In the News: Must you believe in what you study?

I found this very interesting article today stating that Rhode Island University gave a PhD in Geoscience to a Young Earth Creationist (YEC). A YEC is a person that goes against the mainstream scientific viewpoint and believes that everything the Bible says is correct and the Earth is about 6-10 thousand years old, not the 4.6 billion years old the scientific community has adopted.

Actually, not only was his thesis about geology, it was a paleontology degree studying mosasaurs. These animals lived over 65 million years ago during the Mesozoic (The Age of Dinosaurs) and could not have easily fit into the YEC viewpoint. It was stated very clearly by the PhD recipient that he did not believe the science that he was studying, nor the conclusions that he came to.

This leads to my question: can you get a degree in something you profoundly feel is wrong? Most scientists I know feel that Creationists are just wrong based on piles of evidence upon evidence that has been produced for several hundreds of years and, like the flat earth theory, this hopefully will fade into the past. But people are entitled to their own opinions and a society that forces what to believe is not the society Americans signed up for. So let them believe what they want to and I will believe what I want to and we will probably both argue and yell and try to convince the other is wrong but when is life not like that.

But I have a problem with this degree that was granted without any apparent problems to a person who essentially lied through his teeth to get it. What was his point in getting it anyway. He does not believe in what most geologists or paleontologists do, why place himself into that sort of scrutiny? Does he want to convert the masses? Maybe, but then why proclaim that everything we have done was right and then go "I was just lying about that". It makes him look like an idiot where his viewpoints seem to have even less clout than they would have had before.

Go to any SVP (Society of Vertebrate Paleontology) or GSA (Geological Society of America) meeting and present your actual findings and I can guarantee that they will pick apart any findings you have. But don't take that as a religious thing, it's a science thing. Trust me I know. I had 2 years of work taken apart in one finding. But you know what, science moves on and no matter what you think you know. It will turn out to be wrong in the long run.

So again, I pose the question, should a PhD be presented to someone who is making a mockery of the scientific community?

Some links for this story
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/what-is-science.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/02/20/should-creationists-be-able-to-get-phds-in-geoscience/
http://trueancestor.typepad.com/true_ancestor/2007/02/can_a_student_p.html

In the News: Global warming is definitely, most probably almost certainly human caused

So a new report came out today stating that global warming is likely the result of human activity. So what makes this report different from the many before it?

Nothing that I can tell.

I mean really. How many of these things need to come out before the US government will actually do anything. You know this report was primarily for the benefit of the US public since the rest of the world has grown up and accepted the earlier reports. The most profound international program, the Kyoto Protocol, has been panned by Bush, since it allowed too much leniency for developing nations even though we (the US) produces a vast majority of the CO2 entering the atmosphere.

One thing that I extremely dislike in the report is that they state the effects of global warming are not going to go away anytime soon. Eventually they state much further down the article that this does not mean we shouldn't do anything about it, and that if we do nothing the effects will get much worse. But what about the people that just read the first half of article? It's not like any of us hasn't done that before. It is my worry that this will lead people to the wrong conclusion; that to do nothing will be just as good, if not better than actually trying to stop this.

Anyway, that's my vent. Here is a link to a couple of the stories

Reuters

Associated Press

Live Science

In the News - Bring Pluto Back!!!!

The IAU (International Astronomical Union) has officially demoted Pluto to a new class: the Dwarf Planet. This means that under the classical definition of planet ratified at the meeting there are only 8 classical planets.

I am at odds about this. I say we start a petition to bring Pluto back. Anyone with me, comment on this blog and we will get this overruled. Come on people Pluto was not just any planet for most of you. It was your inner rouge.

This is not the usual planet, like Mars or Jupiter, that could go in any old elliptical orbit like all the others, but this was an eccentric planet. Willing to take risks. To think outside the box. To become the 8th planet at times and not always the 9th. What other planet can boast that. NONE I tell you, none. What planet could live in the realm of gaseous planets and still not be considered one of them, none other than our beloved Pluto. And now they go and try to take that away from us.

From this moment on, I am on strike of the planetary system set up by the world. Strike I tell you. STRIKE!!!!

Article Here

And note: The definition of a dwarf planet states that the dwarf planet "has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite."

In the News - Intelligent Design is Dead

In a recent article on Yahoo! It states that many Clergy are now on the side of scientists in the view of evolution:

"As a legal strategy intelligent design is dead. It will be very difficult for any school district in the future to successfully survive a legal challenge," Scott said. "That doesn't mean intelligent design is dead as a very popular social movement. This is an idea that has got legs."

But pastors are speaking out against it. Warren Eschbach, a retired Church of the Brethren pastor and professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania helped sponsor a letter signed by more than 10,000 other clergy.

"We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests," they wrote.
Catholic experts have also joined the movement.

"The intelligent design movement belittles God. It makes God a designer, an engineer," said
Vatican' Observatory Director George Coyne, an astrophysicist who is also ordained. "The God of religious faith is a god of love. He did not design me."

Geological Movie Review - King Kong

First off AWESOME movie. Now for the paleontologist side of me. -

Now with the added 65 million years of evolution all the dinos on Skull Island are slightly demented from their typical selves and the raptors have really bad teeth.

Also I can see why dinos went extinct and mammals thrive. We have King King on our side. Yea, 3 T. rexs versus 1 King Kong, and who comes out on top, that's right, the monkey. Go Evolution!!