Tag: science

We have an answer

The Chateau’s response to the brain study is about as calm and understated as one would expect….

As is so often the case, though, there is something hard and logical beneath the savage provocation. I very strongly suspect, as, I think, Heartiste does as well, that the wiring of Gamma brains will show up differently on brain scans than other male brains.

Here is my scientific hypothesis: The reason Gamma male thought processes and conclusions tend have more in common with female thought processes and conclusions than with normal male thought processes and conclusions is because they have more of the inter-hemisphere connections and less of the intra-hemisphere connections than normal men.

Sex differences are hard-wired

This research on brain connections won’t come as any surprise to anyone who isn’t ideologically bound to the idea that sex differences are cultural, but it should suffice to explode any last vestiges of biology-based sexual equalitarianism:

“What we’ve identified is that, when looked at in groups, there are
connections in the brain that are hardwired differently in men and
women. Functional tests have already shown than when they carry out
certain tasks, men and women engage different parts of the brain,”
Professor Verma said.

The research was carried out on 949
individuals – 521 females and 428 males – aged between 8 and 22. The
brain differences between the sexes only became apparent after
adolescence, the study found.

A special brain-scanning technique
called diffusion tensor imaging, which can measure the flow of water
along a nerve pathway, established the level of connectivity between
nearly 100 regions of the brain, creating a neural map of the brain
called the “connectome”, Professor Verma said.

“It tells you
whether one region of the brain is physically connected to another part
of the brain and you can get significant differences between two
populations,” Professor Verma said. “In women most of the
connections go between left and right across the two hemispheres while
in men most of the connections go between the front and the back of the
brain,” she said.

Because the female connections link the left
hemisphere, which is associated with logical thinking, with the right,
which is linked with intuition, this could help to explain why women
tend to do better than men at intuitive tasks, she added.

It’s amusing how they can’t help but describe their findings in a futile attempt to appeal to women rather than to offend them. It’s not the map-reading that is relevant; the real takeaway here is that women are less logical on average because their right hemisphere interferes with the ability of their left hemisphere to logically process information. It’s never been any secret that women are less logical; among other things, that’s why women weren’t permitted to vote in the first place. But now, thanks to science, we are beginning to understand that limits such as these weren’t set out of simple prejudice, but rather out of the straightforward desire for societal self-preservation.

And, as the consequences have demonstrated, the West violated those limits at its peril, a mistake for which we are all, men and women alike, paying the price.

It should be fascinating to see what happens when similar studies begin providing unavoidable scientific explanations for the differences between various human population groups that everyone observes, but affects to either deny or explain away.

Fear of the hand that feeds

The fact that government bureaucrats are literally silencing scientists doesn’t appear to bother science fetishists anywhere nearly as much as the idea that somewhere, someone has a textbook with an evolution sticker on it.

Hundreds of federal scientists said in a survey that they had been asked to exclude or alter technical information in government documents for non-scientific reasons, and thousands said they had been prevented from responding to the media or the public.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which commissioned the survey from Environics Research “to gauge the scale and impact of ‘muzzling’ and political interference among federal scientists,” released the results Monday at a news conference. PIPSC represents 60,000 public servants across the country, including 20,000 scientists, in federal departments and agencies, including scientists involved in food and consumer product safety and environmental monitoring.

In all, the union sent invitations to participate in the survey to 15,398 federal scientists in June. A total of 4,069 responded.

Twenty four per cent of respondents said they “sometimes” or “often” were asked to exclude or alter technical information in federal government documents for non-scientific reasons. Most often, the request came from their direct supervisors, followed by business or industry, other government departments, politically appointed staff and public interest advocates.

He that pays the gold makes the rules. Science prostituted itself when it got in bed with government and now it has to pay the price. Big science is bad science.

The comparative danger of eating disorders

It’s fascinating how “eating disorder” as it is conventionally used doesn’t appear to cover the statistically most dangerous health consequence of eating abnormally. And, for some reason, in an overstuffed society we’re supposed to worry about the women who are too skinny:

A “disease” that affects 30 million people and kills one out of every 206,897 of the individuals who contract it is simply not a serious societal problem, especially not when considered in light of how diabetes contributed to 231,404 deaths in 2011. 28.5 million Americans suffer from diabetes, so the risk of death from diabetes is one in 111. That means the risk of dying from diabetes is 1,855 TIMES HIGHER than the risk of dying from an eating disorder.

Stuff that in your piehole, fatty. Better yet, stick your finger down your throat if you want to live… and that’s not even considering amputations, blindness, and other non-fatal complications.

Read the rest at Alpha Game.

Nature on science fraud

Even the mainstream journals are being forced to tacitly admit that science skeptics are justified in their skepticism about modern professional science:

Retractions of scientific papers have increased about tenfold during the past decade, with many studies crumbling in cases of high-profile research misconduct that ranges from plagiarism to image manipulation to outright data fabrication. When worries about somebody’s work reach a critical point, it falls to a peer, supervisor, junior partner or uninvolved bystander to decide whether to keep mum or step up and blow the whistle. Doing the latter comes at significant risk, and the path is rarely simple. Some make their case and move on; others never give up. And in what seems to be a growing trend, anonymous watchdogs are airing their concerns through e-mail and public forums.

The reason that the watchdogs have to be anonymous is because scientists are far less amenable to having their mistakes exposed than most people are capable of imagining and the secular priesthood reliably retaliates against those who pull back the curtain on the myth.

Mailvox: a more reasonable vaccine schedule

CM asks what is a more reasonable vaccine schedule than the current US one:

I have followed your blog for quite some time now and have come to really value your opinion on a wide variety of topics. I recently had my first child and my wife and I have already resolved to home school (largely because we looked into a lot of the information that you discussed on your blog). I want to know what in your opinion would be the ideal alternative vaccine schedule.

The first thing is to understand that many European and Asian doctors think the US schedule is insane. Don’t be moved by the rhetorical appeals to the US medical industry; remember the same people are also telling you to fill up on carbohydrates and fructose to lose weight. The second thing is to realize that your primary responsibility is to your children, not to the collective. If something is better for your child than for the community, then you put your child first.

That’s called being a good parent.

Of course, if you are genuinely more concerned about the community, then go ahead and get yourself sterilized. Because global warming or whatever.

Anyhow, in my opinion, no vaccinations need be given until the child is walking. Then the tetanus vaccine is a good idea since tetanus can’t be treated. Polio is probably the next concern, given its seriousness, and should be addressed some time before the child is likely to come into regular contact with large quantities of people.  If you’re homeschooling, this probably means sometime between the ages of three and five.

Due to the potential risk of blindness and the way immigrants and travelers have been spreading it around so freely, measles is probably a good idea around the age of school, so sometime between five and seven. I would recommend a measles-specific vaccine and not MMR; mumps and rubella are much less serious diseases and the rubella vaccine is, as far as I can tell, completely worthless.

Not only is the disease less serious, but I know of several women who have been repeatedly vaccinated for it and still show no evidence of antibodies, hence the repeated vaccinations. If you don’t have pregnant women or infants around, whooping cough is probably not an issue, although it is a real bitch if your children get it. But if you can’t keep your kids home for two to three weeks straight without a problem, then you should probably seriously consider the vaccination around the age of seven.

Vaccines for chicken pox and other non-fatal diseases are a joke. Forget potential reactions, merely driving to the doctor’s office puts your children more at risk than the disease does.  The point is not to avoid all vaccinations entirely, but rather, avoid overloading the very young child’s system. I know vets who refuse to give dogs more than one vaccine at a time due to the negative effects they have observed over the years, so the idea that the current US vaccine schedule can’t possibly be harming children is ludicrous on its face.

As for the inevitable appeals to science, I will merely point out that no science – ZERO – has been done concerning the safety of the current US vaccine schedule. If anyone wishes to dispute that, I invite them to provide everyone here with a link to the published paper. And as for the appeals to the greater good of the collective, I first note that I’ve never been much moved by Leninist arguments, and second, observe that one could just as easily justify murderously culling the immigrant population on that basis.

Fred on the limits of human knowledge

And the utter implausibility of evolution by natural selection, among other things:

Humans today are a puffed-up and overconfident species. We know everything, we believe, or shortly will. We have a sense of near-omniscience equaled only by that of teen-agers. For do we not have have smart phones and Mars landers and PET scans, and do we not all speak wisely of DNA? We are, if not gods, at least godlings on the way up. If you don’t believe this, just ask us.

It was not always so. A thousand years ago, mankind cast a small shadow on the earth and lived in a dark and mysterious world. Little was known, about anything. Gods of countless sorts walked the earth. Spirits inhabited sacred groves. Lightning, the moon, the stars were…what? We had no idea. This brought humility.

We now believe that that nothing is or can be beyond our powers. A contemplative skeptic might advert to a few remaining details: We don´t know where we came from, why we are here, where “here” is, where we are going, or what we ought to do. These are minor questions. We only think about them when we wake up at three a.m. and remember that we are not permanent. We are kidding ourselves.

When people become accustomed to things that make no sense, they begin to seem to. Though we no longer notice it as we peck at tablet computers and listen to droning lowbrow shows about the conquest of nature, we still live in a weird and inexplicable universe, an apparently unending emptiness speckled with sparks of hydrogen fire. It is wicked mysterious. More things in heaven and earth, indeed.

We are not as wise as we think. I reiterate Fred´s Principle: The smartest of a large number of hamsters is still a hamster.

It’s a long one. Read the whole thing. It encapsulates why Darwinism, even in its neo-synthesized form, is caught up in crisis and is being increasingly rejected as unconvincing pseudo-science by the secular and the religious alike.

An honest secularist

It’s always interesting to read David Berlinski’s acerbic comments, since his secularist criticism of scientists and professional atheists not only parallels my own, but tends to confound those who believe all secularists should shut up, stop thinking, and obediently follow the instructions of their self-appointed superiors. This interview is amusingly unprofessional, as the interviewer seems to think that he is debating Berlinski rather than interviewing him, but as you can see, the more fool he:

Why do you think the debate about Darwin’s theory of evolution has taken on such a nasty turn? 

Nasty, eh? If so, the nastiness is not entirely
ecumenical. As far as I can tell, only one side is now occupying the
gutter, even though the gutter is, as gutters generally are, more than
spacious enough for two. But you raise a good question. Why are
Darwinian biologists so outraged? Like the San Andreas fault, the
indignation conspicuous at blogs such as The Panda’s Thumb or Talk Reason is now visible from outer space.

There is a lot at stake, obviously. Money, prestige, power, influence –
they all play a role. Darwinism is an ideological system and when such
systems come under threat, their supporters react in predictable ways.
Freedom of thought very often appears as an inconvenience to those with a
position to protect. Look at the attempts made to humiliate Rick
Sternberg at the Smithsonian Institute, or the campaign now underway to
do the same thing to Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State. There is nothing
surprising in all this. I myself believe that the world would be
suitably improved if those with whom I disagreed were simply to shut up.
What is curious is how quickly the Darwinian establishment has begun to
appear vulnerable …. 
 

Not to scientists …

No, perhaps not. But to everyone else. Consider the latest Pew poll. “Two-thirds of Americans,” the New York Times
reported, “say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in
public schools.” But even among those quite persuaded of Darwin’s
theory, “18 percent said that evolution was ‘guided by a supreme
being.’” Now these are astonishing figures. They represent an authentic
popular revolt against elite thought. I cannot remember anything like
it. The fact that so many Darwinian biologists are utterly tone-deaf
when it comes to debate has hardly helped their case. It is no small
thing to have appeared before the American public in a way that suggests
both illimitable arrogance and scientific insecurity.

How would you react to the argument that Dawkins has made that any form of religion that goes beyond the scientific facts about the universe really represents a form of brainwashing …

He’s probably right. Most education is a form of brainwashing – so much better in French, by the way, lavage de cerveau. Give a child to the Jesuits, they say, and ten years later the man will cringe when he spots the Cross. But look, ten years or so spent studying physics is a pretty effective form of brainwashing as well. You emerge into the daylight blinking weakly and talking about an endless number of universes stacked on top of one another like an old-fashioned Maine pancake breakfast. Or you start babbling inanely about how meaningless the universe is. But if you ask me just who is the more credulous, the more suggestible, the dopier, the more perfectly prepared to convey absurdity to an almost inconceivable pitch of personal enthusiasm – a well-trained Jesuit or a Ph.D. in quantum physics, I’ll go with the physicist every time. There is nothing these people won’t believe. No wonder used-car salesmen love them. Biologists are, of course, worse. Tell them that in the future Richard Dawkins is going to conduct a personal invasion of Hell in order to roust the creationists, and The Panda’s Thumb will at once start vibrating with ticket sales.

Perhaps this isn’t the most productive of topics to pursue …

Well, no, it’s not productive if you’re trying to convince everyone that biologists can be relied upon because physicists have very accurate models, anyhow. This post brought to you on the basis of John C. Wright’s recommendation.

Evidence for nature

It appears “gayface” is a legitimate scientific concept.

Previous studies have shown that homosexual men differ from heterosexual men in several somatic traits and lay people accurately attribute sexual orientation based on facial images. Thus, we may predict that morphological differences between faces of homosexual and heterosexual individuals can cue to sexual orientation. The main aim of this study was to test for possible differences in facial shape between heterosexual and homosexual men. Further, we tested whether self-reported sexual orientation correlated with sexual orientation and masculinity-femininity attributed from facial images by independent raters. In Study 1, we used geometric morphometrics to test for differences in facial shape between homosexual and heterosexual men. The analysis revealed significant shape differences in faces of heterosexual and homosexual men. Homosexual men showed relatively wider and shorter faces, smaller and shorter noses, and rather massive and more rounded jaws, resulting in a mosaic of both feminine and masculine features.

If substantiated by further research, this would tend to suggest that homosexual orientation is not only a physical abnormality, but is at least potentially fixable with either genotherapy or prenatal treatment. And just as there are far fewer children with Downs Syndrome than there were prior to prenatal tests, it’s not hard to imagine that there will be even fewer homosexuals once the condition is more fully understood by medical science.

This, of course, would provoke the mother of all activist storms in the West. But that may not be particularly relevant, as in the East, it will be adopted as a matter of course.

Vaccines are raciss

Or perhaps it is only the viruses that discriminate on the nonexistent basis of “race”:

[T]he HPV subtypes included in the existing two HPV vaccines — Gardasil, developed by Merck, and Cervarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline — are most common among white women but are significantly less common in non-white women. Within Hoyo’s trial, 65% of white women with HPV had the subtypes known as 16 or 18 , while only 36% of African-American women did. That means African-American women are only half as likely to get the type of HPV against which the vaccine works.

The findings highlight the complex role that race plays in medicine, especially as genetic studies reveal more biological reasons behind why racial and ethnic groups may have different propensities for disease, and respond in varying ways to drugs. “We don’t like to admit that race and ethnicity count, but they certainly do in the distribution of infectious diseases,” says Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Not to sound like a dope, but when [race] matters it matters.”

HPV infection is hardly the first disease to be linked to race. Tay-Sach’s is more common in Ashkenazi Jews, sickle-cell anemia is found mostly in Mediterranean or African populations, and cystic fibrosis has a higher incidence among people with Irish or English ethnicity. But all of those conditions are driven by genetic mutations that can be detected through testing. What makes the HPV findings trickier is the fact that the vaccine is designed to protect women before they become infected, and there is no way to tell which strains a woman will get — except, as Hoyo’s findings suggest, by her race.

That suggests that medical predictions should be based on some type of racial profiling; is it ethical to recommend different vaccines for different women based on race?

It’s fascinating that the magical belief in the nonexistence of something that is materially and scientifically observable appears to be on the verge of being elevated to an ethical principle that trumps medical science.

We already know that this magical belief trumps statistical correlation. But it is remarkable to observe that some of those who otherwise claim to value science uber alles should reveal themselves to have elevated their fixed ideas on human genetic and cultural sameness to a state of ethical priority.

Of course, this is very dangerous ground for the equalitarians. Once one admits that different racial and ethnic groups not only exist, but have different propensities for disease, it becomes considerably harder to deny that both logic and history dictate that different human population groups have different propensities for things like crime and building, maintaining, and participating in advanced civilizations.