We Need More Inequality, Not Less

From Mises.org (July 15, 2022):

We are bombarded regularly with narratives touting the ravaging effects of income inequality in capitalist societies. For many, inequality is the signature economic story of the twentieth century and must be averted at all costs. But inequality is only problematic when it’s the culmination of corrupt policies that grant favors to privileged groups. In reality, market-driven inequality is the source of unbridled progress.

By vetting the quality of ideas, markets reward talented and insightful individuals for responding to consumer demands. Unlike government-mandated privileges, markets are impartial observers of value. Political connections are unnecessary for players to succeed in the free market; only a willingness to employ one’s talents to serve consumers will reap success.

However, since some people are more talented than others, markets will invariably produce inequality. Yet inequalities are likely to result in positive outcomes due to talented individuals’ ability to improve average people’s living standard. Most people lack the ability to revolutionize society, but luckily for ordinary people, gifted individuals’ pursuits set off economic and technological changes that boost long-term economic growth and create opportunities for average people to join elite circles.

Amazon made Jeff Bezos a wealthy man, but the entity has also transformed thousands of small businesses into lucrative ventures by providing a place for them to market their products to the globe. In fact, through its store, the company has launched forty thousand millionaires. Amazon’s ripple effect is so significant that it has even made its affiliates’ customers widely successful, as Celinne Dacosta points out in her feature on Rasmus and Christian Mikkelsen:

Rasmus and Christian Mikkelsen are twin brothers who quickly became pioneers in the Amazon book and Audiobook publishing space, having collectively released over 150 books. The growing industry motivated the twins to co-found PublishingLife.com, an online education business that helps ordinary people escape their 9-to-5. With the use of the twins’ Amazon book publishing business model, hundreds of people have been able to achieve life-changing results. To date, their students have made a combined $20 million dollars in verified earnings.

Without talent inequality, supercompanies like Amazon and Google would not exist, and there would be fewer outlets for average people to create wealth. Inequality is beneficial to society, because if we were all equal, the world would be remarkably mediocre. Culturally, this world would be bereft of artistic and literary wonders, since people would be incapable of rising to the level of William Shakespeare or Pablo Picasso.

Our understanding of science would equally be warped in the absence of minds like Galileo Galiei, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. Unfortunately, life in this realm of mediocrity would be nasty, brutish, and short. Dying from simple ailments would be the order of the day, considering that society would lack people with the curiosity and talent of men like Louis Pasteur and Alexander Fleming, who revolutionized our approach to treating diseases.

Even more sinister is that the absence of extraordinary people would fail to trigger the benign envy that usually motivates people to improve their circumstances. Without inequality, there can be no progress, since its absence suggests that we are all equally talented. And if this is the case, then the creativity required to advance society cannot emerge.

Never forget that when all men are equally competent, no man can be excellent. As such, a truly equal society is one where we are all similarly mediocre and living a life that’s below humanity’s potential. [source]

I concur. Without inequality, you have a potential for group think.

Life on Venus and Why ‘Settled Science’ Is Often Hot Air

From John Stonestreet on Breakpoint.org (Sept. 28, 2020):

Hope for E.T. springs eternal, despite the definitive lack of evidence for his existence. After decades of peering through telescopes, listening with giant radio antennae, and hurling probes to distant worlds, astronomers have yet to find even a hint of life beyond Earth. So, instead of looking for actual evidence of life, some scientists have begun looking for conditions that could theoretically be associated with life. And when they find that, they hold press conferences.

When scientists discovered that liquid water may once have existed on Mars, it was reported with the excitement we’d expect if probes had found Martian guppies. The discovery of a probable ocean under the ice of a Jovian moon is reported as if alien life forms had already been filmed doing backstrokes in there. Just this year, the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting a distant red dwarf star was reported by most articles as if Kepler-1649c were a perfect potential host for life.

The latest episode of astrobiological hype involves our nearest planetary neighbor. Venus has long been dismissed in the search for extraterrestrial life due to its hellish climate. After all, it’s wrapped in sulfuric acid, with a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead.

Then, just a few weeks ago, an international team of scientists from MIT and Cardiff University published evidence of phosphine gas high in the atmosphere of Venus. On Earth, the only two known sources of phosphine are human industry and microscopic life. So, according to this team, the presence of large quantities of this gas on Venus can only be explained by living things.

The press’s reaction was predictable. Every headline featured the word “life.” Clamor to divert space exploration resources to Venus mounted so quickly that NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine had to issue a statement in which, while praising the insight of these astronomers, he noticeably downplayed Venus, pointing instead to other, more promising missions already on the space agency’s docket and in their budget.

Other critics were more measured: “[T]his can hardly be taken as a biosignature,” one biologist said to the New York Times, “…only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry.” Another professor of planetary sciences who was quoted in the Financial Times sounded even more skeptical: “The scientists can’t think of a way of getting these phosphine levels without it being a byproduct of life,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t another way, and it is a long way from proving that there’s life on Venus.”

So much of the fanfare of stories like this follow a familiar script: scientists rush through the peer-review process and go straight to the press with speculative conclusions. Along the way, “anomalous chemistry” becomes “alien life.” Later, once cooler heads prevail, the same newspapers and websites carrying the fantastical headlines, print a retraction with a less exciting explanation for all that phosphine gas … usually in small print on a back page somewhere.

Of course, proposing and challenging theories is what science is all about. Where science goes wrong is in treating these findings—especially in the early, speculative stages—as if anything is “settled,” much less announcing the speculations as settled conclusion with breathless news reports and demands that NASA rework their budget.

In one of our latest “What Would You Say?” videos, my colleague Brooke McIntire takes on the myth of “settled science.” Proposing and overturning theories is an ongoing part of the process. Even longstanding scientific consensus is vulnerable to new and contrary evidence, and scientists are fallible and biased human beings too. It’s a great video, especially one to share with your kids and grandkids. To watch and share it, just go to whatwouldyousay.org.

None of this means, of course, that life on Venus is impossible. What it does mean is that a pair of papers linking the presence of a particular gas to life doesn’t amount to all the hype it generated. Without more and better evidence, speculation about little E.T.s on Venus is like its sweltering atmosphere … so much hot air. [source]

Science is never settled because unlike God, humans are not omniscience. We are always learning. Seeking the Truth. Always updating our theories with better evidence. Or we should be doing that anyway.

Information Warfare: An Interview With Dr. Robert Malone

From Zachary Emmanuel on Countere.com (June 16, 2022):

There are many moments one could call the definitive end of the 60s—the resignation of Nixon, the Manson murders, Altamont—but one last leprous gasp was heard from the decade’s corpse in February of 2022, when 76-year-old Canadian citizen Neil Young removed his music from Spotify in protest over The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rogan’s transgression? Interviewing Dr. Robert Malone, a renowned pioneer in mRNA vaccine technology and horse farmer, about his concerns over mRNA vaccine technology. The hippie movement is diseased and dead.

……

What sources or institutions can we trust?

As a scientist, I'm trained not to trust anything.

In the medical world, my intellectual home is pathology. Pathology is essentially the quality control discipline for the entire medical care system. That's the nature of an autopsy—not just to ascertain the truth of an individual and their death, but to provide quality assurance for hospitals in the entire medical system. We're trained in pattern recognition, we detect and discern signal from noise, we’re trained to do this in the medical world.

As a scientist, I was rigorously trained to question everything, including myself. [I use] the intellectual structure called The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses [pdf]. The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses was originally published in Science Magazine in the late 1800s. So these are fundamental philosophies of medicine and clinical research that I'm speaking of.

The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses addresses the problem that exists for scientists, which is that we have a tendency to use a system of scientific questioning that we call hypothesis-driven research. The problem with hypothesis-driven research as a tool to discern truth is that it suffers from what's called “strong inference”—the tendency of a scientist to say, “I know the answer, I have a hypothesis, it’s my hypothesis, and I take ownership of it.”

What happens when you do that is that you will bend truth and reality and information to conform with your hypothesis. I don't normally discuss The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses. I'm speaking about this because I know that your magazine [Countere] thinks about these kinds of underlying philosophical issues.

I've been trained to approach the world as a cluster of information. That information is divided into three compartments. One is, there's the Known, the things that we can all agree on: the Earth is generally round, it orbits the sun, gravity exists. These have been divisive at various times in human history, but now we're pretty convinced those are solid truths.

Then, there’s the world of Knowable but Unknown. If we apply the Scientific Method—which is increasingly a new priesthood, but that's another problem—if we rigorously apply the Scientific Method to this world of Knowable but Unknown things, we can gradually pull truth out of that information cloud and place it into the world of the Known.

Then, there's a third compartment of information. This is the Unknown Unknowable. And that's basically the world of faith. That's the intellectual space of things which we are not able to directly perceive or measure, which may or may not exist. And we can't really apply the Scientific Method to this thought space. We can't get data to test hypotheses. This is the world of philosophers and theologians.

I've been trained on the first compartment, the Known. Then there’s this middle compartment of stuff that’s Knowable but Unknown, and that’s the world I’ve always lived in, first as a young academic and then as a scientist and pathologist.

I had thought that I didn't have to apply that kind of intellectual rigor to the world of politics or public policy or economics. I thought that that was all being adequately handled by other experts that were similarly objective. Now we learned that absolutely not the case, and all of us are forced into becoming citizen-scientists-philosophers, whether or not we're trained.

I didn't choose to be one of the “Leaders of the Resistance,” to use a Star Wars metaphor. But having been placed in that position through circumstance—because I was early in speaking out about certain things, and I had a background that enabled me to legitimately question what was going on—I now find myself with the burden of responsibility of that leadership, and it's one that I don't take lightly. Feeling that responsibility results in some self-editing, some self-censorship. There are things that I observed, for instance, about the World Economic Forum that are so far beyond what average people can accept that I have to self-censor. Otherwise, I'll be labeled as a crazy person. [read more]

Science Never Just “Says”…

From Breakpoint.org (Sept. 15, 2022):

Science is supposed to be objective, an undeniable source for truth not subject to fads or fashion. The phrases “scientists say” or “the science is settled” is supposed to inspire hushed awe and open ears. Scientists are supposed to serve as arbiters of truth, at least on questions within their fields of expertise, able to settle disputes and sort fact from fiction.

Many progressives, especially, employ the phrase “the science says” to silence disagreement about everything from climate policy to gender ideology. “The science,” at least in certain circles, is an authority appealed to in order to end debate and dismiss critics of favored policies. Increasingly, the theory that science is a neutral arbiter or source of truth looks shaky, especially when scientific publications openly announce their commitment to ideology over evidence.

Bell Curve author Charles Murray recently tweeted an editorial published by the peer-reviewed journal, Nature Human Behaviour. Murray (who is no stranger to what happens to those who publish politically incorrect findings) highlighted a section in which the editors announced they will be censoring scientific results that do not conform to a favored political narrative. Specifically, the editors reserved the right to amend, refuse, or retract “[c]ontent that is premised upon the assumption of inherent biological, social, or cultural superiority or inferiority of one human group over another based on race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, [or] (dis)ability…”

They also reserved the right to censor content that “undermines—or could be reasonably perceived to undermine—the rights and dignities of an individual or human group” on the basis of any of these categories, as well as to refuse submissions that are “exclusionary of a diversity of voices…”

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how language this sweeping could be used. For instance, studies that find children do best in homes with their biological mother and father could be “reasonably perceived” by the editors of Nature Human Behaviour to suggest the “inherent inferiority” of same-sex parents. Research that finds female athletes are disadvantaged when competing against biological men could “undermine the rights and dignities” of transgender opponents. A study that finds little girls do better in societies that don’t practice female genital mutilation could be censored for its “assumption of inherent…cultural superiority.”

As Murray tweeted, “It is hard to exaggerate the scientific insanity this represents.” Even psychologist and science author Steven Pinker, no friend of Christians or religious conservatives, slammed the journal, tweeting: “Nature Human Behavior is no longer a peer-reviewed scientific journal but an enforcer of a political creed…how do we know articles have been vetted for truth rather than political correctness?”

It’s a good question, and one more people should be asking. Increasingly, the scientific enterprise itself is looking shaky, not only because of political correctness but because the practices on which science depends—peer review and replication—are breaking down.

Consider an analysis published in the journal Science last year in which behavioral economists at the University of California found that the least reliable studies are the ones other scientists cite the most. This team analyzed over 20,000 papers in some of the top psychology, economy, and science journals, and found that “studies that failed to replicate since their publication were on average 153 times more likely to be cited” than studies that did—mostly because their findings were more “interesting.” And this problem was found to be worst in leading journals Nature and Science.

The takeaway here is not that science is bad. On the contrary, science is a gift of God, made possible in how He made the world and His image bearers. Science has made the world immeasurably richer, and the world arguably owes a debt for these riches to Christian assumptions and pioneers. However, scientists and science editors are human and just as vulnerable to bad ideas and dangerous ideologies as other humans.

Reform can happen within a field of knowledge. Thus, science can regain its authority as a source of truth and public good, rather than propaganda. Christians in the sciences have an especially important role to play, as voices protesting ideologically loaded conclusions and as examples of integrity and objectivity. Until that reform happens, anything announced with “the science says,” especially on intensely politically charged issues, should be greeted with suspicion. As Pinker said, we have a right to know whether their claims have been vetted for truth rather than political correctness. [source]

Sadly, science will always be politicized by the ruling class as long as it can be used to increase their power.

Democracy Can Be Trusted Because Citizens Can Be Trusted

From The Public Discourse.com (Mar. 7, 2023):

In the wake of disappointment that the “red wave” never materialized after the 2022 midterm elections, some prominent conservatives expressed skepticism about democracy, citing historical failures to end slavery and abortion, suggesting that the culture war has been lost due to the electorate’s embrace of the tenets of the left, and even attacking universal suffrage.

Frustration at the midterm results is understandable, but critiques of democracy tend to be shortsighted. After all, the alternative to democracy is always some form of elitism—which hardly has an unblemished historical record. Furthermore, I doubt that the midterm results really mean that the average American now believes in the values of the hard left (abortion on demand, open borders, CRT, gender ideology, queer theory, anti-Americanism and all the rest). For example, Alexandra DeSanctis has persuasively argued in these pages that pro-life legislation fared poorly in the states not because voters are actually pro-choice, but because conservative leaders have failed to articulate a clear, coherent, commonsensical pro-life program that they could get behind. I suspect that a similar case can be made for the other issues mentioned above. So the problem isn’t that voters have pernicious views and can’t be trusted; rather, elected officials have offered them poor choices.

Therefore, it would be foolhardy to discard democracy for elitism. In fact, democracy is superior to elitism, however bad the results of any given election may seem. Democracy, construed properly, safeguards against tyranny, and it recognizes the fact that most voters’ moral sense can be trusted.

Wallace Mendelson, a late friend and mentor, was fond of saying that “no man is really fit to govern another.” Every human being is endowed with reason, and knows his circumstances and needs better than anyone else does—and most people tend to have sound moral judgment (more on that later). Mendelson’s simple statement contains the moral basis of democracy: people ought to have a say in the decisions that shape their lives. In a similar spirit, Abraham Kuyper declared: “No man has the right to rule over another man, otherwise such a right necessarily, and immediately, becomes the right of the strongest. … Authority over men cannot arise from men.” Democracy, when it’s working properly, allows men to rule themselves.

Our democracy in particular—which perhaps is more accurately called a constitutional republic—keeps total power from falling into any one person’s hands. And Lord Acton told us why when declaring that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Fallen human nature ensures that those who wield power will almost always succumb to pride. Democracy helps keep a check on the pride that elite rule fosters in people.

Elites have always argued that ordinary people are incapable of governing themselves. But this argument about capability misses the moral basis for democracy mentioned above: however much of a mess ordinary people may make of self-government, the fact remains that “entitlement to rule cannot be taken from one on the basis of the IQ, experience, knowledge or expertise of another.” Again, every person is rational by nature and should have a say in the laws and rules that govern his life.

Epistemic Democracy and Condorcet’s Jury Theorem

One political thinker, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet, offers a compelling defense of democracy that can instruct those today who are becoming increasingly disillusioned with democracy. Condorcet was a distinguished mathematician, inspector general of the Paris Mint under Louis XVI, member of the Legislative Assembly and National Convention, and leading critic of the French Constitution of 1793—for which he was branded a traitor and lost his life. In 1785, he published his Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions. The Essay put forward the “Jury Theorem,” which examines how increasing electorate (“jury”) sizes affects democratic decision making.

Condorcet was an “epistemic democrat.” That is, he believed that democracy cannot be justified on purely procedural grounds. Epistemic democracy presupposes that there are truths in politics, and that social rules are justified based on the likelihood that their application can be trusted to produce good (“true”) policies or outcomes. Another way of putting it is to say that democratic rules are not (and cannot be) neutral with respect to competing conceptions of the good, as contemporary liberal ideology holds. For Condorcet, both moral relativism and proceduralism are unworkable.

In a nutshell, the Condorcet Jury Theorem states that the probability of a group of voters reaching a decision that is in accord with the truth (the “right” decision) is derived from the probability that each voter in that group reaches the right decision. So if the probability of each voter reaching the right decision is greater than 1/2, then increasing the size of the group will increase the probability that the group will choose rightly. The more the group grows, the larger this probability becomes. On the other hand, if the odds of each voter picking the right decision are smaller than 1/2,  then the larger the electorate becomes, the lower the chances the group will decide rightly.

Recently, Condorcet’s result has been generalized beyond majority rule to plurality voting and to situations in which most—not necessarily all—voters are likely to choose “true” policies. So it is not necessary that every voter’s individual probability of choosing rightly be greater than 1/2, only that the average voter’s is. The math still works. The probability of a correct choice increases dramatically as the size of the electorate increases. [read more]

Which Theory of Evolution? Toppling the Idol of “Settled Science”

From Breakpoint.org (Aug. 10, 2023):

In 1973, evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote that “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution.” Almost 50 years later, an increasing number of scientists are asking whether evolution makes any sense in light of what we now know from biology.

A recent long-form essay in The Guardian signals just how urgent the problem has become for the most dominant theory in the history of the sciences. In it, author Stephen Buranyi gives voice to a growing number of scientists who think it’s time for a “new theory of evolution.” 

For a long time, descent with slight modifications and natural selection have been “the basic” (and I’d add, unchallengeable) “story of evolution.” Organisms change, and those that survive pass on traits. Though massaged a bit to incorporate the discovery of DNA, the theory of evolution by natural selection has dominated for 150 years, especially in biology. The “drive to survive” is credited as the creative force behind all the artistry and engineering we see in nature. 

“The problem,” writes Buranyi, is that “according to a growing number of scientists,” this basic story is “absurdly crude and misleading.” For one thing, Darwinian evolution assumes much of what it needs to be explained. For instance, consider the origin of light-sensitive cells that rearranged to become the first eye, or the blood vessels that became the first placenta. How did these things originate? According to one University of Indiana biologist, “we still do not have a good answer. The classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time,” he says, “has so far fallen flat.”

This scientific doubt about Darwin has been simmering for a while. In 2014, an article in the journal Nature, jointly authored by eight scientists from diverse fields, argued that evolutionary theory was in need of a serious rethink. They called their proposed rethink the “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” and a year later, the Royal Society in London held a conference to discuss it. 

Along with Darwinian blind spots like the origin of the eye, the Extended Synthesis seeks to deal with the discovery of epigenetics, an emerging field that studies inherited traits not mediated by DNA. Then there are the rapid mutations that evade natural selection, a fossil record that appears to move in “short, concentrated bursts” (or “explosions”), and something called “plasticity,” which is the ability we now know living things have to adapt physically to their environments in a single generation without genetically evolving.

These discoveries—some recent, others long ignored by mainstream biology—challenge natural selection as the “grand theory” of life. All of them hint that living things are greater marvels and mysteries than we ever imagined. And, unsurprisingly, all of these discoveries have been controversial.

The Guardian article describes how Royal Society scientists and Nobel laureates alike boycotted the conference, attacking the extended synthesis as “irritating” and “disgraceful,” and its proponents as “revolutionaries.” As Gerd Müller, head of the department of theoretical biology at the University of Vienna helpfully explained, “Parts of the modern synthesis are deeply ingrained in the whole scientific community, in funding networks, positions, professorships. It’s a whole industry.”

Such resistance isn’t too surprising for anyone who’s been paying attention. Any challenges to the established theory of life’s origins, whether from Bible-believing scientists or intelligent design theorists, have long been dismissed as religion in a lab coat.

The habit of fixing upon a dogma and calling it “settled science” is just bad science that stunts our understanding of the world. It is a kind of idolatry that places “science” in the seat of God, appoints certain scientists as priests capable of giving answers no fallible human can offer, and feigns certainty where real questions remain. The great irony is that this image of scientist-as-infallible-priest makes them seem like the caricature of medieval monks charging their hero Galileo with heresy for his dissent from the consensus.

As challenges to Darwin mount, we should be able to articulate why “settled science” makes such a poor god. And we should encourage the science and the scientists challenging this old theory-turned-dogma and holding it to its own standards. After all, if Darwinian evolution is as unfit as it now seems, it shouldn’t survive. [source]

You can’t call quantum physics settled science. Physicists believe it works but there is no settled theory on how it works.

What is a miracle? Here are 7 characteristics

From Claudia Kalmikov on Christian Post.com (Aug. 11, 2023):

The greatest miracle that ever occurred happened in the very first verse of the Bible — Genesis one. God created the heavens and the earth. If God could speak the universe into existence, create the universe Ex-Nihilo — out of nothing, could He part the Red Sea? Can He raise a man from the dead? Of course! That’s child’s play for Him! If God exists, and he does, then miracles are possible. There have been countless accounts of them.

What is a miracle?

Richard Purtill, a philosophy professor at Western Washington University, defines a miracle this way:

“A miracle is an event brought about by the power of God that is, a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history.”

A miracle is:

1. Supernatural

Miracles are supernatural events. Not events brought about by human power. True miracles are brought about by God.

2. Immediate

When Jesus healed people, the results were always immediate. He didn’t say to the paralytic, “You’ll be well in a few days.” No. He said, “Pick up your mat and walk.” He called Lazarus to come out of his grave and he did…immediately. To the woman who touched His robe, He said, “Your faith has healed you,” and she was healed immediately. When Peter cut off the ear of Malchus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus healed his ear immediately. Each of Jesus’ healings was immediate.

3. Rare and unpredictable

A miracle by definition is an exception. Because of this, we can’t expect, predict, or demand one. We can’t predict the activity of God. Miracles are only due to His will.

4. Can’t be tested by scientific means

Miracles can’t be investigated by the usual scientific methods since we can’t control the variable and perform experiments. Science measures and evaluates the natural world. Not the supernatural world.

5. Promotes good and glorifies God

A miracle will always promote good and never promote evil, because God is good. Miracles are never for show. They have the distinct purpose of glorifying God and pointing man to Him.

6. More than astonishing

A magician can perform an astonishing act that can be reduced to natural means — sleight-of-hand. But a miracle is a rare, supernatural event that demonstrates divine power.

7. Not a contradiction

God cannot do the impossible or illogical. But there are some events that are physically impossible for humans, but not physically or logically contradictory for God. For example, it’s physically impossible for a man to walk on water. But there’s nothing self-refuting about this idea for God, and He can do it.

In light of the above information, it is necessary to re-evaluate events that occur that may be God’s provision, but not a miracle. For example, my husband was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) one year ago. He went through chemotherapy and had many hurdles to cross before he could receive the bone-marrow transplant necessary to save his life. We, and thousands along with us, prayed before each hurdle to be a success for him. Each one turned out to work in his favor. He had his bone-marrow transplant last November and is now cancer free and thriving. Was his healing a miracle? No, because it was not immediate. He was healed over a period of months. However, with all of the hurdles he had to cross, and all the tests, and procedures, that could have gone wrong, but went perfectly, we know without a doubt that his healing was certainly God’s provision.

We give glory and thanks to God every day for healing him. [read more]

Good info to know especially when the Apocalypse comes.

Science Has a Major Fraud Problem. Here’s Why Government Funding Is the Likely Culprit

From FEE.org (Jan. 9, 2024):

President Biden’s 2024 budget includes over $210 billion directed toward federal research and development, an approximately $9 billion increase from 2023 funding. That might not sound particularly bad—after all, who doesn’t like science and innovation?

But, although seemingly noble, the billions pumped into the US government’s National Science Foundation don’t always translate into finding cures for debilitating diseases, or developing groundbreaking technologies.

In recent years, although technology and peer-review techniques have become more widespread, fraud has remained a consistent issue. The problem has gotten so out of hand that world-class researchers and medical ethics analysts believe the public should be aware of the widespread inaccuracies plaguing medicine.

Dr. Richard Smith, the former editor-in-chief of the BMJ and cofounder of the Committee on Medical Ethics (COPE), details,

Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Monash Health, they would be wrong. As I’ve been concerned about research fraud for 40 years, I wasn’t as surprised as many would be by this figure, but it led me to think that the time may have come to stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported, and assume that the research is fraudulent until there is some evidence to support it having happened and been honestly reported.

Independent analysis done by J. B. Carlisle confirms Dr. Smith’s suspicions. As Carlisle analyzed dozens of government-funded control trials, he found a staggering 44% contained false data. These findings are swept under the rug by most mainstream news outlets, which is a problem in itself. If government-funded research produces such sloppy results, the taxpayers funding it at least deserve to know the outcomes of the experiments they paid for.

Getting to the Root of the Problem

To understand why government-funded research tends to be so inaccurate, it’s crucial to look at history and remember how government involvement in research started.

It all ties back to the National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the first government agencies built for funding science. In the late 1940s, one of the most outspoken supporters of the NSF was Democratic Senator Harley Kilgore. His motivations were clear: the NSF was to provide the government with a pool of educated researchers that could be used for strategic purposes during the Cold War. Scientific inquisition was never the primary purpose of the NSF.

In addition to this, the system of “checks and balances” in scientific research is completely off-kilter. Private journals risk damage to their reputation if it is revealed that they have published fraudulent research. Privately funded journals compete to be the best among pools of hundreds of other publications. To maintain legitimacy in the eyes of future researchers and funders, publishing high quality research is in the private journal’s self-interest.

Academic institutions funded by governments, on the other hand, are motivated to shield their researchers, as researchers play a crucial role in securing substantial grant funding for the institution, often reaching into the millions of dollars. Government exists in a playing field outside the private sector—they aren’t competing against other specialized journals. Because they aren’t specialized and fund a wide array of projects, they can often afford to let “a few bad apples” through (unfortunately, at the expense of taxpayers).

The source of funding also undoubtedly (at the very least subconsciously) sways the research outcomes. There are several ways the government introduces bias into research. For one, the state often ignores certain scientific queries, forcing researchers to adopt different hypotheses or study different questions to gain any funding. Without any market forces guiding research and development, study objectives start aligning more with the interests of bureaucrats and less with the interests of patients.

Government agencies also don’t want to fund proposals that contradict the agency’s political ideas. If the research’s outcome even slightly threatens the government’s power, funding is likely to be cut off, often for extended periods. These outcomes are clearest when it comes to funding regarding the social sciences and economics, but also occur with life science research. 34% percent of scientists receiving federal funding have acknowledged engaging in research misconduct to align research with their funder’s political and economic agenda. Moreover, a mere 24% of these researchers have disclosed these ethically questionable research practices to their supervisors.

This incentive structure also explains why there is a limited amount of research into the accuracy of government-funded research. Many researchers are simply too afraid of the funding and reputational consequences that come with revealing problems with government funding. When there is research into federal funding bias, it is often concentrated on very specific and politically divisive topics (such as the use of stem cells). A team of researchers at the CATO Institute found just 44 Google Scholar articles from 2010-2014 that dealt with this type of government bias influencing research.

The Private-Sector Alternative

The government’s overpowering role in science simultaneously crowds out private sources of funding. Despite this, there is some good news: the private sector is getting more and more involved in scientific funding by the day.

Globally, 70% of science is financed privately. Charities like the American Cancer Foundation and Howard Hughes Medical Institute collectively contribute billions of dollars to spurring innovation in their respective fields.

For example, renowned neurologist Dr. Helen Mayberg’s research into deep brain stimulation as a depression treatment wasn’t supported by government grants. Instead, private sources funded her research. Yet, her discoveries led to additional trials and eventually breakthroughs in the way depression is treated.

Most Americans treat government-funded science as the holy grail of scientific research, but it truly isn’t. Without proper market signals guiding the direction of research, millions of tax dollars are lost, and thousands of hours of scientific research are wasted. As Milton Friedman explained regarding government funding of science, “The scientific ability of really able people is being diverted from the goals they would like to pursue themselves to the goals of government officials.” It’s up to the next generation to decide who they trust more: scientists, or the state? [source]

Why atheists and Christians should never trust themselves

From Christian Post.com (July 14, 2023):

It is purely natural for man to trust himself. He assumes his ideas and conclusions are reliable. But what about when man gets it wrong? Every day we hear stories of people who misled themselves into making some awful decisions.

Christians and atheists are similar in this sense. People in both groups can be and have been wrong on multiple issues in their personal lives. They advanced positions that turned out to be completely inaccurate or engaged in behavior that is unseemly.

Why do such mistakes happen so frequently? The answer is simple. Atheists rely solely upon their fallible brains, while Christians at times pursue a course that flows from their sinful nature rather than from the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

Let’s start with atheists. John Lennox is a Northern Irish mathematician, bioethicist and Christian apologist who said in an interview:

“As a scientist, the very bottom line for me is that atheism doesn’t even give me a reason to trust the mind with which I do science because it tells me that the mind with which I’m doing science is essentially equal to the brain. And the brain is the end product of a mindless, unguided process. Well, no scientist I have ever asked would trust a computer if he or she thought it was the end product of a mindless, unguided process. So, there’s a big black hole at the bottom of atheism’s thinking when it comes to science.”

And yet most atheists continue to overlook the irrationality of their approach. You see, it is only reasonable to trust your mind if an intelligent Creator produced it. Otherwise, it is utter foolishness to place full confidence in a brain that simply evolved from a mindless process.

Atheists pick and choose which ideas and outcomes to rely upon and which ideas and outcomes to summarily reject. They assume God does not exist and they reject every supernatural claim. In the end, they stake their immortal soul on a faulty assumption rather than on an intelligent investigation of the facts surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Check out the blog post by Rachel Boulos titled, “23 Mind-Blowing Facts About Jesus’ Death and Resurrection You Might Not Know.”)

John Lennox stated: “Of course, I reject atheism because I believe Christianity to be true. But I also reject it because I am a scientist. How could I be impressed with a worldview that undermines the very rationality we need to do science? Science and God mix very well. It is science and atheism that do not mix.”

C.S. Lewis observed:

“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so, I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.” 

[read more]

Profound insight.

Scientists should report results with intellectual humility. Here’s how

From Sujata Gupta on Science News.org (Oct. 28, 2021):

In the children’s chapter book series Zoey and Sassafras, which my own two kids adore, young Zoey has to work out how to save magical creatures with mysterious injuries and ailments. Zoey’s scientist mother teaches her the basics of running an experiment: Observe, hypothesize, test and conclude. Throughout the series, Zoey learns that failed experiments, while disappointing, are simply part of the scientific process.

Schoolteachers similarly encourage most budding scientists to be open to making mistakes and refining ideas — to be like Zoey. In theory, then, this humble thinking should remain foundational as students become established scientists. Yet, in an October 28 commentary in Nature Human Behaviour, psychologists Rink Hoekstra and Simine Vazire argue that the practice of science, particularly the process of publishing findings in scientific journals, is far from this “tell it as it is” style. It’s more arrogant.

“I think implicitly we are taught to brag about our results,” says Hoekstra, of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Hoekstra and Vazire, of the University of Melbourne in Australia, propose scientists should be willing to acknowledge that they might be wrong, what psychologists call “intellectual humility.” This humble approach extends beyond transparency, the authors write. “Owning our limitations … entails a commitment to foregrounding them, taking them seriously, and accepting their consequences.”

Psychologists have shown that intellectual humility helps people learn for the sake of learning, has the potential to reduce political polarization and encourages people to interrogate news stories for misinformation.

A humble approach could also help restore faith in the social sciences. The field has been in a state of crisis for about a decade as researchers have repeatedly tried and failed to replicate original research. That ongoing crisis has prompted soul-searching among many scientists. In 2016, personality psychologist Julia Rohrer launched the Loss-of-Confidence Project, which asked researchers to submit work they no longer believed in, along with a detailed explanation for their changed position. While publicly discrediting one’s own work is retroactive, intellectual humility in science would be proactive — a way for researchers to avoid common pitfalls from the get-go, says Rohrer, of the University of Leipzig in Germany.

Because scientists’ careers often hinge on publishing research papers in top-tier journals, Hoekstra says, they can feel pressure to exaggerate their findings. Scientists might hype the novelty of a study, tinker with statistics to obscure uncertainties in the data, gloss over failed experiments or imply that theoretical results are closer to real-life application than they actually are. Problematically, Hoekstra says, the publication process rewards this behavior. Journal editors and paper reviewers who green-light studies tend to prioritize clear narratives over more nuanced ones.

Change needs to start with those gatekeepers, Hoekstra and Vazire argue. Reviewers especially can contribute to the solution without risking their careers. “Reviewing is one of the few positions in academia where you can freely say whatever you want,” Hoekstra says.

Below Hoekstra explains to Science News how each component of a scientific paper — from the abstract that sets up the work to the discussion that points to conclusions — can be imbued with intellectual humility. [read more]

Wisdom follows humility. No-one is omniscience. Scientists (and everyone for that matter) should be curious. Always learning. Always correcting their theories to fit their observations. They should also know their limitations and biases as much as possible. Own their mistakes and move on. Don’t politicize science either. Learning about God’s universe is a journey. Enjoy it.

Scarcity Is about More Than the Market

From Robert Bellafiore on The Public Discourse.com (July 10, 2023):

Behind the dry equations and supply and demand curves of modern economics lies an entire anthropology. Humans, it posits, are fundamentally acquisitive beings, seeking to satisfy infinite wants in a finite world, directing our limited resources toward the satisfaction of unlimited demands. As economist Lionel Robbins put it, “We have been turned out of Paradise. . . . Everywhere we turn, if we choose one thing we must relinquish others. Scarcity of means to satisfy given ends is an almost ubiquitous condition of human behavior.”

But however intuitive this view feels today—it really does seem correct when I have to decide whether my paycheck will go toward attending a concert, or seeing a movie, or buying a new economics book—it’s far from the only way to conceive of humans and their environment. Modern economists’ conception of scarcity has such a monopoly on our imagination, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl Wennerlind argue in Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis, only because we’ve forgotten the many competing approaches out there. By revealing alternative ways of thinking about scarcity, abundance, and growth over the last 500 years, Jonsson and Wennerlind—intellectual historians at the University of Chicago and Barnard College, Columbia University—hope to show how “scarcity itself can and should be liberated from its connotations in modern economics.”

carcity offers a crash course on the many musings that philosophers, artists, theologians, and economists have had on the topic. And despite their hostility to modern economics, Jonsson and Wennerlind reveal one deep similarity between it and rival accounts: in every case, the seemingly mundane topic of scarcity raises some of the most foundational questions one can ask. Jonsson and Wennerlind’s historical investigations helpfully illustrate how tawdry matters of getting and spending have always been underlaid by questions about man, nature, technology, and their relations.

Unlimited Desire vs. Limited Nature

Jonsson and Wennerlind identify two broad schools of thought that have taken shape across the centuries. The Cornucopian ideology calls for “an active mastery of nature together with a dynamic and expansive notion of desire.” It optimistically envisions people’s ability to reap the bounties of nature so that it can provide for our many, indeed insatiable, wants, and it sees the expansion of knowledge and technology as the surest way to do so. Such figures as philosophers Francis Bacon and David Hume and economists Adam Smith and Paul Samuelson celebrated people’s ability to push back the boundaries of ignorance and poverty and advance learning and commerce for, as Bacon put it, “the relief of man’s estate.” For them, science enables us to uncover nature’s secrets, while technology and trade allow us to put those secrets to good use, raising our standard of living and continually improving our lot.

In the other corner is the Finitarian ideology, which emphasizes “the limits to human power over nature and the need for constraint and moderation of human desires.” The Finitarians generally see nature as altogether more mysterious, but also more fragile, than the Cornucopians do—a subject more fitting for stewardship than for domination. Because nature’s resources can be depleted or disturbed, society must learn to curb its wants, aim for “good enough” rather than “always more,” and thereby strike a stable balance between means and ends. From the Romantic meditations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Ruskin, through the bleak visions of David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, and culminating in the warnings of modern environmentalists such as E. F. Schumacher, Finitarians tend to be a more dour bunch, exhorting us to keep our demands in check, and cautioning against the hope that new technologies will solve perennial problems.

Are these groupings simply another way of listing capitalism’s champions and critics? Not quite; for Jonsson and Wennerlind, scarcity forces us to think through questions far more expansive than simply whether free markets are good or bad—for example, whether man is a part of, or above, nature, and how the deployment of technology transforms both. Theologians such as Thomas More and François Fénelon and novelists such as Daniel Defoe and Joris-Karl Huysmans had weightier questions on the mind than how exactly government should or shouldn’t regulate economy. Scarcity’s exposition of such a wide array of thinkers compellingly conveys the range of thought given to matters that are today cordoned off in the economists’ province (although the summaries are sometimes given too summarily—can one really learn anything about Martin Heidegger in two pages?).

Scarcity also reveals many surprising ironies and affinities that a mere debate over capitalism would obscure, such as the tension between thinkers’ premises and their predictions. The Cornucopians might celebrate the ability to achieve our many desires, but only because they start from bleak convictions about how, in our postlapsarian state, we can never be satisfied. For them, one choice always forecloses another—just look at the glee with which economists will ruin a good meal with the reminder that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The pessimistic Finitarians, in contrast, while somberly calling attention to our, and nature’s, limitations, just as often find themselves daydreaming, as do Karl Marx and Charles Fourier, of the frabjous day when we will attain all we need, and want no more than that. [read more]

Making Mice with Two Fathers: Science Is Never Value Neutral

From John Stonestreet on Breakpoint.org (Mar. 30, 2023):

In the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, God states, after examining humanity’s ambitious but misguided building project, that “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” His reason for confusing their languages and halting their project was not anger. Rather, God states that working together like this, humans can achieve, at least here on Earth, a godlike power. Things that seem impossible can become possible, and for fallen people, that’s a problem. Inevitably, like the builders of Babel, humans use their incredible capacity to “make a name for ourselves” to do what should not be done and to rebel against God’s design and purpose for His world.

I thought immediately of Babel when I saw headlines this month about a team of scientists who created living baby mice with two biological fathers. The Japanese team behind this seemingly impossible feat described their work in the journal Nature.

After harvesting skin cells from the tails of two male mice, they converted them to “induced pluripotent stem cells,” cells able to differentiate into any type of tissue in the body. The scientists treated these stem cells with a drug that transformed them into female cells. These, in turn, produced functional eggs that the team fertilized and implanted into female mice. Eventually—after a 99% failure rate—these pregnancies resulted in a few live mice pups that had two genetic fathers and no mother. The pups survived, grew, and even reproduced normally.

As the Associated Press put it, saying the quiet part out loud, “This raises the distant possibility of using the same technique for people.” The scientists behind the project got more specific, remarking that their work might “provide a template” for male same-sex couples “to have biological children, while circumventing the ethical and legal issues of donor eggs.”

Let’s put aside for a moment the terrifyingly laughable idea that there are “ethical issues” with donor eggs but not with eliminating mothers altogether in reproduction. Science writers have long predicted this breakthrough as a dream come true for those who view normal reproductive biology as something to be “circumvented.” Even if the huge failure rate and serious inefficiency of the method means that it is likely many years from being an available option for humans, the proof of concept is there, as is a whole set of social incentives. It is, apparently, possible to produce live offspring from two individuals of the same sex in mammalian species.

At a moment like this, it is tempting to quote the late science fiction author Michael Crichton, or at least the film adaptation of his novel Jurassic Park. In that movie, Jeff Goldblum’s character famously observes, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” His point is simply that science can only answer “how” questions. It can never give you a “why.” It can discover techniques but never teach ethics.

That does not mean, however, that science or scientific breakthroughs are value neutral. In his book The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis wrote these immortal lines:

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

He was writing specifically here about Subjectivism, a movement that sought to eliminate value judgements from education. They also apply eerily well to the Babel-like project of eliminating one sex from reproduction. The question we must ask is simple: Why? Why are we investigating this technology, what is its therapeutic purpose, and will it make us more human, or less?

In theory, we can now bring human children into existence who have no biological mothers. Should we? Are mothers incidental to the life of a child, easily replaced by a “second father” in order to accommodate the sexual and relational wants of adults, or are they essential? We can ask the same of fathers. In short, does human life and the human family have a definition, an identity, a given structure? Or are they infinitely malleable, putty in the gloved hands of scientists who are so preoccupied with whether they can, they don’t stop to ask if they should? 

None of these are scientific questions. And to be clear, they apply to all kinds of social, legal, and cultural innovations about marriage too. Every time we reinvent, replace, expand, or otherwise redefine marriage and parenting, kids suffer. Yet, the same wrong answers to these questions are guiding scientific projects to manipulate cells with the goal of fundamentally altering human reproduction.

By denying any God-given “ought” for sex and procreation, we are building a new scientific Babel. Through the shared language and technique of science, we may indeed prove that nothing is impossible for us. But as Lewis observed, we may find that in the process we have engineered away our humanity, replacing the love and complementarity our biology signifies with cold, cynical technique. Lewis called these efforts “the abolition of man.” In light of the increasingly likely possibility of children without mothers, we may as well re-label it “the abolition of woman.” [source]

Why do this experiment? Other than to prove, at least theoretically, that same-sex couples can have a baby. But was it really successful experiment after it failed 99% of the time even with a chemical added? I would think not. There’s a reason the experiment failed: It’s unnatural.

Any same-sex couple contemplating doing this Frankenstein-like experiment in the future with themselves is either stupid or evil. Maybe, both. Besides, who knows what kind of biological issues those adult mice would have in the future.

It’s too bad those Japanese scientists couldn’t have done experiments to benefit humanity.

The experiment was stupid and a complete waste of time and resources.

The Institutionalized Minds of Most Americans

From Kevin Portteus on AM Greatness.com (Apr. 2, 2023):

One doesn’t have to be in prison to be institutionalized, however. Years ago, as a junior faculty member, I helped a young woman write her undergraduate honors thesis. She was a chemistry major, but the honors program required that her topic be interdisciplinary, so she chose to write on government funding of science in America. During this process I tried to impress upon her some of the obvious problems with our current system of government-funded science, and to get her thinking about alternatives. I assumed, as a newer faculty member, I’d find a receptive audience at a place like Hillsdale College.

How naïve I was. She could not fathom a world without government-funded scientific research. It was incomprehensible to her that “science” could happen in the absence of massive government funding and pervasive government supervision. Government funding is how “science” happens. For a scientific researcher, especially an academic one, obtaining a government grant from an entity like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health is critical, both to one’s research agenda and to one’s prestige and career advancement. Universities see it as a marker that one is important and doing important work.

Medical professionals of all kinds are dependent on state licenses to ply their trades. Doctors and pharmacists are at the mercy of state pharmacy boards, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration when it comes to prescribing or dispensing pharmaceuticals. These people are practitioners, not academics or intellectuals, so when some government entity tells them that “the science is settled,” they have neither the time nor the inclination nor the resources to challenge the assertion. They’ve been conditioned to accept such assertions as orthodoxy, a conditioning that is reinforced by the possibility of losing their government-issued professional licenses. So your doctor leans on you to get the COVID vaccine, and your pharmacist won’t fill a legal prescription for Ivermectin because the CDC and his state’s board of pharmacy told him it is “horse dewormer.”

The entire modern state in America is one vast engine for institutionalizing its subjects. That state is so huge and so pervasive that essentially everyone is somehow dependent on it, whether they know it or not, whether they’d like to be or not. We depend on the state for everything from government jobs and student loans to occupational licenses and the use of public resources. All of these foster the dependence, and therefore the subservience, of the recipient on the state. A rancher must remain in the good graces of the Bureau of Land Management. Raytheon, and all its employees, are ruined if they don’t get a steady stream of Defense Department contracts. Radio and TV broadcasters need government permission in the form of an FCC license in order to work. To retain my access to federal student aid, my parents had to hand over sensitive tax information to the Department of Education. Failure to comply could result in loss of access to government largesse, with all the attending consequences.

The significance of the pervasiveness of government involvement in the scientific and medical fields goes far beyond the threat of loss of benefits and the promise of more benefits. For those who are enmeshed in it, the government-scientific complex is natural, beneficent, and indispensable. It predisposes them to believe that anyone who is outside the complex is not credible, and anyone who challenges it is a crank, a charlatan, or a conspiracy theorist. It fosters the mentality that any other arrangement is inconceivable. Defending that complex is thus a sine qua non of their very being, even when that complex is exposed as incompetent, corrupt, and even unscientific. The system is science.

Medical and scientific experts have, in the last couple of years, been accused of being stupid, crazy, or downright evil. Whatever is true in individual circumstances (Dr. Fauci, call your office), at the macro level these allegations miss the mark. They’re just . . . just institutionalized. [read more]

Another word for “institutionalized” is “conditioned.” That’s how the Ruling Class wants the state of mind of the Commoners—dependent on the gov’t for everything. That’s how they derive their power.

Excerpts from “2025 Mandate for Leadership” Part 4

Under the next President, the Department of Energy should end the Biden Administration’s unprovoked war on fossil fuels, restore America’s energy independence, oppose eyesore windmills built at taxpayer expense, and respect the right of Americans to buy and drive cars of their own choosing, rather than trying to force them into electric vehicles and eventually out of the driver’s seat altogether in favor of self-driving robots.

………..

Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.*

……….

Project assignments in which students must defend the false idea that America is systemically racist, the theory is actively disrupting the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness. As such, lawmakers should design legislation that prevents the theory from spreading discrimination. For K-12 systems under their jurisdiction, federal lawmakers should adopt proposals that say no individual should receive punishment or benefits based on the color of their skin. Furthermore, school officials should not require students or teachers to believe that individuals are guilty or responsible for the actions of others based on race or ethnicity.

…………….

The next conservative Administration should prioritize energy and science dominance to ensure that Americans have abundant, affordable, and reliable energy; create good-paying jobs; support domestic manufacturing and technology leadership; and strengthen national security.

Source: "Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership" [pdf]

*President Trump wants this too.

James Clerk Maxwell: Cultivating the Mind of Christ

From Breakpoint.org (Jan. 4, 2023):

To be Christian, especially in this confusing cultural moment, requires the intentional cultivation of our minds. An exemplary model of someone who took this calling seriously is James Clerk Maxwell.

The only two physicists most people could name, if at all, are Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. However, they should know James Clerk Maxwell, whose work was foundational for many of the most important discoveries of 20th-century physics.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1831, Maxwell entered the University of Edinburgh at age 16. When he didn’t find his studies all that demanding, he dedicated his spare time to self-constructed chemical, electric, and magnetic devices, especially with polarized prisms and gelatins. This work led to two scientific papers which he completed at age 18.

In 1850, Maxwell went to the University of Cambridge. While there, he underwent an evangelical conversion. He remained an evangelical Presbyterian for the rest of his life, eventually becoming an elder in the Church of Scotland.

He graduated from Trinity College in 1854 as one of the top two mathematicians. Although he was made a Fellow of Trinity in 1855, he instead accepted a professorship at Marischal College in Aberdeen. While there, he won the Adams Prize from King’s College Cambridge for demonstrating that Saturn’s rings could be neither solids nor liquids, but rather made of smaller particles that orbited Saturn independently. In the 1980s the spacecraft Voyager confirmed the theory in a flyby of Saturn. At the time he wrote the paper, it was considered the finest example of an application of mathematics to physics in history.

In 1860, Maxwell took a position at King’s College London, before moving on to Cambridge in 1871. Soon, Maxwell’s work changed the field of physics. For example, he showed that light was a form of electromagnetic radiation and worked out key concepts describing electromagnetic behavior. That work was later simplified into four partial differential equations that paved the way for Einstein’s theory of special relativity. He also produced the first light-fast color photograph (in 1861), and he proposed a system for defining physical quantities, which today is known as dimensional analysis.

Maxwell’s faith was very important to his understanding of science and put him at odds with most of his contemporaries. The dominant philosophy of the day among scientists was positivism, which taught that the only foundation for knowledge was empirical observation and logical and mathematical analyses of those observations. This means that intuition, introspection, revelation, and tradition are not valid ways of finding truth. Therefore, the authority of the Bible must be rejected, along with claims to miracles and divine interventions of any sort.

Maxwell, however, rejected positivism as both reductionistic and presumptuous. He believed firmly in the Scriptures and had a decidedly mystical streak to his Christian life that he rarely discussed. To Maxwell, science was a profoundly religious endeavor. Among the daily prayers he repeated was this one:

Teach us to study the work of Thy hands that we may subdue the earth to our uses, and strengthen our reason for Thy service; and so rescue Thy blessed Word, that we may believe on Him whom Thou hast sent to give us the knowledge of salvation and the remission of our sins.

Maxwell understood science as an expression of the cultural mandate from Genesis 1 and its connection to the Gospel. In 1875, he said,

I think that men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think that Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that this view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. 

Maxwell died at age 48 of stomach cancer. Despite a short life, physicists classify his work along with Einstein and Newton. In advancing our knowledge about God’s world, Maxwell understood that he was performing the work of the kingdom of Heaven, with an expectation that it would lead people to glorify God and fulfill His purposes for the world. [source]

Is Social Justice Killing Science? Why We Need to Define “Truth”

From Breakpoint.org (Dec. 8, 2022):

The mission of scientific discovery, Johannes Kepler believed, was “to think God’s thoughts after Him.” Even for scientists skeptical of the supernatural, for a long time at least, the task of science was to discover truth. As a fictional scientist in Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth put it, “Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are useful … because they lead little by little to the truth.”

Today, however, the pursuit of truth in the natural sciences is increasingly eclipsed by the tyranny of political correctness, and some frustrated scientists are crying foul. In early November, in fact, over 150 professors and scholars gathered at Stanford University to talk about the growing threats to the scientific enterprise and to academic freedom.

Among the speakers was Williams College biology professor Luana Maroja, who gave a troubling presentation on the ways progressive ideology is strangling her discipline. Dr. Maroja, a frequent advocate for evolutionary theory, has long slammed critics of Darwin as “creationists” who prioritize religion over science. These days, however, she’s more concerned about threats to science coming from another religion, the “woke” left. In her presentation, she cited the growing number of Biology 101 classes where students are taught that the sexes (not just gender) exist on a “continuum.” She pointed to statements by several schools, and even the Society for the Study of Evolution, that blur the distinction between male and female, which is, she said, a “bedrock insight” of biology.

Dr. Maroja cited published papers that urge biologists to be “inclusive” by only talking about organisms that show the least difference between the sexes, even “when that has no relevance to any animal or vascular plant.” She even described efforts to restrict access to population genetics data out of fear that such data might be used to promote discrimination.

In other words, biologists and other scientists are being taught to ignore or are being denied vast amounts of evidence simply because that evidence could threaten politically favored ideologies. According to Dr. Maroja, it has become “taboo” to note “any disparities between groups that are not explained as the result of systemic bias.” Put differently, the push to obscure the truth about sex and keep population genetics under lock and key is the result of a belief that people (and perhaps animals) are blank slates onto which society imposes roles and identities, and no data to the contrary should be allowed.

Sadly, this very unscientific approach to science is becoming a running theme. Recall the recent announcement by the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Human Behaviour that they will now filter submissions based on how well they promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Scientists like Lawrence Krauss, also no friend of religious conservatives, rightly complained that such requirements subjugate science to politics.

The Stanford gathering could be a new high-water mark for anti-“woke” backlash among scientists. As Dr. Maroja concluded at the gathering, when science “becomes an extension of ideology,” it is no longer concerned with “pursuing knowledge and truth.” Simply put, it ceases to be science.

There are, of course, other ideologically driven problems with the scientific establishment that go well beyond social justice censorship. Scientists are fallible, and the worship of science as a source of final knowledge and ultimate meaning is itself a corruption of science called scientism. Even so, the growing number of scientists complaining that their institutions, sponsors, publishers, and even peers are now more interested in reaching approved conclusions than provable ones is revealing. This kind of censorship is not only dangerous: It underscores the impossibility of a value-neutral academy.

In Jules Verne’s rosy telling, scientists fearlessly seek out the truth, following the evidence wherever it leads. However, as authors such as Stephen Meyer, Glen Scrivener, and Rodney Stark have pointed out, this quest for objective truth is itself a feature of a worldview historically distinctive to the West and Christianity. As all three authors argue, it’s no coincidence that modern science was born of Christendom and nowhere else.

In sharp contrast, ideologies rooted in postmodernism render fact subjective and see power plays behind every truth claim, and therefore undermine science. Old-fashioned scientific atheists may mock social justice warriors who want evidence to bend to their feelings but cannot explain why evidence should matter if the world is nothing but matter. There is no way to explain why reality is comprehensible or truth attainable, if, as C.S. Lewis put it, thoughts are nothing more than the “flux of the atoms” in scientists’ brains.

We should all agree that the mission of science is to seek the truth about our world, but that requires a working definition of “truth.” Unless scientists can supply that definition, the very unscientific demands of political correctness will continue to make their jobs difficult. [source]

Yea, if science cannot define truth then it isn’t really science.

Why You Should Think Twice Before Pursuing a Career in Research

 From Daniel Șterbuleac on FEE.org (Nov. 27, 2022):

Scientific research concerns discovering facts about the natural world and, to the largest extent possible, putting them to good use for mankind. It seems like a noble endeavor, right? You get to choose whether you wish to study any of the four main branches of STEM: science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. As for science, it usually divides by the nature of the studied object into: computer science, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology, to mention the most common disciplines. Well, I have chosen the latter field, the biological sciences at their intertwining with medicine.

Which seems like a great choice in our times.

However, working in this field is not a walk in the park. Unless you are blessed by working in the right environment and having the right motivation, such a choice may do you and others more harm than good.

Research Often Is a Wild Goose Chase

The next time you are reading a piece of scientific evidence, hold it in your mind that it is most likely false. This was actually theorized and proven in a 2005 paper, and led to a stirring debate. Let me explain this theory, as simply as possible; it applies to all research fields, STEM and non-STEM.

In order to make a scientific discovery, you (usually) formulate a hypothesis, then you put it to the test. But you cannot test it on the whole statistical population (which consists of all the possible objects of study). You obviously cannot put all cancer patients in the world on an experimental pill. You cannot analyze the effects of an economic change in your country and assume it applies in the same way wherever and whenever. Rather, you design and experiment with a limited set of individuals, and then extrapolate (with a certain amount of uncertainty) to the whole population. For a hypothesis to be considered highly likely to be true, the uncertainty rate should be less than .05 (5 percent).

Experiments may lead to inconclusive results, due to chance (coincidence) or other factors. And there are a lot of factors that can influence the experiments. A researcher may be biased (willingly or not) in his choice of subjects, statistical methods, or experimental protocols. Models may not replicate the real-world scenarios (e.g. animal models in cancer research, statistical models in economics research). An association of two different events could foolishly imply causation; rather, a third, confounding variable, may influence the former two. Another difficulty arises when the initial hypothesis is split into smaller, more specific, ones, which are tested out individually (allowing cherry-picking, which taints results).

In addition to the aforementioned factors, there stands yet another hindrance: researchers are inclined to test out an unusually high number of fallacious hypotheses (as opposed to actual true ones) and erroneously prove (at least part of them) true. The incentive of proving that something apparently false is actually true is enormous. Who would not want his research (“inflation lowers unemployment,” “dark chocolate prevents cancer”) making the headlines and securing further funding?

This problem has been repeatedly confirmed, by simply allowing different researchers to redo the initial analyses, using the same methodology; such attempts take the form of “replication studies.” In an extensive effort to replicate previous studies in cancer research, a tiny 11 percent (6 out of 53) revealed similar conclusions to the initial ones. Comparatively, in Economics, replication surveys are scarce; one report showed that 39 percent (7 out of 18) studies failed replication. This area certainly requires further attention.

Choosing the Right  Direction Is Difficult

To research, you must base your assumptions on previous knowledge. Yet, when previous knowledge can be flawed, how can one be sure to follow a fruitful path?

During my work, I had to spend a considerable amount of time not only retrieving past discoveries related to my research, but also assessing their scientific quality. An assumption found in the scientific literature can easily be taken for granted—it has been proven, so it seems. But its proof may be flawed. I recall finding a handful of high-level studies that completely crushed previous conclusions and made me switch my research strategy. Ingenuity can help in taking advantage of scientific discrepancies, but could also end up adding even more “debris” to an overloaded scientific literature.

In extreme situations, the research may be so shoddy that one particular study gives out manipulated results stemming from malevolent conduct (false numbers, figures, charts or tables). Further investigations often mandate the retraction of such published papers. The number of retracted papers increases steadily, but they may only be the tip of the iceberg. This amalgam catches researchers up in a never-ending struggle to pursue the truth.

Publish or Perish

Unless you work as a researcher in a private company, whose purpose is to compete and devise concrete solutions for its clients, you may find your work judged not by its quality, but rather by the scientific output. The aphorism “publish or perish” refers to the pressure to publish research output in renowned journals; its negative connotations resonate throughout academia and research facilities.

Journals compete to attain a higher scientific status. In this way, they can attract higher quality papers and charge more. Unfortunately, the “scientific status” of a journal is routinely measured through scores reflecting the number of citations its published papers received in the past two to three years. Such an abstract number reflects poorly the quality of the published research – citations can be made even to unrelated papers, artificially increasing scores. Editorial houses may take advantage of self-citations to boost their ratings.

Similarly, an article bearing a pompous title or a high-sounding (probably false) result attracts citations and makes it easier to get published in a top journal. In extreme cases, journals have been found to not even check the paper or author before publishing it.

Freedom and Mental Health

A scientific career begins by pursuing a PhD. Although it may seem like a privilege, getting into a PhD has multiple downsides, and they all come down to the supervisor. There are accounts of PhD students being forced to do “quasi-slave” work, being bullied, or working overtime (over three quarters of respondents in a large-scale study work overtime). Later in one’s career, academic research revolves around high expectations, job insecurity (research funding is highly dynamic) and a push for productivity – common recurrent themes found throughout surveys.

Such a highly-competitive work culture combined with a narrow path to success leads frequently to stress and anxiety. A large-scale study revealed 36 percent of PhD students have sought help for anxiety or depression; the same problem was shared by 34 percent of academics worldwide. There are even more researchers showing probable signs of depression: an overwhelming 53 percent among UK research staff.

Conclusion

Despite its barriers and pitfalls, a scientific career can be fulfilling. Worldwide efforts are made in order to create more precise standards in statistical analysis, improve journal ratings, and facilitate doctoral experiences. Through smart work, in the right place (surrounded by like-minded people) and at the right time (for the research to find its use), the best minds of the world make our life easier and unravel what had been waiting to be revealed.

Yet, such right places and moments are rare; finding one’s place in the scientific world can be challenging. Anyone wanting to pursue such a career in scientific research should do their “research” first. [source]

Good information for any potential researcher. Something to keep in mind.

Object and Meaning

We need to know four things:

what there is,

what to do about what there is,

that there is a difference between knowing what there is, and

knowing what to do about what there is and what that difference is.

………….

Myth is not primitive proto-science. It is a qualitatively different phenomenon. Science might be considered “description of the world with regards to those aspects that are consensually apprehensible” or “specification of the most effective mode of reaching an end (given a defined end).” Myth can be more accurately regarded as “description of the world as it signifies (for action).” The mythic universe is a place to act, not a place to perceive. Myth describes things in terms of their unique or shared affective valence, their value, their motivational significance.

Source: Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (2018) by Jordan B. Peterson.

Faraday Recognized an Authority Greater Than Science

From Breakpoint.org (Oct. 3, 2022):

Michael Faraday was born in in 1791 in London to a local blacksmith and a housemaid. Despite these humble beginnings, Faraday is remembered among the most respected scientists in history, pioneering the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

Without Faraday, “there would be no modern economy.” At least that is what Andy Kessler claimed recently in The Wall Street Journal.

In 1820, (Faraday) noted that electricity applied to a loop of wire could get a magnet to move through it, an insight that produced the electric motor found in every fan, vacuum cleaner, washing machine and electric car. Faraday then turned his own thinking inside out. In 1831, he invented the dynamo, an inverse motor.… By running electricity down a long wire to an electromagnetic relay switch, you can ring a bell. This innovation became the telegraph, telephone and today’s wireless devices, which are all based on Faraday’s induction.

That resume alone makes Faraday well worth remembering. But, as Kessler pointed out, his example also matters in an age when so many use “science” with a capital “S” as an unquestionable authority, even beyond its natural purview. The oft-repeated phrases “scientists say” or “the science is settled” are usually intended to inspire hushed awe and to silence dissent, on everything from economics and government policy to gender ideology and climate change.

Faraday might have laughed at that way of employing “the science.” While the scientific enterprise points to the logic and order God has woven into the cosmos, people are often guilty of bias and irrationality. “I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion,” he wrote to Swiss physicist Auguste-Arthur de la Rive.

When two well-known scientists of his day engaged in a dispute, Faraday wrote a friend, “These polemics of the scientific world are very unfortunate; they form the great stain to which the beautiful edifice of scientific truth is subject. Are they inevitable? They surely cannot belong to science itself, but to something in our fallen natures.”

These twin beliefs, in both the knowability of the created order and the human tendency to leap to conclusions, helped Faraday become a meticulous researcher in the lab and something of a non-conformist in religion. He belonged to a small denomination known as the Sandemanian Church, which was skeptical of traditions. The empirically minded Faraday argued that a Christian could have “no assurance beyond what the Word could give him.”

MIT professor of nuclear science Ian Hutchinson described Faraday this way: ​​“One might speculate that his lifelong religious nonconformity lent a certain color to his psychological makeup that enabled him to comfortably champion unorthodox scientific positions.” In fact, his theories about the lines of magnetic force were initially met with skepticism, only to become a foundation of modern physics.

In all of this, Faraday is an example of how Christians can balance the constructive purposes of science with an accurate understanding of scientific authority. Today’s shorthand too easily shortchanges debate and politicizes issues where the jury should still be out. In fact, the idea that science can never be questioned is a betrayal of science itself. Some of humanity’s greatest discoveries began by bucking conventional wisdom and allowing the evidence to lead elsewhere. “Science,” after all, never “says” anything. Only scientists do, offering hypotheses as a way of stewarding the data science provides.

Part of the abuse of the term science stems from a lack of authority other than science. Faraday’s reverence for Scripture came from recognizing its moral and spiritual authority. In the absence of external authorities, many look to “the science” to fill a role it simply cannot. So, the authority passes to scientists, who claim both an objectivity and a purview they do not have.

As Hutchinson put it, writing about Faraday and his near-contemporary James Clerk Maxwell, “These men’s insights into physics were made possible by their religious commitments. For them, the coherence of nature resulted from its origin in the mind of its Creator.”

That’s a basis for the role and purpose of science that’s well worth recovering. [source]