I’ve been eyeing up to do something about this film for a little while, and whilst i enjoy mocking those derive all their ideas about the Soviet Union from the likes of Beck and said film. I’ve decided to calm down enough now, to do a proper critique of this movie, which for the time being can be located here.
Home » Research
Search
Latest Forum Posts
- Religion & Irreligion • Re: Christians being offended by their own beliefs Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:44 am australopithecus
- General Discussion • Re: Peanut Gallery - AronRa/Enyart - Phylogeny Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:41 am )O( Hytegia )O(
- Religion & Irreligion • Re: Christians being offended by their own beliefs Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:30 am MaryContrary
- Introduce Yourself! • Re: Heard AronRa, came here, he gave me the finger... Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:17 am Stripe
- General Discussion • Re: Peanut Gallery - AronRa/Enyart - Phylogeny Sun Feb 05, 2012 1:36 am Inferno
Information
You are currently browsing the archives for the Research category.
Archives
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- December 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
Categories
- Astronomy (5)
- Censorship (33)
- Culture (25)
- Entertainment (15)
- Events (13)
- History (5)
- Introductions (10)
- Literature (11)
- News (57)
- Philosophy (45)
- Politics (7)
- Random (14)
- Reason (66)
- Religion (59)
- Research (8)
- Reviews (2)
- Science (53)
- Show (5)
- TubeGuardian (2)
- Uncategorized (1)
- Website (6)
- YouTube (32)
Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
The Soviet Story, A critique (the first 20 mins).
theyounghistorian77
Free GE
Aught3
Forgive the indulgence, I read a rather infuriating story in the newspaper and I felt like a rant.
A recent story in the Dominion Post (Commercial benefits lacking in GE trials) reveals the genetic engineering trials being carried out by Crown Research institutions have lead to very few commercial gains. Plant and Food and AgResearch have paid over half a million dollars in application fees to ERMA and only one of the trials has resulted in royalty generating IP. To those familiar with New Zealand’s restrictive requirements for GE research, this outcome is hardly a surprise.
Despite decades of safe use around the world, GE and GMOs remain contentious issues in New Zealand. The regulatory environment alone makes it difficult to carry out even basic research, let alone the commercial research which scientists are now being criticised for not producing. Anti-GE spokeswoman Claire Bleakley decries that the benefit of GE research being completed in New Zealand is lost to the overseas companies. But if private companies are the only ones paying for the research to be carried out then it makes sense they are the ones who reap the economic benefit. Basic funding for GE research is simply not available in New Zealand, the funding bodies know there is little chance any innovation made will be allowed to be used.
If New Zealand wants its scientific organisations to produce applied science using GE technology then it must:
1) relax the regulatory environment so that research time and money is not being consumed navigating expensive legislation
2) fund GE projects so the IP is not captured by overseas companies
3) open the New Zealand market to GMOs so that the benefits of this technology can be accrued here
There is very little risk and huge benefits to allowing GE research to be conducted more freely. The longer New Zealand clings to the anti-GE label, the more we miss out on the exciting commercial opportunities. Rather than be GE-free, let’s free GE!
Cross-posted from IndoctrinatingFreethought.blogspot.com
Magnetic Madness
rabbitpirate
Recently my Dad was diagnosed as having arthritis in his knees. Now I should say right from the beginning that I am skeptical even of this, given that the diagnosis apparently just involved my Dad telling the GP that his knees still hurt after a fall he had a few weeks ago, the GP looking at my Dad’s trousers for a few seconds (he never so much as asked him to roll up his trouser leg) and then noting the fact that my Dad is over 60 and so concluding that the pain is therefore the result of arthritic knees. But I am not going to focus on this aspect of the story as it is what happened next that really got my skeptical juices flowing.
Religion and support for torture
Aught3
An interesting paper in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin details the conflicting influences of religion on support for torture. The researchers tested several possible relationships between these two factors including the influence of other variables such as education level and political conservatism. I found the results fairly surprising, let me know what you think.
The data collected was from two surveys taken in 2004 and 2008 asking 983 and 1,893 people respectively. The first effect looked at was the direct relationship between religion and support for torure. The researchers found a negative correlation on this point. That is, a religious person was less likely – on average – to support torture. This was described as an organic influence, something about the precepts of religion and opposition to torture were simultaneously appealing to the survey respondents.
However, the authors had also expected a discursive influence of religion and torture because of the popular view that religion and conservative politics ‘go together’ in the US and conservative politics lead to support for torture. When they separated out the progressive and conservative respondents, the moderating impact of religion was overwhelmed and a strong positive relationship between religion and support for torture was observed. A discursive relationship is one that arises through common perception, such as an ideological framework. Compare this to an organic relationship caused by innate features which people may not be consciously aware of. To show the three part relationship between religiosity, conservatism, and torture the researchers looked at one final factor: education level.
The authors of this study reasoned that conservatives with higher education levels would hold more consistent political views. Those with less education would be more likely to follow the common, organic, threads even if they were inconsistent with their stated political position. The data were consistent with this hypothesis showing conservative religious people who were highly educated were even more likely to support torture. So there we are, being religious is negatively correlated with supporting torture but being educated and politically engaged is positively correlated with it, at least if you are a conservative.
Malka and Soto (2011) The Conflicting Influences of Religiosity on Attitude Toward Torture. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Science vs religion: the effect of education
Aught3
A new sociological study of UCLA undergraduate students has been getting some play in the sceptical blogosphere. Since it relates to some previous blog posts I have written on the LoR I thought I would go through it. Basically, a UCLA organisation called the Spirituality in Higher Education Project (SHEP)1 surveyed the religious opinions of the first-year population on campus. They then followed up with another survey of juniors to identify opinions influenced by several years of higher eduction. The study in question (Scheitle, 2011) focuses on the students’ perception of the relationship between religion and science.
Students could choose between four options to describe their view on this relationship.
- Conflict – I consider myself on the side of religion
- Conflict – I consider myself on the side of science
- Independence – they refer to different aspects of reality
- Collaboration – each can be used to help support the other
Categories three and four were lumped together into a ‘non-conflict’ answer.
Of this sample 83% of the students were religious. Unsurprisingly then, this means that 86% of the respondents went with non-conflict (69%) or sided with religion (17%). That leaves 17% non-religious students, 14% of whom sided exclusively with science. Given the large proportion of Christians in the US and that most are not of the fundamental variety, meaning they will have their science and eat it too, this seems a fairly straight-forward result.
Interestingly by their junior year, 73% of those who had originally sided with religion had come to adopt a non-conflict or pro-science position. This shift perhaps reflects the secularising effect of education. However, 47% of those who had originally picked science had also shifted their position. Not as large of a percentage of those who changed from a pro-religion stand-point but a substantial proportion of students. Even when the researcher looked into the data for only science students, the moderating effect of education was still present. Apparently, learning more about science decreased the view that science and religion were in conflict.
What I would have liked to be able to look at is the detailed data for both the independence and collaboration viewpoints instead of having them lumped together in a single category. If it’s correct that more education promotes a more secular viewpoint I would expect to see the ‘independence’ category increase. Whereas if education was actually supporting religion, I would expect to see a growth in the number of students picking ‘collaboration’. With the data in their current form, it’s impossible to make such judgements.
- SHEP is funded by the Templeton foundation; any true sceptics will now hum the Jaws theme.
Scheitle, C. P. (2011) U.S. College Students’ Perception of Religion and Science: Conflict, Collaboration, or Independence? A Research Note. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50(1), 175-186.
NASA Reveals Discovery of Arsenic-Using Life
AndroidAR
NASA has announced the discovery of microbes that can replace phosphorus with arsenic, which is toxic to all other known life forms. It can substitute arsenic for phosphorus in the (normally phosphoric) backbone of its DNA and RNA, in its cell membrane, and even in its ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is a central energy-carrying molecule in all cells.
NASA’s release: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/dec/HQ_10-320_Toxic_Life.html
So, how do you think this will affect the search for life elsewhere? It might not be life on Titan (as some speculated the news release might be about), but it’s still pretty cool.
Forum topic for convenience: http://forums.leagueofreason.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6453
Experiment time again
rabbitpirate
Yes, it is time for another ill-conceived and most likely fundamentally flawed online experiment to test something that in all likelihood no one else is remotely interested in other than me and which is presented with all the get up and go of a dead camel stung by a poisonous grave scorpion. Oh the fun. This time around we will be testing the pseudoscientific claim that by recording what we say and playing those messages backwards we can tell if someone is lying or not.
This strange claim is put forward by David Oates who runs an organisation called Reverse Speech Technologies. Reverse Speech is the idea that when we talk normally our subconscious minds encode messages into the words we choose that can only be identified by recording what we say and playing it backwards. These backwards messages are said to contain the true meaning of what we said as well as always speak the truth. Amongst the various uses for Reverse Speech Oates claims that Reverse Speech can be used to detect lies. Well them sound like fighting words to me and so I have put together a very simple experiment to test that claim. And that’s where you guys come in.
In order to test this claim I have put together a video, well technically two videos but who’s counting, that contains five statements, four of which are factual and one of which is a complete fabrication. After each statement is played you will hear it again only this time in reverse. If the claims of David Oates are accurate then you should be able to hear in the reverse versions of the five statements clues as to whether they are truthful or not. Once you have decided which of the five statements you believe is the false one then all you need to do is vote for that statement in the poll that you can access from a link in the information box below the second part of the video. Unlike my pervious experiment the results of how people have voted and the details of which statement is in fact the false one will be accessable immediately so you don’t have to sit around for ages waiting for me to make another video explaining how everything went.
Ok so it is not as sexy as testing psychic powers or debunking homeopathy, however as far as I can tell this is the very first time this specific pseudoscientific claim has been tested which means you will be a part of something no one has ever done before. To get involved, and I hope you will, go watch this video and simply follow the instructions you will find there. Sorry my video presentation is somewhat less than dynamic, that is really something I have to work on.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
theowarner
I’m having a peculiar thought this morning.
After a few exchanges on message boards, I’ve been directed to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy more than once in the last few days. And, today, glancing through it, I’m left with a rather odd feeling. It’s not entirely one of having found a child with his hand in the cookie jar, but more the feeling that there some of the cookies are missing.
I direct the curious reader to a few articles and I will ask a few questions. Mind you, I cannot suggest anything more than to wonder if there isn’t anything more going on here.