Published by Brunsell on 12 Sep 2009 at 08:35 pm
Web Highlights (weekly)
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Major Blunder in Science Reporting will Fuel Creationist Claims : Greg Laden’s Blog
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Life Science Teachers: Take special note!
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It turns out that a study of these different depositional environments, in the paper by Swart, indicates that the two data sources behave differently and the non-ocean bottom deposits cannot be used as they previously were. As a result of this, our understanding of the history of the Earth’s carbon cycle has gone all topsy-turvy and now needs to be re-examined.
Science marches on. This assertion by Swart will be tested, challenged, and if he is wrong, tossed out or modified. At the same time, people will be working on reassessing the pre 150 mya record. There is a lot of work to do an if it is really true that the pre 150 mya record is borked, this means that we will soon be exposed to a new and different (presumably) understanding of early life on earth! Cool!
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Obviously, this writer gets it totally wrong. But more importantly, if you look at this text, it is clear that this is the writing of someone steeped in the creationist literature. This tells me that we are seeing the beginning of a disinformation campaign regarding this research. There are several clues in here that link this paragraph to the Creationist Conspiracy. For example, the mention of NSF funding in the first paragraph, followed by the phrase “carbon dating can ony be trusted up to 150 mya” is a clue.
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Again, most of the early evidence for the origin of life is based on fossil material dated in a way that has nothing to do with this. The overall pattern of life and the carbon cycle prior to 150 million years ago may be reassessed in relation to this research, but not the existence of life during this period.
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YouTube - Experiments & Bias in science
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Science is often seen as only an experimental endeavor, yet both observational and experimental science provide insight. Also, most think scientists strive to be unbiased, but this is simply not p..
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Dark matter and normal matter have been wrenched apart by the tremendous collision of two large clusters of galaxies. The galaxies are observed in the optical (shown in orange and white). Most of the normal mass in the clusters (pink) is associated with gas heated in their collision. Dark matter is not visible, but is inferred (blue) from gravitational lensing effects
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Where Did All the Flowers Come From? - NYTimes.com
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Darwin could see for himself how successful flowering plants had become. They make up the majority of living plant species, and they dominate many of the world’s ecosystems, from rain forests to grasslands. They also dominate our farms. Out of flowers come most of the calories humans consume, in the form of foods like corn, rice and wheat. Flowers are also impressive in their sheer diversity of forms and colors, from lush, full-bodied roses to spiderlike orchids to calla lilies shaped like urns.
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It is now clear, for example, that the closest living relatives to flowers are flowerless species that produce seeds, a group that includes pine trees and gingkos. Unfortunately, the plants are all closely related to one another, and none is more closely related to flowers than any of the others.
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In the past few years scientists have pushed back the fossil record of flowers to about 136 million years ago.
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.