Arete

There have been many observed instances of speciation, so the fundamental claim here is just plain false. Furthermore, the emergence of complex traits through evolutionary mechanisms has additionally, also been observed. But, even if they hadn't, we're still left with an argumentum ad ignorantiam logical fallacy. Just because you don't understand how an event could happen, doesn't not mean that the event in question is impossible.

The largest study I know of came out of Germany, which showed that acupuncture was actually effective for treating back pain. However, the kicker was that it didn't matter if the needles were placed in acupuncture pressure points, or at random - meaning there is probably something to stimulating nerve endings with needles to treat chronic pain, but the whole meridian lines, chi flow etc component is unsurprisingly, nonsense.

That makes as much sense as hating badminton players because the rules don't have any good recipes in them. Plus, just as many humanists are also animal rights activists, I'm sure many badminton players are good cooks.

Or the resounding success that the 1970 Clean Air Act has been in reducing sulfate and nitrate deposition across the US: http://nadp.isws.illinois.edu/newsletter/nl4/

The defining feature of humanist ideology is the belief that ethics and morality are a human construction rather than derived from a supernatural, divine source. Any additional ideology regarding animal rights is coincidental and irrelevant to humanist ideology. You're using the term incorrectly.

The answer is clearly 42. Duh

I did not claim either has never happened - but no, I've never experienced either of those occurrences and I've not heard of either occurring. I also teach evolution at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

I'm a professor at a state university. I've never been told anything like this, and neither has anyone I've met in academia. In fact the tenure system exists primarily to protect academic integrity from administrative censorship.

But I've never seem an ostrich turn into a fruit fly, so evolution is wrong On serious note, I'm weary of any STEM educator who doesn't accept evolution as fact - I mean, for e.g. if I didn't believe in magnets, it wouldn't really affect my teaching biology, but it does show a pretty big gap in in one's ability to apply critical thinking.

The speculations forum is a place to discuss speculative concepts and ideas in a scientific and evidence based fashion. Got an idea? Great, post it up, but be prepared for it to be critiqued, explain your idea to others and accept suggestions to modify and validate your approach. Don't dump a poorly edited 5,000 word text wall and be condescending, uppity and refuse to answer questions when other posters critique your idea. Does that make sense?

I disagree that there is only one format (i.e. journal article) to present scientific work; go to any conference and you'll see lots of people presenting scientific studies on posters, so it's entirely possible to present sound, evidence based science in an abridged style, including a conversational forum discussion. The APPROACH is what's critical - one needs to apply the scientific method regardless of the format the work is presented.

I still disagree - if speculations posters had some data or a model that wasn't obviously and fatally flawed, it would be a considerable improvement over most of the posts which appear there. Or even an open minded attitude. As I alluded to, a lot of the worst offenders are posters who claim to have a paradigm shifting contribution which fails basic premises, and are resistant to any attempts to critique their ideas. It doesn't need to be a publication quality study.

I would disagree. There is an expectation in the speculations forum that a speculation can be supported with evidence or a working model. Most of the posters being complained about come here with a "revolutionary" idea - they've disproven relativity, gravity, evolution, etc. It's not expected that they'll dump a "ready to be submitted to Science" manuscript on the forum, but simply that they have some sort of functional working, data, analysis, model, etc to substantiate the actual proposal. This can facilitate a discussion of the working, the validity of the speculation, etc. Unfortunately this almost never happens, you get a series of "it makes sense to me" explanations that contradict basic data on the topic, followed by heated discussion, followed by a locked thread. Most breakthroughs in science these days are through widely collaborative endeavors, by people with the skills and knowledge to get their work published in appropriate journals - the days of the self trained gentleman scientist toiling away in isolation and producing a magnum opus are largely over, for better or worse. The correct place to publish completed, new scientific work is in a peer reviewed journal rather than a forum post.

Because no one appreciates a discussion post that is simply a wall of text. If the poster has something specific to discuss, then sure, link to the aforementioned blog post, but using a discussion forum as your primary publication method isn't really conducive to the purposes of a discussion forum.

I mean no disrespect, but I wouldn't accept a freshman term paper devoid of any citations to the literature, let alone a paper submitted for peer review. At the bare minimum you need to demonstrate what gap in knowledge your work fills, and how existing work does not address it. The editor's comments regarding research profile are a little snobby, however they likely acted in accordance with peer review standards in rejecting your manuscript. Furthermore, a discussion forum is not the correct place to publish an entire paper. Perhaps a blog, or your own website would be appropriate? For some scientists, coming up with the novel hypothesis is the hard part... more than one career has been built applying standard methodology to other people's ideas. However, I always tell my grad students and postdocs that ideas in science are cheap. You can and should have dozens of them for every one you pursue, because most of them will either a) be bad, b) have been done before, or c) can't be (feasibly) tested. I do agree with the general sentiment though, coming up with the idea to test is the first, often easiest step, and more than one of our dear crackpots has stopped there and quite seriously expected a Nobel prize to fall in their lap.

I imagine a sound, solid proof would be welcome in the mainstream forums - threads generally get moved to speculations when the OP fails to support their assertions, as the speculations forum has specific rules to compel a poster to substantiate speculative claims which assist in moderating those type of discussions. However I balk at your reasoning for not publishing in a journal. I review articles written by scientists I've never heard of all the time and many journals like the Nature group are now offering double blind reviews. Did you have a specific bad experience submitting an article, or are you just assuming that because you're not "famous" your article will get desk rejected? We've had posters here before shoot way too high with their papers (i.e. Nature, Science, Cell, etc) and despite being warned that these journals have >95% rejection rates, come back claiming prejudice was the reason, rather than their work just wasn't that broad and interesting, or potentially just wrong. I, and I'm sure the other actively publishing scientists here would be happy to provide advice.

Monday is not even done and I've just got my 7th "I need to interview a university professor for my school project" email. As one educator to another - I have a research lab to run, 160 of my own students to teach, a crapload of "service" duties, oh and a family outside of work to spend time with. I don't have time to talk to each of your students individually, so I'm going to end up ignoring their emails. On the other hand, a local teacher did something different. She organized 4 scientists from industry and academia to participate in a panel discussion with all 250 students from her high school. We spent an hour answering questions from the audience, followed by a "mixer" event where we engaged with students informally to talk about science, science careers, college, life, etc. It was vastly more impactful for the students, a vastly better use of my time, and ultimately a much more valuable task than any BS "interview" project I've ever encountered. I know it's more work, but please do this instead of assigning your students an "interview a science professor" task.

The evolution of skin color in humans is a well characterized trade off between vitamin D synthesis, and susceptibility to UV damage. The relative "attractiveness" of melanistic skin is, I imagine largely cultural and variable between populations, and individuals within populations.

The basic premise of the argument that "organisms only evolve into like organisms, not completely dissimilar organisms - therefore evolution is unproven/belief/etc" is false. The theory of evolution never proposes that organisms "turn into" other organisms - the claim of evolutionary theory is that if you trace the evolutionary history of organisms back far enough, their genealogies will coalesce on a common ancestor. There is no claim or expectation that organisms can evolve across vast evolutionary spaces spontaneously, and if they actually did, our current understanding of evolutionary theory would need considerable revision. An example one might find more comprehensible might be the example of cousins: You and you cousins share a common ancestor in your grandparents. The assumption of shared ancestry does not predict that you can turn into your cousin, or give birth to their children. The evidence of common ancestry is demonstrated by tracing your genetic and/or phenotypic genealogy back to your grandparents - which is how evolutionary biologists trace the genealogies of organisms, only they go much farther back than two generations. Now, imagine that you traced your ancestry back 10 generations to your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents. Now imagine you trace a different branch of the genealogy back to a family at the present. This family might be very different to you - live in a different country, speak a different language, have different colored hair, or skin tones or facial features from your family due to the different families that have been involved in their family tree compared to yours. Now the creationist claim is effectively that because this family can't give birth to someone from your family, your shared ancestry is disproven, However we know that you share an ancestor from your family tree, and it's not disproven by the unreasonable expectation that you would give birth to each other's babies. Similarly, if a creationist says, for e.g. that no one has seen a bacteria turn into an elephant means there is no proof for the tree of life, they are making a flawed, and ultimately silly claim.

When my wife and I first immigrated to the US, I was listed as a J2 on her J1 visa. De facto relationships are not recognized by USCIS. As such, if we were a homosexual rather than a heterosexual couple, I would not have been allowed to accompany her into the country, as our country of citizenship - Australia, has not legalized gay marriage. Seems like a straightforward example of homosexual couples being discriminated against because they cannot legally marry, don't you agree?

Put simply, it would lose its functionality. A diffuse skeleton wouldn't provide the same level of anatomic structure, capacity for locomotion or protection of vital organs. The increased fibrosity of other tissues would impede their function also.

One of the major benefits of multicellularity is the ability of cells and organs to become specialized. I.e. as compared to a unicellular organism, in which every single cell is an individual which must perform every biological task necessary for the organism to live, the cells/organs in a multicellular organism can specialize in one or more specific roles. The leads to different optimal densities - e.g. a vertebrate has a rigid musculoskeletal system optimised to move around an enviroment, and a liquid blood and lymphatic system to transport compounds throughout the body. Giving up variable density means giving up many of the benefits of multicellularity, and while some organisms do this (e.g. macroalgae, some fungi) they tend to be facultatively multicellular - exploiting some benefits of being both multi and uni cellular.

As I was alluding to, there is a striking double standard exposed by current events and the outrage of you and the rest of the "lock her up" crowd expressed at similar events which faced a certain Democratic nominee, that is not apparent with regard to the current President. However events of his first less than one month in office reveal a deeper, more troubling aspect of that position, e.g. Members of the Trump administration apparently had extensive contact with Russian Intelligence at the same time as Russian Intelligence was using acts of espionage to manipulate the US federal election. Trump was not in the situation room for the first military operation of his administration, which went awry and resulted in one US and multiple civilian casualties. Trump mishandled classified information on a North Korean missile launch. Conway openly broke federal ethic rules on national television. It seems as though Trump has outdone virtually every misdeed leveled at Clinton over a 40 year career in less than one month - but where's the outcry? It seems as though the anti Clinton campaign was essentially a smokescreen - it doesn't matter if our guy is dirty, so long as he wins.

And intercepted emails?