. Send 'em anything, and they'll spit it back up on the web for you.
One such example is a press release titled Life on Earth came from other planets. It purports to be a summary of a peer-reviewed, published research paper.
This one:
"Life on Earth Came From Other Planets," by R. Joseph, Ph.D. Cosmology, Vol 1. 2009.
There are a few funny things about this article. The journal Cosmology doesn't seem to exist. Then notice "Vol. 1"…this is the inaugural issue. It contains a grand total of one (1) paper, the aforementioned article by Rhawn Joseph.
Wait! It does exist! The "journal" exists as a web page only; go ahead, here's Cosmology, 2009, Vol 1, pages 00000. You can read the whole article, which you know was peer reviewed, because it says so in the upper left corner: "Peer Reviewed".
Guess who the web page can be traced to? Rhawn Joseph.
I think you begin to see a pattern here. If you can't get your crappy paper published in a legitimate journal, invent one!
The comments at scienceblog.com are hilarious, too. To his credit, the author of the site, Fred Bortz, shows up to offer objections to the weird quality of the submission; someone named Joy Haiyan Wu, who works with Rhawn, pops up a few times to complain and threaten legal action. A comment by Christopher Coffee pretty much nails the phoniness of the whole effort.
What about the paper itself? Complete garbage. It presents nothing new, makes exaggerated claims about the likelihood of bacterial life surviving in space for hundreds of millions of years (it wouldn't), makes grand claims of revolutionizing our understanding of the origins of life, and offers nothing other than rehashed claims and denial of legitimate scientific hypotheses. You can get a taste of how poor this paper is from just the conclusion.
Life on Earth appeared while this planet was still forming. There is no proof life can be created from non-life. As only life can produce life, only panspermia is a viable scientific explanation as to the origin of Earthly life. The first life forms to appear on Earth were produced by other living creatures who were likely encased in debris ejected by the parent star nearly 5 billion years ago.
Well, life had to have come from non-life at some point, logically speaking. The claim that only life can produce life clearly had to have been wrong at some point, and panspermia doesn't get around the fundamental problem: where did the life at that distant exploding star come from?
I haven't even mentioned yet that the writing is incoherent and poorly organized, the paper is full of typos, and although it contains many citations, the references have been left off…and instead we get a repetition of ten ads flogging Rhawn Joseph's self-published book.
I look forward to issue 2 of volume 1 of Cosmology. Perhaps it will have another paper by Rhawn Joseph?
Comments
Posted by: James F | July 23, 2009 10:22 PM
The Biologic Institute just found a place to publish!
Posted by: Bride of Shrek OM | July 23, 2009 10:31 PM
Oooh, I've been looking for a forum to publish my well researched and extensivly tested paper currently entitled " It's Never Too Early in the Day to Drink - Using New Zealand Time as the New Yardarm Benchmark".
It's peer reviewed an all, my girfriends read it and thought it was excellent.
Posted by: Hideki | July 23, 2009 10:34 PM
Hihi
It's giving access denied for the comments link and indeed the paper itself, oh well -.-
Posted by: Daddy Stegosaurus | July 23, 2009 10:42 PM
Wow. PZ works quick. It's already offline at Sceince Blog.
Posted by: Lilith | July 23, 2009 10:43 PM
I got Access Denied as well and I certainly don't intend to register just to read that crap. I too much spam from registering for various sites as it is.
Posted by: Daddy Stegosaurus | July 23, 2009 10:45 PM
ugh. Science Blog too.
Posted by: KillerChihuahua | July 23, 2009 10:50 PM
Bride of Shrek: If you and I drink together until we're both blind, you can add a "double blind study" to your paper as well.
Posted by: Zeno | July 23, 2009 10:50 PM
I'm fascinated by the concept that living cells were "ejected by the parent star." Stars have always struck me an inhospitable environment for life (so inhospitable that it ejected it?). But I suppose it's possible. After all, I once heard of a space mission to visit the sun: they went at night because it would be cooler.
Posted by: Physicalist | July 23, 2009 10:51 PM
Well, it's logically possible that life continues all the way back into the infinite past (cf. Aristotle on the age of the world.) It's just that we know as an empirical fact that there was no life in the early universe.(And why do I get a 404 error when I try to post after previewing?)
Posted by: atomjack | July 23, 2009 10:52 PM
"Spit it back up"? That's what my kids did with food they didn't like when they were little.
But seriously, don't these dingleberries get it that it isn't "life/turtles" all the way to the beginning/bottom? Yeah, I know, they really don't...but dayamn.
Well, like one of my sons says, IQ of 100 is actually pretty stupid.
Posted by: Andy James | July 23, 2009 10:53 PM
The roaches scatter when the lights come on.
Posted by: criswell | July 23, 2009 10:53 PM
The article and comments may be hidden now (requiring registration) but there is still an open "science gifts" section. You can even get a camera out there! (quick! someone tell kwak from his new home at Chris and Sheril's)
Posted by: a different phil | July 23, 2009 10:55 PM
http://www.mailinator.com is your friend.Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 23, 2009 10:59 PM
He does seem to have made himself comfortable over there amongst the lightweights and other low-hanging fruit. I cringed when I was reading one of the threads and saw that he'd written a post where he'd announced he'd be offline for a while because he was going to a memorial service.
What kind of warped egomaniac does that?
Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | July 23, 2009 11:03 PM
Google cache of the article/comments: ding!
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD
|
July 23, 2009 11:05 PM
There are some meaty "blogs" over there at ScienceBlog. I particularly like this one:
Kenneth Harold Troxler's Blog
Crayon and construction paper science. Gotta love it.
Posted by: Mokele | July 23, 2009 11:09 PM
Oh, this guy is FAR from the first to try this. There's this jackass called Raymond Hoser from Australia, a taxi driver who fancies himself a herpetologist. He constantly "revises" genera of Australian herps with pathetically dubious criteria, and is generally a laughingstock. When even the Journal of Nowhere stopped accepting his crap, he made his own journal, publishing only his own papers.
Of course, this is also the lovely person who mutilates snakes for fun - he cuts out the venom glands of snakes without any anaesthesia, analgesia, sterilization or post-operative care.
Posted by: Ten Bears | July 23, 2009 11:18 PM
I guess that shoots my theory all to NoTomatoSauce:
Recalling that in all legend lay a kernel of fact, reading the fabrications koran, bible, and torah in larger, historical context with other fabrications lain down in stone it is in fact quite easy to afford “Intelligent Design” a measure of credibility. When chariots with wheels of fire flitting about, vast arks propelling the seeds of life across vast empty spaces, and fathers asking of their wives “be this my son, or that of a “giant?” are lain aside the physical record it isn’t all that far fetched to supposit that at some point in the past half-million years extra-terrestrial travelers – for whatever reason: pure science, sheer boredom, desperate survival, or profit – genetically interfered with the development of the proto-humans they found roaming the savannahs of Northern and Western Africa. Not only are we but fleas agitating the hide of a far greater organism, but some bastard’s abandoned science project, if not cattle, as well.
Wrap the twelve percent of your brain you use around that.
Posted by: Davo
|
July 23, 2009 11:34 PM
Ten Bears, our galactic conquest will soon be over, little do the humans realise their coming doom!
seriously tho, on the premise that all legend is based on a kernel of fact, you have made up a nice story jumping from that. Pretty much like all religion does, leap after leap after leap ...
Posted by: criswell | July 23, 2009 11:34 PM
Wowbagger OM asked apropos his royal kwakkery:
'What kind of warped egomaniac does that?'
The same one who would probably have traded a demand for a camera if only he got an "OM" long before (eech!), drops names and denies doing it, and also finds a home with two folks who tried to make a book by ego-driven strawman arguments focused in part on PZ (well, the money shot as it were focused thereon). As others here and elsewhere have noted, the whole 'woo crew' from PZ's dungeon is over there: JAD (who still loves it so - jazz hands!), Rooke, Mabus/Markuze etc. Not a ringing endorsement when your blog ends up as the treehouse for the squirrels carting their nuts...
Of course Wowbagger's question was likely rhetorical :)
Posted by: aaron | July 23, 2009 11:43 PM
I came across this post at scienceblog.com the other day, seemed fishy. I did a quick google search on Rhawn Joseph, and turns out he's had a run in with Susan Blackmore in the past, the kind that should be read about to be believed (or not), here's a link: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/neurotheologyold3.htm
Posted by: Ben in Texas | July 23, 2009 11:43 PM
One correction:
"If you can't get your crappy paper published in a legitimate journal, invent one!"
should say:
"If you can't get your crappy paper published in a legitimate journal, invent an illegitimate one!"
Posted by: djlactin | July 23, 2009 11:49 PM
"Peer reviewed" as in the sense "What the fuck is this?! Go wipe your ass with it!"
Posted by: Spanish Inquisitor | July 24, 2009 12:00 AM
I'm curious about this. Seriously (I'm a non-scientist). There's a article in the current issue of Wired about a microbiologist that was able to extract yeast from long dead bugs encased in fossilized amber, and re-spark it (is that a scientific term?) back to life. The resulting yeast cultures are now used as the base for a micro-brew, I think, in San Francisco.
So if a single cell organism can survive the death and fossilization of it's host in amber over millions of years, why couldn't it survive floating around in what's essentially a vacuum for millions of years. Or hundreds of millions of years. Or whatever....
Just wondering.
Posted by: j Dubb | July 24, 2009 12:04 AM
Check out cosmology.com
Posted by: j Dubb | July 24, 2009 12:09 AM
More specifically, check out http://Cosmology.com/AboutCosmology.html
Posted by: King Aardvark | July 24, 2009 12:11 AM
OT:
PZ, I think you should know that the deaths of 3 teenaged sisters and an older female relative in Kingston, Ontario, found in a car at the bottom of a canal are now being described as honour killings and the parents and older brother were responsible.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/07/23/canal-arrests023.html
Still not proven (though strongly suspected), but it's something to follow.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 24, 2009 12:15 AM
Yes, I want to try this beer badly
Posted by: paradoctor | July 24, 2009 12:16 AM
Just for fun, here's my own crackpot theory: Time-Travel Panspermia.
Assume that a rotating black hole, or a cosmic string, or some other general-relativity doohickey can send rocks back in time. Then there could be a time-loop of this sort: an asteroid hits life-bearing planet B; bacteria-bearing rocks fly out into space; one of them encounters the above-mentioned doohickey; it goes back millions of years and lands on planet A; planet A grows an ecology; an asteroid hits planet A; bacteria-bearing rocks fly out into space; one of them lands on planet B, when then grows an ecology, and that closes the loop.
This way, life never arises from non-life, but instead self-sustains in a self-consistent causal loop. So where did life come from? Itself.
I agree that this theory is speculative. It assumes time machines and spaceworthy bacteria; unproven assumptions. (But not refuted, either.) Testing this theory would require finding samples of life from other worlds. If they share our DNA code, then that would be evidence in favor of panspermia.
Posted by: Spanish Inquisitor | July 24, 2009 12:22 AM
That's the one. I want to try it too, but I think it'll be awhile before it makes it to the East Coast.
Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 24, 2009 12:24 AM
Hot damn! This is my chance to get published, and win the Nobel Prize on the chicken and egg controversy.
Posted by: raven | July 24, 2009 12:28 AM
Yeah. Panspermia just puts the nonlife into life event a step or two back. They can't keep backstepping beyond 13.7 billion years, the age of our universe.
Just like the aliens seeded or designed the earth's biosphere theory, aka ID. So where did the aliens come from? Or did they evolve?
Panspermia itself is a legitimate scientific hypothesis. It requires no goddidit suprenatural steps and makes testable predictions. Like we should find DNA based life forms older than our biosphere around nearby stars or maybe Mars. Hey, I didn't say they were easy to test. But this paper doesn't offer any data or even any coherent arguments.
Posted by: Kagato
|
July 24, 2009 12:30 AM
I like the ten Amazon affiliate links he has to pre-order his book on the subject.
I don't know how people get into the mindset of thinking this actually answers the question.
"Ah, but life didn't have to spontaneously originate on Earth; it could have been seeded from space instead! Thus solving the problem once and for all."
But--
"ONCE AND FOR ALL!!"
Posted by: mulipath | July 24, 2009 12:33 AM
This guy is very impressed with himself:
http://brainmind.com/publications.html
Posted by: fact3r | July 24, 2009 12:35 AM
I want to know as well why bacteria couldn't survive for millions of years. I thought studies were increasingly showing that bacteria were impervious to a lot of the obstacles once thought, like living in a vacuum, surviving long freezes, etc.
Posted by: genesgalore | July 24, 2009 12:38 AM
can't imagine the explanation of the flow of energy that has created the multitude of new chemical compounds on the planet since its inception.
Posted by: Stanton
|
July 24, 2009 1:07 AM
Who is Rhawn Joseph and why is he so stupid?
Posted by: Wes | July 24, 2009 1:09 AM
There's this thing called "the Sun" you might want to look into...
Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 24, 2009 1:13 AM
Guardian - You moron. The eight seasonal markers of the year are the way the Earth works. Your dumbass christian masters stole it from the pagans.
Nobody cares if you celebrate "christmas" on the winter solstice. Listen to Rush Limbaugh much?
Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 24, 2009 1:18 AM
Aw crap.
Posted by: j Dubb | July 24, 2009 1:25 AM
From the bottom of his PUBLICATIONS page:
"Currently Dr. Joseph is again conducting research in the field of astrobiology, evolution, and the origins of Earthly Life, and has created a highly acclaimed documentary series detailing his theories which were first published in 1997. In the summer of 2009, he hopes to publish his magnum opus: Life on Earth Came From Other Planets.
Dr. Joseph is single and is not married. "On rare occasions, I have been asked about my sexual orientation. What's my orientation to sex? I am in favor of it."
Although he has certainly had his wild times, Joseph lives the life of a scholar and scientist who sometimes runs with the wolves. He is an artist, musician, has written screenplays, and has authored short stories and books under other names, co-wrote a highly successful off-Broadway play, and has When he is not working, Dr. Joseph spends a considerable amount of time walking in the mountains, in the woods, and near the sea...thinking. Always thinking. "
Posted by: Hank | July 24, 2009 1:25 AM
One of the science journalists sent that to me a few days ago with, 'Can we make fun of this?'
As if they need to ask.
But at some point there has to be something to make fun of and it lacked ... well, everything. Unfortunately it makes the real guys tackling the question of how primitive versions of proteins and nucleic acids came to be look bad by association.
Posted by: j Dubb | July 24, 2009 1:27 AM
I bet this guy has a t-shirt with three wolves howling at a full moon.
Posted by: Anon | July 24, 2009 1:29 AM
This stuff isn't actually funny. In the mid-80s two amateur herpetologists, Wells and Wellington, basically self-published (in a amateur herp journal of which Wells was editor) a massive taxonomic revision of all Australian herpetofauna. Over 90 Australian scientists lead a request for repeal but it was not approved by the ICZN.
So what's the problem? First, they weren't correct in a lot of cases. They didn't do very good descriptions making it hard to understand. And fixing their work is a lot more expensive and time consuming than doing it right the first time. Poor description also leads to poor conservation.
Scientists need to stand up against these types of amateurs and crusaders or we end up spending our hard-won money fixing their mistakes, and our reputations are damaged. Unfortunately I don't find any of this at all funny. Especially in my nth hour of measuring dead herps trying to fix the problem!
Posted by: Ray Mills | July 24, 2009 1:31 AM
Hey on the subject of peer reviewed papers anyone come across this, or have access to the original as I suspect the form its presented in at the climate change deniers site is heavily quotemined (well know)http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2117/PeerReviewed-Study-Rocks-Climate-Debate-Nature-not-man-responsible-for-recent-global-warminglittle-or-none-of-late-20th-century-warming-and-cooling-can-be-attributed-to-humans
Posted by: RC | July 24, 2009 1:35 AM
j dubb @43
Love the three wolves! but you might also like:
http://www.threadless.com/product/1960/Three_Keyboard_Cat_Moon?utm_medium=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=July-23-2009_072309+Thursday+%2f+Inactives&utm_source=072309+Thursday+%2f+Inactives
Posted by: MadScientist | July 24, 2009 1:52 AM
So many people are accustomed to parroting "but it isn't peer reviewed" that they're stumped when I ask how they would refute, say, creationist literature which was peer reviewed by other kooks. It's sad how some people forget (or did they never know) that papers must be reviewed by other experts in the field ('peer' because presumably you're also working in the same or similar enough field) and that a bogus review by people who know nothing is not a peer review. I'm a bit surprized that so far no one has brought to my attention any kook-reviewed climate denialist sites.
Posted by: Ray Mills | July 24, 2009 1:58 AM
madscientist, would you care to peruse the article above, the source for the article is here. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD011637.shtml
Posted by: MadScientist | July 24, 2009 1:59 AM
What - didn't people get new lizards etc. to replace the ones from the original bogus study? I can imagine how things went: Looks like a lizard to me. Yeah, it's a lizard alright. Let's call it Lizard B.
Posted by: Anon | July 24, 2009 2:19 AM
Madscientist @ 49
If they ICZN said it stays, then it ends up in all the books. The books are used by a lot of conservation planning agencies. So the only way to fix it is a proper revision. You can't replace bad taxonomy using bad taxonomy.
That's why it's important for the scientific community to start to take a stand against these self-publishing idiots. At the moment they get too much credibility and we need to stop them from being taken seriously. And get this self-published shit ignored like it always should have been!
Posted by: Tassie Devil | July 24, 2009 3:01 AM
Just a thought - he's using a lot of NASA images as the background on his site - they're all recogniseable hubble/chandra/spitzer pics.
Don't you need permission to do that?
Posted by: Midnight Rambler | July 24, 2009 3:22 AM
Anon @44: Unfortunately it's not just amateurs, "professional" scientists sometimes do this as well. The Hawaiian crickets are in a catastrophically bad state because of a revision published about 15 years ago that isn't just bad taxonomy, but has so many editing mistakes that it's impossible to use. There are several species for which there are no text descriptions, it just says something like "see Fig. XXX"; but the figure turns out not to exist or the caption says it's of another species.
Posted by: Mozglubov | July 24, 2009 3:41 AM
Just for the record (although I know it hardly matters, since I think it was a drive by spewing of nonsense in comment #18), but you do use more than 12% of your brain. In fact, you use your whole brain... fancy that. The whole, "you only use x% of your brain" nonsense irks the hell out of me.
Posted by: Ancient Greek Lady | July 24, 2009 3:47 AM
Wow. This amusingly suspicious “paper,” amusingly "peer-reviewed," in an amusingly "peer-reviewed journal" of one issue, also appears to be *amusingly* unoriginal in concept through and through. See Fred Hoyle and N.C, Wickramasinghe's Life Cloud (1979). And in case the argument that life arrived on earth from interstellar space isn't enough, they also authored Diseases from Space (1979), in which they argue that viruses and bacteria are also from outer space.
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Cloud-Fred-Hoyle/dp/0722147554
http://www.amazon.com/Diseases-space-Fred-Hoyle/dp/0060119373/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248420790&sr=1-1
Posted by: Strasbourg | July 24, 2009 4:25 AM
@41
".... He is an artist, musician, has written screenplays, and has authored short stories and books under other names, co-wrote a highly successful off-Broadway play,... "
This correlates to almost 100% with the official description of Kim Jong Il (Dear leader of North Korea). I therefore suspect that R.Jones is a pseudonym.
Posted by: Sherk Workman | July 24, 2009 4:38 AM
But Sir Fred seems to have actually held the opinion
(which he put into the, uh, mouth of a super-intelligent
gasbag critter in his novel The Black Cloud) that
the universe in fact had no beginning, & therefore life
also could have had no beginning. Very entertaining.
Posted by: Uncle Glenny
|
July 24, 2009 5:23 AM
@51: NASA images may be freely used because it's US govt. I don't remember what restrictions there may be, if any.
Posted by: Flea | July 24, 2009 6:21 AM
This guy, Rhawn Joseph, is just trying to sell a book he has written (see bottom of his page). His webpage and the "paper" in it (that he must be sending everywhere) are just a cheap PR campaign. Nothing new under the sun.
From amazon.com:
"About the Author:
Dr. Joseph obtained his Ph.D. from UHS/The Chicago Medical School, Internship completed at Yale Medical School, and has a history of making major scientific discoveries published in prestigious scientific journals.
Dr. Joseph has published best selling scholarly texts (e.g., Plenum, 1990, 1992, 1993, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1996), which received the highest praise by major scientific periodicals. His scholarly works have been featured on the cover of prestigious scientific journals and reprinted by major medical schools and universities including Harvard, and he has been invited to speak at prestigious universities including the University of California at Berkeley. ,P> Choice Magazine has called his previous books: "Brilliant." "Joseph... is Sagan and Asimov."
Other Journals called his texts "Astounding! The best!"
"One of the most astonishing books of our time."-Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society Dr. Joseph has summarized the central tenants of this proposed book in a series of very successful documentary films, and a 3 DVD set, which have been posted online and viewed over 3 million times with an average ranking of 5 stars out of 5. Viewers have called Dr. Joseph's work "revolutionary," "Paradigm shifting" and an "epic theory.""
My guess about who wrote all this "about the author" stuff: Rhawn Joseph
Posted by: Marc Abian | July 24, 2009 7:10 AM
I've learned not to rule out anything when it comes to bacteria.
Posted by: Chief | July 24, 2009 7:40 AM
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/all-blue-eyed-humans-have-common-ancestor-15361.html
Um...if all humans have a common ancestor, why do we then need to parse it down even further?
Posted by: MadScientist | July 24, 2009 8:07 AM
@Anon: That sucks - that's just making hard work because some unqualified idiot had a say in things. I get that sort of thing on small projects (building instruments, not classifying herps) but in my case I only need to scream at a few people and at worst only a few months are lost.
@Ray Mills: I'll have to wait until Monday before I can read the full article. Looking at the abstract I don't see anything unusual at all; natural temperature variations do dwarf the drift with CO2 over short periods (even over the period at which the SOI changes sign) but the CO2 is still a major contributor to the overall temperature increase and should not be ignored simply because the earth appears to be warming anyway.
Also, you need to keep in mind that the SOI is a rather ad-hoc number derived from current weather; it is an effect rather than a causal agent so it is rather silly to say something like "the SOI causes X". The SOI is useful because its relation to other related phenomena is somewhat consistent and thus allows us to make useful qualitative predictions. Come to think of it, if I reviewed that paper I would have smacked the authors about for the statement:
"The results showed that SOI accounted for 81% of the variance in tropospheric temperature anomalies in the tropics."
The wording is sloppy; it is not the SOI accounting for something, but rather there is a strong correlation with SOI. That would suggest that whatever drives the SOI is related to the variances they're talking about - hardly surprising, it's a bit like saying "the temperature in the shade at noon is a good indicator of whether it is summer or not". But as I said, I'll have to wait for Monday to have a good look.
Posted by: Thomas Lee Elifritz | July 24, 2009 8:40 AM
He's angling for his 'niche' in panspermia, so what, it's as good a crackpot theory as any other. I've got a bunch of them. The trick with these guys is finding something where you can make it appear you got in on the ground floor, in an domain where your hypothesis can only very difficultly be falsified.
His credentializing is a little over the top, though.
Posted by: Holbach
|
July 24, 2009 8:49 AM
An all encompassing site for the weirdoes of all stripes:
moron.com
Posted by: kryptonic | July 24, 2009 8:54 AM
Is Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D. violating copyright law? This article from Time appears to have been reprinted without permission on his website.
Here's the original article.
Scienceblog.com is dangerous and stupid.
Posted by: Cappy | July 24, 2009 8:56 AM
Rawn...is that short for Rawnald?
Posted by: Elwood Herring | July 24, 2009 9:01 AM
OT but good for a laugh:
Floodwaters create 'Grand Canyon'
Uh-oh.
Posted by: ice9 | July 24, 2009 9:12 AM
I wonder what the central tenants of his book have to say about that CV. But he has a lot of prestigiousness.
ice9
Posted by: Carrie | July 24, 2009 9:54 AM
It's turtles, all the way down.
Posted by: Spanish Inquisitor | July 24, 2009 9:55 AM
Interesting article on Blue eyes
I happen to know that women prefer men with blue eye. Clearly we're being selected. ;)
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 24, 2009 10:21 AM
That's the difference between natural and sexual selection.
Posted by: ffrancis | July 24, 2009 10:56 AM
Too bad the tenants are only in the centre; if they were all the way down like the turtles, he could be getting, like, bazillions of dollars rent from them.
Posted by: Fred Bortz | July 24, 2009 11:15 AM
PZ, a slight correction, after which I have something to say about the Rhawn Joseph affair at Science Blog.
The correction is that I am not the author of the Science Blog site, just a blogger there. There are crackpots like Joseph who show up now and then, but there are also a few serious bloggers like me who comment on the scientific developments of the day. I often post my book reviews after they appear in print, and I often see interesting connections between current events in science and some of my books for young readers. That allows me a bit of self-promotion but hopefully in the context of enlightenment.
As for Dr. Joseph, the thread seems to have been taken down. I sent the site owner an e-mail making this case for restoration that included the following, based on a post last evening by Joseph:
---
There was plenty of nonsense in the thread about life coming from other planets, and Dr. Joseph seems to have lost his bearings and become a self-promoter of a poorly developed, outrageous theory after some early significant scientific achievements in his own field.
But then he apologized for his acolytes (though he did not call them such) and opened up the scientific discussion. I restated a couple of my points about the science and planned to add comments about why his website lacks credibility (claiming peer review before he had an editorial board in place, for example).
In short, the thread had promise to illuminate how crackpot ideas are both promoted and shot down by evidence and process.
---
I'll be awaiting further developments on that front. I sometimes question myself about whether it is worth getting involved with such outrageous folks. But this incident has helped me put it in perspective. It is critical that we learn to distinguish between fringe ideas that have the potential to advance science even if they are wrong, and ideas that are simply wrong because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the science.
Joseph's paper falls in the second category, and it is not even well written. In the immortal words of Wolfgang Pauli, it is "not even wrong."
Fred Bortz
Science Books for Young Readers (www.fredbortz.com)
and
Science Book Reviews (www,scienceshelf.com)
Posted by: John | July 24, 2009 11:49 AM
This guy Rhawn really likes the embossed. He uses huge table borders in his html code to make everything either embossed or double embossed.
Posted by: hyoid | July 24, 2009 11:49 AM
Ten Bears @18. That kind of flows right into the little credulous part of my Magnificent Religion of Reality. Falsifiability of the credulous part is key!
I only used 1% so as to make it understandable. I'm saving the rest for important stuff.
Posted by: tytalus | July 24, 2009 11:56 AM
It does appear as if Rhawn Joseph has been at this panspermia theory for some time. This older book seems similar enough that it makes me wonder if he's just repackaging and reselling over and over again.
http://www.amazon.com/Astrobiology-Origin-Life-Death-Darwinism/dp/0970073380
While I'm at it, when I looked up this particular glowing review of his previous work, for a moment I was thinking Poe. All the google references for this journal go back to him! Just seems...unfortunately named.
"An intense, in-depth examination of the relationship between neuroanatomy and associated behavior." 5 Stars! Highly recommended. -Doody's Medical Review Journal
Posted by: Culturemorph | July 24, 2009 12:02 PM
Do people actually believe this crap? I mean the "peer reviewed" part, not the rest of the spew. If so, I'm going to start signing my name with the addendum:
-Master of the Universe
Posted by: TransitionalForm | July 24, 2009 12:02 PM
As a daily reader of EurekAlert:Space & Planetary earlier this week I noticed the announcement of pRhawn's 'peer reviewed' article. I flagged it, emailing EurekAlert. SO with pride I received a letter thanking me for the assistance in getting the announcement bumped from their listings..
By the way the 'Online Jounal' is pRhawn's own website. So you will see many more follow-up supporting 'publications'.
For a hoot query Rhawn on Youtube. His ID: sarastarlight. He not only espouses panspermia, but has numerous videos on the 2012 world end.
Posted by: camanintx | July 24, 2009 1:30 PM
I'm sure that Mr. Joseph's "peers" find his arguments totally convincing.Posted by: Ford | July 24, 2009 2:14 PM
He also has his own "publisher" to publish his books:
"University Press, California."
Similarity to University of California Press must be coincidence.
http://universitypress.info/
Posted by: MikeDaniels | July 24, 2009 2:21 PM
#78 -
That's the scary part. That Rhawn Joseph has peers!
"Life cannot come from non-life. Therefore, it came from a rock from someplace that already had life. And that life was always there, because life cannot come from non-life."
It's as bad as "God did it".
Posted by: Fred Bortz | July 24, 2009 2:34 PM
Click my name for a defense of Science Blog and why it fills a need that Science Blogs does not.
Perhaps PZ, whom I describe as a bit snooty in that posting, is willing to reply with a blog posting of his own on the same topic.
The URL, if the click fails, is
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/2040-reflections-crackpot-post-23367.html
Posted by: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
|
July 24, 2009 3:33 PM
I just got an email from Cosmology with the subject headline "Editors / Referees Sought By Online Science Journal: Cosmology" and the body text:
Cosmology is seeking esteemed scientists to serve as Editors and Referees.
Editors / Referees will be financially compensated for their time.
QUALIFICATIONS:
1) Open to new ideas and "thinking outside the box."
2) History of publishing peer reviewed scientific articles.
3) Full time academic position (Senior Scientist or Assistant to Full Professor).
EDITORS
-Editors will be appointed for a 1 year time period.
-Editors will have complete authority.
-Editors can invite submission of articles and wave all review/publication fees -Editors are sought for the general areas of: Astronomy, Astrobiology, Biology, Physics, Geoscience, Evolution...
-Duties include A) identifying and contacting appropriate referees, B) reviewing the article and/or reviewing referee comments / recommendations and submitting the Editor's recommendation to the Managing Editor.
-Editors (and referees) will be paid per article -These positions are reserved for highly qualified experts, but do not require a major time commitment.
COSMOLOGY: Overall Focus
-Origins & Evolution of the universe, galaxies, stars, planets, earth, life... woman and man.
-Cosmology will begin accepting manuscripts in mid August. We will publish articles, online, as they are accepted.
-All articles will be peer reviewed by at least 2 experts.
-All articles must be written to be understood by a wide range of scientists -Cosmology will publish: Scientific Articles, Theoretical, Review, Speculation, Opinion.
-Cosmology is an online scientific journal and science news magazine
SEE COSMOLOGY.com, or contact Dr. Joseph for additional details.
R. Joseph, Ph.D.
Managing Editor
Cosmology.com
Posted by: Joe Felsenstein | July 24, 2009 3:48 PM
I got one of those in my email too. I was tickled by the idea that "cosmology" includes origins and evolution of "woman and man"! But the best part is the fees: he actually thinks someone is going to pay him a fee? And he allows the distinguished editors to "wave" the fees? Mind, you, not "waive" them, "wave" them, perhaps creating a breeze.
Posted by: Faithless | July 24, 2009 4:03 PM
Logic fail.
"There is no proof life can be created from non-life. As only life can produce life..."
Wow. What happened to "...but there's also no proof that it can't..."?
In any event, of course there's proof that life can be created from non-life. The earth, with its teeming life, is now here. At some point in the past (say, 5 billion years if you study the subject, 7,000 years if you are a moron) it was NOT here. So - NOT-life => life.
Posted by: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
|
July 24, 2009 4:08 PM
I missed the "wave the fees" misspelling! I guess the fees are in bills, spread out as a fan.
Posted by: frog | July 24, 2009 4:14 PM
Physicalist: It's just that we know as an empirical fact that there was no life in the early universe
How do we know that, as an empirical fact? Has someone gotten around the physical resolution limits of lenses recently allowing the creation of telemicroscopes?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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July 24, 2009 4:21 PM
It must be like Britannia rules the waves or the editor waves the rules or some such.
Posted by: Monika Kress | July 24, 2009 4:31 PM
Ugh, I got one of those emails (re #82 and 83) too... our dear Dr. Joseph is apparently trolling for reviewers. Half tempted to agree to be a referee, just to give the guy a piece of my mind (and at least slow down publication of his nonsense).
Posted by: Mark | July 24, 2009 4:33 PM
My goodness... you all talk as if this is a bad thing. I can't think of a more positive development in the world of science (well... except of course for actual science).
This man is planting a big red flag in the ground and saying, "Here I am! I am an utter moron!" By doing so he is saving everyone much time and energy should they ever have to deal with him. A quick google will show him for what he is, which will allow any potentially affected parties to avoid him most efficiently.
I believe this is the modern day equivalent of the "ass, gas or grass, nobody rides for free" bumper sticker.
Posted by: Robyn K | July 24, 2009 9:04 PM
Peer reviewed, that must be like a jury of my peers.
My brother read it and thought it was alright.
Published!
Posted by: cadra | July 25, 2009 8:57 AM
Panspermia and darwinism have something common - they are both wrong. Life came up neither from space nor it arose from "primordial soup" by chance.
Many great scientists and philospoher challenged darwinism -
only to be neglected by them. Some of interesting non-darwinian ideas are to be found here. Doctor Myers is mentioned as well:
http://cadra.wordpress.com/
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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July 25, 2009 9:02 AM
Thinking outside the box. First, one must be familiar with the box. And know where it is. I'm not sure if this guy is in the same state as the box.
Posted by: cadra | July 25, 2009 9:06 AM
Panspermia and darwinism have something common - they are both wrong. Life came up neither from space nor it arose from "primordial soup" by chance.
Many great scientists and philospoher challenged darwinism -
only to be neglected by them. Some of interesting non-darwinian ideas are to be found here.
http://cadra.wordpress.com/
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | July 26, 2009 12:49 PM
ROTFL. Why did anyone bother to read beyond this? Unfortunately, no journal ever pays its referees.
Page charges. He just doesn't know the word.
Mutation is random, but selection is not – it's determined by the environment. Do you actually know anything about the topic you're talking about?
I mean, have you no shame?
It is not possible to use philosophy to challenge a scientific theory. Our imagination is limited, you see; reality always comes up with something nobody has ever thought of. Questions about reality cannot be solved by just thinking about them.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
July 26, 2009 1:02 PM
You are giving yourself away as an ignorant crank and/or godbot. Darwinism isn't used by evolutionists except to describe only those ideas put forth by Darwin. Some of which, like his method for heredity, was wrong. Many of those ideas have since be superseded by 150 years of scientific research which enriched the ideas of Darwin, corrected his mistakes, and is now called "modern synthesis". And all the discoveries in molecular biology and gene analysis confirm evolution. Evidence to refute a scientific idea will only be found in the peer reviewed scientific literature, not in a blog.Posted by: MadScientist | July 28, 2009 7:35 AM
[OT] @Ray Mills: The claims that the JGR paper support the anti-AGW claims is not true. What the authors say is that in modeling the modelers haven't had much luck predicting a composite value like GTTA and have tried to account for the differences by introducing ad-hoc "human influence factors" (note that increased CO2 is not mentioned) but have not been very succesful with their attempts at these ad-hoc adjustments. The authors are essentially saying they will get better prediction of the GTTA if they use SOI from 7 months prior instead.
It is incorrect to claim that global warming is caused by the ENSO (or even to claim that the article makes such an assertion). The authors do make the completely unsupported claim that perhaps ENSO drives temperatures [anomalies] rather than the other way around; the authors make the mistake of assuming that ENSO and temperature anomalies have a cause-and-effect relationship rather than being interdependent phenomena. The assumption, in my guess, is based on their observed correlations but there is really no information to support the claim.
Atmospheric CO2 will affect temperatures and thus affect ENSO, but exactly how is not yet understood. However, although dynamic relationships are not well known, there is absolutely no doubt that more CO2 = more heating. What is not well understood is how that CO2 drives our present weather (as opposed to generic global temperature over long periods of time).
In short, there are problems with the models (as if that's news) and the authors of the paper are proposing a possibility for improving part of the model. The theory that CO2 is causing a global warming trend remains undisputed despite claims of other parties to the contrary. Mere models cannot refute observations - except perhaps when the models are very good, as in the case of Newton's laws of gravitation, and the data is bogus.
Posted by: fluorospace | July 28, 2009 7:51 AM
Y'all seem pretty sure that life did in did occur on the planet Earth, well if that's not a religulous complex, I don't know what is.
Tell me one thing then, if life appeared on the planet Earth, how come we can't wait to blow it to bits and get the heck out of here ?
Posted by: eddie | July 29, 2009 3:45 AM
Rhawn?!
Sound like the kind of guy that a) Can't spell his own name, and b) having made the initial error, decides he's infallible and that must have been his name all along, and c) we have always been at war with eurasia.
Posted by: eddie | July 29, 2009 3:49 AM
Well, um, I'm pretty sure I did indeed occur on earth. And there's evidence (look it up, fluorospace, this is the opposite of a religious complex) that there has been other kinds of life on earth for at least 1,500,000,000 years.Posted by: Knockgoats | July 29, 2009 3:52 AM
Y'all seem pretty sure that life did in did occur on the planet Earth, well if that's not a religulous complex, I don't know what is.
Tell me one thing then, if life appeared on the planet Earth, how come we can't wait to blow it to bits and get the heck out of here ? - fluorospace
The levels of batshit insanity prevalent among goddists never cease to amaze.
Posted by: Knockgoats | July 29, 2009 3:55 AM
You can read the whole article, which you know was peer reviewed, because it says so in the upper left corner: "Peer Reviewed".
Maybe he asked that well-know peer, Viscount Christopher "Barking" Monckton, to review it?
Posted by: Knockgoats | July 29, 2009 4:04 AM
I look forward to issue 2 of volume 1 of Cosmology. - PZ
I'm afraid that just shows you're a slave to orthodoxy in arithmetic as well as biology: the next issue will be issue 4 3/4 of volume -7i.
Posted by: Jadehawk, OM
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July 29, 2009 4:13 AM
or he had a Dutch buddy named Peer review it