Skeptical News for 26 August 2002Skeptical News for 26 August 2002Archive of previous NTS Skeptical News listings
The Transcendental Meditation program has been effectively used within the prison system in California, Massachusetts and Vermont, and there is scientific research documenting the many benefits of the program in this setting as well. The research clearly indicates significantly reduced recidivism, reduced aggression and substance abuse among inmates practicing the TM technique.
http://www.enlightenedsentencing.org/
Has Walt Disney's body been cryogenically frozen? Did Steve of "Blue's Clues" die of a drug overdose? Was Jerry Mathers of Beaver Cleaver fame killed in the Vietnam War?
No to all three. And each of these urban legends and hundreds more like them are painstakingly debunked at Snopes.com, a popular Web site that some think would make for great television.
Writer-director Michael Levine has finished a pilot episode of a show he calls "Snopes: Urban Legends" that stars former "Guiding Light" actor Jim Davidson.
He made the pilot on spec using a crew and cast who worked for nothing more than the promise of a paying job if the show sells. It consists of Davidson explaining various well-known rumors, then telling the audience whether they're true or false; if they're the latter, he explains their genesis.
"I kept getting bombarded in my e-mail box with urban legends," Levine said. "I thought, 'I wish people wouldn't buy into this stuff.' "
For the rest of the story click on the following link:
A statue of the Virgin Mary in a house in Perth, Australia, has become a major attraction as hundreds of pilgrims throng the house, after reports said the statue shed fragrant tears.
It was from Bangkok that Patty Powell bought the statue eight years ago, but she discovered the tears only recently, reported ABC News Online. The statue has been weeping since Easter, Patty said adding that hundreds of people have been visiting her home to touch the ?tears?.
Meanwhile, ABC News Online Perth's catholic Archbishop has seen the statue, and even some of the clergymen had seen it weep.
For the rest of the story, click on the below link:
What do you watch for, when you are watching the news? Signs that interest rates might be climbing, maybe it's time to refinance. Signs of global warming, maybe forget that new SUV. Signs of new terrorist activity, maybe think twice about that flight to Chicago.
Or signs that the world may be coming to an end, and the last battle between good and evil is about to unfold?
For evangelical Christians with an interest in prophecy, the headlines always come with asterisks pointing to scriptural footnotes.
That is how Todd Strandberg reads his paper. By day, he is fixing planes at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Neb. But in his off-hours, he's the webmaster at raptureready.com and the inventor of the Rapture Index, which he calls a "Dow Jones Industrial Average of End Time activity."
Instead of stocks, it tracks prophecies: earthquakes, floods, plagues, crime, false prophets and economic measurements like unemployment that add to instability and civil unrest, thereby easing the way for the Antichrist. In other words, how close are we to the end of the world? The index hit an all-time high of 182 on Sept. 24, as the bandwidth nearly melted under the weight of 8 million visitors: any reading over 145, Strandberg says, means "Fasten your seat belt."
It's not the end of the world, our mothers always told us. This was helpful for putting spilled milk in perspective, but it was also our introduction to a basic human reference point.
For the rest of the story check the link below:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020701/story.html
The months-old search for Elizabeth Smart took a strange twist last week when two Salt Lake City detectives -- at the behest of a group of psychics -- ventured into a crypt that holds the skeletal remains of ancient American Indians.
Officials from PSI Tech, a Seattle-based company, claimed that more than a dozen of its members had determined the location of Elizabeth's body by using a special psychic process they call "Technical Remote Viewing."
Independently, the company claims, 14 visionaries all pointed to a concrete burial vault built by the state of Utah about 10 years ago. The vault, located in Salt Lake City's This Is the Place State Heritage Park in the mouth of Emigration Canyon, contains the remains of 75 American Indians, many unearthed by construction projects around Utah.
For the rest of the story check the link below:
http://www.sltrib.com/09072002/utah/769194.htm
NIR SHAVIV remembers vividly the moment last year when he first saw evidence that our planet's journey through the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy could be triggering Earth's ice ages.
It was 2 a.m. on a Toronto March morning. Shaviv was gazing out the window of a High Park high-rise at a wintry landscape, hoping for inspiration. Then he looked back down at the mass of numbers on the desk in front of him.
"Lo and behold, there it was right before my eyes," he says.
Shaviv, who holds Israeli and U.S. citizenships, was then a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Toronto's Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. What he saw was a diagram dating from 1975 that showed ice ages on Earth recurred about every 145 million years.
For the rest of the story check the link below:
Adding a startling chapter to the long historical debate over the secret laboratory that developed the atom bomb in World War II, a new book concludes that its leader, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, belonged to the American Communist Party in the late 1930's and early 40's.
Contrary to his repeated denials, Oppenheimer belonged to a cell of the party that discouraged members from disclosing their membership, says the book, "Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller," by Gregg Herken, a senior historian at the Smithsonian Institution. It is being published today by Henry Holt.
For the rest of the story check the link below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/national/08OPPE.html?ex=1032519223&ei=1&en=72c042ed151af65b
A puzzling mountain-side object in Turkey is the target of a hide-and-seek game of biblical proportions.
The high-flying and super-powerful commercial QuickBird satellite has begun snapping imagery of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey - in a quest to spot the possible remains of what is believed to be Noah's Ark.
Aircraft pictures taken in the late 1940s, as well as more recent secret spy satellite shots of the area do show something odd - a bit of strangeness that has earned the title of the "Ararat Anomaly".
QuickBird 2 satellite will use its super-powerful camera system to image Mt. Ararat in search for remains of Noah's ark. credit: EarthWatch Inc.
For the rest of the story check the link below:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/ark_hunt_020830.html
1. HERBAL NONSENSE: DON'T MESS AROUND WITH MOTHER NATURE. Even as many of the most popular herbal medications failed miserably when subjected to actual tests (WN 23 Aug 02), one concoction of saw palmetto, said to include seven Chinese and Indian herbs, seemed to be just as effective in treating prostate cancer as the latest prescription drugs. This was not as remarkable as it seemed: as a natural dietary supplement, PC-SPES could be sold over the counter without proof of purity or effectiveness (WN 16 Aug 02). But the FDA contended PC-SPES contained prescription- only drugs, and pulled it off the market. It is now confirmed by independent laboratories that PC-SPES contained warfarin, a blood thinner, indomethacin, an analgesic, and synthetic estrogen. These are prescription-only drugs not found in nature.
2. PATENT NONSENSE: COURT DENIES BLACKLIGHT POWER APPEAL. The status of BlackLight Power's intellectual property is fuzzier than ever. BLP was awarded Patent 6,024,935 for "Lower-Energy Hydrogen Methods and Structures," a process for getting hydrogen atoms into a "state below the ground state" (WN 18 Feb 00). You might expect these shrunken hydrogen atoms, called "hydrinos," to have a pretty special chemistry. Do they ever! Indeed, a second patent application titled "Hydride Compounds" had been assigned a number and BLP had paid the fee. Several other patents were in the works. That's when things started heading South. Prompted by an outside inquiry (who would do such a thing?), the patent director became concerned that this hydrino stuff required the orbital electron to behave "contrary to the known laws of physics and chemistry." The Hydride Compounds application was withdrawn for further review and the other patent applications were rejected. Since the one patent already issued involves the same violations of basic laws of physics, there is a cloud over its status as well. BLP filed suit in federal court arguing that it was too late for the Patent Office to change its mind. The court was not impressed, so BLP appealed the decision. In denying the appeal, the court said the Patent Office has a responsibility to take "extraordinary action" to withdraw a questionable patent. The long-awaited IPO may have to wait a little longer.
3. LANCE BASS: MAYBE THE RUSSIANS JUST DON'T LIKE MUSIC. Russian space officials say the boy-band star stiffed them on the $20M fare to the ISS, so they evicted him from Star City and gave his seat on Soyuz to a box of supplies. But MirCorp still needs the dollars, and deals are still being discussed. One is said to involve a major soft drink company. Pepsi and Coke have fought it out in space for years. Mir cosmonauts inflated a giant Pepsi can on a space walk (WN 5 Nov 99), while Coke was involved in developing a $3M micro-gravity Coke machine that gave only foam when it was tested before a world-wide audience on television.
Rennie is wrong in many of his opening statements. He accuses Philip Johnson of wanting to inject "God" into the science classroom. Phil is interested in injecting truth into the classroom; yes, even the kind that questions Darwinism. If that truth leads some to wonder about God, then so be it.
Rennie?s overall approach is a two-faced one. His "fact of evolution" falls directly out of his faith in methodological naturalism. Can there be any observation that contradicts the fact of evolution? No, his faith forbids the thought. So when he claims that evolution also sits atop a huge pyramid of observational evidence, he should forgive readers like me who question his objectivity.
For the point by point nuisanse see:
http://www.icr.org/headlines/rennie.html
CROP CIRCLES: QUEST FOR TRUTH: Documentary. Directed by William Gazecki. (Not rated. 115 minutes. At the Opera Plaza and the Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley.)
William Gazecki is convinced that crop circles are the work of nonhuman beings or natural forces -- not hoaxes -- and he's out to convince anyone who'll listen, especially those willing to pay money to see his newest documentary.
The circles in "Crop Circles: Quest for Truth" are beautiful to look at -- stunning, really -- but Gazecki's film is so journalistically flawed and needlessly melodramatic that it will be treasured only by those who share his singular vision.
Gazecki interviews researchers, authors and anyone else who promulgate the idea that crop circles -- those large, mysterious patterns that show up on farmland and fields around the world -- are legitimate. Billed as "a comprehensive look at the Crop Circle phenomenon," "Crop Circles: Quest for Truth" masquerades as a documentary in search of real answers. Instead, we get ad nauseam comments from believers who put forth scientific and mathematical formulas that they say prove that the circles are done by higher life forms or unknown powers of nature -- not by, say, a collection of college kids trying to pull off a colossal prank.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/09/06/DD232690.DTL&type=movies
Sep. 4 ? The U.S. Government has just licensed the first commercial mission to the moon.
TransOrbital, Inc. received permission from various government agencies last week to send a probe back to the Earth's little sister. That probe, dubbed Trailblazer, will orbit the moon for 90 days, filming portraits of Earth as it rises over the lunar horizon and mapping the moonscape in unprecedented detail ? as small as one meter in diameter.
"We're also looking to verify Apollo and other landing sites," said TransOrbital President Dennis Laurie.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020902/moon.html
Sept. 3, 2002 | In the "Apocalypse" movies, the rapture has come and gone, calling home the Christian right and leaving everyone else to suffer under the rule of the antichrist. While the gold-encrusted studios of the Trinity Broadcasting Network can be assumed to be silent as tombs, all is not lost. TBN footage has survived, offering words of advice for those "left behind," presented by neighborly doomsday advisors Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella.
The Van Impes have, of course, personally ascended to heaven, but a ragtag band of fugitive evangelists, who include Mr. T, use a stolen news van to hack into Satan's satellite network and broadcast this pirate signal. It's enough to make the antichrist, Nick Macalusso (Nick Mancuso) lose his cool: "Why can't you idiots stop these treasonous transmissions?" he roars at his henchmen.
Scientologist John Travolta gave us "Battlefield Earth," which begins with a note to the effect that "humans are an endangered species." And a host of B-list Hollywood stars have given us "Apocalypse" and its three sequels -- "Revelation," "Tribulation" and "Judgment" -- in which fundamentalist Christians are the endangered species.
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2002/09/03/christian/index.html
Now you see it, now you don't: A reported new "planet" orbiting a distant star turns out to be an illusion, caused by giant dark "spots" on the star.
The discovery raises questions about the validity of a small percentage of other reported discoveries of "extrasolar planets," which have drawn media attention in recent years.
Two years ago, astronomers in the Bay Area and elsewhere reported discovering the new planet orbiting a star, technically known as HD 192263, which is 65 light-years (390 trillion miles) from Earth.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/09/04/MN196976.DTL&type=science
STAR ISLAND, N.H. - Ursula Goodenough knows she takes a risk as a respected biologist when she spends a week each summer on this island considering God.
Though she says her colleagues might be intrigued by the questions asked here, many wouldn't grace this annual conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), she says. The reason: Suspicions of religion in academic circles make them "afraid they won't get a grant if people find out they've been here."
Yet on a sun-splashed day at the end of July, this professor at Washington University in St. Louis claimed her place in the shade on a stately wrap-around porch six miles off New Hampshire's coast. As gulls cried and lobster boats puttered by, she counted herself among dozens of scientists who considered the risk worth taking.
"I'm troubled by the antiscience world," Ms. Goodenough said, citing efforts to bar evolution from the classroom as an example. "I come here to see how our understanding of matter can become a resource for religious understanding ... and to experience the wonder of being together."
Goodenough was far from alone. Dozens of scientists were among the 245 participants who grappled with the question: "Is Nature Enough? The Thirst for Transcendence." Nor was she alone in her dual motive for attending.
For the rest of the story read:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0905/p16s01-stgn.html
An American officer, who wished to remain anonymous, affirmed that aliens took part in a military exercise that took place in Arkansas several years ago. There are some things that I cannot talk about. Yet, I think I can say something.
Airborne troops conducted their exercise from April 15 to May 5, 1992. The event took place on the territory of the Fort Chaffee army base. The exercise was performed under the code name "Operation Curtain." Special units of airborne troops from Venezuela, Ecuador, the USA, and Puerto Rico, took part in the exercise. The troops were sent to swamps in a remote part of the base. It was ordered not to allow the dummy bridge that was built for the exercise to be exploded.
No unit managed to prevent the explosion of the bridge. Neither the Venezuelans, nor Americans, nor the soldiers from Ecuador managed to detect the enemy." No one could understand how the saboteur made its way without even bumping into any of the best units. Nevertheless, it happened,said the officer.
For the rest of the story: http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/09/04/35979.html
Oliver Poole reports from Berkeley, California, the counter-culture centre of America, on some offbeat analyses of what really happened on September 11
"After Flight 93 came down in Pennsylvania, they saw a craft buzzing around. Now what was that? All earth air traffic had been grounded. And in the World Trade Centre, where are all the bodies? They were transported out first to be experimented on. Listen to me now, September 11 was all caused by aliens."
It was certainly a fresh view of the events of a year ago but then again the person propagating it was wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan: "Beam Me Up, Jesus".
For the rest of the story: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$DG03FJREWNMGBQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2002/09/05/wloon05.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/09/05/por_right.html
IT sounds like a tale that only Hollywood could dream up - but a family insist they are being plagued by a frisky Roman ghost.
Now, Linda and Darren Morris are on the verge of calling in ghostbusters to rid their home of the saucy spectre.
The couple, from Norton, North Yorkshire, are convinced strange goings-on in their home are the work of a paranormal visitor - and local history enthusiasts believe they may have a point.
"It's stroked my knee and my hair several times. It's really creepy," said Mrs Morris, a mother of three.
For the rest of the story: http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/the_north_east/archive/2002/09/02/A77i2l.re.html
Gotcha!
Strange but true: This is the golden age of hoaxes
BY THOMAS HAYDEN
She strolls onto the stage as if into her own living room, casually elegant in a twinkling, black tunic top and matching trousers. "I love you, Sylvia!" cries an exuberant young woman, her enthusiasm rising above the applause of 2,400 paying audience members. Sylvia Browne?psychic, medium, prolific author?accepts the affirmation gracefully and takes the podium. "I want to talk to you about angels, about spirit guides, and about how to become more psychic." Shudder. This is precisely the conversation I've spent most of my life avoiding. But I was trapped in a sea of believers, and having paid $78.50 of U.S. News's money for my seat in the Atlantic City Convention Center auditorium, I didn't dare attempt an escape.
What is a hoax, exactly? When does a good deal become too good to be true, and where does belief end and credulity begin? In the stories that follow, we present elaborate swindles, outrageous gags, and insidious disinformation campaigns. They're all hoaxes?proof there's a sap for every scam artist, an easy mark for every mountebank, a chump for every charlatan. The notion that the Eskimos have 100 words for "snow" isn't true?more urban legend than hoax?but English certainly has a telling number of mots juste for stretchers of the truth and the suckers who believe them. And it is a collaboration; history shows that a successful hoax often depends not so much on the guile of the hoaxer as on the gullibility of the hoaxed.
Life is full of decisions to believe or not to believe. When it comes to psychics, I'm quick to adopt a skeptical stance. Yet despite any number of analyses exposing the psychic's art as, at best, a clever party trick, many people?perhaps even you, dear reader??clearly believe this stuff. Sylvia Browne's Book of Dreams (Dutton, $25.95), about connecting with loved ones on "the other side," is on the New York Times bestseller list. John Edward, who also offers a link to the dead, has a hit with his television show Crossing Over, and other dabblers in divination and necromancy are perennial favorites on TV talk shows. I went to see Browne not so much to test her psychic powers as to test my own ability to resist the temptation to believe in them, real or not. Sadly, my status as a hardened skeptic did not survive unblemished, but more on that later.
(Filed: 05/09/2002)
Oliver Poole reports from Berkeley, California, the counter-culture centre of America, on some offbeat analyses of what really happened on September 11
"After Flight 93 came down in Pennsylvania, they saw a craft buzzing around. Now what was that? All earth air traffic had been grounded. And in the World Trade Centre, where are all the bodies? They were transported out first to be experimented on. Listen to me now, September 11 was all caused by aliens."
It was certainly a fresh view of the events of a year ago but then again the person propagating it was wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan: "Beam Me Up, Jesus".
Most Americans have no time for such offbeat analyses but this is Telegraph Avenue in the heart of Berkeley, the counter-culture centre of America, with a heritage of anti-Vietnam protests and 1960s hippy love-ins.
Berkeley is a city where the bookshops have sections dedicated to conspiracy theories and everyone has a view about what really happened that day.
September 11 has spawned its own mythologies of what "really" happened, like every seminal event in American history over the last 50 years.
Helping the stories spread are questions that conspiracy theorists have seized upon. Many focus on Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers decided to fight back.
How, they ask, did the debris end up covering an eight-mile area? The FBI says it was spread by a 10mph wind but sceptics maintain it was because the plane was shot down by fighter jets.
One man in Berkeley named Patrick ("no surnames please") showed me copies of air force log books he claimed proved that one of the two F-16s scrambled to intercept the plane would, despite government denials, have been in sight when it crashed.
Eyewitnesses have reported an aircraft flying erratically over the crash site shortly after impact. This is the UFO of those who favour aliens or the attacking jet for others. The FBI said it was a civilian business jet asked to gather location details but, as Patrick pointed out, all non-military aircraft had long been ordered to land.
The American press has used the stories as evidence of a re-emergence of American's latent suspicion of government.
Spread by the internet, they have become common gossip at office water coolers and bar tables indicative of how, a year on, Americans have not been transformed by the attacks but merely given new material and fears with which to harden their existing responses and prejudices.
A few months ago, at an anti-war meeting in Los Angeles, an earnest young man explained the links between the administration, oil companies and the years of negotiations to try to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan.
At the heart of his argument was the view that it was all too convenient how things had worked out for the oil barons and that some high-level conspiracy must have arranged it all.
He disclosed who had led the delegations to the Taliban: "Dick Cheney." The gasp from the converted was deafening.
IT sounds like a tale that only Hollywood could dream up - but a family insist they are being plagued by a frisky Roman ghost.
Now, Linda and Darren Morris are on the verge of calling in ghostbusters to rid their home of the saucy spectre.
The couple, from Norton, North Yorkshire, are convinced strange goings-on in their home are the work of a paranormal visitor - and local history enthusiasts believe they may have a point.
"It's stroked my knee and my hair several times. It's really creepy," said Mrs Morris, a mother of three.
"Once I was in the kitchen watching TV and I felt this hand stroking my leg. At first I thought it was Darren feeling romantic, but when I turned around to tell him off, there was no one there. My husband was in the other room.
"We've been told the house is built on top of a Roman burial site so I'm convinced it's something to do with that."
The inexplicable activity began soon after the family moved in to the house three years ago and they now want the amorous ghoul flushing out.
"I saw a shadow of a man in the kitchen when I first moved in," said Mr Morris. "We've been watching TV a few times and the channels just start to change themselves.
"We'll often hear banging noises upstairs and at one point the doorbell was ringing so often by itself I had to remove it."
A child's doll also appears to have taken to moving around the house of its own accord.
A spokeswoman for MAP archaeological consultants, of nearby Malton, confirmed that the site of the couple's home was thought to have been a Roman burial site.
"According to local records a Roman skeleton was found there in 1948," she said.
"Romans buried their dead at the side of roads and this site is right next
to an ancient highway."
Magnetic Stimulation Relieves Depression
By ED SUSMAN
UPI
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_9090.html
"Painless magnetic waves pulsed across the brain appear to relieve depression as well as the more traumatic and standard electro-convulsive shock therapy, researchers said at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association."
Debate rages over biblical mystery
by Ari Ben Goldberg
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2218763.stm
"The ancients called the Dead Sea, with its great sulphur deposits, "Hayam Hamasriach" - the Stinking Sea."
Bulgaria to build a Noah's Ark
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2218096.stm
"The famed Noah's Ark of Biblical times could re-emerge in Bulgaria as a tourist attraction, if a Bulgarian historian's ambitious project becomes reality."
Shift in Kansas Board of Education takes many by surprise
By DIANE CARROLL
Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/3897473.htm
"For months, a leading conservative Republican group in Kansas searched for a candidate to challenge incumbent moderate Val DeFever for a seat on the state Board of Education."
Evolutionists stifle academic freedom
By Cal Thomas
TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/3949298.htm
"It's back-to-school time. That means school supplies, clothes, packing lunches and the annual battle over what can be taught."
CELEBS DYING TO TALK TO THE DEAD
By MICHAEL STARR
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/55762.htm
"CROSSING Over with John Edward" is tweaking its daytime format - incorporating more celebrity readings into its talking-to-the-dead formula."
For More Stories Visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/skepticsearch/
15:17 2002-09-04
Aliens took part in a military exercise in Arkansas
An American officer, who wished to remain anonymous, affirmed that aliens took part in a military exercise that took place in Arkansas several years ago. ?There are some things that I cannot talk about. Yet, I think I can say something.?
Airborne troops conducted their exercise from April 15 to May 5, 1992. The event took place on the territory of the Fort Chaffee army base. The exercise was performed under the code name "Operation Curtain." Special units of airborne troops from Venezuela, Ecuador, the USA, and Puerto Rico, took part in the exercise. The troops were sent to swamps in a remote part of the base. It was ordered not to allow the dummy bridge that was built for the exercise to be exploded.
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IN THE NEWS
Today's Headlines ? September 4, 2002
ORGAN RECIPIENTS HAD WEST NILE VIRUS
from The Washington Post
At least three of the four people who grew ill or died after receiving organs from a woman infected with West Nile virus have also been found to have been infected with the microbe, adding to the evidence that the potentially fatal disease can be transmitted by donated organs or blood.
Federal health officials yesterday sought to reassure the public, saying that although no test is yet available to detect West Nile virus in donated blood or organs, they believe the nation's blood and organ supply is extremely safe. There remains the possibility that all the cases were caused by mosquito bites, which so far remain the only proven means of spreading the disease.
Nonetheless, officials said they were mounting a massive dragnet to track down each of the scores of people who either donated or received blood or organs related to the recently identified cases, in an effort to prove or disprove a link by donation.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34762-2002Sep3.html
FORMER ANTHRAX RESEARCHER LOSES JOB
from The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, who says the federal government has ruined his life by linking him to the anthrax investigation, was fired Tuesday from his job as a researcher at Louisiana State University.
Hatfill was hired by LSU's National Center for Biomedical Research and Training in July and put on administrative leave with pay on Aug. 2.
"The university is making no judgment as to Dr. Hatfill's guilt or innocence regarding the FBI investigation," said Chancellor Mark A. Emmert in a brief statement released by the university on Tuesday.
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-anthrax-hatfill0904sep04.story
NEW EPA STUDY DETAILS DANGER OF DIESEL EXHAUST
from The San Francisco Chronicle
Confirming earlier California studies, a new federal scientific report acknowledges that diesel exhaust from trucks, buses and other equipment very likely triggers asthma attacks and causes cancer.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the 651-page health assessment Tuesday, providing leverage to health officials and environmentalists who want greater controls on diesel engines.
Diesel exhaust makes up about a quarter of the airborne microscopic soot nationwide, according to the report.
"The overall evidence for potential human health effects of diesel exhausts is persuasive," it found. "This assessment concludes that (the diesel exhaust) is likely to be carcinogenic to humans by inhalation, and that this hazard applies to environmental exposure . . . based on the totality of evidence from humans, animal and other supporting studies."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/04/MN236155.DTL
REPORT: TWINS HELP SCIENTISTS PINPOINT CLEFT LIP AND PALATE GENE
from The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Scientists say twins have helped them identify a faulty gene that accounts for Van der Woude Syndrome, the most common cause of cleft lip or palate associated with other symptoms.
About 70 percent of all babies born with a cleft lip or palate are otherwise normal. The most common diagnosis in the other cases is Van der Woude, symptoms of which include distinctive pits in the lower lip.
To track down the elusive gene, a team of scientists studied a pair of twins. Only one had the syndrome.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/09/03/state1911EDT0140.DTL
STARCHES LINKED TO PANCREATIC CANCER
from Newsday
Women who are overweight and inactive and consume diets high in starchy foods may dramatically elevate their risk of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest and most difficult malignancies to treat, a team of Harvard scientists report today.
"What we're really talking about here is insulin's role" in the cause of pancreatic cancer, said Dr. Charles Fuchs, a gastroenterologist and cancer researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas in the presence of glucose (blood sugar). It is insulin's job to lower the amount of sugar that floods the bloodstream after a meal.
Fuchs and his team targeted potatoes, white rice and white or rye bread as key culprits in the cancer-producing scenario because these foods raise the "glycemic index," the amount of sugar in the blood. The more sugar in the blood, he said, the greater the need for insulin. The hormone is capable of fueling the development of cancer cells, the researchers say.
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hspan042849788sep04.story?coll=ny%2Dhealth%2Dheadlines
BATTLE FOR THE FUTURE SWIRLS BELOW PROUD TOWERS
from The New York Times
MONT-ST.-MICHEL, France ? For over a thousand years, the monastery here has thrust skyward out of the sea, like the pointed finger of some giant piercing the earth's crust. The image favored by visitors is at high tide, when it rises islandlike from the smooth waters of the bay that shares its name.
Though dedicated to monastic peace, the place has always been the theater of conflict: between the earth and the eroding sea, between the English and French, and between the religious and the profane ? as during the French Revolution, when the monks were dispersed and the monastery dedicated to the Archangel Michael, France's protector, was converted to a prison.
The latest battle, more mundane, is between the protectors of historic monuments and the engineers who advise them, on the one side, and local merchants on the other. In very French fashion, it also pits the periphery against the center ? local interests in Brittany, a region noted for its independence, against Parisian central planners.
The engineers' concern is gradual silting and the spread of marsh grass, unwanted byproducts of a causeway built in 1879 to link the monastery to the mainland. Fearing that Mont-St.-Michel is being robbed of its island character, they have devised a four-year, $133-million plan, financed by the French state and the European Union, to demolish the causeway and restore the natural flow of currents. This would theoretically reverse the spread of sands that have created salt marsh flats up to about 200 yards from the ramparts that surround the mount.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/04/international/europe/04FRAN.html
CHECKBOOK CHEMISTRY: EFFORTS TO RETAIN DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR PAY OFF
from The (Raleigh, NC) News and Observer
Chemistry professor Joseph DeSimone, on vacation in New York on Aug. 8 with his wife and children, spent two hours on a Liberty Island pay phone delivering the news to more than a dozen professors and top brass at UNC- Chapel Hill and N.C. State University: He will stay in North Carolina.
His decision ended months of bargaining in which DeSimone received job offers from Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Florida. The suitors promised handsome salaries, millions of dollars in lab equipment and the latest technology for microelectronics research.
DeSimone, 38, is a star professor who pioneered the use of carbon dioxide as a "green" industrial solvent. He has earned 64 patents and brought millions in research grants to UNC-CH and NCSU. He means a lot to both universities, where he holds joint positions in chemistry and chemical engineering.
Here's how much: Today, UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser will announce that the two universities are spending $3 million to buy a photo-lithography tool, used to make computer circuitry on microchips, that will be installed in a clean room on NCSU's Centennial Campus. DeSimone's new Triangle National Lithography Center will attract industry users and scientists in the field of nanotechnology, the study of materials on the tiniest molecular level.
http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/1699471p-1717548c.html
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IN THE NEWS
Today's Headlines ? September 3, 2002
U.S. REACHES ENERGY DEAL AT SUMMIT
from The Boston Globe
JOHANNESBURG - The United States, in partnership with Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, pushed through a final deal on sustainable energy last night that preserves the primacy of fossil fuels and blocks time-based international commitments to develop renewable energy sources in poor countries.
The energy accord was the final piece of a broad-based plan negotiated at the Earth Summit on poverty alleviation and environmental issues.
The final language on energy, which took eight days of round-the-clock deal making, calls on countries to "diversify energy supply by developing advanced, cleaner, more efficient, affordable and cost-effective energy technologies, including fossil fuel technologies as well as renewable energy technologies, hydro included, and their transfer to developing countries on concessional terms as mutually agreed."
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/246/nation/US_reaches_energy_deal_summit+.shtml
FEDERAL JUDGE OVERTURNS RULING ON SKELETON
from The Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. -- More than six years after the discovery of one of the oldest skeletons ever found in North America, a federal judge overturned a decision to give the bones to Indian tribes for reburial and ruled that scientists can keep them for more study.
U.S. Magistrate John Jelderks said he reviewed 20,000 pages of documents before concluding that "nothing I have found in a careful examination of the administrative record" supported the government's decision to give the bones to the tribes.
Scientific study of the ancient skeleton will benefit all people, including tribes, by offering clues to early migration and culture, one of the scientists said.
When the 9,300-year-old skeleton was discovered in July 1996 in Kennewick, Wash., scientists said it was extremely rare to find a nearly intact skeleton so old.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21649-2002Aug31.html
4.6-MAGNITUDE TEMBLOR AND RELATED QUAKES STRIKE ORANGE COUNTY, CALIF.
from The Associated Press
YORBA LINDA, Calif. (AP) -- Small earthquakes centered in Orange County rattled parts of Southern California around midnight Monday, but there were no reports of damage or injury.
The largest temblor struck at 12:08 a.m. Tuesday and had a magnitude of 4.6, said Lucy Jones, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena.
The temblor was located three miles north of Yorba Linda.
A magnitude-2.6 foreshock struck the same area Monday at 11:50 p.m., Jones said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/09/03/state0729EDT0055.DTL
FBI CONTINUES ANTHRAX INVESTIGATION IN BOCA RATON, FLA.
from The Associated Press
BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) -- FBI agents and scientists spent Monday combing the former headquarters of American Media Inc., searching for clues in last fall's anthrax attacks.
Investigators have declined to say how many people are working inside the quarantined building or if any evidence has been discovered. Crews re- entered the building Friday.
John Florence, a spokesman for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said Monday the team expects to collect evidence through Friday. The investigation will continue until Sept. 11, the deadline agents set in their search warrant.
The teams hope to discover the letter or package that brought anthrax into the building and fatally infected photo editor Robert Stevens, who was the first of five people to die nationwide during the bioterror attacks.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/09/02/national1357EDT0534.DTL
RESEARCH REBEL URGES COLLEAGUES TO PUBLISH ON THE WEB, NOT IN
HIGH-PRICED
JOURNALS
from The San Francisco Chronicle
Pat Brown, a biochemist at Stanford University, invented a cheap way to put thousands of bits of DNA on test slides, helping to pave the way for industrial-scale studies of how genes control cells.
But spying out the secrets of cells is not what he likes to talk about these days.
Brown has a new scheme in mind: He wants to raise about $20 million in foundation grants to bring together top scientists to review scientific research, and publish it on the Web -- for free.
"We'll just give it away" to undercut the pricey subscription journals that dominate academic publishing, Brown said.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/02/MN97506.DTL
LITTLE BUG, BIG PROBLEM
from The Boston Globe
It is the kind of mystery that disease researchers hope they encounter only in the pages of a medical thriller.
It began three years ago, with a few patients beset with fevers and headaches showing up in doctor offices in Queens, New York. And then a few more patients - and a few more after that.
West Nile virus had arrived, making New York City its US port of call, an unwelcome visitor with an uncertain itinerary.
Now, three years later, the virus has colonized a swath of the United States from the East Coast to the Rockies. But disease trackers remain befuddled by its trajectory, uncertain where, at any given moment, the virus will exact the most damage. Why, for instance, has no one been infected this year in all of New England - while the virus has killed eight people and sickened 197 more in Louisiana alone?
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/246/science/Little_bug_big_problem+.shtml
AS ALASKA WARMS, GLACIERS STAGE A FEROCIOUS DANCE
from The New York Times
Scientists are studying the rapidly retreating glaciers of Alaska, which are dumping far more water into the sea than they expected.
Dr. Keith Echelmeyer, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and an accomplished bush pilot, has been flying his two-seat Piper PA-12 regularly over glaciers since 1993 and using laser altimetry to plot changes.
After comparing their data against topographical maps that go back 50 years, he and his colleagues recently published their findings in Science for the first 67 glaciers measured, representing about 20 percent of the area covered by these Alaskan ice rivers and the geographically connected regions of the Canadian Yukon.
From climate models, as well as years of field work, Dr. Echelmeyer had expected a general thinning of the glaciers that would be consistent with Alaska's summer temperature increase averaging 5 degrees over the past three decades. Instead, the researchers found that since the mid-1990's, Alaskan and Yukon glaciers had been dumping enough water into the ocean to raise sea level by 0.2 millimeters a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/03/science/earth/03GLAC.html
WITH TOWERS GONE, AREA MAY BE VULNERABLE TO LIGHTNING
from The New York Times
When the World Trade Center stood, lightning regularly struck its towers and was safely discharged to the ground. Now, scientists say, Lower Manhattan may be much more vulnerable to lightning. Meteorologists and engineers have been given new impetus to study how lightning behaves in urban areas and how best to protect city dwellers.
"There may be a dramatic difference in New York City's lightning strike pattern," said Richard T. Hasbrouck, a lightning safety consultant based in Truchas, N.M.
The issue received little attention after Sept. 11, in part because New York had so few storms this year. But on Aug. 2, when an unusually powerful thunderstorm struck, a 25-year-old Manhattan man was struck and killed by a bolt of lightning on the roof of a six-story apartment building on Broome Street, on the edge of Chinatown.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/03/science/03LIGH.html
TECHNOLOGY PROVIDES ARCHAEOLOGISTS WITH A SECOND LOOK
from Newsday
Revisiting the past is never easy, and revisiting an old excavation site on a canyon wall makes for a particularly dicey trip.
Especially when it no longer exists.
Yet a recent return by scientists to the final resting place of Arlington Springs Woman, the oldest known inhabitant of North America, has provided a striking demonstration of new technology's power to restore the past and preserve it well into the future.
In 1959, an archaeologist named Phil Orr first stumbled upon the bones on the small, canyon-pitted island of Santa Rosa, now part of the Channel Islands National Park off the coast of Ventura, Calif. Realizing the significance of his find, he brought several other researchers to the site, located near a spring in the island's Arlington Canyon. Orr and his collaborators eventually dated one of the bones to about 10,000 radiocarbon years, or 11,500 calendar years, erroneously dubbing them "Arlington Springs Man."
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-dsspdn2846472sep03.story?coll=ny%2Dhealth%2Dheadlines
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http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/03/snopes_part2/index.html
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Sept. 3, 2002 | Osama bin Laden lives in Salt Lake City, because his many wives aren't conspicuous there.
Terrorists fund their operations using a telemarketing scam peddling information about an upcoming nuclear attack.
And, if you drink Coke after Labor Day, well, I hope your will's up-to-date.
A year after Sept. 11, rumors like these still circulate on the Net, threatening to turn a vigilante mob of telemarketing-phobic Coke boycotters loose on Salt Lake City.
It's all the husband-and-wife team of Barbara and David Mikkelson -- who run Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages -- can do to keep pandemonium at bay with their levelheaded debunking of these well-meaning but often goofy warnings and too-good-to-be-true stories.
Washed-up Hollywood stars battle the antichrist and his smooth-talking liberal minions in the wacky parallel universe of "end-times" Christian movies.
By John Gorenfeld
Sept. 3, 2002 | In the "Apocalypse" movies, the rapture has come and gone, calling home the Christian right and leaving everyone else to suffer under the rule of the antichrist. While the gold-encrusted studios of the Trinity Broadcasting Network can be assumed to be silent as tombs, all is not lost. TBN footage has survived, offering words of advice for those "left behind," presented by neighborly doomsday advisors Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella.
The Van Impes have, of course, personally ascended to heaven, but a ragtag band of fugitive evangelists, who include Mr. T, use a stolen news van to hack into Satan's satellite network and broadcast this pirate signal. It's enough to make the antichrist, Nick Macalusso (Nick Mancuso) lose his cool: "Why can't you idiots stop these treasonous transmissions?" he roars at his henchmen.
Scientologist John Travolta gave us "Battlefield Earth," which begins with a note to the effect that "humans are an endangered species." And a host of B-list Hollywood stars have given us "Apocalypse" and its three sequels -- "Revelation," "Tribulation" and "Judgment" -- in which fundamentalist Christians are the endangered species.
Have you had an experience with aliens? Or maybe a dream that seemed too real? Have you ever had a close encounter with a UFO? Do you think you know the reason why UFOs are here? Or where they come from?
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The Gonzo Manifesto
A Column by Jim Richardson and Allen Richardson
Why Gonzo?
We use the term "gonzo" in the sense that outlaw journalist Hunter S. Thompson used it. It connotes weirdness, excitement, and danger. Gonzo also refers to Thompson's guerilla style as he conducted raids on objectivity. Thompson was trying to say, "Enough of this B.S., I'm tired of journalism pretending to be objective; the story is actually about the reporter." It is our observation that science is prone to the same argument. Scientific facts amount to the current beliefs of scientists. Dominant paradigms collapse ? that is what they do. The trick is to use the holes in the current theory to see what you might expect from the up-and-coming theory. Hunter may be a stylistic influence, but T.S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions figures strongly here of course, as does Schick and Vaughn's critical thinking classic How to Think About Weird Things, and the exhaustive scientific anomaly catalogs of William R. Corliss.
What is a Gonzo Scientist?
A gonzo scientist is under no obligation to actually be a trained scientist. Being free agents allows gonzo scientists to avoid pitfalls and influences of the culture of science. These include having to play ball with the academy, begging for funding from military-industrial sources, and submitting to the vice-like grip of the peer-reviewed journals, which rigidly enforce the status quo. The gonzo scientist studies and comments on the system, but is not of it. This follows "the world's greatest paleontologist" David Raup's observation: people outside of a discipline may have fresher perspectives than those people stuck inside of it.
Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist
James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock
"If you have any interest at all in the UFO phenomenon...or you just like reading about the very, very strange belief systems and adventures of very, very strange humans, you?ll find this book a non-preachy, nonjudgmental hoot." --San Diego Union Tribune Sunday
?Fifty years of UFO sightings and alien obsession is amusingly documented??-Publishers Weekly
?At a time when so many UFO books are not worth buying, this autobiography by one of the long-time players in the ufology game is a welcome addition. Your ufological library will not be complete without [it].?-MUFON UFO Journal
This amusing, revealing, and entertaining romp through the confused and controversial history of the UFO craze is a
must for believers and skeptics alike. Shockingly Close to the Truth! is the first and only comprehensive tell-all history
of ufology from two men who have been at the center of this cultlike movement for close to half a century. James W.
Moseley conveys the fun he has had over the years pursuing tall tales and purported evidence of visitors from outer
space. As the creator of the newsletter Saucer Smear?the source on the follies, foibles, fads, and feuds of
ufology?Moseley has the inside scoop on the amazing world of serious UFO sleuths and wigged-out ?saucer
fiends.? His co-author, Karl T. Pflock, has been tracking reports of unidentified flying objects for close to half a
century and has written the most thorough investigation of the Roswell incident ever done.
By Cal Thomas
TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
It's back-to-school time. That means school supplies, clothes, packing lunches and the annual battle over what can be taught.
The Cobb County, Ga., School Board voted unanimously Aug. 22 to consider a pluralistic approach to the origin of the human race, rather than the mandated theory of evolution. The board will review a proposal which says the district "believes that discussion of disputed views of academic subjects is a necessary element of providing a balanced education, including the study of the origin of the species."
Immediately, pro-evolution forces jumped from their trees and started behaving as if someone had stolen their bananas. Apparently, academic freedom is for other subjects. Godzilla forbid! (This is the closest one may get to mentioning "God" in such a discussion lest the ACLU intervene, which it has threatened to do in Cobb County should the school board commit academic freedom. God may be mentioned if His Name modifies "damn.")
What do evolutionists fear? If scientific evidence for creation is academically unsound and outrageously untrue, why not present the evidence and allow students to decide which view makes more sense? At the very least, presenting both sides would allow them to better understand the two views.
Pro-evolution forces say that no "reputable scientist" believes in the creation model. That is demonstrably untrue. No less a pro-evolution source than Science Digest noted in 1979 that, "scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities ... Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science." (Larry Hatfield, "Educators Against Darwin.")
In the last 30 years, there's been a wave of books by scientists who do not hold to a Christian-apologetic view on the origins of humanity but who have examined the underpinnings of evolutionary theory and found them to be increasingly suspect. Those who claim no "reputable scientist" holds to a creation model of the universe must want to strip credentials from such giants as Johann Kepler (1571-1630), the founder of physical astronomy. Kepler wrote, "Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
Werner Von Braun (1912-1977), the father of space science, wrote: "... the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator. I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science."
Who would argue that these and many other scientists were ignorant about science because they believed in God? Contemporary evolutionists who do so are practicing intellectual slander. Anything involving God or his works, they believe, is to be censored because humankind must only study ideas it comes up with apart from any other influence. Such thinking led to the Holocaust, communism and a host of other evils conjured up by the deceitful and wicked mind of uncontrolled man.
There are only two models for the origin of humans: evolution and creation. If creation occurred, it did so just once and there will be no "second acts." If evolution occurs, it does so too slowly to be observed. Both theories are accepted on faith by those who believe in them. Neither theory can be tested scientifically because neither model can be observed or repeated.
Why are believers in one model - evolution - seeking to impose their faith on those who hold that there is scientific evidence that supports the other model? It's because they fear they will lose their influence and academic power base after a free and open debate. They are like political dictators who oppose democracy, fearing it will rob them of power.
The parallel views should be taught in Cobb County, Ga., and everywhere else, and let the most persuasive evidence win.
By SANDY BRUNDAGE
Karen Long (a pseudonym), in her mid-20s, turned to meditation as a way to feel connected. "I wanted to experience that 'oneness with the universe,'" she says. At a nondenominational San Francisco temple, she hooked up with a group of women practicing a hodgepodge of relaxation techniques, drawn from books and discussions. Long spent one to two hours a day meditating over the next three years.
"Then I began hearing voices," she says. "I heard profound messages. The other people thought it was a sign of enlightenment. Some people at the temple told me that I had 'contacted a spiritual guide.' During my normal awake hours, I found myself feeling spacey sometimes."
Unconvinced that aural hallucinations were a sign from God, Long quit meditating. The voices stopped.
Long's experience isn't unique. Researchers have known for 30 years that meditating can have adverse health effects on some people, inducing psychological and physical problems ranging from muscle spasms to hallucinations. But around the Bay Area, eyes seem closed to the data.
SCIENCE is a cumulative, fairly collegial venture. But every so often a maverick, working in self-imposed solitude, bursts forth with a book that aims to set straight the world with a new idea. Some of these grand schemes spring from biology, some from physics, some from mathematics. But what they share is the same unnerving message: everything you know is wrong.
A self-employed British theorist named Julian Barbour recently argued that time doesn't exist, and Frank Tipler, a physicist with a theological bent, offered scientific proof, in "The Physics of Immortality," of an eternal hereafter. People still read Julian Jaynes's imposing 1976 book, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," which pinpoints when humanity first became self-aware, and (also from that era) the work of James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia Hypothesis, holding that the earth - rocks, air and all - is a living, breathing superorganism.
But for sheer audacity - and intellectual salesmanship - it would be hard to beat Stephen Wolfram, whose 1,263-page, self-published manifesto, "A New Kind of Science," was holding its own last week atop Amazon's best-seller chart, along with "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" and "The Nanny Diaries."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/weekinreview/16JOHN.html?ex=1031970953&ei=1&en=4fa8e67e228b0553
Adrian L. Melott
My deliberately provocative title is borrowed from Leonard Krishtalka, who directs the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. Hired-gun "design theorists" in cheap tuxedos have met with some success in getting close to their target: public science education. I hope to convince you that this threat is worth paying attention to. As I write, intelligent design (ID) is a hot issue in the states of Washington and Ohio (see Physics Today, May 2002, page 31*). Evolutionary biology is ID's primary target, but geology and physics are within its blast zone.
Creationism evolves. As in biological evolution, old forms persist alongside new. After the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, creationists tried to get public schools to teach biblical accounts of the origin and diversity of life. Various courts ruled the strategy unconstitutional. Next came the invention of "creation science," which was intended to bypass constitutional protections. It, too, was recognized by the courts as religion. Despite adverse court rulings, creationists persist in reapplying these old strategies locally. In many places, the pressure keeps public school biology teachers intimidated and evolution quietly minimized.
However, a new strategy, based on so-called ID theory, is now at the cutting edge of creationism. ID is different from its forebears. It does a better job of disguising its sectarian intent. It is well funded and nationally coordinated. To appeal to a wider range of people, biblical literalism, Earth's age, and other awkward issues are swept under the rug. Indeed, ID obfuscates sufficiently well that some educated people with little background in the relevant science have been taken in by it. Among ID's diverse adherents are engineers, doctors--and even physicists.
ID advocates can't accept the inability of science to deal with supernatural hypotheses, and they see this limitation as a sacrilegious denial of God's work and presence. Desperately in need of affirmation, they invent "theistic science" in which the design of the Creator is manifest. Perhaps because their religious faith is rather weak, they need to bolster their beliefs every way they can--including hijacking science to save souls and prove the existence of God.
William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher at Baylor University and one of ID's chief advocates, asserts that: " . . . any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient."1 Whether or not they agree with Dembski on this point, most Americans hold some form of religious belief. Using what they call the Wedge Strategy,2 ID advocates seek to pry Americans away from "naturalistic science" by forcing them to choose between science and religion. ID advocates know that science will lose. They portray science as we know it as innately antireligious, thereby blurring the distinction between science and how science may be interpreted.
When presenting their views before the public, ID advocates generally disguise their religious intent. In academic venues, they avoid any direct reference to the Designer. They portray ID as merely an exercise in detecting design, citing examples from archaeology, the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) project, and other enterprises. Cambridge University Press has published one ID book,3 which, the ID advocates repeatedly proclaim, constitutes evidence that their case has real scientific merit. ID creationist publications are nearly absent from refereed journals, and this state of affairs is presented as evidence of censorship.
This censorship, ID advocates argue, justifies the exploitation of public schools and the children in them to circumvent established scientific procedures. In tort law, expert scientific testimony must agree with the consensus of experts in a given field. No such limitation exists with respect to public education. ID advocates can snow the public and school boards with pseudoscientific presentations. As represented by ID advocates, biological evolution is a theory in crisis, fraught with numerous plausible-sounding failures, most of which are recycled from overt creationists. It is "only fair," the ID case continues, to present alternatives so that children can make up their own minds. Yesterday's alternative was "Flood geology." Today's is "design theory."
Fairness, open discussion, and democracy are core American values and often problematic. Unfortunately, journalists routinely present controversies where none exist, or they present political controversies as scientific controversies. Stories on conflicts gain readers, and advertising follows. This bias toward reporting conflicts, along with journalists' inability to evaluate scientific content and their unwillingness to do accuracy checks (with notable exceptions), are among the greatest challenges to the broad public understanding of science.
ID creationism is largely content-free rhetoric. Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University and an ID proponent, argues that many biochemical and biophysical mechanisms are "irreducibly complex."4 He means that, if partially dismembered, they would not work, so they could not have evolved. This line of argument ignores the large number of biological functions that look irreducibly complex, but for which intermediates have been found. One response to Behe's claims consists of the tedious task of demonstrating functions in a possible evolutionary path to the claimed irreducibly complex state. When presented with these paths, Behe typically ignores them and moves on. I admire the people who are willing to spend the time to put together the detailed refutations.5
The position of an ID creationist can be summarized as: "I can't understand how this complex outcome could have arisen, so it must be a miracle." In an inversion of the usual procedure in science, the null hypothesis is taken to be the thing Dembski, Behe, and their cohorts want to prove, albeit with considerable window-dressing. Dembski classifies all phenomena as resulting from necessity, chance, or design. In ruling out necessity, he means approximately that one could not predict the detailed structures and information we see in biological systems from the laws of physics. His reference to chance is essentially equivalent to the creationist use of one of the red herrings introduced by Fred Hoyle:
A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?6Having dispensed with necessity and chance, Dembski concludes that design has been detected on the grounds that nothing else can explain the phenomenon--at least according to him.
Of course, design has no predictive power. ID is not a scientific theory. If we had previously attributed the unexplainable to design, we would still be using Thor's hammer to explain thunder. Nor does ID have any technological applications. It can be fun to ask ID advocates about the practical applications of their work. Evolution has numerous practical technological applications, including vaccine development. ID has none.
As organisms evolve, they become more complex, but evolution doesn't contravene the second law of thermodynamics. Dembski, like his creationist predecessors, misuses thermodynamics. To support the case for ID, he has presented arguments based on a supposed Law of Conservation of Information, an axiomatic law that applies only to closed systems with very restricted assumptions.7 Organisms, of course, are not closed systems.
ID's reach extends beyond biology to physics and cosmology. One interesting discussion concerns the fundamental constants. There is a well-known point of view that our existence depends on a number of constants lying within a narrow range. As one might expect, the religious community has generally viewed this coincidence as evidence in favor of--or at least as a plausibility argument for--their beliefs. The ID creationist community has adopted the fundamental constants as additional evidence for their Designer of Life--apparently not realizing that many fine-tuning arguments are based on physical constants allowing evolution to proceed. Physical cosmology is largely absent from school science standards. Where present, as in Kansas, it is likely to come under ID attack.
I have only scratched the surface here. Don't assume everything is fine in your school system even if it seems free of conflict. Peace may mean that evolution, the core concept of biology, is minimized. No region of the country is immune. Watch out for the guys in tuxedos--they don't have violins in those cases.
Adrian Melott is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He is also a founding board member of Kansas Citizens for Science.