Samantha Pierce

Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve ...some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account. Asked how likely it is that we all descended from Adam and Eve, Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, replies: "That would be against all the genomic evidence that we've assembled over the last 20 years, so not likely at all." "Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost," Schneider says. "So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings." To many evangelicals, this is heresy. "From my viewpoint, a historical Adam and Eve is absolutely central to the truth claims of the Christian faith," says Fazale Rana, vice president of Reasons To Believe, an evangelical think tank that questions evolution...

So the title of this article is a little sensationalist and, well, alarmist, but it does point to some very interesting research. Bottom line is that reality does not conform to the climate change computer models. We might want to consider attempts to radically alter how we live bases on the assumption that human sources of CO2 are harmful to the global climate. New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed. Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the Univer...

This sounds like the scare over thimerosal all over again. Parents, and others, insisted (and some still do) that the preservative used in some vaccines caused autism. And we all know how that debacle turned out (years of effort and money looking for a link all the while subjecting children to some pretty uncomfortable and often dangerous "treatments"). Now here again we have parents and their supporters asserting that the big bad scary chemicals are messing up their kids, researchers saying that umm no the evidence doesn't suggest any such thing, and government regulators ready to appease. F.D.A. Panel to Consider Warnings for Artificial Food Colorings Renee Shutters, a mother of two from Jamestown, N.Y., said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that two years ago, her son Trenton, then 5, was having serious behavioral problems at school until she eliminated artificial food colorings from his diet. “I know for sure I found the root cause of this one because you can tu...

I remember reciting the times tables in school when I was little, before I came to the States. Reciting things out loud over and over was a big part of learning things in that time and place. These days I spend a lot of time talking to myself. Turns out that that's actually the way to go. Talking Out Loud Improves Memory Retention Via Althouse .

I dislike appeals to scientific consensus preferring to peruse the research that current scientific opinion is based on for myself. Having said that, in light of Lancet finally getting around to retracting Andrew Wakefield's 1998 study that claimed that vaccines were linked to autism, Popular Mechanics is taking a look at some studies that have claimed a link between vaccines and autism. The Truth About 9 Anti-Vaccine Studies Now that the infamous 1998 Lancet study implicating vaccines for causing autism has been retracted, does the anti-vaccination movement have any scientific legs left to stand on? Here, we investigate the scientific merit of some of the other lightning-rod studies from over the last decade that anti-vaccination advocates say back up their claims.

The news has hit the main stream media that part of the proposed revisions destined to be in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) include incorporating the current category of Aspeger's Syndrome, along with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) and a few others, into the larger Autism Spectrum Disorder category. All in all I think this is a good move that will result in more accurate diagnosis and better access to services for individuals who currently have autism related diagnoses but not the label autism. While I haven't yet come across objections to doing away with some of the other diagnostic labels such as PDD and PDD-NOS there seems to be some criticism of the changes with respect to Asperger's Syndrome. The one criticism that I find most irritating is the complaint that this change will "taint" Asperger individuals with the label of autism. The complaint rears it...

Most people would recognise that Dr. Andrew Wakefield is an unethical user of autistic children and their parents but now it is official. MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield 'abused his position of trust' The doctor who first claimed that the MMR vaccine could cause autism has been found guilty of a series of misconduct charges, that include putting children through painful and unnecessary tests, a disciplinary hearing has ruled today. Dr Andrew Wakefield showed "a callous disregard" for the suffering of children and "abused his position of trust" as a doctor in carrying out a study which sparked the biggest vaccine scare in a generation and has been blamed for the resurgence of measles in Britain, the General Medical Council (GMC) found. He was also found to have brought the medical profession "into disrepute" after he took blood samples from youngsters at his son’s birthday party in return for payments of £5 and failed to disclose vital conflicts of inte...

A visual representation of the universe as we know it thus far. Kind of blows the mind. Via Respectful Insolence .

Sullivan at Left Brain/Right Brain comments in the post Forbes on “Stars Vs. Science” once again the autism community looks bad Once again, the Autism community takes it on the chin that our representative in the public eye is, well, in a league of her own when it comes to understanding science. Even though the story is about celebrities and science in general, autism plays a big part in the story as a whole. Autism and the "controversy" over whether or not vaccines cause autism feature prominently in the Forbes article Stars Vs. Science that discusses the maddening phenomenon of people taking medical advice from Hollywood celebrities. When the medical journal Pediatrics released a consensus report early this year concluding that autistic children do not benefit from special diets, ABC News' Diane Sawyer knew just whom to call. Jenny McCarthy, former MTV game host, nude model and now mother of an autistic son Evan, enthusiastically denounced the study. "Until docto...

This explains a lot. Bacon and eggs could help pregnant women boost their baby's intelligence Sis2's response, "Who put that out the pork people?" Via Instapundit who asks , "BACON: IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO?"

Hilarious commentary (to me anyway) from Tim Blair on the race politics of climategate: Robert James Taylor of the National Black News Journal : Blacks should not join the global warming battle or accept new taxes or restrictions on their lives until the truth about global warming is actually known. I dream of a day when this freedom is also granted to whites. More from the Taylor article: The CRU is the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia near Norwich, England. The CRU is populated by British and American scientists who more than any other group in the world has been responsible for the computer models and measurements upon which the bulk of global warming predictions are based. Indeed, President Obama was in Copenhagen this week pushing an anti-global warming agenda based largely on CRU data. There is just one problem: Global warming has actually stopped. Yes, the planet’s mean temperature did rise for at least 30 consecutive years but somewhere around the ...

I'm starting to feel like one of those gawkers who turn out to see how bad the three car pile up is. Anyway, Pajamas Media has put together a climategate database for you to peruse and comment on at your leisure. Here are a couple of interesting reads, Global warming consensus: garbage in, garbage out and Climategate and Scientific Journal Chicanery Reading the comments section of just about any article on global warming climate change policy is particularly amusing these days since the articles almost universally ignore the unfolding climategate scandal but it keeps cropping up in the comments sections of these articles. This story amusingly tries to make the argument that CRU scientists and their contacts trying to keep papers that have differing conclusions from their own from being published was actually an attempt to protect the public from "junk" science, Stolen E-Mails Raise Questions On Climate Research . In this case "junk" science being anything tha...

In another chapter of the Scientists behaving Badly saga the rumblings of lawsuits and congressional probes over the information in leaked emails and files from CRU have begun (via Instapundit). Competitive Enterprise Institute Sues NASA in Wake of Climategate Scandal Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies’ refusal — for nearly three years — to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding “Climategate” scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries’ freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, compu...

I like Scientists Behaving Badly much better than Climategate. We don't really need another X-gate. Although this "gate" is more like the original than some of the other "gates" that have been christened as such. Anyway, here's a round up of facts and opinion on the revelations in the hacked emails and data from University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most of these I picked up from Instapundit . Climate cuttings 33 , summaries of some of what's in those hacked CRU files. Climategate, Coal Mine Deaths, Air Pollution and Coals assault on human health . I'm not sure I would agree with everything this blogger concludes about coal but this is certainly true, "The over reaching on the science and over aggressive tactics are now blowing up in face of the pro-global warming side." This from the comments section regarding claims about climate conditions in the earth's past also rings true, "How can you trust that these con...

Apparently some place called University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit got hacked. Their emails and data on global warming climate change are all over the internet. There was initial caution that the data and emails might have been fakes but they have since been confirmed to be the real deal. Why should anyone care about information hacked from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit? Well only because they've apparently been massaging their data to get the desired results with regard to global warming climate change. The desired result being that the planet is warming and that the warming is the fault of mankind. So much for the integrity of the scientific process. There's a post full of updates here , the most amusing of which so far is, "UPDATE VI. The BBC declines to cover this story, preferring a piece on mammoth dung ." Reactions from our part of the globe can be found here . Both posts provide access to the leaked information for you to ev...

I remember some years ago the "Behold the power of cheese" ad campaign. One of the commercias said something to the effect that mankind went to the moon, discovered it was made of cheese after all and never went back. I always found that commercial to be amusing. That fateful flight took place forty years ago today .

There is intriguing news out about of some of the latest research into the genetic origins of autism. The research out of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has identified several changes in genes involved with brain function that occur in autistic individuals and the general population (thanks to hubby for doing most on the leg work for this). CHOP, Penn research points to genetic link in autism By analyzing DNA from more than 2,000 autistic children, researchers have uncovered the best evidence yet for genetic links to the disorder - all tied to the way brain cells form and dissolve connections. The research effort, led by Hakon Hakonarson at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, used much larger samples than had been analyzed before to identify genetic differences between autistic subjects and controls. The CHOP group collaborated with Penn, UCLA, and other institutions, announcing their findings in two papers in today's issue of the journal Nature. One paper reveale...

Medical blogger Whitecoat Tales wades into the blogging world at Beyond the Short Coat and goes right for the hard stuff. Check out the first post in the series, Hard Conversations: Vaccines and Autism, Part 1

Sometimes it pays to get a second opinion. Study: Kids Often Misdiagnosed With Food Allergies . Many children with allergies and eczema are often misdiagnosed as having food allergies, according to a study presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology conference in Washington, D.C. Researchers at National Jewish Health in Denver conducted "food challenge" tests on 125 children with allergies and eczema and found that more than 50 percent of the kids could tolerate foods they had been told to avoid.

So the lifting of the ban on creating new embryonic stem cell lines wasn't really a lifting of the ban at all. This new new speak is hard to keep track of. Everybody is all up in arms over how AIG has spent the money that the government has been throwing at it. It's a bit late now to try putting the toothpaste back in the tube. The millions that have already been paid out are gone and we ain't gettin' it back. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Hopefully somebody is paying attention and will stop giving them money. So is the economy totally in the tank or are things starting to look up? I've lost track of what the message is supposed to be this week. There is an unsavory whiff of protectionist xenophobia about this: Amazing how Americans managed to get jobs with the glut of foreigners (we're talking legal workers here) taking all the good jobs before we started throwing money at failing companies. Mexico is disintegrating from within, has been for years. The border area...