The Problem on Science News Sites Is Worse Than Mere Exaggeration

The New Atlantis web site (www.newatlantis.com) has a recent essay entitled "Reformation in the Church of Science" that sounds promising, but which does not deliver very much in the way of insight. Someone could have written a very insightful essay with such a title. First, you could have explained how scientific academia gradually became something very much like a church. You could have explained how university professors became a belief community (a kind of "church of science") with its own belief traditions, speech customs, rituals, priesthood and traditions, in a way very much resembling the way that a belief community may become a church (with the professors acting like priests, and certain figures such as Darwin being revered as much as canonized saints). You could have explained how such a belief community became overconfident and largely dysfunctional, often straying from the high principles of its founding fathers. You could have drawn a parallel between the substantial dysfunction and occasional corruption of scientific academia and the substantial dysfunction and occasional corruption of the Renaissance-era Catholic Church that helped give rise to the Protestant Reformation. You could have drawn a parallel between priests who became indulgence peddlers and witch hunters and scientists who were lured into jobs such as nuclear weapons developers,  chemical weapons developers, peddlers of dubious ideology and helpers of corporations often pushing inferior, worthless or harmful products.  You could have described how the "church of science" began preaching some dogmas that were no more scientific facts than the dogmas of the Catholic Church. 

You could have also described how such a "church of science" worked to suppress and stigmatize those with opposing beliefs and viewpoints, just as the Catholic Church once acted ruthlessly against heretics. Then you could have suggested some ways in which a reformation could be achieved in scientific academia, to help restore public confidence. You could have discussed how the Catholic Church improved its image by specific reforms it undertook in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, and you could have discussed how the "church of science" could do something similar, by improving its work habits and credibility (suggesting some of the things mentioned here). But the article fails to do such things, so I was left thinking that the author failed to execute a great idea for an essay. 

But the essay does at least have one good quote. We read the following:

"The rise of mass marketing created the cultural substrate for the so-called post-truth world we live in now. It normalized the application of hyperbole, superlatives, and untestable claims of superiority to the rhetoric of everyday commerce. What started out as merely a way to sell new and improved soap powder and automobiles amounts today to a rhetorical infrastructure of hype that infects every corner of culture: the way people promote their careers, universities their reputations, governments their programs, and scientists the importance of their latest findings. Whether we’re listening to a food corporation claim that its oatmeal will keep your heart healthy or a university press office herald a new study that will upend everything we know, radical skepticism would seem to be the rational stance for information consumers."

The author correctly perceives that university press offices are massively guilty of hype (a word meaning exaggeration) in promoting scientific research. But the problem on our science news sites is a problem worse than mere hype. The problem is that very often our science news sites are giving us headlines and news stories that are just plain false. 

As evidence to back up this claim, let me mention two stories that I read last Saturday, on the same day that I read the New Atlantis essay. Here is how the Real Clear Science web site (www.realclearscience.com) looked on July 9, 2022:

Two of these headlines were bogus

We have two headlines that are just plain false. The first is a headline declaring "The Laws of the Universe Are Changing." That headline is as wrong as wrong can be. The laws of the universe are fixed and unchanging. Our existence depends on the constancy of laws such as the laws of gravitation, the laws of electromagnetism and the laws of nuclear physics. 

The article in question takes us to an interview with physicist Lee Smolin. Smolin discusses his utterly groundless theory of cosmological natural selection, one that no one advances other than himself. It's a theory of a cyclical universe in which the laws of the universe change in each cycle. Not one scrap of evidence is provided for believing in such a theory. Rather laughably, we are told that "when asked to give an account of how he arrived at this theory he offers a kind of intellectual autobiography."  The article tells us that the theory involves the idea that "the universe gives birth to other universes through black holes," which is a pretty wacky thing to think, given that we don't even see black holes giving birth to stars or planets or even little rocks.  

Smolin claimed that one advantage of his theory of cosmological natural selection is that it makes a falsifiable prediction. In a 2004 paper (page 38) he lists one such prediction:

“There is at least one example of a falsifiable theory satisfying these conditions, which is cosmological natural selection. Among the properties ...that make the theory falsifiable is that the upper mass limit of neutron stars is less than 1.6 solar masses. This and other predictions of CNS have yet to be falsified, but they could easily be by observations in progress.”

But by now this prediction has proven to be incorrect. In September 2019 a science news story reported on observations of the most massive neutron star ever found. We are told, “The researchers, members of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, discovered that a rapidly rotating millisecond pulsar, called J0740+6620, is the most massive neutron star ever measured, packing 2.17 times the mass of our Sun into a sphere only 30 kilometers across.” A 2021 story lists the mass of this neutron star as 2.14 solar masses. Referring to a different neutron star, a 2022 CNN story states, "The PSR J0952-0607 star is 2.35 times the mass of the sun."

So Smolin told us that the cosmological natural selection theory would be falsified if any neutron stars were found to be more massive than 1.6 solar masses, and by now it has been found that one neutron star has 2.14 solar masses and another has 2.35 solar masses. We can therefore consider the cosmological natural selection theory to be falsified.  So why is Smolin still pushing such a theory? And why is the Real Clear Science site giving us a fake news headline of "The Laws of the Universe Are Changing" based solely on Smolin's clinging to a groundless theory he should have discarded when its prediction was falsified?

On the same day the Real Clear Science site gave us another fake news headline, one which read "Building Blocks of RNA Spotted at the Center of the Milky Way." The link takes us to a www.gizmodo.com page with the same untrue headline. The article does not mention any specific chemicals found, and only vaguely refers to "organic molecules." There is a link to a scientific paper. That paper does not report the observation of any building blocks of RNA. 

RNA consists of a sugar-phosphate backbone and four types of chemical subunits: uracil, cytosine, adenine and guanine. The scientific paper does not report the observation of any such things. Instead, it reports the detection of a different set of chemicals, none of which is found in RNA. The paper states, "We report here the detection towards the molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027 of several nitriles, including cyanic acid (HOCN), and three C4H3N isomers (cyanoallene, CH2CCHCN; propargyl cyanide, HCCCH2CN; and cyanopropyne (CH3CCCN), and the tentative detections of cyanoformaldehyde (HCOCN), and glycolonitrile (HOCH2CN)."  None of those things is a building block of RNA. Such chemicals are not constituents of RNA; RNA molecules are not built from such things. 

Reporting on the abundances of one of these chemicals (cyanic acid), the paper reports "a molecular abundance with respect to molecular hydrogen of 1.6 × 10⁻¹⁰.” Now, since the source here tells us the hydrogen density in protoplanetary disks is about 10⁴  (10,000 molecules) per cubic centimeter, this means the cyanic acid was found at levels of about one molecule per million cubic centimeters, or about one molecule per cubic meter -- a negligible amount.  It's the same thing for the other molecules reported, all of which were found in only negligible amounts. Such a fact has been omitted from all the news stories on these papers, one of which has falsely told us that such molecules "are abundant in interstellar clouds," and has falsely claimed that such biologically irrelevant molecules mentioned by the scientific paper are "building blocks of life."

The screen shot at the top of this post includes a link to another misleading story, one entitled, "Could 'Moral Enhancement' Technologies Solve Human Aggression?" It is a story trying to persuade us that there are technological ways to make people more moral. We read this:

"Certain biomedical procedures show promise. Neuromodulation techniques have been found to lower aggression by directly altering brain activity. One example involves a painless procedure in which electrodes are placed on a person’s head to excite or inhibit a specific part of the brain."

We have a link to a scientific paper, but that paper provides no robust evidence for the batty idea suggested in the article, that you can make people more moral by zapping their brains with electricity.  It is pretty much impractical silliness to suggest that we can reduce anger in enraged people by planting electrodes and zapping them with electricity. An enraged person on the brink of violence would not be likely to submit to such treatment. We can imagine how it would go. 

Joe: I'm so mad about this stuff I'm going to hit someone!

Doctor: Well, let's plant 30 electrodes on your head, and after an hour of zapping your brain with electricity, you'll calm down. 

Joe: Like hell you will! 

The article gives us untrue statements about what goes on when people act aggressively:

"But reactive aggression is different because it lacks higher-order cognition. It engages the relatively basic limbic system – the region of the brain which deals with behavioural and emotional reactions. It also shuts down the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rational decision-making."

This is not correct. When you get angry and act reactively, there is still plenty of higher-order cognition going on, and it is not at all true that the prefrontal cortex is shut down at such times. That cortex will be just as active during such times as it is during calm thinking. There are also strong reasons for rejecting claims that  decision making is localized in the prefrontal cortex. 

The article also suggests equally silly ideas for "technological moral enhancement," such as giving people LSD and altering their genes. We read this untrue statement about genetically enhancing people to be more moral: "Gene-based strategies such as CRISPR also offer hope for therapeutic and enhancement purposes." No, there is no prospect of making people more moral by altering their genes. Genes merely specify low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up each protein, not high-level things such as how people should act. 

Speaking of untrue headlines in the recent science news, we had another example this week with this headline on www.scitechdaily.com (with the misleading headline being passed on by Google News):

Success! First Results From World’s Most Sensitive Dark Matter Detector

The supposed success is a negative result, and the article confesses that "dark matter particles have never actually been detected."  Meanwhile on the same day this article appeared, there appeared another science article with a headline of "Dark Matter Doesn't Exist."  That article (by an astrophysics professor) says there are multiple observations showing that dark matter cannot exist. The article says, "We need to scientifically understand why the dark-matter based model, being the most falsified physical theory in the history of humankind, continues to be religiously believed to be true by the vast majority of the modern, highly-educated scientists." This suggests all those dark matter stories we have read for so many years were just ivory tower tall tales. 

Postscript: Today (July 25) there is another untrue news headline on the Real Clear Science site, a headline of "Humans Are Evolving a New Artery." The story refers to the last study in the table below, which is contradicted by the other studies. 

Below is a table summarizing various studies or claims relating to the prevalence of the median artery in the forearm:

Source	Date	What Percent Had a Persistent Median Artery
“Prevalence of the Persistent Median Artery”, an autopsy study of 60 corpses	2012	6.60%
“Persistent median artery of the forearm and palm: a cadaver study into its origin, course, fate and clinical significance”	2015	“A large, well developed persistent median artery extended to the palm and contributed to its vascular supply in 6 out of 100 upper limbs dissected.”
“Prevalence of Bifid Median Nerves and Persistent Median Arteries and their Association with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in a Sample of Latino Poultry Processors and Other Manual Workers”	2010	"We screened 1026 wrists of 513 Latino manual laborers in North Carolina for bifid median nerves and persistent median arteries using electrodiagnosis and ultrasound...3.7% of wrists had a persistent median artery independent of subgroup ethnicity, age, gender, or type of work."
“Recently increased prevalence of the human median artery of the forearm: A microevolutionary change”	2020	“A total of 26 median arteries were found in 78 upper limbs... a prevalence rate of 33.3%”

Altogether this data presents no real evidence that persistent median arteries in the arm are becoming more prevalent.  The attempt of the last of these papers (the Flinders University study) to sell their outlier result as evidence of recent microevolution is unfounded, and their sample involving only 78 limbs is much less reliable than the 13 times larger sample of the 2010 study finding a prevalance of persistent median arteries only one tenth of what the Flinders University study found (a prevalance of only 3.7%).  We seem to have here an example of the "cherry-picking for Charles" that is done so often by Darwinism enthusiasts. 

We see quite a few stories at Real Clear Science coming from the Genetic Literacy Project site, a corporate-funded site with the misleading tagline of "Science, not ideology." The site (funded by corporate donations) is very obviously an extremely ideological site devoted to promoting the corporate interests of corporations such as pesticide manufacturers and GMO manufacturers.