Tag: science

Kick back, have a beer

And let her get on with the housework.  You’ll not only both be happier, but you’re less likely to end up divorced:

In what appears to be a slap in the face for gender equality, the report found
the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50
per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.
“What we’ve seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home
doesn’t necessarily contribute to contentment,” said Thomas Hansen,
co-author of the study entitled “Equality in the Home”.
The lack of correlation between equality at home and quality of life was
surprising, the researcher said.  “One would think that break-ups would occur more often in families with less
equality at home, but our statistics show the opposite,” he said. The figures clearly show that “the more a man does in the home, the higher the
divorce rate,” he went on.

The idea that the values held by members of equalitarian households are to blame sounds reasonable, but I think the real cause is a natural consequence of men and women having fundamentally different standards.  If you’re going to end up doing it one way or the other, it’s a lot more annoying to have to do it when you thought – however unreasonable the expectation – that someone was going to do it to your liking for you.  A woman who has no expectation of household equality is naturally going to be much happier than one who thought she was going to get it, but didn’t.

The equalitarian households are simply more likely to discover this than the more traditional ones.  If the homemaking isn’t left to the homemaker, it shouldn’t be a tremendous surprise that things don’t go well.  The household is hardly the only place where it is a terrible idea to assign the job to the individual who cares least about it.  The lesson, as always, is that if you care a lot about how well something is done, you should always do it yourself.

On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that men doing too much housework is simply a grotesque DLV and they’re actively repelling their wives by turning themselves into disgusting socio-sexual gamma males.

I found the following to be an interesting conclusion of another study, which does not actually contradict the one cited above, as it is completely in line with the conclusions of a month-long experiment conducted by one of my friends.

The researchers expected to find that where men shouldered more of the burden,
women’s happiness levels were higher. In fact they found that it was the men
who were happier while their wives and girlfriends appeared to be largely
unmoved. 

If it makes you happier, then do more housework.  If not, then don’t.  Either way, don’t think that it’s going to score you any points or make her any happier, because you’re probably not going to do it to her satisfaction and it’s even possible that your well-intentioned efforts are making you sexually repulsive to her.

Homeschool vaccine survey

If you live in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Oregon and homeschool your children, please consider taking part in this NHERI-sponsored pilot study:

A lot of people feel strongly about the
importance of all children being vaccinated for their own good and
society’s good. Others feel just as strongly that vaccines are dangerous
and do more harm than good.

Maybe you haven’t really thought about
it and are rather neutral about the issue. But wouldn’t it be
interesting to find out the facts about what might be going on with
vaccines and the health of our children and society?

This is a great opportunity for you to
participate in a study to help everyone understand this critical and
controversial subject. Homeschoolers, with either vaccinated or non-vaccinated children, are in a unique position to inform this area of research.

Study participants will remain anonymous. We fully understand the importance of confidentiality and anonymity.

This should be interesting, as there has been a great deal of theorizing about homeschoolers and vaccinations without anyone actually possessing much in the way of relevant evidence concerning it.

Blind faith in science

Despite philosophy’s failure to do so, some are still fantasizing about Science finally killing God:

Physicists have observed that many of the physical constants that
define our universe, from the mass of the electron to the density of
dark energy, are eerily perfect for supporting life. Alter one of these
constants by a hair, and the universe becomes  unrecognizable. “For
example, if the mass of the neutron were a bit larger (in comparison to
the mass of the proton) than its actual value, hydrogen would not fuse
into deuterium and conventional stars would be impossible,” Carroll
said. And thus, so would life as we know it.

Theologians often seize upon the so-called “fine-tuning” of the
physical constants as evidence that God must have had a hand in them; it
seems he chose the constants just for us. But contemporary physics
explains our seemingly supernatural good luck in a different way.

Some versions of quantum gravity theory, including string theory, predict that our life-giving universe is but one of an infinite number of
universes that altogether make up the multiverse. Among these infinite
universes, the full range of values of all the physical constants are
represented, and only some of the universes have values for the
constants that enable the formation of stars, planets and life as we
know it. We find ourselves in one of the lucky universes (because where
else?).

Some theologians counter that it is far simpler to invoke God than to
postulate the existence of infinitely many universes in order to explain
our universe’s life-giving perfection. To them, Carroll retorts that
the multiverse wasn’t postulated as a complicated way to explain
fine-tuning. On the contrary, it follows as a natural consequence of our
best, most elegant theories.

While it may be true that the multiverse wasn’t originally postulated as a way to explain fine-tuning, there is no question that is the primary way in which it is utilized now.  It borders on the dishonest to pretend otherwise.  The logical irony, of course, is that multiverse theory itself suggests that even if we happen to inhabit a godless universe, there must be other universes in which gods exist.  And then, there is no logical reason to assume that a Creator God which created one universe did not create more universes.  Multiverse theory is not a means of deprecating God, it is merely a means of defending godlessness against the powerful assault of the anthropic principle.

When one contemplate these matters, one quickly realizes that most scientists would do well to stick to science.  Because as both philosophers and theologians, they tend to be remarkably incompetent.

Most food allergies are fake

Science says either the parents are lying or the little brats are faking it:

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth (U.K.) have discovered the reason why food allergies have increased in recent years: hypochondria. It turns out that four out of five kids who believes he or she is allergic to a food, isn’t. The researchers surveyed over 1,500 children, along with their parents, about food allergies and intolerances. Then they tested those who reported problems, both with skin fold tests and by feeding them the offending food. The results were completely unexpected….

About 12% of children claimed to have adverse reactions to a food, with peanuts, dairy products, wheat, and fish the most common. Only 2.3% actually had a problem, some with merely an “intolerance,” and some with an actual allergy.

This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. I’ve noticed that most children whose parents say they have food allergies are obnoxious, spoiled little brats who whine about everything and are allergic to the notion that they are not the center of the universe

The immoral mind of Marc Hauser

It’s a serious blow to the “morality evolved” crowd when one of its chief proponents, Harvard’s Marc Hauser, has been found to have engaged in scientific misconduct in attempting to find evidence to support his theories of moral evolution:

Marc Hauser, a prolific scientist and popular psychology professor who last summer resigned from Harvard University, had fabricated data, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and described how studies were conducted in factually incorrect ways, according to the findings of a federal research oversight agency posted online Wednesday.

The report provides the greatest insight yet into the problems that triggered a three-year internal university investigation that concluded in 2010 that Hauser, a star professor and public intellectual, had committed eight instances of scientific misconduct. The document, which will be published in the Federal Register Thursday, found six cases in which Hauser engaged in research misconduct in work supported by the National Institutes of Health. One paper was retracted and two were corrected, and other problems were found in unpublished work.

Although Hauser “neither admits nor denies committing research misconduct,” he does, the report states, accept that federal authorities “found evidence of research misconduct.”

According to the federal findings:

-Hauser fabricated data in a 2002 Cognition paper that was later retracted, which examined monkeys’ ability to learn patterns of syllables. He never exposed monkeys to a particular sound pattern described in the experiment, despite reporting the results in a graph.

-In two experiments, researchers measured monkeys’ responses to patterns of consonants and vowels, a process called “coding” their behavior. Hauser falsified the coding, causing the results to pass a statistical test used to ensure that a particular finding was not just a chance result. Colleagues coding the same experiments came up with different results. Hauser “acknowledged to his collaborators that he miscoded some of the trials and that the study failed to provide support for the initial hypothesis,” the report said.

-A paper examining monkeys’ abilities to learn grammatical patterns included false descriptions of how the monkeys’ behavior was coded, “leading to a false proportion or number of animals showing a favorable response,” the findings stated. In an early version of the paper, he falsely reported that all 16 monkeys responded more strongly to an ungrammatical pattern than a grammatical one. Records reviewed by investigators found that one monkey responded in the opposite way and another responded equally. Hauser claimed that the behavior was coded by three scientists, when in fact he was the only one who measured their behavior. Then, when the manuscript was revised, he provided a false numerical description of the extent of agreement among multiple observers in coding behavior, despite being the only observer. All issues were corrected before publication.

I’ve read Hauser’s Moral Minds twice, and while it is head-and-shoulders above the likes of Dawkins and Harris, I did not find his arguments particularly compelling, for the most part, not that I wasn’t above citing them in my incomplete debate with Dominic.

More data please

The initial results of the religion and paternal age survey have been intriguing, so much so that it may justify a more methodical investigation into the hypothesis. However, we need a bit more information in order to tease out the strength of an effect called the demographic confound.

So, if you don’t mind answering the following questions, please do so, but keep the following instructions in mind: Answer only for yourself. Not your siblings, your children, or your parents. Also, Anonymous responses will not be counted.

Name. (Not real name, just make something up so we can keep things straight.)
Birth year.
Age of father at birth
Age of mother at birth
Sex (M/F)
Parents married through age 18 (Y/N)
Strength of belief on the Spectrum of Theistic Probability. (1-7). The milestones are as follows:

1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C.G. Jung: “I do not believe, I know.”
2. De facto theist. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. “I don’t know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.”
3. Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. “I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.”
4. Completely impartial. Exactly 50 per cent. “God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.” Agnostic.
5. Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. “I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.”
6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. “I don’t know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
7. Strong atheist. “I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one.”

Science thanks you for your assistance.

Atheists and Daddy issues

Behold science in action. We’ll begin with the well-known observation that many atheists have serious problems with their fathers. To this, we add the fact that scientists at Boston University, the University of British Columbia, and UC Davis have all reported evidence supporting my original hypothesis that there is a connection between atheism and higher than normal Asperger’s Quotients, as well as this new study, which has the potential to explain the reason for that connection.

Older men are more likely than young ones to father a child who develops autism or schizophrenia, because of random mutations that become more numerous with advancing paternal age, scientists reported on Wednesday, in the first study to quantify the effect as it builds each year. The age of mothers had no bearing on the risk for these disorders, the study found….

The overall risk to a man in his 40s or older is in the range of 2 percent, at most, and there are other contributing biological factors that are entirely unknown.

My random thought of the day is that older fathers not only increase the number of random mutations, but also tend to behave differently than younger fathers. Certainly everyone who has multiple children knows that the youngest is brought up somewhat differently than the eldest, and at least part of this may have to do with the increased age of the father rather than “been there done that” syndrome. This means that the children of older fathers are likely to experience a double-whammy of Nature and Nurture teaming up against them with regards to the probability of their turning out neurotypical.

This all leads to my hypothesis that the reason atheists are less likely to be neurotypical and less likely to believe in the existence of gods and the supernatural is because their fathers are, on average, older. This hypothetical causal connection between the age of the father and the atheism of the child is interesting in that it would have the potential to explain both the relatively recent increase in the number of atheists as well as the reason Europe is more atheist than the United States and other religious countries.

The testable prediction generated by this hypothesis is that there will be a statistically significant difference in the average/median age of fathers of atheists and the rest of the population. The average age of the atheist’s fathers should be older than the norm, while due to their much greater numbers, the average age of religious individual’s fathers will very closely approximate it. Unfortunately, the USA doesn’t track the age of fathers, only first-time fathers, but Australia does.

1. The average age of a first-time dad in the U.S. was 29.65 in 2010, considerably younger than a Western European equivalent of 32.51 (based on the average of UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain only).

2. Between 1988 and 2008 the median age of married fathers increased by almost three years, from 31.0 to 34.1 years, while the median age of unmarried fathers who acknowledged the birth of their child also increased, from 27.0 years to 29.8 years. In 2008 the median age of all fathers was 33.1 years. [This indicates that the median age of all fathers in Australia was 30 in 1988.]

So, for the time being, we’ll use 30 as our approximate average age. And like we did before, let’s take an informal poll here to see if the average age of fathers of the atheists here is, in fact, above 30. Just indicate if you are atheist, agnostic, or religious, and your father’s age when you were born. Here are some examples:

Vox Day: religious-25
Richard Dawkins: atheist-26
Christopher Hitchens: atheist-40
Daniel Dennett: atheist-32
Bertrand Russell: atheist-30
John Russell: atheist-50
Skatje Myers: atheist-32
Friedrich Nietzsche: atheist-31
H.G. Wells: atheist-38
Scott Atran: atheist-26

So the average age of the father of the New Atheists is 32.7. So far so good. Anyone know how old Sam Harris’s or PZ Myers’s fathers were when they were born?

TIA: the meme spreads

Courtesy of Scott Atran, the argument that religion does not cause war has now reached both Science and The Chronicle of Higher Education:

it’s not the criticism of ecclesiastical overreach that bothers Wilson and Atran; it’s the conflation of science and advocacy. Wilson supports efforts to destigmatize atheism, like the running feature “Why I Am an Atheist” on Pharyngula, and said so in his anti-Dawkins posts. Atran believes that “attacking obscurantic, cruel, lunatic ideas is always a good idea.” It’s proclaiming that religion is rotten to the core that they think is misguided.

That includes laying the blame for much of human conflict at the feet of the faithful. In a recent Science article, Atran and Jeremy Ginges, an associate professor of psychology at the New School, cite evidence suggesting that “only a small minority of recorded wars” have been mainly motivated by religious disputes (though making distinctions between religious and political causes is notoriously knotty). They complain in the article that the New Atheists are quick to remind everyone how fundamentalism fuels Al Qaeda but neglect to mention the role of churches in the civil-rights movement. The New Atheists are, according to Atran and Ginges, cherry-picking the horrors. “Science produced a nuclear bomb. Therefore we should throw away science,” says Atran, to illustrate the baby-bathwater logic. “Sometimes it can be really noxious, and other times it can be quite helpful.”

The Science article is entitled “Religious and Sacred Imperatives in Human Conflict” and appears in Science 336, 855 (2012). The relevant passage cites The Encylopedia of Wars and states: “In fact, explicit religious issues have motivated only a small minority of recorded wars. There is little religious cause for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts and world wars responsible for history’s most lethal century of international conflict.”

Given the absurd assertions by science fetishists who insist that I do not understand science, I find it more than a little ironic that a number of real scientists are not only making use of my ideas, but my methods as well, in publishing professional peer-reviewed science.

Spanking is child abuse

But apparently chemical lobotomies are nothing more than good parenting:

The researchers found that doctor visits between 1993-1998 and 2005-2009 that involved a prescription of antipsychotic medication for children jumped sevenfold — from 0.24 to 1.83 per 100 people. For teens, 14 to 20 years old, the rate rose from 0.78 to 3.76 per 100 people, and for adults, it just about doubled, from 3.25 to 6.18 per 100 people….

Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist from Ithaca, N.Y., and an outspoken critic of widespread antipsychotic use in children, said these drugs damage developing brains

“We have a national catastrophe,” said Breggin. “This is a situation where we have ruined the brains of millions of children.” In controlling behavior, antipsychotics act on the frontal lobes of the brain — the same area of the brain targeted by a lobotomy, Breggin said. “These are lobotomizing drugs,” he added. “Of course, they will reduce all behavior, including irritability,” he said….

Between 2005 and 2009, controlling “disruptive behavior” accounted for 63 percent of the reason antipsychotics were given to children and almost 34 percent for adolescents, the researchers found.

To say nothing of what they do to long-term cognitive capacity. Between widespread chemical lobotomies and ubiquitous vaccines, I’m amazed that anyone still believes that medical “science” is genuinely focused on attempting to help children grow up to live healthy and productive lives.

It would be informative to know how these children on antipsychotics do on IQ tests before and after their brains are bathed in chemicals for years.

South African science

Lightning is raciss!

Following a spate of deaths from lightning in the province of Natal, Nomsa Dube of the Provincial Executive Council promptly called on the National Department of Science and Technology to investigate what causes lightning:

We will do an investigation and talk to the department of science and technology on what is the cause of the lightning, and if it only happened to the previously disadvantaged, as I have never seen any white people being struck by lightning.

At least Americans and Europeans will have the benefit of a nice object lesson in what happens when a civilized nation hands over the keys of government to the previously disadvantaged in South Africa. Certainly no one appears to have learned anything from the fate of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.