Modern sovereignty is anthropocentric, constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone. Although a metaphysical assumption, anthropocentrism is of immense practical import, enabling modern states to command loyalty and resources from their subjects in pursuit of political projects. It has limits, however, which are brought clearly into view by the authoritative taboo on taking UFOs seriously. UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in (...) fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be "known" only by not asking what it is. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, viruses had yet to be defined in a material way. Instead, they were known better by what they were not – not bacteria, not culturable, and not visible with a light microscope. As with the ill-defined “gene” of genetics, viruses were microbes whose nature had not been revealed. Some clarity arrived in 1929 when Francis O. Holmes, a scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research reported that Tobacco mosaic virus could produce local necrotic (...) lesions on tobacco plants and that these lesions were in proportion to dilutions of the inoculum. Holmes’ method, the local lesion assay, provided the first evidence that viruses were discrete infectious particles, thus setting the stage for physicochemical studies of plant viruses. In a field where there are few eponymous methods or diseases, Holmes’ assay continues to be a useful tool for the study of plant viruses. TMV was a success because the local lesion assay “made the virus visible” and standardized the work of virology towards determining the nature of the virus. (shrink)

This booklet poses and answers 20 questions about climate change, followed by a section on “Basics of Climate Change.” If it had been published by an activist environmentalist organization, it could safely be ignored as a self-confessed piece of propaganda. But it can hardly be ignored since it comes from the top scientific institutions in the United States and Britain and might therefore be presumed to provide the most judicious available assessment of its chosen subject. Nevertheless, it is propaganda, not (...) a scientific assessment. It argues from authority and distorts evidence in doing so. The very term “climate change” in this context is rhetorical sleight of words. Until a few years ago, “global warming” was the universally used shorthand for human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW). But since there has been no appreciable warming globally for the last 15 years or so, the critics of carbon emissions have been using the term “climate change,” which cannot be contradicted or falsified: Climate has always changed and always will. Because it is awkward to keep writing “human-caused climate change,” I will here use the previously common acronym AGW. Arguing from Authority with Just-So Stories A common tactic when arguing from authority is the Just-So Story, supporting a dogmatic assertion with apparently reasonable statements which, however, have no basis in actual facts. Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories are the eponymous icons for this genre, imaginatively whimsical “explanations” for how the leopard got its spots, the giraffe its long neck, the camel its hump, and so on. “But, Mr. Kipling, how do you know that’s so?” “It’s just so... Just So” (Hillerich 1966). (shrink)

Some vociferous proponents of established science assert that it should always be believed when there are controversies over issues of public importance. That assertion rests on three assumptions, none of which are usually made explicit: 1) that only science is capable of arriving at truths about the natural world and that it actually does so; 2) that “science” is identical to the views propounded by the contemporary prevailing establishment of science, its mainstream institutions; and 3) that science can be distinguished (...) unequivocally, with certainty, from everything else. None of those presumptions has been demonstrated to be correct, and indeed there are excellent historical and logical reasons to regard all of them as wrong. Since these underlying assumptions cannot be proven, self-styled “skeptics” and other activists who seek hegemony for contemporaneous scientific consensuses engage in intellectual and rhetorical misdirection to give actual uncertainty the appearance of “practical” certainty. In doing so, activists fail to acknowledge the crucial distinction between a point of view that appropriately guides scholarly discourse or scientific research and views (expert opinions or assertions or conclusions) that “everyone” should accept and that offer appropriate guidance to public policies and actions. (shrink)

This book’s subtitle acknowledges the complexity of the task that anomalistics faces. Important aspects of the evidence come from times past, which makes it necessary to consider the reliability of the sources and how to interpret them in light of the cultural environment in the pertinent eras. The present and past states of science are obviously important, including why science has chosen not to look into what seems to us worth looking into; and that again calls for an understanding of (...) how science affects and is affected by culture, in the present and in the past. All these things are discussed in relation to Sasquatch, in the body of the book and also in the substantial and insightful Foreword by Leila Hadj-Chikh. The general phenomenon of resistance to genuine novelty is often remarked, but this book goes much further than the generality by rooting out quite specific reasons for mainstream science’s resistance to the existence of Sasquatch; and by pointing to the unspoken assumptions that underlie those reasons. Perhaps the central issue is that popular culture takes Sasquatch to be a primitive relative of humans, Homo, whereas Bindernagel identifies Sasquatch as one of the great apes. (shrink)

Ethos and logos of the Jain thought and practice is based on reality perceived by senses. Atheistic roots of Jain Dharm have nourished growth, maintained viability and vitality, and kept it relevant for over the last five millennia. Unlike Judeo-Christian-Islam or Brahminical faith, it does not rely on omniscient supreme or god. Its atheistic and anti-theistic thrust is generally known, yet its followers do not call themselves Nastik. They emphasize action-consequence relations as guide for successful behaviors with ethical conduct. The (...) basis of their arguments follows from the Jain logic of evidence based inference with multiple orthogonal affirmed assertions. It conserves information by acknowledging the remaining doubt in an inference. It does not assume binary complementation to force closure for deduction with incomplete knowledge which leads to self-reference and loss of information. This approach offers a rational and practical alternative to conundrum of western atheism even though its arguments are logical and consistent with available evidence. It also obviates need to extract religious morality from social mores. Objective truth and knowledge of established generalizations is necessary but not sufficient for subjective searches to shape desires and for what the futureought to be. (shrink)

Besides his activities as a theoretical physicist, the Belgian Léon Rosenfeld cultivated and showed a lively concern for history of science since his student years. This paper is a study of his publications, correspondence and other endeavours in history of science, mainly during the early Cold War period, in order to explore his essentially Marxist views on science and society and how they differed from those of other Marxists scholars, most notably John D. Bernal and Boris Hessen.

This article concerns itself with the reception of Rous' 1911 discovery of what later came to be known as the Rous Sarcoma Virus (RSV). Rous made his discovery at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research which had been primarily established to conduct research into infectious diseases. Rous' chance discovery of a chicken tumor led him to a series of conjectures about cancer causation and about whether cancer could have an extrinsic cause. Rous' finding was received with some scepticism by the (...) scientific community that held that cancer was not infectious and favored explanations which located the origins of cancer in the inner mechanism of the cell. After 4 years of unsuccessful effort to isolate and further determine the virus Rous felt compelled to discontinue his work on cancer viruses. When 55 years later, the significance of Rous's discovery was attested by the award of the Nobel Prize, it opened up debates about the issues of delayed recognition and scientific reputation. This article also considers why Rous' hypothesis of a viral origin of cancer could not be incorporated into the existing body of knowledge about cancer before the 1950s. (shrink)

This article concerns itself with the reception of Rous’ 1911 discovery of what later came to be known as the Rous Sarcoma Virus. Rous made his discovery at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research which had been primarily established to conduct research into infectious diseases. Rous’ chance discovery of a chicken tumor led him to a series of conjectures about cancer causation and about whether cancer could have an extrinsic cause. Rous’ finding was received with some scepticism by the scientific (...) community that held that cancer was not infectious and favored explanations which located the origins of cancer in the inner mechanism of the cell. After 4 years of unsuccessful effort to isolate and further determine the virus Rous felt compelled to discontinue his work on cancer viruses. When 55 years later, the significance of Rous’s discovery was attested by the award of the Nobel Prize, it opened up debates about the issues of delayed recognition and scientific reputation. This article also considers why Rous’ hypothesis of a viral origin of cancer could not be incorporated into the existing body of knowledge about cancer before the 1950s. (shrink)

The common view of science is a misunderstanding of today's science that does not recognize how "modern" science has changed since its inception in the 16th to 17th centuries. Science is generally taken to be objectively reliable because it uses "the scientific method" and because scientists work disinterestedly, publish openly, and keep one another honest through peer review. That common view was not too unrealistic in the early days and the glory days of modern science, but it is quite wrong (...) about contemporary science, which has ceased to be trustworthy because it is subject to commercial and bureaucratic influences that have spawned highly damaging conflicts of interest, institutional as well as personal. The birth of "modern" science is credited uncontroversially to "The" Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, but it has not been widely under-stood that there have been three distinctly different stages of scientific activity since then. In the first stage, amateurs were seeking to satisfy their curiosity about how the world works. There were essentially no controlling interests other than truth-seeking. Missteps taken resulted chiefly from the inherent difficulty of making discoveries and from such inherent human flaws as pride and avarice. The second stage, roughly the 19th century, saw science becoming a career, a plausible way to make a living, not unlike other careers in academe or professions like engineering: respectable and potentially satisfying but not any obvious path to great influence or wealth. Inevitably there were conflicts of interest between furthering a career and following objectively where evidence pointed, but competition and collegiality served well enough to keep the progress of science little affected by that conflicting career interest. The way to get ahead was by doing good science. In the third and present stage, which began at about the middle of the 20th century, science faces a necessary change in ethos as its centuries-long expansion at an exponential rate has changed to a zero-sum, steady-state situation that has fostered intensely cutthroat competition. At the same time, the record of science's remarkable previous successes has led industry and government to co-opt and exploit science and scientists. Those interactions offer the possibility for individuals to gain considerable public influence and wealth. That possibility tempts to corruption. Outright fraud in research has become noticeably more frequent, and public pronouncements about matters of science are made for self-interested bureaucratic and commercial motives. The public cannot now rely safely on the soundness of advice from the scientific community. Keywords: historical changes in science, science become untrustworthy. (shrink)

The official position, the mainstream consensus, is that HIV causes AIDS and that anti-HIV drugs are beneficial. Both are denied by many people: Some of them are eminently qualified to critique the technicalities, others are persuaded by personal experience or that of friends of being "HIV-positive" but healthy, and others again have analyzed the cases presented pro and con by the believers and the disbelievers. To my knowledge, there exists no disinterested analysis of the opposing cases, and books and book (...) reviews tend to be highly polarized. For the present book, fulsome praise has come from those who share Nattrass's belief that HIV causes AIDS; the opposite comes from those who disagree with her. This reviewer disagrees with Nattrass (Bauer 2007a, 2009a), and the reader is thereby warned to be on the alert for bias in this review even as its author strives to focus on verifiable points. (shrink)