White House Releases a Long Report on Scientific Integrity, One Blind to Its Main Threats

The White House Office of Science and Technology has just released a long 53-page report on the topic of protecting scientific integrity. The report is entitled "Protecting the Integrity of Government Science."  Nowadays in the United States "government science"  means almost the same as "American science," because such a large fraction of research depends on grants from the Federal government. 

The report uses the term "scientific integrity" very many times. But the authors of the report seem to be unaware of the main things undermining scientific integrity these days.  The report focuses mainly on threats to scientific activity such as government interference in scientific activity, such as when an administration or federal agency might try to pressure scientists into reporting something more agreeable to the administration or agency.  The authors of the report make little or no mention of the main things threatening scientific integrity these days. 

Below is a list of the main things threatening scientific integrity these days:

(1) There has arose in scientific journals a tendency called publication bias, a habit of not publishing negative experimental papers reporting only a null result. 

(2) There has arose in academia an incentive system and scoring system in which scientists are judged numerically by the number of scientific papers they have written and the number of citations such papers have received. 

(3) Under such a system there is an incentive for scientists to  produce low-quality papers or low-value papers in high numbers, for the sake of increasing the count of papers they have published, rather than producing papers of much higher quality in smaller numbers. 

(4) Under such a reward system there is also a strong incentive for scientists to run experiments following poor design standards and using inadequate sample sizes, because such easier-to-produce and poorly designed experiments will be more likely to create false alarms that will be reported as some positive result, thereby increasing the chance that the resulting scientific paper will be published, and not be rejected because of publication bias that excludes null results.  

(5) Under such a reward system there is also a strong incentive for scientists to not use proper blinding protocols, and to interpret and analyze experimental data in a biased way, to maximize the chance that some positive result can be reported, rather than a null result (which may cause the resulting paper not to be published because of publication bias). 

(6) Under such a reward system (in which citation counts are a key metric under which scientists are judged) there is also a strong incentive for scientists to exaggerate or misstate their experimental findings or analytic findings, claiming that they showed some important result that was not actually found by the research.  

(7) Wishing to create an aura of research success that increases their institutional prestige, universities and colleges have a strong incentive to write press releases that exaggerate or misstate the research results of scientists at their institutions, making minor or unimportant research sound like some very important result. 

(8) Not wishing to have any scandal that might decrease their institutional prestige, universities and colleges have a strong incentive to not investigate or penalize scientists at their institution who engage in fraud or poor research practices or misstatements about their research. 

(9) Wishing to create additional web traffic that results in more revenue because of online ads that generate revenue proportional to the number of page visitors, science web sites and other web sites have a strong incentive to produce hype-filled misleading pages that inaccurately summarize scientific research, making dubious or unimportant research sound like some important result.  

(10) These incentives are producing exactly the results we should expect them to produce. A large fraction of scientists are producing mainly low-quality or unimportant papers, as if they were more interested in their paper count than in the quality of their papers. In some fields such as experimental neuroscience, very poor research practices are more the norm than the exception, with inadequate sample sizes, a lack of a needed sample size calculation, and nonexistent or inadequate blinding protocols seeming to occur in the majority of experiments.  Very large numbers of scientists are making inaccurate claims in the abstracts or titles of their papers, claiming the research shows things it did not actually show. With great regularity colleges and universities are producing press releases that make inaccurate or exaggerated claims about some research result at their institution that is being announced.  Science news sites and science magazines habitually make unwarranted hype-filled claims about scientific research.  There is a huge replication crisis that has been documented by scientists.  Attempts to replicate experimental results typically show that far fewer than 50% of reported experimental results can be successfully reproduced.  Research surveys of experimental scientists (such as this one and this one) show that a large fraction of them either confess to poor research practices or suspect very many of their colleagues of such conduct.   

(11) In addition to all these problems that have nothing to do with belief traditions among scientists, there are a host of scientific integrity problems resulting from belief traditions that have arisen in scientific communities, cases in which scientists are socially pressured to support or conform to far-from-proven theories that have become popular within scientific communities.  Such theories include the dogma of abiogenesis (that the first living thing arose accidentally), the dogma of common descent (that all species evolved from a common ancestor), the dogma that memories are stored in brains (despite no one ever finding a stored memory in a brain), the dogma that all mental phenomena are caused by brains, the dogma of dark matter, the dogma of dark energy, the dogma of primordial cosmic inflation, the dogma of the nonexistence of spooky psychic phenomena, the dogma that genetically modifying food is safe, the dogma that pesticides are relatively safe (pushed by sites such as www.realclearscience.com), the dogma that gene-splicing is not risky, the doctrine that COVID-19 had a purely natural origin, and many others. When some unproven theory gains ascendancy in a scientific community, and becomes a belief tradition in that community, its members will tend to interpret all observations in a way that conforms to such a theory, rejecting all observations inconsistent with such a theory.  Dogma-driven interpretations of observational results threaten objective scientific inquiry in many ways.   

(12) Because of some of these problems,  a significant fraction of the billions of dollars that the US government spends each year on scientific research is wasted, going to unworthy projects or poorly designed experiments or poorly conducted research.  Moreover, there is a gigantic amount of misinformation being spread about federally funded projects, misinformation such as claims that experiments or projects showed things they did not show. 

The recent White House report on scientific integrity ("Protecting the Integrity of Government Science") seems to be almost entirely blind to such problems.  The authors show no real signs of understanding the problems listed above. Instead of focusing on such problems, which are the main threats these days to scientific integrity, the report focuses on things of lesser significance such as rare cases when some administration attempts to interfere with scientific analysis.  Any report such as this should have said very much about the very widely discussed problem known as the replication crisis, the fact that most scientific research does not seem to be reproducible, and that attempts to reproduce experimental results are failing most of the time. But the 53-page report does not even use the words "replicate" or "replication" or "reproduce" or "reproducible" or "reproducibility."  The report has lots of glittering generalities, but fails to deliver an effective algorithm for how to beef up scientific integrity.  The report has no mention of sample sizes or blinding protocols, two of the main things that should come up in a thorough discussion of scientific integrity. Inadequate sample sizes and a lack of thorough blinding protocols are two of the chief current threats to the integrity of experimental science.  

The report seems to have been carefully worded so that no specific mention would be made of any ongoing shortfall of today's scientists.  It is as if the authors were terrified of offending anyone in the science community or academic community or journalism community.  As a result, the report is a kind of bowl of bland bureaucratic mush, rather than the kind of sharp, incisive thing that might really help beef up scientific integrity.

What might an effective White House report on scientific integrity look like? It might be one that thoroughly documented all the problems threatening the integrity of scientific research.  It might be one that proposed specific measures to substantially reduce such problems.  The report might include a proposal for enforcing quality standards on federally funded research.  Rather than vague bland mush, the report might have included specific recommendations rather like this:

(1) No federal funding of any research project that has its published results available only behind a paywall. Taxpayers should be able to easily read all the research they paid for, except for classified research. 

(2) Some mechanism guaranteeing the publication of all federally funded observational results (including null results). 

(3) Some mechanism (such as public weekly research logs) depriving federally funded researchers from cherry-picking the experimental results that will be published, something that often occurs so that only results conforming to prevailing belief traditions appears. 

(4) No federal funding of any experimental research project unless it first published a detailed research plan precisely describing how data will be gathered and analyzed, and also followed such a plan.  This would mean no more federal funding of "fishing expedition" projects which allow researchers to slice and dice data a hundred ways until they find some result they were hoping to get, and which allow researchers to "torture the data until it makes the desired confession." 

(5) No federal funding of any experimental research project that did not declare before data was gathered a thorough blinding protocol that will be followed, and also adhered to such a protocol.

(6) No federal funding of any experimental research project that did not use at least 15 subjects for each of its study groups. 

(7) A mechanism by which federal money granted for research could be "ungranted," with a refund demanded whenever the standards above were not met. 

If such standards existed for granting federal funding, the US government could stop wasting so many billions on poorly designed experiments producing unreliable or unreproducible results. 

An example of the timidity of the report is the fact that it brings up the topic of what is the definition of scientific integrity, but timidly fails to even define such a thing. We have on page 3 of the report a shaded box labeled "Box 1.1 Defining Scientific Integrity," and we have in that box some vacuous "go around in circles" language:

 

"The 2021 Presidential Memorandum does not define the term 'scientific integrity.' Rather it reaffirms and builds on the 2009 Presidential Memorandum and 2010 OSTP Memorandum, which establish principles and guidance, respectively, for protecting scientific integrity, without explicitly defining the term. The Task Force has taken a similar approach, focusing its initial efforts on assessing agency scientific integrity policies against the principles and guidelines articulated in the memoranda and identifying practices for improving policies and their implementation as called for in the 2021 Presidential Memorandum. The Task Force notes that some, but not all, agencies provide definitions of scientific integrity in their scientific integrity policies. These definitions vary across agencies and would benefit from greater harmonization. The Task Force intends to produce a definition of scientific integrity for adoption by Federal agencies as it develops a framework for assessing scientific integrity policies. The definition will be informed by the insight gained in preparing this report."

This is classic bureaucratic "use lots of words to say nothing" talk.

Anatomically Uninformative DNA, Nonfunctional Intermediates and Useless Early Stages Are Why Gradualism Does Not Work

Biologists teach the doctrine of gradualism, the idea that every species appeared because of very many tiny random changes that gradually took place over long periods of time. There are several very large reasons why gradualism is not a credible general theory of biological origins.  Each is a fatal difficulty. 

Fatal Difficulty #1: No Explanation for Why Any Useless Early Stage Would Appear in a Population of Organisms

In general Darwinism fails to explain the first stages of useful structures. This was pointed out very clearly in Darwin's time by the biologist Mivart, who wrote the following at the beginning of Chapter II of his book On the Genesis of Species: "Natural Selection utterly fails to account for the conservation and development of the minute and rudimentary beginnings, the slight and infinitesimal commencements of structures, however useful those structures may later become."  Mivart devoted Chapter II of that book to many examples of "incipient stages" that Darwinism could not explain well, including the first small part of any limb such as an arm or leg or the first small part of a wing or the first small part of a mammary gland.

Darwinists have told many a tall tale to try to account for such things, such as suggesting that maybe wings grew out of wing stumps that were used to catch insects. Such tales are typically unbelievable.  Two of the attempts that Darwin made to suggest such stories are now believed to be erroneous (biologists now reject his "maybe mammals come from marsupials" explanation for the incipient stages of mammary glands, and also reject his "lungs come from swim bladders" explanation for the incipient stages of lungs). 

Consider the case of the biological implementation needed to produce vision. We can call this a vision system, and it requires much more than just an eye. Below are four requirements of a vision system.

1. Some type of eye.
2. An optic nerve leading from the eye to the brain.
3. Extremely complicated proteins used to capture light, such as rhodopsin.
4. Very complex brain changes needed to allow for a vision effect that is useful for an organism.

Now if an organism had only or two of these things, it would receive no benefit. For example, merely having an eye and an optic nerve would not be useful unless the eye had the protein molecules needed for vision, and unless the eye also connected to changes in a brain needed to make use of visual inputs. And if there were only such proteins and such brain changes, and no eye and no optic nerve, that would not be beneficial.

The general principle that the first stages of an implementation are not beneficial can be stated as the principle of preliminary implementations. We can state this principle like this:

The principle of preliminary implementations: in almost all cases, with few exceptions, preliminary or fragmentary implementations of very complex organized things by themselves yield no benefits or rewards.

This principle holds true in general life (as the examples above show), and also in regard to biological implementations. So if we are speaking of some complex biological innovation requiring a certain number of parts organized in the right way, we should not at all assume that the first stages of such an innovation will provide a benefit. A benefit will occur only when a certain degree of complexity and functional coherence has been achieved. In other words, no benefit will come unless some functional threshold has been reached. Such a functional threshold will typically require that several or many parts are arranged in the right way. The diagram below illustrates the point.

The same principle is illustrated by the diagram below:

The reason why Darwin's ideas do not work to credibly explain the origin of biological innovations was rather well explained by scientist Gustave Geley in his monumental work From the Unconscious to the Conscious.  He mentioned "embryonic organs" that are "merely adumbrated" to refer to some mere useless preliminary fragment of an organ. He stated the following: 

"It is not difficult to show that neither the Darwinian 

nor the Lamarckian hypothesis enables us to understand 

the origin of characteristics that constitute a new 

species...In order that any given modification occurring in 

the characteristics of a species or an individual, should 

give to that species or to that individual an appreciable 

advantage in the struggle for life, it is evident that this 

modification must be sufficiently marked to be utilizable. 

Now an embryonic organ, a modification merely 

adumbrated, appearing by chance in a being or a group 

of beings, can be of no practical use and give them no 

advantage....Now an embryonic 

wing, appearing by chance, one knows neither how nor 

why, in the ancestral reptile, could not give that reptile 

the capacity or the advantage of flight, and would give 

it no superiority over other reptiles unprovided with the 

unusable rudiment. It is therefore impossible to attribute 

to natural selection the transition from reptile to bird. 

...Rudiments of legs and lungs would give no 

advantage to a fish...It is  indispensable that its heart, lungs, and organs of locomotion should be already sufficiently developed to allow it to live out of the water."

We can imagine some useless early stage of a useful innovation appearing in a single member of a species because of some random variation. But because such a useless early stage would provide no survival value, it would not spread around from a single organism to reach most members of a species in subsequent generations in a "selective sweep" occurring because of "survival of the fittest" reasons. 

In fact, useless early stages would often be not just useless but actually detrimental to the survival chances of an organism.  An example would be a not-yet functional appendage that was the beginning of a wing.  Such an appendage would slow down an organism that had it, and make an easy target for predators to bite.  Another example would be a rudimentary not-yet-functional eye lens, which would tend to block light and reduce sight until it became a sophisticated functional lens. 

Darwin attempted to answer the problem of useless early stages by speculating on some examples of useful early stages. But far from being answered by his speculations, the problem of useless early stages has grown gigantically larger after Darwin because of what we have discovered about the great complexity and fragility of protein molecules, something Darwin never knew about. We now know that the animal kingdom contains millions of different types of protein molecules, each its own separate complex invention, typically with hundreds of amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way for the molecule to be functional.  In the human body there are roughly 20,000 different types of protein molecules, each its own separate complex invention. Experiments have repeatedly shown that protein molecules are fragile, and become nonfunctional when only a small fraction of their amino acids are removed.  A biology textbook tells us, "Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severely that all function is lost." And we read on a science site, "Folded proteins are actually fragile structures, which can easily denature, or unfold." Another science site tells us, "Proteins are fragile molecules that are remarkably sensitive to changes in structure." Protein molecules are not functional if only a half or a third of their amino acids exist.  Typically we have no credible explanation for why the first half or the first third of any protein molecule would have ever originated. So what we have learned about protein molecules causes the problem of useless early stages to loom a hundred times larger than it did in Darwin's time. 

Besides protein molecules that are not useful when only half of the molecule exists, there are countless larger features of organisms that are not useful when only half of such features exist.  Some of these features are mentioned by biologist , Richard Goldschmidt, who wrote the following on page 6 of his book The Material Basis of Evolution:

"I may challenge the adherents of the strictly Darwinian view, which we are discussing here, to try to explain the evolution of the following features by accumulation and selection of small mutants: hair in mammals, feathers in birds, segmentation of arthropods and vertebrates, the transformation of gill arches in phylogeny, including the aortic arches, muscles, nerves, etc.; further, teeth, shells of mollusks, ectoskeletons, compound eyes, blood circulation, alternation of generations, statocysts, ambulacral system of echinoderms, pedicellaria of the same, cnidocysts, poison apparatus of snakes, whalebone, and, finally, primary chemical differences like hemoglobin vs. hemocyanin, etc. Corresponding examples from plants could be given.” 

Fatal Difficulty #2: The Great Rarity or Nonexistence of Nonfunctional Adult Features That Are Merely the Initial Stages of Biological Innovations

If you do a Google search for "incipient organ" or "nascent organ" or "incipient appendage," you will get many matches. But the search results matches will be talking about incipient organs and incipient appendages that arise during morphogenesis and embryonic development, long before an organism reaches adulthood.  The matches will not be discussing nonfunctional adult features that are merely the initial stages of biological innovations that may occur later in the evolution of a species. 

If it were true that gradual random changes led to very complex visible biological innovations, then we would see all over the place (in the animal world) adult organisms with not-yet-functional biological innovations existing in rudimentary form: what can be called incipient organs, nascent organs, incipient appendages or nascent appendages. But we see no such thing. We do not see any adult organisms containing not-yet-functioning organs that are the initial stages of organs that will be functional in future generations. We do not see any adult organisms with not-yet-functioning appendages that are merely the initial stages of appendages that will only be functional in future generations. Inside the bodies of organisms we see no protein molecules that are presently useless but which are the first half or the first third of some molecule that will be highly functional in future generations.  

The point that I make here was forcibly made in pages 24-26 of Douglas Dewar's book Difficulties of the Evolution Theory.  Dewar states this: 

"Better evidence of the assertion that for the last fifty years biological textbooks bring to light only that which is favourable to evolution and pass over unnoticed all that is unfavourable could scarcely be adduced than the fact that these volumes contain many references to vestigial organs, but none to nascent organs....Thus, although the anatomy of thousands of species of animals has been carefully studied, it is impossible to adduce a single structure in any species which is indubitably or even probably in a nascent condition."

Fatal Difficulty #3: Nonfunctional Intermediates

It is typically true that we cannot imagine a transition between two very different and highly-functional biological things without a passage through an intermediate state that is nonfunctional.  For example, if over very many thousands or millions of years one specialized protein molecule changed gradually to become some other specialized protein molecule with a different function, there would have been an intermediate non-functional state; but in such a state such a molecule would have tended to have fallen out of a gene pool, preventing the imagined transition.

Let us consider an elementary example of nonfunctional intermediates during a transition from one functional thing to another. Suppose I have a red "stop" sign, and I wish to modify this to serve another function: the function of being a "tow zone" sign. I can do this in three steps:

(1) I use red paint to cover the "s" and the "p" in "stop."
(2) Painting where the "p" was in "stop," I paint a "w."
(3) I then paint "zone" under what was originally the word "stop."

Now I have changed my functional "stop" sign to be a functional sign saying "tow zone."  The visual below illustrates the steps:

Yes, a functional stop sign can be gradually changed into a functional "tow zone" sign. But if you do this, you will have to pass through two stages that are nonfunctional.  Both stages 2 and 3 shown above are nonfunctional intermediates. If we get a nonfunctional intermediate when doing such a simple transition,  we should suspect that nonfunctional intermediates would occur all over the place in a gradual transition between two complex biological units such as protein molecules. 

Let's imagine another gradual transition, this time using something more complex.  Let's imagine you were to try to gradually change an automobile so that it became a functional boat. You could do this through the following steps.

(1) Open the car's hood and yank out everything connected to the engine block. 
(2) Then remove the entire engine block. 
(3) Remove the car's wheels and axles.
(4) Remove the car's steering wheel.
(5) Remove the car's exhaust system. 
(6) Remove the car's two front seats

You would now have a car so light that it might well float if tossed into the ocean.  So it's quite possible that an automobile could be gradually changed to become a crude boat.  But the problem is that in the middle of such a transition there would be nonfunctional intermediates. At some point during this transition, we would have something that was neither a functional car, nor something light enough to be a functioning boat. 

There would be nonfunctional intermediates all over the place during the type of gradual biological transitions imagined by proponents of gradualism. The problem with that is according to Darwinist theory, when a nonfunctional state is reached, then evolution should discard something.  As Darwin put it, "Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good." So the imagined Darwinian process of so-called natural selection can never pass through nonfunctional intermediates while on some long process of producing a functional result. It can only produce some final good result by some long sequence such as this:

1. Good result.
2. Some later result that is also good.
3. Some still later result that is also good.
4. Final good result. 

It can never produce some final good result by some long process such as this:

1. Good result.
2. Some later result that is also good.
3. Some later nonfunctional result that does no good.
4. Final good result. 

Fatal Difficulty #4: Anatomically Uninformative DNA

Perhaps the greatest problem with gradualism arises from the lack of any such thing as a specification for making an organism in the body of that organism.  If we knew that there was such a thing as a specification for making an organism somewhere in the organism, we might imagine that such a specification had gradually changed over vast lengths of time. But inside an organism there is no such specification for making an organism.  The DNA in an organism merely specifies low-level chemical information such as how to make the polypeptide chains that are the beginning of protein molecules. DNA does not specify how to build the overall structure of an organism, nor does it specify how to make any organ of an organism, nor does it even specify how to make any of the cells of an organism. Humans have about 200 different cell types, and DNA does not specify how to make any of those types of cells.  Containing no information about anatomy or how to construct the cells or bodies of organisms, DNA is correctly described as anatomically uninformative. 

So we cannot at all credibly imagine that over a huge length of time one species gradually changed into some other very different species with a very different anatomy, because of random mutations that produced gradual changes in DNA.  This is such a problem for gradualism that biologists have repeatedly tried to cover up the problem by telling us the lie that DNA is a blueprint or recipe for making an organism.  When the proponents of an idea have to resort to telling us an outrageous lie to try and cover up problems with their theory, this should be a very big warning sign that something is very, very wrong with their thinking.  

Read the end of this post for quotes by more than twenty distinguished biology authorities very clearly stating that DNA is not a recipe or blueprint or program for making an organism or a human.  For example, on the web site of the well-known biologist Denis Noble, we read that "the whole idea that genes contain the recipe or the program of life is absurd, according to Noble," and that we should understand DNA "not so much as a recipe or a program, but rather as a database that is used by the tissues and organs in order to make the proteins which they need." At the same link we read statements by Sergio Pistoi (a science writer with a PhD in molecular biology) who tells us, "DNA is not a blueprint," and tells us, "We do not inherit specific instructions on how to build a cell or an organ"; and we read the director of a biology research lab tell us that "genomes are not a blueprint for anatomy." "The genome is not a blueprint," says Kevin Mitchell, a geneticist and neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin. "It doesn't encode some specific outcome."  His statement was reiterated by another scientist. "DNA cannot be seen as the 'blueprint' for life," says Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland. He says, "It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times." 

Even if there existed a blueprint in DNA for making an organism, that would not explain the origin of adult bodies, for the elementary reason that blueprints don't build things. Buildings get built because there are intelligent construction workers who read blueprints and carry out their instructions. If there were to exist in DNA fantastically complicated instructions for building a human body with its gigantically complex hierarchical organization (which would have to be instructions more complex than any humans have ever written), we know of nothing in the human body (below the neck) capable of acting on and carrying out such instructions if they happened to exist.  The idea that adult human bodies arise because of a reading of a DNA blueprint is therefore one that is false and very childish,  as silly as the idea that a balloon could take you to the moon. A child imagining that a balloon can rise to the moon fails to consider the elementary "show-stopper" fact that a balloon would stop rising once it reached the vacuum of space. A gradualist imagining  that adult bodies arise because of a reading of DNA blueprints fails to consider the elementary "show-stopper" facts that DNA has no blueprint for building a body and that blueprints don't build things. 

So how is it that an adult human body (with its many levels of hierarchical organization) arises from the billion-times-simpler state of a speck-sized egg existing just after conception? Our biologists do not understand this great mystery of progression, which is a thousand miles over their heads. An article in the journal Nature states this: "The manner in which bodies and tissues take form remains 'one of the most important, and still poorly understood, questions of our time', says developmental biologist Amy Shyer, who studies morphogenesis at the Rockefeller University in New York City."  No one lacking an explanation for this great mystery has any business claiming he understands the origin of humanity; for if you do not understand the origin of even a single adult body, what business do you have claiming that you understand the origin of the whole human race?  That would be like claiming that you understand the origin of cities when you don't even understand the origin of buildings. When we consider that our biologists also lack a credible account for the origin of individual adult minds, their boasts about understanding human origins seem all the more hollow. 

Gradualism (the idea that every species appeared because of very many tiny random changes that gradually took place over long periods of time) does not work as a credible explanation for the origin of species.  To credibly explain in some natural manner organisms that have incredibly high levels of organization all over the place, what you would need (at the very least) is some theory credibly explaining why there occurred so often vastly impressive feats of purposeful biological organization. Gradualism is no such thing. 

Gradualists frequently commit in their thinking a common logic error that is known as the fallacy of composition. The fallacy of composition is the fallacy of assuming that each part in a whole must have some property that the whole possesses.  An example of this fallacy is found is this statement: "A big bag of sand is heavy, so each of its parts must be heavy." No, that's wrong.  The parts of a big bag of sand are millions of grains of sand, and a bag; and none of those things is heavy. 

There are millions of different types of functional protein molecules in the animal kingdom, each its own separate very complex invention. The human body contains more than 20,000 types of protein molecules, each a very complex invention.  The median number of amino acids in a human protein molecule is about 375.

Pondering some thing such as a protein molecule (consisting of hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right to achieve a functional result), our gradualism believer assumes that each of hundreds of mutations that might have combined to produce the useful molecule would produce a benefit.  That is the fallacy of composition.  Typically the property of being beneficial in the protein molecule only arises "late in the game" when hundreds of the amino acids appeared and were organized in just the right way to produce a functional protein molecule, something that would be as unlikely to occur by chance as typing monkeys producing a useful paragraph of hundreds of characters. It is absolutely fallacious to assume that each little mutation would itself be beneficial, as fallacious as thinking that each of the hundreds of pixels that make up a functional sentence produces a benefit because the sentence produces a benefit.

Spooky Stuff Soviet-Style

The book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder is a fascinating account of paranormal events and parapsychology in countries of the Warsaw Pact, mainly the Soviet Union. Among the most interesting accounts is the tale of Wolf Messing, a Soviet psychic who is all but unknown in the West, but who was apparently very famous for many years in the Soviet Union. 

On page 43 we hear that Messing was summoned by Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union. We are told Stalin had heard of Messing's reputed ability to influence minds in some paranormal manner. He commanded that Messing go to a bank and try to perform a bank robbery by mentally commanding a bank teller to give him money. Messing claims that he went to the bank, handed the teller a blank sheet of paper, and then mentally commanded the teller to give Messing 100,000 rubles.  Messing says the teller complied, and that after Messing showed two witnesses that the money had been successfully extracted, he returned the money to the bank teller (who had a heart attack upon realizing he had given away such a large amount of money).  

On page 44 we are told Messing passed another experiment designed by Stalin: being able to enter Stalin's dacha without a pass and without permission (which is rather like some unauthorized visitor strolling into the Oval Office of the White House).  Messing says that he telepathically suggested to the guards that he was Beria, the head of the secret police, who frequently visited Stalin's dacha. 

It seems to be a well-established fact that Messing was given permission to tour the Soviet Union with an act that was mainly based on demonstrations of telepathy, and that such an act was wildly successful for many years, making Messing a "household name" in the Soviet Union.  Typically Messing would ask random people in the audience to write down some command they wanted Messing to do, with the sealed instructions being delivered to some "jury" selected by the audience.  The people writing down the instructions would think of their instruction, and Messing would be remarkably successful in performing what they had wished, having never seen their written instructions.  Messing had previously performed such demonstrations in many different countries. 

On page 104 we read a chapter discussing many examples of so-called "telepathic knockouts." During such events it would appear that a person was put into a state of deep sleep or unconsciousness solely because of the mental suggestion of some other person.  We read, "The ability to put people to sleep and wake them up telepathically from a distance of a few yards to over a thousand miles became the most thoroughly tested and perfected contribution of the Soviets to international parapsychology." After reading of countless successful experiments of such an effect, we read of such a test being successful at a distance of a thousand miles.  At a scheduled time, one scientist mentally commanded a subject a thousand miles away to fall asleep. We are told, "A thousand miles away Ivanova lost consciousness on schedule as she talked to Dr. Doubrovsky."  Since electromagnetic waves diminish with distance, the test seemed to prove that ESP does not work by some transmission of electromagnetic waves. 

While such accounts are shocking to the average person in the West, they may not shock careful scholars of the very deep topic of hypnotic phenomena and trance phenomena.  It was often claimed by hypnotists that a person could be put into a hypnotic trance purely by the hypnotist's mental suggestion. First, some verbal technique or physical technique such as hand movements might be used to put someone into a hypnotic state. A hypnotist would sometimes report that after such a thing had succeeded, it would later be possible to almost instantly put the subject into a hypnotic state, purely by a mental command of the hypnotist (which might or might not be accompanied by a purposeful stare). 

On page 117 we hear a leading Soviet ESP researcher (Leonid Vasiliev) state he has gathered hundreds of "reliable cases" of spontaneous telepathy.  On the same page we have an account by a mother who says she saw the face of her son (at a distant location),  only to have the apparition vanish. She said she knew that her son had died. She later found out her son had died "at this very time." 

On the next page we hear of a similar occurrence. A Russian composer and conductor named Anton Rubinstein made a pact with his student William Nichia, that whichever died first would try to appear to the other one, to show his survival. Six years later Nichia saw an apparition of Rubinstein, and found out the next day that Rubinstein had suddenly died, apparently on the same day the apparition was seen. 

Anton Rubinstein

These are just additional examples of a phenomenon often reported in the West: that of someone seeing an apparition of a person he did not know had died, and later finding out that the person had died on the same day. You can read of hundreds of such cases by reading my posts below:

An Apparition Was Their Death Notice

25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Yet Another 25 Who Were “Ghost-Told” of a Death

Scientific American's Very Lame "Ghost Explanations"

They Also Were "Ghost Told" of a Death

More Accounts of Veridical Apparitions

Even More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Serve as Announcements

Still More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Act as News Bulletins

They Too Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

On page 170 the book has a chapter on the topic of "Eyeless Sight." We read of Rosa Kuleshova, who developed an ability to read or detect colors while blindfolded, merely by touching reading material or objects with her hands. Kuleshova held up very well to a long series of scientific tests. The same phenomenon was reported decades earlier in France, by Jules Romains in his book Eyeless Sight (discussed here). A 19th-century work states this: " Although  blind,  this  girl  can  read  by  passing  her  fingers  over  the  printed or  written  page,  and  can  describe  persons  whose  pictures  were  handed  to  her."

An edition of the EdgeScience magazine (#47) published by the Society for Scientific Exploration has an article "Seeing Without Eyes" (page 9) which discusses evidence for clairvoyance like that gathered by Romains. It mentions work by Carol Ann Liaros in the 1970's, saying, "Liaros discovered that blind people could see the images on black-and-white photos (and could see the photos when they were turned over, face-down, and even their reallife colors)."  We read about many other examples of ESP and clairvoyance similar to that reported by Romains, most occurring in recent decades. 

A long article in the June 12, 1964 Life magazine was entitled "Seeing Color With the Fingers." It reported a great number of observations very similar to those reported by Romains.  You can read the article here, by scrolling down to page 102.  In 1964 Life magazine was as mainstream and respectable as the New York Times, and had been a trusted mainstream source for decades.  Just as there is now a gigantic New York Times building in New York City, an equally sized skyscraper was once called the Time-Life building.  

In the Life magazine article of June 12, 1964, we read a very long account of Rosa Kuleshova's paranormal ability and how it was demonstrated in a long series of tests with different Soviet scientists. Below is an excerpt:

"Rosa, securely blindfolded, could read headlines in newspaper and magazines, and the large type in children's books, just as rapidly as if her eyes were open. She could read ordinary newspaper type, too - more slowly, but still correctly. She was able to describe illustrations in popular publications like Ogonyok and Krokodil as well as on cigaret packages and postage stamps. And she had no trouble at all singling out black, white, red, orange, yellow, blue and green samples of colored papers, colored pencils, aniline dyes, as well as cotton threads and fabrics."

The phenomenon has sometimes been called dermo-optical perception. The 19th-century literature on hypnosis contains many similar accounts of such an ability occurring during hypnosis. The term "transposition of the senses" was often used to describe the ability. A nineteenth century work by William Gregory (a chemistry professor at the very prestigious University of Edinburgh) describes this phenomenon on page 148:

"I have not hitherto noticed, save in passing, a phenomenon which occasionally presents itself, but which is not by any means uniformly present in a marked form; I mean, transference of the senses to some special part of the body.... But it sometimes happens, that the power of seeing, not the ordinary sense of sight, but the clairvoyant power, is located in some special part. It has been observed to be located in the pit of the stomach, in the tips of the fingers, in the occiput as well as in the forehead, or on the top of the head, and in one case which I heard of from a scientific gentleman who tested it, in the soles of the feet. The books and journals which treat of Animal Magnetism teem with similar facts; and the head, hand, and epigastrium, seem to be the usually selected parts, probably from the proximity to the brain in the first, the great development of the nerves of touch in the second, and the presence of the great sympathetic plexus of nerves in the third. The fact itself is beyond all doubt, and it is quite unnecessary to accumulate cases. In one form or other, the power of dispensing with the eyes, and yet perceiving color, &c. quite plainly, is found in every good subject. The same thing frequently happens with hearing. Thus E.  when on her travelling state or stage, is utterly deaf to all sounds, save those which are addressed to her by speaking with the mouth in contact with the tips of her fingers. This fact I have myself verified. I believe she would not hear a pistol fired at her ear, in that state."

Going back to the Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain book, we read on page 173 of previous accounts of abilities similar to Rosa Kuleshova's. For example: 

• A Russian Journal of Neuropsychological Medicine had described a case similar to that of Kuleshova; 
• Leonid Vasiliev had got a hypnotized man to be able to read the newspaper Pravda with his hands only; 
• A Dr. Novomeisky had found that with a half hour of practice, every sixth person could distinguish two colors only by touching them.  

One of the most sensational cases discussed in the book is the case of Ninel Sergeyevna Kulagina, who was sometimes referred to under the pseudonym of Nelya Mikhailova, and also referred to as Nina Kulagina.  The book starts telling the story of Nelya/Nina in a chapter entitled "Have the Soviets Found the Secret of Mind Over Matter?' I will use the name Nelya that is used in the text of the book. We are told of scientists and film-makers gathering to test Nelya. After a long period of intense concentration by Nelya, they filmed a compass needle spinning in front of Nelya, along with the whole compass spinning.  They also filmed a number of matches mysteriously moving below her outstretched hand, along with a matchbox.  You can see some of the footage here.  A transparent plexiglass cube with one face removed was placed over some objects on a table,  and Nelya was tested under such a setup which should have ruled out any fakery. The objects within the cube still moved. 

We are told this:

"Nelya's discovery of her new talents soon led her to one of the greatest physiologists in Russia, Dr. Leonid Vasiliev. Dr. Vasiliev carried out painstaking tests of her ability and had her demonstrate her paranormal ability before scores of scientists. In 1964 a special conference of scientists was called to observe Mikhailova's demonstration and, according to the January issue of Smena, it was a success."

On page 81 we read an eyewitness report by a Dr. Rejdak (published in a newspaper) in which he discusses observing Nelya thoroughly in 1968 during successful tests of psychokinesis, in which there mysteriously moved a compass needle, the entire compass, a gold ring, glass objects, a cigarette, a matchbox and twenty matches.  Rejdak says he shredded the cigarette, and found nothing unusual in it. He also says the matchbox and the matches were provided by him, and that Nelya had no chance to prepare them in any way.  The movement of such non-metallic objects cannot be explained by hidden magnets. Rejdak says, "Tests with special instruments failed to show any indication whatever of magnets or any concealed object."

Skeptics try to discredit Nelya by pointing out that she was charged with a crime by Soviet authorities. But the crime was merely selling money on the black market, an offense almost as common during the Soviet Union as speeding is in the West.  Such an offense does nothing to discredit the reports about her psychokinetic abilities. 

In the 1977 book "Advances in Parapsychological Research" we read on page 116 the following written by CUNY psychology professor Gertrude R. Schmeidler (which  uses PK to mean psychokinesis or mind-over-matter):

"Since 1968 special interest has attached to a middle-aged Soviet woman, Nina Kulagina, who seems able to make small objects move by PK. Movies show her near but not touching objects on a table before her, and then shows the objects moving as she sits tensely and makes small hand movements. Both Soviet and Western scientists have tested her under more of less formal conditions and have confirmed the effect. A full summary (Keil, Ullman, Herbert, and Pratt, 1976)  of these reports indicates that there is good reason to accept them as authentic PK. Typical of the most striking changes is a series of observations on objects that would not be influenced by concealed magnets, such as a cigarette. The investigator brings in the objects, puts them on a table sometimes covered with a cloth, and sometimes covers the assembly, for example, with a small transparent dome. Observers tell of -- and film records show -- movement of one or several adjacent objects, typically in jerks, over a few centimeters. The movements are sometimes bizarre: an upright cigarette, for example, stayed upright as it moved." 

The case of Ninel Sergeyevna Kulagina (aka Nina Kulagina aka Nelya Mikhailova) is sometimes dismissed on the grounds that no other person has shown such abilities. But similar abilities have been reported from subjects in the West, in India, and also subjects in China (as described here).  Many exclude ideas such as mind-over-matter on an impossibility basis, claiming there is no way that a brain could produce such an effect.  But there are very many reasons (including many neuroscience reasons) for rejecting the claim that the human mind is mainly the product of the brain, so we need not assume that our minds are mainly the product of our brains.  Once we have got on the right track, by realizing that our minds are some mysterious reality that cannot be explained by the contents of brains, then the door of possibilities becomes unlocked, and swings wide open.  We know the kind of limitations a mind would have if it were merely the product of a brain. We know very little about the limitations of our minds under the assumption that we are souls that arose nonphysically. 

These reports of dramatic parapsychology successes in the Soviet Union are corroborated by "a Department of Defense Intelligence Document prepared by the Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command and approved by Assistant Vice Directorate for Science and Technical Intelligence of the Defense Intelligence Agency."  The document was entitled "PARAPHYSICS R&D-WARSAW PACT." Paraphysics is a term similar to parapsychology.  You can read about the results in that document by reading my post here. The document discusses results similar to the results discussed in Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder.

Let me cite an experiment in England similar to results reported above. A paper called "Consciousness and the Physical World" available at the Cornell physics paper server is a record of a 1978 symposium. The paper includes essays by a variety of authors, most of whom parrot the same old talking points of materialism, many of them misconceptions. But within the long paper you will be surprised to read some evidence for psychokinesis, similar to that discussed above. We read the following statement on page 163 by Suzanne Padfield:

"For the purpose of aiding scientific understanding, I have in the past demonstrated some psychokinetic effects under controlled conditions.Most of these experiments took place at the Paraphysical Laboratory, Downton, Wiltshire, with Dr. Benson Herbert, and the principal experiment involved a piece of apparatus known as a light mobile system. This apparatus consisted of a single strand of polyester fibre, the polymer known as polyethylene terephthalate, 25 cm long and 16 microns in diameter (chosen for its high tensile strength and low electrical and thermal conductivity because of its low moisture content). A straw beam 8 cm long was attached to one end of the fibre by means of sealing wax and the other end attached by the same means to a cork which fitted tightly into the neck of a large glass bottle in which the straw became suspended horizontally. The straw was balanced by two differently coloured pieces of plasticine, one at either end, and the sides of the bottle marked with vertical lines, enabling the angle of rotation of the straw to be observed accurately.

The system was placed on a vibration-free surface in a room free from disturbances and left for 24 hours, being monitored during that time to ensure that none of the known factors which might produce an effect on the straw beam were in operation. At the selected time for the experiment (no detectable movement of the beam, i.e. less than half a degree movement,  having been recorded for 24 hours) I would enter the room quietly and stand 5 or 6 ft away from the system. I always wore a visor to reduce effects of heat radiation from my face and electrostatic charge from my hair.‘ I would then commence to 'direct' the beam a certain number of degrees towards or away from me, either by free choice, having stated the number of degrees of rotation and direction beforehand, or at the command of the experimenter who was also present in the room but only near enough to the system to allow accurate observation, usually 10-12 ft. The experiment was successful about 70 per cent of the time and the straw beam would rotate the required number of degrees and remain still until a further direction or degree of rotation was chosen. A series of up to fifteen runs of psychokinetic influences could be accomplished during one experimental period with successful deflections of the beam from 5 to 90 degrees, fatigue usually deciding when the period would end. This particular experiment was carried out almost weekly for a period of nine years, and various refinements were made at different times."

The same person describes success with psychometry, stating this on page 165:

"In the case of psychometry I am aware of a feeling of scanning the past events of the object I am holding and am aware of sequences or memory tracks, some of which become actual events and others which existed only as possible events. Both are explored and the actual events are singled out and emphasized in the same way as one might retrieve a memory trace."

Postscript: The page here gives a quite lengthy and thorough rebuttal of skeptical speculations that Nina Kulagina used magnets and wires. As discussed above, the mysterious movements of objects near Kulagina were often of non-metallic objects that could not respond to a magnet. We can only imagine how careless observers would have to be to fail to observe a tested subject using wires to move some object on a table in front of the subject. Instead of being tested by such "most careless observers ever," all indications above are that Kulagina was successfully tested by very careful observers looking out for signs of fraud.   

Futile Speculative Contortions of the Fine-Tuning Dodgers

Around about 1978, cosmologists (the scientists who study the universe as a whole) were puzzled by a problem of fine-tuning. They had figured out that the expansion rate of the very early universe (at the time of the Big Bang) seems to have been incredibly fine-tuned, apparently to about one part in ten to the sixtieth power. This dilemma was known as the flatness problem.

Around 1980 Alan Guth (an MIT professor) proposed a way to solve the flatness problem. Guth proposed that for a tiny fraction of its first second (for less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second), the universe expanded at an exponential rate. The universe is not expanding at any such rate, but Guth proposed that after a very brief instant of exponential expansion, the universe switched back to the normal, linear expansion that it now has. The theory was devised to get rid of some fine-tuning, but it turned out that the theory required fine-tuning of its own in multiple places. So we had a kind of "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation in which it was unclear that the need for fine-tuning had been reduced. A recent paper says this: "It actually requires much more fine-tuning for the Universe to have inflated than for it to have been placed in some low-entropy initial state (Carroll & Chen 2004)." The paper also refers to "the highly fine-tuned initial conditions required for inflation to work."

There was never any observational evidence for the idea of primordial exponential expansion (typically called the cosmic inflation theory), and the idea was very far-fetched from the beginning, depending on the existence of a never-observed "inflaton field." But despite such flaws, Guth's idea became very popular among the small tribe of cosmologists.   Between 1980 and 2020 the Guth-following cosmologists spent decades cranking out many hundreds of different versions of the cosmic inflation theory, which appeared in thousands of different speculative physics papers.  It's actually a big sign of weakness when theorists have to keep grinding out countless different versions of a theory.  Good theories usually don't have to go through hundreds of iterations. 

It is now the year 2022, and there is still no evidence for the theory of cosmic inflation.  Supporters of the theory sometimes claim that the theory predicts this or that which has been observed.  The fact that a theory may predict something that was observed does nothing to show that the theory is correct.  Many false theories predict (without any great precision) something that was actually observed.  A theory is only supported by successful predictions if the theory uniquely predicts something correctly (being the only theory predicting that thing) or correctly predicts things with high numerical precision (such as when a gravitational theory correctly predicts that some asteroid will crash into Jupiter in exactly 32 days,  7 hours and 23 minutes).  

For many decades cosmologists have been lost in a strange little world of fantasy whenever they dealt with this cosmic inflation theory. As different versions of the theory have kept failing, cosmologists have kept producing new versions of the theory; and by now there are many hundreds of versions of it, making predictions all over the map.  All attempts to provide some empirical support for cosmic inflation theory have failed.  

The main prediction of cosmic inflation theories have been that there would be observed something called primordial gravitational waves, gravitational waves coming from the very early history of the universe. Although non-primordial gravitational waves have been detected (arising from times when the universe was already billions of years old), nothing has come from searches for primordial gravitational waves, which have gone on for years with ever-more-fancy and ever-more-expensive equipment.  A 2019 article states, "Models such as natural and quadratic inflation that were popular several years ago no longer seem tenable, says theorist Marc Kamionkowski of Johns Hopkins University."  A late 2021 article (based on this paper) is entitled "Primordial Gravitational Waves Continue to Elude Astronomers." But rather than discarding a theoretical approach that isn't working, our  cosmologists keep tying themselves into knots by spinning out more and more speculative ornate versions of the theory (which already has many hundreds of different versions).  This has all been a giant waste of time, without any real success. 

It is interesting that when scientists release papers telling us that they still can't find any sign of something they have long been looking for,  something predicted by some theory they cherish, the scientists often use paper titles that don't mention any failure, and try to give their observational failure some kind of positive sound. The latest big paper announcing that nothing has been found in the search for primordial gravitational waves has a title mentioning "improved constraints on  primordial gravitational waves," and the "improved" makes it sound like something positive has happened, although the observational result is purely negative. 

Another "high priest of speculation" professor comparable to Guth is Edward Witten of Princeton. For many years Witten was a leading champion of the empirically unsuccessful theories called supersymmetry and string theory.  They are both wildly speculative theores that have no observations supporting them. 

Like the cosmic inflation theory, the supersymmetry theory arose as a speculative attempt to explain away (or kind of sweep under the rug) a case of cosmic fine-tuning that bothered scientists. The issue of the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass (the mass of the Higgs boson) was skillfully explained by physicist Ben Allanach in a previous article at the Aeon site: 

"Behind the question of mass, an even bigger and uglier problem was lurking in the background of the Standard Model: why is the Higgs boson so light? In experiments it weighed in at 125 times the mass of a proton. But calculations using the theory implied that it should be much bigger – roughly ten million billion times bigger, in fact....Quantum fluctuations of ultra-heavy particle pairs should have a profound effect on the Higgs boson, whose mass is very sensitive to them....One logical option is that nature has chosen the initial value of the Higgs boson mass to precisely offset these quantum fluctuations, to an accuracy of one in 10¹⁶. However, that possibility seems remote at best, because the initial value and the quantum fluctuation have nothing to do with each other. It would be akin to dropping a sharp pencil onto a table and having it land exactly upright, balanced on its point. In physics terms, the configuration of the pencil is unnatural or fine-tuned. Just as the movement of air or tiny vibrations should make the pencil fall over, the mass of the Higgs shouldn’t be so perfectly calibrated that it has the ability to cancel out quantum fluctuations. However, instead of an uncanny correspondence, maybe the naturalness problem with the Higgs boson could be explained away by a new, more foundational theory: supersymmetry."

In an article in Symmetry magazine, we have a similar explanation:

"To understand what’s fishy about the observable Higgs mass being so low, first you must know that it is actually the sum of two inputs: the bare Higgs mass (which we don’t know) plus contributions from all the other Standard Model particles, contributions collectively known as “quantum corrections.” The second number in the equation is an enormous negative, coming in around minus 10¹⁸ GeV. Compared to that, the result of the equation, 125 GeV, is extremely small, close to zero. That means the first number, the bare Higgs mass, must be almost the opposite, to so nearly cancel it out. To some physicists, this is an unacceptably strange coincidence."

How big a coincidence? The Symmetry article later quotes physicist Lawrence Lee Jr. as saying “the conundrum with the Higgs mass, which would require fine-tuning on the order of 1-in-10³⁴,” which is a coincidence like the coincidence of you correctly guessing the full phone numbers of three consecutive strangers. 

Scientists should have just accepted this case of very precise fine-tuning in nature.  But instead, many of them made a long, quixotic, futile attempt to overthrow it (like someone trying to overthrow the observation that the sun is hot, with some elaborate theory trying to explain how the sun isn't really hot).  Why did they do that? Because they had a motivation, an ideological motivation rather than the motivation of simply discovering truth. Their ideological motivation was related to a belief that the universe should not be anything that looked like a product of design. This ideological motivation is clearly stated in the Symmetry article by physicist Lee, who states it as follows: “In general, what we want from our theories—and in some way, our universe—is that nothing seems too contrived.” If you want for the universe to not "seem too contrived," then you may twist yourself into knots trying to explain away cases of apparent fine-tuning in the universe. 

An article this year makes it rather clear that the supersymmetry theory was mainly motivated by a desire to get rid of a case of fine-tuning, and make the universe look like it was a little less lucky, a little less  providentially blessed. We read this:

"For example, the small mass of the Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to explain—its calculation requires subtracting two very large numbers that just happen to be slightly different from each other. 'But if you add supersymmetry, this takes care of all these cancellations such that you can get a light Higgs mass without needing to have such luck,' says Elodie Resseguie, a postdoc at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."

Like the cosmic inflation theory originated by Guth, the supersymmetry theory championed by Witten was a case of "twist yourself into knots trying to explain away a case of apparent fine-tuning in the universe." It advanced elaborate speculations about undiscovered "superpartner" particles that might help sweep under the rug the fine-tuning involving the Higgs mass or Higgs boson.  Just as the cosmic inflation theory has failed all empirical tests (with its predicted primordial gravitational waves never being found), the supersymmetry theory has failed all tests.  It was hoped that the Large Hadron Collider would find evidence of these "superpartner" particles predicted by supersymmetry theory, but it has found no such thing. 

Just as there is no evidence for the supersymmetry theory championed by Witten, there is no evidence for the string theory speculations he has advanced. But for decades physicists have wasted time cranking out thousands of speculative papers on string theory and supersymmetry theory. For decades physicists regarded Witten as kind of the High Priest of string theory, and they kept saying he was the smartest physicist. But what has come from all these string theory papers? Just a lot of speculation and mathematical gymnastics. 

A recent interview with Witten is a sad affair with a "sound of failure" ring to it.  He rather seems to acknowledge the failure of supersymmetry, saying that "it has been very hard to find a conventional natural explanation of the dark energy and hierarchy problems," and that "it seems that the ideas of naturalness that we grew up with are failing us in at least these two cases." He mentions two great fine-tuning problems, one the Higgs mass fine-tuning problem, the other the dark energy fine-tuning problem, involving even greater apparent fine tuning. Both involve involve apparent fine-tuning of greater than 1 part in 10³⁰, as does the fine-tuning of the universe's initial expansion rate.  Witten seems to throw his hands up and reluctantly express sympathy for the idea of the multiverse "landscape," under which there are an infinite or near infinite number of universes, each with different physics.  He says he resisted this idea before, but is now warming to it.  The idea was dreamed up by another string theorist (Leonard Susskind), specifically for the purpose of evading evidence for design in the universe (we can tell this from the title of a book Susskind wrote introducing the term "landscape" for such an imagined multiverse).  

Such a multiverse is a "when all else fails" type of last-resort fallback. Physicists and cosmologists will try desperately to explain away various types of cosmic fine-tuning, speculating like crazy, and trying to come up with some scenario that helps sweep some of the fine-tuning under the rug. When after decades of fiddling with such flights of fancy, they find all such efforts flopping and failing everywhere, their desperate last resort is to "grasp at straws" by appealing to some "all possibilities realized" multiverse. 

Resorting to such a thing is futile.  The issue is why our universe would have such almost infinitely improbable favorable conditions. You do not increase the probability of such a thing by even 1% by imagining some infinity of universes, each with different conditions. Such a multiverse may increase the likelihood of some universe being habitable, but does nothing to increase the likelihood of our universe being habitable.  Similarly,  I do not even increase by 1% the chance that I will get ten consecutive royal flushes when playing poker if I postulate that there are an infinity of poker players.   

Our multiverse theorists are guilty of the most elementary error in logic, failing to distinguish between a "some universe" likelihood and an "our universe" likelihood, or conflating the two. Below are some good principles to remember:

(1) Never assume that because some person is very smart and has learned very much that he would not commit the most elementary and obvious error in logic. 

(2) Never assume that his "singing from the same choir book" colleagues (spellbound by groupthink and hero idolizing) would fail to recognize such an elementary and obvious error in logic.

(3) Never assume that because some person is very smart and has learned very much that he would not advance some theory that is  absurd or groundless, and utterly unworthy of belief.

(4) Never assume that any theory lacking a sound observational basis is science rather than ideology mixed up with speculative narration or mathematics, what we may call metaphysics wearing an "I'm science!" T-shirt.  

From the standpoint of advancing human knowledge, theories such as the cosmic inflation theory (not to be confused with the more general Big Bang theory), supersymmetry and string theory have been futile flops.  They went viral, but were never validated by observations.  There is only one standpoint from which such theories have been successful: they have provided a type of lucrative busy work for physicists and cosmologists, who have received tons of government money for the armchair activity of writing wildly speculative papers.  A similar thing would have gone on if the government had paid theologians very many millions to speculate about the living conditions of angels and the visual characteristics of heaven.  

The latest Symmetry magazine article on supersymmetry gives us some quotes that should cause a chuckle, such as this one:

"The lack of evidence for supersymmetry at the LHC does not signify a death knell for the idea. Nevertheless, 'now the community is going off in a large number of different directions,'  Peskin says. 'We’re all pretty confused right now.' ”

The article also makes it clear that the supersymmetry faithful will cling to their cherished speculations for a long, long time, kind of like some religious community waiting for centuries for its promised messiah. We read this:

"It could be decades before physicists know the truth about supersymmetry. If superpartners exist, Gates says that up to a century could pass before their discovery. But 'we know how to be patient as a community,'  Herwig says."