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Widow Blames MSHA's Failure in Miners' Death

Dale Jones, 51 and Michael Wilt, 38 reported to work at the Caledonia Pit, a surface coal mine near Barton, Maryland at 5:30 am on Tuesday, April 17, 2007.  In the 275 feet-deep pit, Jones operated the excavator while Wilt ran the dozer.  By about 10:00 am that morning, something had gone terribly wrong.  The massive highwall collapsed, burying the two coal miners under 93,000 tons of rock.  John David Cook II, a co-worker and the shovel operator, dug night and day trying to reach Jones and Wilt.  A state mining official who was on-site during the rescue-recovery operation said…

Anatomy of a Disaster in One Flavor Factory

By David Michaels We've been writing for the past few months about U.S. regulatory agencies' failure to take meaningful action on diacetyl, a toxic component of artificial butter flavor, despite having been aware of its risks since at least the start of this decade. Now, mounting evidence suggests that some flavor manufacturers have known about diacetyl's association with severe lung disease and failed to take appropriate action for even longer - since the early 1990s, when diacetyl started killing workers in flavor plants. Disabled workers are currently suing flavor manufacturers over their…

Update on Antibiotics at FDA

by Susan F. Wood  After the recent post here on KETEK, both the Wall Street Journal and Senator Grassley are on the move.  The WSJ reports today on another antibiotic Cubicin which has been seeking approval for use in endocarditis and discusses the competing issues of data quality and high standards, with the push for more antibiotics, particularly in the case of serious infections without effective treatment.  The case of Cubicin in some respects serves as an example of this, however Ketek does not.  They both illustrate problems identified by the recent Institute of Medicine Report on…

UNDP on the World's Water Challenge

by Liz Borkowski  Nearly half of Mumbaiâs 18 million residents live in unofficial settlements called zopadpatti. In one of these areas, Dharavi, estimates suggest there is one toilet for every 1,4440 people, tap water flows for only two hours each day, and approximately 15 families share each water tap. Around the globe, rural residents are migrating to urban areas and expanding these unofficial settlements, where global challenges in water and sanitation are highly visible. Many rural areas that struggled with water to begin with face new constraints as aquifers are depleted and global…

Utah Miners and Cranky CEOs

Some readers have been emailing me about the Utah mine disaster saying the mine owners are using some seriously fishy arguments. I am in no way shape or form a geologist, but after reading the coverage of the Utah mine collapse I can't help thinking the CEO saying it was an earthquake - not a mine collapse caused by unsafe practices - comes across as someone being deceptive. Scientists believe the seismic waves in the area of the Crandall Canyon mine were "the signature of the collapse and that the collapse was not caused by an earthquake," said James W. Dewey, a seismologist at the…

Shapes, Boundaries, and Interiors

When we talk about topology, in general, the way we talk about it is in terms of *shapes*: geometric objects and spaces, surfaces, bodies that enclose things, etc. We talk about the topology of a *torus*, or a *coffee mug*, or a *sphere*. But the topology we've talked about so far doesn't talk about shapes or surfaces. It talks about open sets and closed sets, about neighborhoods, even about filters; but we haven't touched on how this relates to our *intuitive* notion of shape. Today, we'll make a start on the idea of surface and shape by defining what *interior* and *boundary* mean in a…

Validity of Mathematical Modeling

In the comments to one of my earlier [Demsbki][demsbki-info-theory] posts, I was responding to a comment by a poster, and realized that what we were discussing was probably interesting enough to promote up to a front-page post. A poster named [Garote][garote] said: >I think PaulC said exactly what needs to be said, that grants us all >hearty permission to ignore Dembski's work. I think it bears repeating: > >"If I am betting on coin flips and notice any kind of algorithmic pattern then >there are legitimate reasons to conclude that the person flipping coins is not >playing…

FPP: No you cant haz yr LOLCODE: Sortle Instead

All week, I've been buried by a wave of requests to write about LOLCODE today. Normally, I do try to honor requests from readers, but from the time I started my friday pathological languages, I've always tried to stick to languages that actually had *something* interesting about their semantics. LOLCODE is funny because of its goofy grammar; but it's really incredibly dull semantically. And while there are lots of programs written in it, there's no implementation (at least not yet). Anyway, what I decided to do instead is a twistedly beautiful language called [Sortle][sortle]. Sortle is a…

Great tits: murderous rapacious flesh-rending predators!

If you're a long-time reader of Tet Zoo you'll be familiar with the remarkable fact that Greater noctules Nyctalus lasiopterus predate on nocturnally migrating passerine birds (this was discussed in a ver 1 article that I'll update and recycle for ver 2 at some stage). Various predatory microbats around the world predate on small birds, but it was a bit of a surprise to learn that this behaviour occurred in western Europe. Of course, bats don't have it all their own way: it's well known that bats are heavily predated upon by raptors and owls. As revealed today by Péter Estók and colleagues…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 14 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Speciation in the Deep Sea: Multi-Locus Analysis of Divergence and Gene Flow between Two Hybridizing Species of Hydrothermal Vent Mussels: Reconstructing the history of divergence and gene flow between…

A Letter on Ocean Acidification

Sally-Christine Rodgers and Randy Repass do a TON for ocean conservation around the world, including supporting students and getting the right folks involved on the ground. They wrote this letter and asked a bunch of us bloggers to spread it around the Web: _______ We are both lifelong boaters. What we have learned from sailing across the Pacific over the past 6 years, and especially from scientists focused on marine conservation, is startling. Whether you spend time on the water or not, Ocean Acidification affects all of us and is something we believe you will want to know about. What…

Clock Tutorial #7: Circadian Organization in Mammals

This February 06, 2005 post describes the basic elements of the circadian system in mammals. The principal mammalian circadian pacemaker is located in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. The general area was first discovered in 1948 by Curt Richter who systematically lesioned a number of endocrine glands and brain areas in rats. The only time he saw an effect on circadian rhythms was when he lesioned a frontal part of hypothalamus (which is at the base of the brain) immediatelly above the optic chiasm (the spot where two optic nerves cross). Later studies in the 1970s…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

Let's see what's new in PLoS Genetics, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS ONE this week. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Association of Tinnitus and Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: Hints for a Shared Pathophysiology?: Tinnitus is a frequent condition with high morbidity and impairment in quality of life. The pathophysiology is still incompletely understood. Electromagnetic fields are discussed to be involved in…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There were 15 new articles in PLoS ONE published last night but I was too busy watching the election returns. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Historical Mammal Extinction on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) Correlates with Introduced Infectious Disease: It is now widely accepted that novel infectious disease can be a leading cause of serious population decline and even outright extinction in some invertebrate and vertebrate groups…

Clock Tutorial #7: Circadian Organization in Mammals

This February 06, 2005 post describes the basic elements of the circadian system in mammals. The principal mammalian circadian pacemaker is located in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. The general area was first discovered in 1948 by Curt Richter who systematically lesioned a number of endocrine glands and brain areas in rats. The only time he saw an effect on circadian rhythms was when he lesioned a frontal part of hypothalamus (which is at the base of the brain) immediatelly above the optic chiasm (the spot where two optic nerves cross). Later studies in the 1970s…

Clock Tutorial #7: Circadian Organization in Mammals

This February 06, 2005 post describes the basic elements of the circadian system in mammals. The principal mammalian circadian pacemaker is located in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. The general area was first discovered in 1948 by Curt Richter who systematically lesioned a number of endocrine glands and brain areas in rats. The only time he saw an effect on circadian rhythms was when he lesioned a frontal part of hypothalamus (which is at the base of the brain) immediatelly above the optic chiasm (the spot where two optic nerves cross). Later studies in the 1970s…

Per Holothuroidea Ad Astra: Interview with Sheril Kirshenbaum

Sheril Kirshenbaum took the science blogging world by storm last year when she guest-blogged on The Intersection while Chris Mooney was traveling. When he came back, he had to face the outcries of his commenters, begging him to keep Sheril permanently as a co-blogger, which he gladly accepted. If you attended the Science Blogging Conference last week, you saw Sheril speak at the panel on Framing Science. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? What is your Real Life job? Hi Bora, Thanks…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

Tuesday night - time to see what's new in PLoS ONE - 28 new papers: Reporting Science and Conflicts of Interest in the Lay Press: Forthright reporting of financial ties and conflicts of interest of researchers is associated with public trust in and esteem for the scientific enterprise. We searched Lexis/Nexis Academic News for the top news stories in science published in 2004 and 2005. We conducted a content analysis of 1152 newspaper stories. Funders of the research were identified in 38% of stories, financial ties of the researchers were reported in 11% of stories, and 5% reported financial…

Cloning: A Beginner's Guide

tags: book review, biotechnology, biomedicine, stem cells, ethics, Cloning: A Beginner's Guide, Aaron Levine Would you drink milk from a cloned cow? Should we clone extinct or endangered species? Are we justified in using stem cells to develop cures? When will we clone the first human? Ever since Dolly the sheep was born, questions like these have been part of the public consciousness, and now, cloning is poised to revolutionize medicine, healthcare, and even the food we eat. Regardless of what certain politicians do to slow the progress of scientific research, cloning is here to stay, and…

What is University?

A rather radical proposal from Texas came across my desk recently, courtesy of the Texas Exes... A Modest Proposal for Texas Higher Ed: "... The UT System Board of Regents ... has hired consultants who have publicly stated the fundamental view that academic research is not valuable and that tenured faculty could be replaced by lower-cost lecturers. These consultants propose a formula that excludes research in valuing faculty. They only want to look at any immediate financial value of research that can be proven on a current basis. ... these same consultants also believe that tenured faculty…

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)

tags: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill), economy, politics, corporate welfare, David Cay Johnston, book review America was built on the premise that hard work would be financially rewarded, but unfortunately, more than 37 million people are part of the growing ranks of the "working poor": people who work two or three jobs yet are unable to pay their living expenses. What's wrong with all these people that makes them unable to achieve even a modest level of comfort in this Land of Opportunity where the streets are…

Safety experiences of union carpenters, imagine what it's like for the rest of them

Last week, my home State of Michigan became the 24th one to enact "right-to-work" legislation.   I'm sure the great labor leader Walter Reuther (1907-1970) rolled over in his grave when Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed the anti-union bill into law. Workers coming together to negotiate for better wages, benefits and working conditions created the middle class in America.  Belonging to a union means workers can be more secure that they won't be fired arbitrarily, and have more power to receive skills training and guard against unsafe working conditions.  This latter point is an underlying…

Film "Semper Fi" profiles Marine families' struggle for justice

by Dick Clapp, DSc, MPH The documentary "Semper Fi: Always Faithful" was screened at the Congressional Auditorium in the Capitol Visitors Center on a hot, humid evening in Washington, DC on June 23. Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC) welcomed the audience of Congressional staff, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), and approximately 150 audience members and representatives from groups such as the Blue-Green Alliance, Environmental Working Group (EWG) and interested individuals. Congressman Miller said he is approached by many groups seeking his help to move large bureaucracies or make…

Search continues for Idaho silver mine worker, one mile deep underground

[Updated 4/21/2011 below] [Updated 4/25/2011 below] Deep in the Bitterroot Mountains of the Idaho panhandle, mine rescue teams are working around the clock to locate Larry "Pete" Marek, 53. Marek and his brother were working in Hecla Mining's Lucky Friday silver mine on Friday afternoon (4/15) when the roof collapsed. His brother Mike escaped, but Larry Marek did not. The "fall of ground" occurred in an area 6,150 feet below the surface in a silver vein that runs 2200 feet, according to information released by the company. Mine rescue teams are using heavy equipment to remove the fallen…

Occupational Health News Roundup

In a big win for workers, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court has ruled that state law allowing businesses to opt out of traditional workers’ compensation is unconstitutional. At ProPublica, Michael Grabell writes that the ruling now leaves Texas as the only state that lets employers pull out of workers’ comp in favor of creating their own alternative plans. Last year, Grabell, along with Howard Berkes at NPR, investigated the new opt-out trend, finding that such workers’ comp alternatives typically come with fewer employee benefits, more restrictions and no independent oversight. In reporting on the…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At In These Times, reporter Joseph Sorrentino writes about the heartbreaking plight of uranium miners and millers as well as the history of uranium mining oversight and regulation. He spent a week interviewing uranium workers and their families in New Mexico — workers who are among the thousands who began working in the mines after 1971 and who don’t qualify for federal compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). Sorrentino writes: Cipriano Lucero worked in uranium mills from 1977 to 1982. He has pulmonary fibrosis, and one of his kidneys failed when he was 48,…

Amazon packages, postal workers, and “being careful”

He was in his truck, he was out of his truck.  He was in his truck, he was out of his truck. On a recent walk in the neighborhood, I couldn’t help but notice my mailman’s pattern of work. He was in-and-out of his truck many times to bring packages up to my neighbors’ front doors. “Lot of packages, eh?” I asked walking passed him. “More and more,” he said, starting up the mail truck again and driving off. A few houses up the street, he was out of his truck again as I again walked passed. “It’s going to be a long day, eh?” I commented. “Tis the season,” he said. “It will be like this till the…

Mapping technique reveals spatial clustering of workplace injuries and potential new venues for outreach

A common hurdle in the field of occupational health and safety is delivering what can sometimes be life-saving information to the people who need it most. After all, not all employers are amenable to workplace health and safety education. But what if safety advocates could find and connect with the most at-risk workers out in the community? Perhaps even reach vulnerable workers with safety education before they experience an injury at work? New research from the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health could help safety advocates do just that. Linda Forst, director of the school…

ESPN's Mt. Rushmore of College Basketball

Two sports posts in one day? They're going to revoke my membership in the Association of Intellectuals. But hey, college basketball is one of my great passions. ESPN has been discussing and debating who would go on the Mt. Rushmore of college basketball for both coaches and players during the ESPN era (which began with the 1979-80 season, which means Larry Bird and Magic Johnson just miss out on being included). I'm going to give my thoughts on both the coaches list and the players list. Doug Gottlieb offers up his list of the 4 players who would go on Mt. Rushmore since 1980. They are Larry…

The (Dimensionless) Constants of Nature

As noted yesterday, someone going by "who" (who may or may not be a doctor) took me to task in the comments to the dorky poll for talking about fundamental constants that have units, preferring dimensionless ratios instead: I would be really interested to hear what your readers come up with if the popularity constest was about DIMENSIONLESS physical constants----which are significant RATIOS built into the universe. Like the ratio of mass of proton to mass of electron, or the ratio of Planck mass to proton mass. these are things you can't simply make become = 1 and in effect "go away" merely…

Betting on sea ice: $10,000

This year's story so far: in May, I accepted some bets but was still trying to come to terms with Rob Dekker. In the comments there we came to agreement on the following: If both NSIDC and IARC-JAXA September 2016 monthly average sea ice extent report are above 4.80 million km^2, RD pays WMC US$ 10,000. If both are below 3.10 million km^2, WMC pays RD US$ 10,000. In all other cases the bet is null and void The numbers are a bit of a compromise, and of course the large "null gap" in the middle means a no-payment result is quite likely. Now is a sort-of good time to announce this, because this…

Meinshausen et al.

Did you notice that RC called it "Meinshausen et al"? Barbarians :-). Anyway, they liked the paper whilst I'm less sure. As far as I can tell its not really a question of science in dispute, just what you make of it. So what M et al. do is instead of the std.ipcc "force a GCM with CO2 and see how climate changes" they try to reverse this process, and see what level of CO2 produces a given temperature change. They can't do this with GCMs, of course, so are fitting the GCM stuff to a simpler model. And since there is uncertainty in the sensitivity, there is uncertainty in the result, but at…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 0

The Bottleneck Years Table of Contents Chapter 1 by H.E. Taylor Chapter 0 Edie, May 11, 2055 I hate it when I find myself doing something and I don't know why. Somehow that seems to happen a lot around my brother, Matt. This time he wanted me to accompany him on a visit to his fiancee, Adelle. I didn't know why and frankly, I didn't really care at the time. My other brother Jon was supposed to be arriving back from the North today, but Matt's invitation gave me a chance to ride in his new car. Usually I get around on bike and foot, so the Faraday was a treat. Adelle lived on the far…

Science Talks and Pick-Up Hoops

Over in Tumblr-land, Ben Lillie has an interesting post on all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes of a science talk. It's an intimidatingly long list of stuff, in quite a range of different areas. But this is a solved problem in other performance fields: And that raises and interesting question, since aside from the science section (and not even all of that), all of these apply to any other performance or production. So how do those people master all of those things? The short answer is that they don’t. Almost any production that requires a long, and more importantly disparate, set of…

Method and Its Discontents

Given that I am relentlessly flogging a book about the universality of the scientific process (Available wherever books are sold! They make excellent winter solstice holiday gifts!), I feel like I ought to try to say something about the latest kerfuffle about the scientific method. This takes the form of an editorial in Nature complaining that Richard Dawid and Sean Carroll among others are calling for discarding traditional ideas about how to test theories. Which is cast as an attempt to overthrow The Scientific Method. Which, you know, on the one hand is a kind of impossible claim. There…

How Einstein's most famous equation affects you

"It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind." -Albert Einstein You've heard and seen it plenty of times: Einstein's most famous equation, E = mc2. I've taken you inside this equation before, which lays out how much energy is stored in matter-at-rest, and tells you how much energy you need to create matter in the first place. Image credit: Niels Madsen, ALPHA / Swansea / CERN. That's right, you can create matter directly from energy; we do it all the…

Messier Monday: The Pleiades, M45

"Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades." -Walt Whitman Last week, we kicked off our very first Messier Monday by spotlighting M1: the Crab Nebula. But with 110 different objects to choose from, the Messier catalogue represents some of the brightest and most universally accessible wonders of the night sky. Image(s) credit: SEDS -- http://messier.seds.org/. Many of these…

Bovids Of The World

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are 143 species of bovids. The Animal Diversity Web is a bit less precise, indicating that there are "more than 140 extant and 300 extinct species." That second number is highly questionable because today there exist sister species that are so similar I doubt they could be told apart from fossils alone. If you check around the internet, this ~140 number comes up again and again, and Wikipedia says 143. Research published in 2011 and later by Colin Groves, Peter Grubb, and David Leslie, which has been tagged as controversial by some but…

Dark Matter Haters to the Left

"When you make the finding yourself -- even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light -- you'll never forget it." -Carl Sagan When we talk about dark matter and its alternatives, we are talking about no less a task than explaining the structure of every large object in the Universe. This means every one of the billions of galaxies, including the way they form, merge, and cluster together. Image credit: Mark Subbarao, Dinoj Surendran, and Randy Landsberg for the SDSS team. On the largest scales -- where each pixel in the map above represents an entire galaxy -- dark matter blows…

What our future looks like to an outsider

"At the last dim horizon, we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be oppressed." -Edwin Hubble It still boggles my mind that a scant 100 years ago, many of the greatest astronomers and physicists of the day still thought that the Milky Way was the only galaxy in the entire Universe. It wasn't until the 1920s that Edwin Hubble definitively showed that the great Andromeda Nebula was actually a separate galaxy from our own. Image credit: Rogelio…

Geocentrism: Was Galileo Wrong?

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galileo Galilei While practically every scientist (and 79% of Americans) accept that the Earth and the other planets go around the Sun, it isn't quite everyone. In fact, a number of people have recently pointed out the following conference to me. That's right, this November, a group of people are going to get together and try to put together as convincing an argument as possible for geocentrism, or the model that the Sun (and all the other planets)…

The Beginning of the End of the Republican Congress: Chaffetz vs. Allen

In Health Care Insurance Reform We See The History of the Republican Party Very few American policy initiatives have been as popular as Obamacare. The fact that several years of Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act did not result in any alternative policies or specific revisions to the law suggest that Republicans were aware of that. Touting opposition and threatening to repeal worked with their base, but actually doing something would lead to widespread outrage and loss of votes, possibly loss of actual elections. The worst nightmare of Republican members of the House and…

Atlantic's Hermine Is A Big Deal (UPDATED)

For the latest post on Hermine GO HERE. Update Thursday PM Hermine has grown in strength, and may even make landfall as a Category 2 storm. At least a strong Category 1. The right front quadrant of the storm is where the main "punch" (of winds) is located. If the storm winds come into an embayment, they can really build up the storm surge. Look at this image: You can see the right front quadrant of the storm heading right into Apalachee Bay. Barrier islands to the west of the bay's head, and the communities right in the bay, are very much at risk for severe flooding. Here is a blowup…

Carnival of Space #43: Oscar Edition

It's been a spectacular week for the film space industry, and here at Starts With A Bang!, we've got the recap of all the highlights that you may have missed while watching the countless Oscar montages. Take your time browsing and enjoying this site, and maybe even find out what the question is if 42 is the answer! And now, without further ado, here are the winners from the 43rd Carnival of Space, as chosen by Ethan Siegel, your magnanimous host of this week's Carnival (and check out all previous carnivals here): Nancy Young-Houser, of A Mars Odyssey, for Stellar Breakthrough Performance…

Myers on the Muslim Caricatures

When it comes to the science of evolution, PZ Myers and I are in almost complete agreement; when it comes to other issues, it's scarcely possible that we could be further apart. The latest example of this is his essay on the Muhammed caricatures and the attending controversy. PZ appears to believe that because Muslims are a "poor minority", they are insulated from satire. I could not disagree more with his assessment of the caricatures: I've seen the cartoons, and they are crude and uninterestingâthey are more about perpetuating stereotypes of Muslims as bomb-throwing terrorists than…

The Danger of Radical Islam

Eugene Volokh had a couple of posts a few days ago about anti-religious speech and a movement to regulate it around the world. It begins with the UN Commission on Human Rights urging nations to "take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination through political institutions and organizations of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers" that might lead to harrassment, discrimination or hostility. Volokh notes that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has publicly condemned a Danish newspaper for publishing a dozen caricatures of…

Duke's First Loss

Well, my Blue Devils just lost their first game, to Georgetown on the road by 3. What made this a fascinating game is what it tells us, both good and bad, about this Duke team. This game simultaneously showed why this Duke team will have a difficult time winning the national championship this year, and why they still have a good shot of doing so. I thought I'd analyze both of those statements for the 3 sports fans who read this page. 1. Why Duke will have a difficult time winning the national championship this year. Because they have no "tweeners". This Duke team is loaded with guards (…

Guest Post: Allen Macneill Fisks Dembski

This is a guest post from Allen Macneill, an evolutionary biologist and writer. He currently teaches an introductory evolution course for non-majors at Cornell, and is writing an introductory evolution textbook, also for non-majors. HIs most recent article, "The capacity for religious experience is an evolutionary adaptation to warfare" has just been reprinted in an anthology on war and peace, published by Greenwood/Praeger. In the post below, Macneill is replying to an article by William Dembski about the Dover ruling that appeared in Science and Theology News. 1) Dembski makes the…

Allen Macneill on Dembski

This is a guest post from Allen Macneill, an evolutionary biologist and writer. He currently teaches an introductory evolution course for non-majors at Cornell, and is writing an introductory evolution textbook, also for non-majors. HIs most recent article, "The capacity for religious experience is an evolutionary adaptation to warfare" has just been reprinted in an anthology on war and peace, published by Greenwood/Praeger. In the post below, Macneill is replying to an article by William Dembski about the Dover ruling that appeared in Science and Theology News. 1) Dembski makes the…

Dembski on Templeton and ID Research

In the wake of yesterday's NY Times article that included the Templeton Foundation saying that when they demanded that ID advocates produce actual research that could confirm ID and offered to fund that, they didn't come up with any, William Dembski responded with this post on his blog. He makes the following claim: I know for a fact that Discovery Institute tried to interest the Templeton Foundation in funding fundamental research on ID that would be publishable in places like PNAS and Journal of Molecular Biology (research that got funded without Templeton support and now has been published…