If Cosmologists Used Conflation Tricks Like Biologists Do

It is interesting to draw some comparisons between cosmology (the study of the universe as a whole) and biology. Both fields are dominated by very dubious speculations, with the very wobbly speculations constantly marketed as "science" rather than being honestly described as the speculations they are.  The two principal "sold as science" speculations of the modern biologist are (1) the speculation that the origin of species can be explained mainly by the mere accumulation of random mutations; (2) the speculation that human mental processes such as thinking, self-hood, consciousness, learning and memory retrieval can be explained by brain activity.  The main speculations of cosmologists nowadays are (1) the theory that most of the universe's matter is some invisible type of matter called dark matter; (2) the theory that most of the universe's mass-energy is some invisible type of energy called dark energy; (3) the theory that the universe underwent an instant of exponential expansion during a fraction of its first second, close to the time of the Big Bang.  The third of these theories should really be called the theory of PEE, since it a theory of Primordial Exponential Expansion.  But instead the theory goes under names such as "inflation" or "cosmic inflation."

There are no observations establishing any of these theories. But biologists are always trying to persuade us that this or that weak reason justifies a belief in the origin of species by random mutations, and they are always trying to persuade us that this or that weak reason justifies a belief in brains storing memories or brains being the source of human minds. Similarly, cosmologists are always trying to persuade us that this or that weak reason is a reason for believing in dark matter, dark energy or cosmic inflation, things that have never been observed. Cosmologists observe the universe expanding with ordinary linear expansion, not the explosively fast exponential expansion imagined by proponents of the theory of primordial cosmic inflation. 

But at least our cosmologists do not use a verbal trick very frequently used by biologists, the trick of trying to speak as if evidence for one type thing is evidence for something vastly different.  The biologist uses this trick when he discusses mere evidence for microevolution, and tries to insinuate that such evidence supports claims about macroevolution, something which humans have never observed.  

Microevolution can be defined as mere small changes in genomes, typically changes producing some minor or superficial effect that results in no big biological innovation.  Macroevolution is the claim that natural changes gradually transform some species into some very different species with visible new structural innovations or dramatic new anatomical features or vastly different mental powers. Claims that evolution produced better lactose digestion or a darkening of some moths are claims of microevolution. Claims that ape-like creatures evolved into humans or that dinosaurs evolved into birds are examples of claims of macroevolution.  

Tiny random changes that may produce microevolution do nothing to establish the occurrence of macroevolution (evolution producing major morphological novelties). In his paper Macroevolution: The Morphological Problem the natural history professor Keith Stewart Thomson stated this: "The origins of major morphological novelties remain unsolved...No one has satisfactorily demonstrated a mechanism at the population genetic level by which innumerable very small phenotypic changes could accumulate rapidly to produce large changes: a process for the origin of the magnificently improbable from the ineffably trivial.” Seeming to insinuate that microevolution does not establish macroevolution, Phillip Ball stated this in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

"It is not obvious a priori that small mutational steps should permit adaptation rather than simply inevitable loss of function. Nor is it clear why such a mechanism should permit genuine evolutionary innovation rather than being confined to a sort of timid tinkering with existing functionality."

In the book Evolution and Ecology: The Pace of Life by Cambridge University biology professor K. D. Bennett, this mainstream authority comments on speciation (the origin of species). He says on page 175, "Natural selection has been shown to have occurred (for example, among populations of Darwin's finches), but there is no evidence that it accumulates over longer periods of time to produce speciation in the Darwinian sense." That's another way of saying that evidence for microevolution does not prove macroevolution. 

Clearly there is a world of difference between microevolution and macroevolution. But biologists have constantly been guilty of the trick of conflating microevolution with macroevolution.  The trick is done by simply not using the words "microevolution" or "macroevolution," and by using the single word "evolution."  

Let us consider mutations in a virus or bacteria which may make them more resistant to vaccines or antibodies or antibiotics.  Such changes usually involve only very minor and unimpressive changes in the virus or bacteria.  Vaccines or antibodies or antibiotics may be fine-tuned to work with some exact structure of a virus or bacteria. A tiny change in that virus or bacteria may cause such vaccines or antibodies or antibiotics to stop working so well, just as changing one character in your login password may break some functionality.  So such changes are clearly an example of microevolution.   

But we often hear have reasoning like this:

"We should not doubt evolution, because it is fact. Right now the world is witnessing evolution, as the COVID-19 virus evolves.  Since evolution is fact,  you are a science denier if you doubt that men evolved from apes. "

This statement performs the sleazy trick of conflating microevolution and macroevolution.  Such microscopic microevolution (involving no visible structural change at all) is very much "small change" that does nothing to prove claims such as ape-like ancestors evolving into men or dinosaurs evolving into birds.  Similarly, if somebody shows you some small change in his pocket (a few quarters and dimes), that does nothing to prove he is a billionaire. 

In the case of the virus causing COVID-19 (which is SARS-CoV-2),  each person who gets the virus has between a billion and a 100 billion virus particles (called virions) during peak infection. The total number of COVID-19 infections has been about 170 million worldwide.  This means that there have existed more than 170,000,000,000,000,000 SARS-CoV-2 virions, any one of which could have  mutated. Conversely, it is believed that before recorded history the total number of humans who lived was no more than a few billion, with the average prehistorical population of humans or pre-humans being only a few million.  So given that there has been a number of SARS-CoV-2 virions more than a million times greater (and probably more than a billion times greater) than the number of humans living before history,  it is hardly fair to be presenting microevolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as something establishing the credibility of macroevolution claims about humans evolving from an ape-like or chimp-like ancestor.  The smaller the population, the smaller the chance of some very lucky series of random mutations. 

The same sleazy trick of conflating microevolution and macroevolution is used when biologists argue like this:

"We should not doubt evolution, because it is fact. For example, we know that humans can breathe better at high altitudes and digest lactose better than they could 5000 years ago. Since evolution is fact,  you are a science denier if you doubt that men evolved from apes."

Again, such minor microevolution does nothing to prove claims of macroevolution, something that would be a billion times harder to achieve. 

It's not just magicians who do tricks

A recent scientific paper has estimated the amount of evolution that is occurring in the human genome. The estimate is that only the faintest trace of adaptive evolution is occurring. The paper states, "We estimate that, on average across traits, about 1% of human genome sequence are mutational targets with a mean selection coefficient of ~0.001."  The selection coefficient of about .001 is a rate of increase in a trait that would take something like 500 generations to spread from a single individual in the population to the entire population.  According to the paper, only about 1% of the human genome is undergoing such an evolution, which is occurring at a glacially slow pace. In the 2018 book Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, the author makes this revealing confession on page 9: “The sad truth is that it is possible to count on the fingers of two hands the examples like FOXP2 of mutations that increased in frequency in human ancestors under the pressure of natural selection and whose functions we partly understand.” Judging from this statement, there are merely 10 or fewer cases where we know of some mutation that increased in the human population because of natural selection. 

Similarly, the scientific paper “The Genomic Rate of Adaptive Evolution” tells us “there is little evidence of widespread adaptive evolution in our own species." In the study here, an initial analysis found 154 positively selected genes in the human genome -- genes that seemed to show signs of being promoted by natural selection (less than 1% of our genes). But then the authors applied something called "the Bonferroni correction" to get a more accurate number, and were left with only 2 genes in the human genome showing signs of positive selection (promotion by natural selection).  That's only 1 gene in 10,000.

The amount of evolution now occurring in the human species can honestly be described as being pretty much negligible. It is never justified to speak of so paltry a microevolution reality as something establishing macroevolution claims that gigantic morphological transistions occurred such as dinosaurs evolving into birds or ape-like creatures evolving into humans. 

What would it be like if cosmologists used trickery similar to that of biologists using the trick of conflating microevolution and macroevolution?  Then we would see arguments for dark matter like this:

"Dark matter is a very well-observed reality.  The undeniable fact that dark matter exists is shown by the fact that geologists have found many dark rocks, and the fact that there are many people with dark skin in Africa.  Since we clearly have seen many examples of dark matter such as tar, coal, ebony and dark-skinned Africans, we should not doubt cosmologists when they talk about the reality of dark matter."

Here we have a sophistical example of conflation. Committing a very obvious fallacy, the writer is conflating one type of thing (visible atomic dark matter such as coal) with a very different type of thing (the invisible non-atomic dark matter that cosmologists speculatively postulate).  We have plenty of observational evidence for the first of these things, and no observational evidence for the second of these things. 

We can also imagine cosmologists using conflation sophistry in regard to dark energy. Their fallacious reasoning might go like this:

"Imagine you are living in a large New York City apartment building during the winter. In your dark apartment at night, heat comes up through your radiator, but you don't see such energy. So it's an invisible dark energy.  Since we know that such dark energy exists, we should not doubt cosmologists when they talk about dark energy. Don't be a science denier by doubting that dark energy exists."

Again we have a sophistical example of conflation. The writer is fallaciously conflating one type of thing (normal heat energy which can be measured by using a thermometer) with a very different type of thing (the utterly mysterious dark energy that cosmologists speculatively postulate, something that cannot be measured by any known instrument).  We have plenty of observational evidence for the first of these things, and no observational evidence for the second of these things. 

We can also imagine cosmologists using conflation sophistry in regard to their theory of cosmic inflation, the theory that the universe underwent exponential expansion during a fraction of its first second. Their reasoning might go like this:

"How can you doubt the theory of primordial cosmic inflation? Each of us has observed inflation with our own eyes! Remember when you blew up a balloon when you were a child? That was inflation. And ask your parents about how rapidly prices rose during Jimmy Carter's presidency. That also was inflation. So do not be a science denier by doubting claims of primordial cosmic inflation.  We know that inflation occurs."

Here the writer shamelessly conflates three things that have nothing to do with each other: (1) the expansion of a small balloon; (2) rises in consumer prices; (3) the speculative claim that in its first second the universe underwent a brief instant of exponential expansion unlike anything ever observed by humans.  The first two things do nothing whatsoever to support claims about the third of these things. 

We do not hear cosmologists giving arguments like the ones I have stated above. Although they make many misstatements and very often try to pass off groundless speculations as science, our cosmologists at least have enough scruples not to use such obviously fallacious sophistry as I imagined above.  But many biologists act as if they had no such scruples.  Again and again they use the most blatantly fallacious conflation sophistry, by trying to pass off mere evidence of microevolution as if it proved something very different and a billion times harder to achieve, the never-observed phenomenon of macroevolution.  

We often read some authority trying to speak as if microevolution proves not just that macroevolution occurs, but also that all species have a common ancestor (which is the claim that all the main biology wonders arose by macroevolution).   This is like someone showing a few coins in his pocket to try to prove his strange claim that he is a billionaire, and that every one he knows is a billionaire. 

Speaking of cosmology, recently cosmologists claimed to have detected an "arc of galaxies" spanning one fifteenth the radius of the observable universe. If this observational claim holds up, it means a bedrock assumption of modern cosmology and the cosmic inflation theory (that the universe is homogeneous at large scales) is false, that the theory of primordial exponential expansion cannot be true, and that modern cosmologists are explanatory bunglers mired in great error. We read this:

"Lopez ran three statistical tests to figure out the odds that galaxies would line up in a giant arc by chance. All three suggest that the structure is real, with one test surpassing physicists’ gold standard that the odds of it being a statistical fluke are less than 0.00003 percent." 

Postscript: A recent paper gives us fresh examples of the shameless sophistry of Darwinist apologists. The paper incorrectly states that "many empirical studies have shown that there is a clear link between microevolutionary processes and resulting macroevolutionary patterns,"  and cites as a "classic example" the case of "Sewall Wright's work on artificial selection in guinea pigs," saying, "Wright was able to breed laboratory populations with four toes."   Guinea pigs are normally born with three toes on their back feet, but are sometimes naturally born with four toes on their back feet (the fourth toe involving no improvement in function).  This is called polydactyly. Through artificial selection using inbreeding, you can create a breed that will always have four toes.  An animal hospital refers to such polydactyly as a "genetic defect, which may indicate other genetic health defects."  Another site says polydactyly "may require surgical repair for his [the guinea pig's] safety and comfort." Such four-toed guinea pigs are not actually an example of either macroevolution or the appearance of beneficial new features, and do not involve the appearance of any new complex useful innovation.  Humans have never observed either macroevolution or any "macroevolutionary patterns." 

Do UFOs Come From a Paraverse?

UFOs are in the news because of some upcoming government report on them, and some very hard-to-explain footage and accounts released by government sources and employees.  The mainstream media is doing what it so often senselessly does in the rare cases that it covers reports of paranormal phenomena: getting quotes from professors who show no signs of having studied the relevant phenomenon.  So, for example, a recent USA Today article quotes an astronomer dismissing UFOs as "strange reflections" or "atmospheric phenomenons."  That's just what someone might say if he had spent zero time studying UFO reports.  The same article quotes another astronomer talking about UFOs, showing zero signs that he has studied the evidence for such things.

Why is it that when mainstream sources quote professors dismising the paranormal, such sources never ask questions such as, "Please tell us how many hours you have spent studying such reports, by examining original source materials," or "Have you actually spent a sufficient time studying such evidence and accounts to have a well-informed opinion"?  It is usually the case that the professors being questioned have never bothered to seriously study the reports they are being asked about.  So asking for their opinion on such reports is like asking a philosopher about how to fix your car, or like asking a professor of medieval history to analyze an IPO investment offering.  

When people think of an explanation for hard-to-explain UFO sightings, they tend to think of "nuts and bolts" spaceships from another planet.  But while there are quite a few very hard-to-explain UFO sightings, which may be signs of some utterly paranormal phenomenon, the evidence for UFOs specifically being spaceships from other solar systems seems weak. 

If UFOs were physical spaceships from other planets, we might expect to observe one or more of these things:

(1) Physical evidence of intelligent life in other solar systems, such as signs of distant "technosignatures" or distant "astroengineering." 

(2) Deliberately designed radio signals from other solar systems.

(3) Evidence of some type of spaceship entering into our solar system. 

(4) Evidence of some type of spaceship entering into our atmosphere from outer space. 

But the things above have not been found. It has been pointed out by many that a craft for traveling between stars would probably be much different from a craft for exploring a planet's surface or atmosphere.  But no astronomer has ever detected a "mother ship" in our solar system that looked like an interstellar spaceship. Searches for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations (conducted for decades) have come up empty, as have searches for optical signals from such civilizations. No sign has been found of "technosignatures" or god-like "astroengineering" in other solar systems. 

Supposedly some US intelligence report on UFOs will be delivered to the US Congress next month.  We read this in an Associated Press story:

"Investigators have found no evidence the sightings are linked to aliens — but can’t deny a link either. Two officials briefed on the report due to Congress later this month say the U.S. government cannot give a definitive explanation of aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots."

The quote is consistent with my comments above. Something inexplicable seems to be involved in some UFO sightings, but there is little evidence connecting the phenomena with visiting spaceships from other planets in our universe. 

Why do we always assume that UFOs are metallic spaceships from other planets? They might be from some realm of existence unobservable by our telescopes.  UFOs might be from some mysterious unobservable realm of existence that can be called the paraverse. 

Scientists sometimes imagine the existence of many other universes, none of which interact with our own universe. Such a concept is sometimes called the multiverse.  Since it imagines causally disconnected universes that do not interact with each other, the concept of a multiverse is of no explanatory value.  Those who claim that the concept can help explain the seemingly fine-tuned fundamental constants of our universe are very much mistaken.  You do not increase the likelihood of any one random trial succeeding by increasing the number of random trials. So if you imagine that there are a million billion quadrillion other universes, or an even an infinite number of other universes, that does not affect the likelihood that our universe would by chance have the conditions necessary for it to be habitable. Similarly, if you spend years buying lottery tickets, that does nothing to increase your chance of winning when buying any one of those lottery tickets. People who think the concept of a multiverse has some explanatory value tend to be people who make the simple mistake of confusing the concept of "the likelihood of some universe being habitable" with the concept of "the likelihood of our universe being habitable."

The concept of a paraverse is very different from the multiverse.  A paraverse may be imagined as some mysterious realm of existence that is not normally directly observable from our universe.  But there may rarely or perhaps even frequently occur interactions between our universe and such a paraverse.  Such interactions may consist of an agent from such a paraverse visiting or contacting or influencing someone or something in our universe.  Such interactions might also consist of someone in our universe briefly visiting (in some mystical or psychic experience) such a paraverse, or perhaps permanently migrating to such a paraverse (by means of a soul passing from the earthly realm to the realm of the dead). 

The term "paraverse" is best used in a general and non-committal way. The term does not presuppose any belief about what happens after death. The term simply means some other universe or realm of existence not normally observable by people in our universe, which can interact with our universe in some way.  When we adopt the concept of the paraverse, we throw away the never-justified dogmatic principle of "there can be no mysterious invisible or spiritual influences," and perhaps (after sufficient scholarship) acknowledge that possible signs of such influences have been extremely widely reported for centuries by a host of respectable witnesses. 

The diagram below illustrates the difference between the multiverse concept and the paraverse concept.  The arrows represent causal interaction. There is no causal interaction between any of the universes in a multiverse, but there may well be causal interaction between our universe and a paraverse. 

How might UFOs fit into the paraverse concept? UFOs may be manifestations of mysterious powers existing in some paraverse that can interact with our universe, powers that might either be influencing matter in our universe, or briefly visiting our universe. A paraverse power producing a UFO manifestation might be divine, angelic, psychic, spiritual or material.  Such an idea is consistent with the fact that observations of UFOs seem to usually report something that does not look technological. A UFO will be typically described as a sphere of light or a bright light or a disk or something else that does not particularly look like some "nuts and bolts" flying machine. 

Rather than entering our atmosphere from outer space, UFOs may instantly enter our skies through some type of instantaneous appearance process, or through some gradual materialization process.  The history of paranormal phenomena (senselessly ignored by most of our professors) is filled with very many hard-to-explain or inexplicable cases in which inexplicable material phenomena and strange energy phenomena seemed to occur through some mysterious interaction between our reality and some eerie other reality. 

When we examine the records of seances (often recorded in credible publications such as the Journal or Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research), we can find many cases of inexplicable lights moving about indoors, and also many other phenomena far stranger.   When we examine modern photographic records of indoor photographic anomalies, we find many inexplicable things, such as 800+ photos of mysterious striped orbs, 700+ photos of mysterious speeding orbs, and thousands of photos of massively repeating orb patterns.  UFOs may have a source similar to such phenomena. They may all be cases of some mysterious unseen mind or minds reaching out to us to produce a sign of their existence. Both UFO sightings and Bigfoot sightings may be manifestations of some unfathomable intelligent influences from some mysterious paraverse.   

A very rough analogy might be a man throwing a little rock into a pond.  A fish in that pond may experience that little falling rock (or its ripples) as a rare strange anomaly.  But that fish would be unable to fathom the mind that threw the stone, just as we are unable to fathom the source of manifestations from some mysterious paraverse. 

There will be some who recoil at such a comparison.  They may say something like, "I'm only interested in baffling inexplicable lights darting around in the sky, not baffling inexplicable lights darting around indoors."  The rationale behind such a distinction is not very clear, and such a statement sounds rather like saying, "I'm only interested when bears and cougars stray into my front yard, not in other weird events like when walruses or giraffes stray into my front yard."

What kind of observations might allow us to distinguish between UFOs coming from other planets in our universe and UFOs coming from some mysterious paraverse, perhaps instantly? We would not be able to distinguish between the two ideas merely by verifying something physical associated with a UFO.  That is because the idea of a paraverse does not specifically entail a purely spiritual, non-physical realm, or some realm producing only spiritual effects in our universe. A paraverse might be largely material, and manifestations from such a paraverse might consist of physical, tangible evidence.  In fact, the history of paranormal phenomena includes many reports of tangible evidence produced by some mysterious spiritual or invisible reality (examples include the widely reported phenomena  called materializations and apports).  

On the other hand, you might be able to distinguish between the competing UFO explanations if a UFO encounter included some extraterrestrial claiming to have come from some specific other star in our universe, and producing evidence for such a claim, such as photos or videos of the cities on a planet revolving around such a star. Even in the case of such evidence, it would not be sufficient to rule out either the "UFOs from other planets" or "UFOs from a paraverse" explanations for other UFO sightings.  It would still be possible that some UFOs are produced by spaceships from other planets, and other UFOs arise from some mysterious paraverse, a reality capable of instantly producing physical effects in our universe. 

"We're Getting There" Baloney Recurs in Science Literature

Imagine a father in the Queens area of New York City who tells his children that he will take them to a  big water park at the east end of Long Island. To do that, he needs to travel to the east. But imagine the father mistakenly travels to the north, assuming that the water park is to the north. After a while, the kids will get impatient, and begin asking, "When will we get to the water park?"  The father might try to soothe the kids by saying this: "We're getting there," But that would not be accurate in his situation. Given his blunder,  he would not be really "getting there" at all. 

Such a situation reminds me of a frequent item in the science literature, a kind of paper or article that discusses scientists who are making no major progress (often because they have made the wrong assumptions), but which tries to make it sound as if some great  progress is being made.  We can call this kind of story a "we're getting there" narrative. 

An example of a very inaccurate "we're getting there" story is an article or paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one entitled, "Inner Workings: Making Headway with the Mysteries of Life's Origins."  The paper tries to create some idea that progress is being made in understanding how life could have naturally originated. No such thing is actually occurring. 

The paper starts out by using the same old hogwash that writers about the origin of life have been shamelessly peddling for seventy years, the entirely unfounded idea that the Miller-Urey experiment represented some progress in understanding the origin of life.  That experiment was no such thing, because the experiment was nothing like a realistic simulation of early Earth conditions. 

DEFECTS OF THE MILLER-UREY EXPERIMENT
Unrealistic gas mixture	The Miller-Urey experiment used a mixture of ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water vapor to simulate the early Earth's atmosphere. It is now believed that such an atmosphere consisted of mainly nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water vapor, with little ammonia, methane or hydrogen.
Unrealistic length of electricity exposure	The Miller-Urey experiment used a week-long electrical discharge to simulate lightning. Lightning actually jolts any specific little spot on Earth no more than about a tiny fraction of a second during any week.
Unrealistic prevention of electrical dissipation	Actual lightning occurs in the open air, where electricity can dissipate. The Miller-Urey experiment kept the electricity in a little glass apparatus minimizing such dissipation.

The author tells us that the Miller-Urey experiment "was meant to simulate conditions on the early Earth," trying to insinuate that the experiment realistically simulated the conditions on the early Earth, without explaining to us any of the three very big reasons why the Miller-Urey experiment did not actually realistically simulate the early Earth.  We now know about the first of these reasons (that the wrong mixture of gases was used in the experiment).  But the two other other big reasons why the experiment completely failed to realistically simulate the early Earth have been very obvious from the beginning: the fact that the experiment used a small enclosed glass apparatus unlike anything that existed on the early Earth, and the fact that the experiment used continuous electrical discharges in a small enclosed space, unlike anything that ever would have existed on the early Earth.  The seventy years of evoking the irrelevant Miller-Urey experiment as "progress on the origin of life" is one of the most outrageous examples of blatant baloney in science literature. 

The author then proceeds to make a widely-made but very false claim that the stuff of life is common in outer space, telling us "the chemical precursors of life are common throughout the cosmos."  This is the same bunk that Carl Sagan kept telling us in the 1970's, and that SETI enthusiasts have shamelessly repeated since then.  The simplest one-celled organisms are built from functional proteins and nucleic acids. There are no reliable reports of any such things ever being discovered in outer space. The building blocks of proteins are the twenty amino acids used by proteins. Only one of those twenty amino acids has ever been discovered in outer space: glycine, the simplest amino acid.  Glycine has only been detected in the tiniest trace amounts in outer space. Some amino acids have been found in meteorites that fell to Earth, but only in trace amounts no greater than about 1 part per million.  Such trace levels are so low that it is hard to determine whether the amino acids found arose from earthly contamination, and also hard to know whether the trace amount detection is a misidentification (like the recent  "phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus" report that seems to have been a misidentification). The building blocks of nucleic acids are nucleotides, which have never been detected in outer space.  It is therefore very false indeed to claim  "the chemical precursors of life are common throughout the cosmos."  

The author then proceeds to make the untrue claim that "many meteorites that fall to Earth are packed with biomolecules."  Brittanica.com defines a biomolecule as "any of numerous substances that are produced by cells or living organisms," and says there are four main examples: carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acids and lipids.  No proteins or nucleic acids or lipids have ever been found in meterorites, except for things that can be accounted for by earthly contamination.  A paper claims to have found a tiny trace of the carbohydrate ribose in a meteorite, but only in the tiniest trace amount, less than 1 part in 10 billion.  No one has ever discovered anything like a meteorite "packed with biomolecules." 

We then have the following very big non-sequitur:

"Sasselov has shown that exposing the various isomers to ultraviolet light preferentially destroys the non-useful ones, leaving behind those relevant for life. The results imply that the origin of life might have happened in shallow water exposed to sunlight, rather than near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, as some researchers have previously hypothesized."

We should doubt the "has shown" claim made (which is not made in the abstract of Sasselov's paper), and were such a thing to be shown, it would do nothing to show the possibility of abiogenesis (the formation of life from chemicals), a possibility that is actually made all the more improbable when we consider harmful ultraviolet radiation. 

We then have a statement that moves from two "might have" statements and a "could have" statement (along with an additional "might" statement and an additional "if" statement) to a very  unjustified "would have" statement that does not follow from any of the preceding statements, and is not based on experiments.  Below is the statement (I have put the speculative words in boldface). 

"Given such findings, researchers now have an idea for how the compounds of prebiotic chemistry might have been stockpiled on our planet. Early on, the Earth’s atmosphere might have mainly contained simple molecules, including carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, and molecular nitrogen. Lakes containing carbon minerals could have accumulated phosphorous in their depths. Dissolved hydrogen cyanide would have created ferrocyanide salts. Evaporation cycles could then repeatedly dry the lakes out and concentrate all these materials during wetter seasons. Volcanoes and meteorite impacts might add additional necessary metals, such as magnesium and potassium, to the mix. If such a rich body of water were exposed to sulfur dioxide and ultraviolet radiation, the resulting chemical reactions would produce a wide diversity of organic molecules. The stuff of biochemistry—nucleotides, amino acids, and lipids, which help form cell membranes—would have all sprung up in this fertile environment in the specific forms needed for cells."

The final "would have" statement is a non-sequitur that does not logically follow from the preceding statements, and has no empirical or experimental basis. In fact, no experiments realistically simulating early Earth conditions have ever produced nucleotides or amino acids, and the Miller-Urey is not any such experiment realistically simulating early Earth conditions.  There is no scientific basis for believing that if the preceding imaginary events occurred, "the stuff of biochemistry—nucleotides, amino acids, and lipids, which help form cell membranes—would have all sprung up in this fertile environment in the specific forms needed for cells." 

You could compare the statement above to someone claiming that if he went to New York City without any money in his pockets, he might have got some coins after begging, and that he could have used such coins to buy a winning lottery ticket, and that this would have made him the richest man in the world.  Such a lottery win would have done no such thing. 

Then, after the author resorts to one more "might have," another "could," and another "perhaps," the author describes the self-replication of an RNA molecule, claiming that such an idea is "plausible." No, the word "plausible" means "likely." No one has ever been able to produce a self-replication of an RNA molecule outside of a cell, and such an imaginary phantasm is pure fantasy, not something "plausible."  There is no basis for believing that such an RNA molecule could have existed before cells existed, since no experiment realistically simulating the early Earth has ever produced any of the buiding blocks of RNA molecules.  "Plausible" is one of the most abused words in scientific literature, where thousands of things that are enormously implausible have been described as "plausible."

The author then makes it sound like explaining the origin of proteins needed for life to begin is just a little detail waiting to be filled in. He states the following:

"Yet even here, many gaps remain before researchers can see their way to creating life. 'The dot, dot, dot happens when you get to inventing proteins,' Chen says. Those gaps have yet to be filled."

We have been given here the totally erroneous insinuation that origin-of-life researchers have kind of explained the origin of RNA,  leaving some little detail (a "dot,dot,dot") of explaining the origin of proteins.  The reality is that origin of life researchers have not got anywhere in explaining the origin of DNA, RNA or proteins.  They have not produced any such things in any experiments realistically simulating the early Earth. Moreover, such researchers have not even produced any of the building blocks of DNA, RNA or proteins in any experiments realistically simulating the early Earth.  So the title of the article (claiming that researchers are "making headway with the mysteries of life's origin") is very inaccurate. No such headway has been made.   There has been no real experimental progress in understanding life's origin.  The problem of explaining the random origin of the 50 or more types of proteins needed for the simplest living things is a difficulty as great as explaining how someone could dump on the ground a dumpster filled with Scrabble letters and have them form into fifty coherent instructional paragraphs. But rather than being honestly described, such a problem is misleadingly described as some little "dot,dot,dot" kind of "gap," as if it were something minor. 

The "Inner Workings" paper is very much like someone who does not actually have a spacesuit (but only a sweater and a motorcycle helmet) insinuating that he kind of has the beginning of a spacesuit, and  is therefore almost ready to explore planets revolving around other suns,  talking like this:

"As you can see, I've made substantial progress and I'm partially ready for interstellar exploration. Of course, there are still some little gaps, such as the dot, dot, dot of getting the warp-drive faster-than-the-speed-of-light interstellar spaceship."

The history of origin-of-life research has been a history of the most ridiculous overconfidence and hubris. In 2006 a chemistry professor proclaimed, "We shall understand the origin of life within the next five years." Zero progress has been made in understanding any way that life could have naturally originated.  No experiments realistically simulating the early Earth have produced either the building blocks of microscopic life (nucleic acids and protein molecules) or even the building blocks of the building blocks of life (amino acids or nucleotides). 

Cognitive neuroscientists have made no real progress in proving their never-warranted claim that the human brain is the source of human thinking and understanding, and their never-warranted claim that the brain is the storage place of memories. But they often try to assure us that such efforts are proceeding well, in articles and papers that conveniently fail to mention the very many reasons for thinking the brain must be too slow,  noisy and unstable to be the source of human thinking and recall which can occur with astonishing speed and reliability (such as the instant accurate recall of fifty-year-old memories). 

In the field of neuroscience,  a typical way of presenting a misleading "we're getting there" story is to do what is called a review article.  The review article usually presents no new research, but merely discusses previous research.  For example, there may be a review article discussing research on neural correlates of mental activity. Or there may be a review article on neuroscience research on memory.  Such articles may try to assure us that significant progress is being made in understanding a neural basis for memory, or a neural basis for mental activity such as thinking, understanding and imagination.  But no such progress has actually been made. 

So how do these reveiw articles accomplish the trick of suggesting to us that progress has been made when no such progress has been made? They do it by citing many weak, unconvincing experimental studies that used what is sometimes called Questionable Research Practices.  Typically, nothing will be said to assure us that the experiments were properly designed studies using adequate study group sizes and good experimental techniques such as all study groups having at least 15 subjects, a thorough and well-documented blinding protocol, and pre-registration of a hypothesis and the exact methods to be followed.  Instead, the review article will merely tell us whatever was reported as being found by the study, without discussing factors relevant to the quality of the study. 

How a Typical Review Article Is Done	How a Review Article Should Be Done
Discuss results reported by Study #1	Discuss results reported by Study #1
Discuss results reported by Study #2	Analyze whether Study #1 used “best practice” techniques to get a robust result, or whether it used Questionable Research Practices
Discuss results reported by Study #3	Discuss results reported by Study #2
Discuss results reported by Study #4	Analyze whether Study #2 used “best practice” techniques to get a robust result, or whether it used Questionable Research Practices
Discuss results reported by Study #5	Discuss results reported by Study #3
Discuss results reported by Study #6	Analyze whether Study #3 used “best practice” techniques to get a robust result, or whether it used Questionable Research Practices
Discuss results reported by Study #7	Discuss results reported by Study #4
Discuss results reported by Study #8	Analyze whether Study #4 used “best practice” techniques to get a robust result, or whether it used Questionable Research Practices

 

We also have misleading "we're getting there" stories involving the search for life in space. A typical story of this type will talk about the discovery of some not-very-important chemicals in distant space, and try to describe such things as "building blocks of life." The chemicals typically described are no such things.  The building blocks of visible life are cells, and the building blocks of microscopic one-celled life are functional proteins. No such things have been discovered in outer space, outside of human spacecraft or space stations.  A typical but misleading tactic is to describe carbon chemicals that are not any of the building blocks of life as "organic compounds."  The phrase "organic compounds" means any compounds at all made out of carbon, no matter how biologically irrelevant.  "We're getting there" stories on the search for life typically tout the discovery of extrasolar planets.  But finding such planets is no more progress in the search for life in space than the purchase of lottery tickets is progress towards becoming a millionaire. 

In the world of physics, we also have "we're getting there" baloney.  A recent article by a physicist has a subtitle asking "is a grand theory of everything finally within reach?" Notice the kind of "we're getting there" sound of such a question. It has always been phony language for physicists to use the term "Theory of Everything" for some theory that would go beyond the Standard Model of Physics, as such an imagined theory has always been merely a theory of physics, not at all a "theory of everything." No real progress has been made in establishing any such theory. There has been merely been arcane speculation that has failed all observational tests. 

In this article we have a couldn't-be-more-false statement that refers to the arrangement of charges in a fundamental particles, and states, "It’s a motley crew of jumbled-up numbers, which doesn’t seem to have much rhyme or reason to it." To the contrary, the arrangement of charges in fundamental particles (with each proton having an electric charge that is the very precise opposite of the electric charge in each electron) is an "exact opposite" relation that has tons of "reason to it," for if that "exact opposite" relation did not exist, the chemistry in our bodies would be impossible, and planets would not hold together. 

In the field of cosmology, we recently had "we're getting there" baloney in the recent form of a publication of a "dark matter map" that purports to show us concentrations of dark matter.  But dark matter has never even been observed. So publishing such a "map" is rather like publishing maps of Oregon forests purporting to tell you where there are concentrations of Bigfoot creatures, except that the Bigfoot map would probably be on firmer ground, since at least some people claim to have seen Bigfoot.  You won't be more confident in such a claimed "map" of dark matter when you read that it was reverse-engineered by artificial intelligence. 

The same type of "we're getting there" baloney goes on when scientists discuss the current state of developmental biology, the study of how a speck-sized egg is able to progress to become a baby the size of a newborn baby. Scientists have no real understanding of how such a miracle of progression is able to occur. There is no truth to the idea that a tiny speck-sized egg turns into a 8-pound baby because a blueprint for making is read from DNA. No such blueprint of the human form exists in DNA, which only specifies low-level chemical information such as which amino acids are in some particular protein. If such a blueprint of the human body were to exist in DNA, it would not explain the origin of a human body, because of the simple fact that blueprints don't build things.  Blueprints are merely instructions used by intelligent agents that build complex things. We know of nothing in the human body that would be capable of reading and understanding a genetic blueprint for how to make a human body if such a thing happened to exist, and also capable of acting on such instructions to make the body of an 8-pound baby.  

So how do modern biologists explain the origin of a full grown human body? Some will tell the utterly false lie that there is a blueprint for making humans in DNA. Other biologists will not explicitly tell such a lie, but simply use loaded or suggestive language trying to make you draw the conclusion that DNA is some kind of blueprint or recipe for making a human. 

Other biologists will avoid such deception, but engage in a more subtle use of misleading language: trying to suggest that in this tiny way or that tiny way some progress is being made in a getting a mechanistic explanation for the origin of an individual human body.  There will be some talk of some tiny progress made in some tiny millionth of the problem of explaining how a human body originates, and some talk of some other tiny progress made in some other tiny millionth of the problem of explaining how a human body originates. Then there will be some language such as this:

"Clearly progress is being made in unraveling this deep riddle. We're getting there. Scientists are beginning to see hints of the answers slowly emerging. Things are starting to slowly fall into place.  There's a long way to go, but much progress has been made. Scientists can start to faintly see the light at the end of the tunnel."

Language such as this is profoundly misleading when talking about the origin of life, the origin of human mental phenomena, and the origin of individual human bodies.  If you look hard enough around the borders, you can always find some little thing that can be called some little signs of tangential progress.  But the plain facts are:

• Scientists are not really getting anywhere in explaining how life could have naturally originated.
• Scientists are not really getting anywhere in explaining how a brain could produce the main types of human mental phenomena.
• Scientists are not really getting anywhere in explaining how a full-sized human body arises from a speck-sized egg. 

The reason why no such progress is being made is largely because scientists are trying to prove assumptions that are wrong in the first place. For example, sweeping aside illusory progress made by the use of dubious research practices, no real progress has been made and no progress can ever be made in explaining how a brain could produce the most impressive types of mental phenomena, because the main types of human mental phenomena are not and cannot be caused by a brain, an organ too slow, too noisy and too unstable to account for the wonders of human mental phenomena such as the instant creation of permanent new memories, the instant recall of things learned decades ago, and the accurate recall of 60-year-old memories.  Similarly,  sweeping aside progress on tangential matters, no real progress has been made in producing a mechanistic description of how a human body originates, for such a miracle of origination (a billion times more impressive than a 52-card house of cards rising up by itself from a deck of cards) must involve some currently unfathomable reality far more than mere chemical and low-level biological activity. 

The "we're getting there" stories we so often see in science literature are often like some little child on the eastern United States wading into the Atlantic Ocean, and then claiming that he's "getting there" on his plan to swim to Europe. 

Postscript: An article in the current edition of the widely read science magazine Nautilus may give us further evidence of the often-erring state of scientific academia.  It is written by the authors of a paper entitled "Scientific conclusions need not be accurate, justified, or believed by their authors." 

From a Misty Cloud to a Human Form

In Robert Crookall's book Out of the Body Experiences, we have on page 35 this very interesting passage:

"Thus, Dr. R. B. Hout saw 'a fog' leave a dying body (and gradually become its 'double'). E. W. Oaten saw 'a smokelike vapor' (which gradually became 'an exact duplicate' of the person who had just died). Florence Marryat saw 'a cloud of smoke' (which 'gradually acquired the shape of the girl’s body'). J. C. Street observed 'a column of vapor' (which assumed the form of the man under observation). Major W. T. Pole reported 'a shadowy form” (which became 'an exact counterpart of the body on the bed'). Mr. 'G' described 'clouds' (which assumed the form of the body they had left). Maurice and Irene Elliott spoke of 'a white hazy mist' (which also took the shape of the body it had left)."

On page 105 we have a fuller discussion in the same vein:

"We have already referred to the 'mist' observed to rise from dying bodies...Mrs. Annie Brittain saw that 'the mist' which left the body of a woman passed through a second stage and became its counterpart. Lily J. Price, J. P., of Australia, wrote and told me how, when present at the 'passing' of a child, she saw 'a mist' leave the head (first stage). She continued, 'The mist gradually took the shape of the child’s form [second stage].' Mrs. G. Vivian, B.A.,  saw 'a mist' leave the body of her dying mother. 'It gradually took shape and resembled my mother.' Mrs. 'Alexander' gave an identical description, as did Mrs. E. Herrick, T. E. Morgan, and an American literary woman.  The Reverend J. Lewis  saw a gambler die. A 'mist' left his body and later assumed the gambler’s form." 

On page 106 we read this: "Professor E. Bozzano quoted a missionary from Tahiti who was told by the natives: 'Shortly after a human body ceases to breathe, a vapor rises from the head . . . this vapor gradually . . . assumes the form of the inert body.”

Below is a description by an R. B. Hout on page 153:

"I could distinguish nothing more than a vague outline of a hazy, foglike substance. There seemed to be only a mist held suspended, motionless. But, as I looked, very gradually there grew into my sight a denser, more solid, condensation of this inexplicable vapor. Then I was astonished to see definite outlines presenting themselves, and soon I saw this foglike substance was assuming a human form. 

Soon I knew that the body I was seeing resembled that of the physical body of my aunt  . . . The astral body hung suspended horizontally a few feet above the physical counterpart. ... I continued to watch and . . . the Spirit Body now seemed complete to my sight. I saw the features plainly. They were very similar to the physical face, except that a glow of peace and vigor was expressed instead of age and pain. The eyes were closed as though in tranquil sleep, and 

a luminosity seemed to radiate from the Spirit Body."

On page 121 of his very interesting book The Supreme Adventure the author Robert Crookall cites the following account told by an E. W. Oaten who witnessed the death of his friend Daisy: 

"I saw a faint, smoke-like vapour rise from the body. It rose some few feet above the bed and stayed there. It was full of motion and rolled over and over until it became a ball of greyish smoke, in a state of motion, with slight traces of opalescence in it here and there. It condensed and grew larger, supplied with a steady stream from the body, a stream of vapour some three inches in diameter. Slowly the ball assumed the size of about 5 ft. 6 in. in length by 18 in. in diameter. Condensation continued until it became to me, a semi-solid body, light-grey in colour, but still like a volume of smoke all in motion. Then, gradually, definition began to come. It assumed the form of a roughly-moulded dummy of the human form. An umbilical cord united it with the physical body. I could see the flow of energy in the umbilical cord. The etheric form began to assume the perfect shape. . . . Presently there was the exact duplicate of Daisy floating face downwards in the air.  It was connected to the body by the silver cord through which her life slowly escaped. Then the form began to heave and rock, like a balloon tearing at its moorings. The silver cord began to stretch. It grew thinner and thinner at the middle until at last it snapped and the floating form assumed an upright attitude.  It was the living duplicate of the sleeping form on the bed. She turned to me and smiled. She was thanking me for the hours I had spent in trying to help her. Then, from the corner of the room, near the ceiling, there came a rush. Two white-robed figures, a man and a woman...came to her, and wrapping their robes around her, they floated away . . . .” 

On page 157 of Crookall's book Out of the Body Experiences we read of a Dr. R. J. Staver who witnessed the death of his father: 

"There was a little mistlike wraith which rose rather slowly. ... It had no human appearance at the time of withdrawal; that 

came a bit later. The whole proceeding took the best 

part of an hour, and for some time following the com¬ 

plete withdrawal, there was a wisp of connection between 

the physical body and that portion which had left it— 

it reminded me of the oft-mentioned ‘silver cord.’ "

On page 159 we read this:

"Mrs. Josephine Taylor ... told how she saw a child die: 'I saw a mist above the little body. It took the shape of the body which lay on the bed. This was attached by a very fine silver cord. . . . The replica was about three feet above the body, then gradually tilted itself into an upright position. It then floated away.'  Charles Moore observed, 'There slowly escapes from the outworn body a luminous cloud of fine substance. This rapidly becomes compact and takes the form of a solid ethereal body exactly like the old physical body from which it has arisen.' "

On page 162 we are told a Dr. Kayner  observed "a vapor or mist"  which left the chest and head and "gradually rose" until 

the "newly born man" stood up.

The world-class scientist Sir William Crookes was the inventor of the Crookes tube that was the forerunner of all television sets (and also the co-discoverer of the element thallium).  Crookes wrote the following:

"Under the strictest test conditions, I have more than once had a solid, self-luminous, crystalline body placed in my hand by a hand which did not belong to any person in the room. In the light, I have seen a luminous cloud hover over a heliotrope on a side table, break a sprig off, and carry the sprig to a lady; and on some occasions I have seen a similar luminous cloud visibly condense to the form of a hand and carry small objects about."

Lt.-Col. L. Moore Cosgrave reported the following incident occurring near the time of the death of Horace Traubel, the main biographer of the American poet Walt Whitman:

"During this long watch, Horace Traubel, who was suffering from paralysis and debility, was without visible pain, and semi-conscious, unable to articulate owing to paralysis of the tongue....On the last night, about 3 a. m., he grew perceptibly weaker, breathing almost without visible movement, eyes closed and seemingly comatose, he stirred restlessly after a long period, and his eyes opened, staring towards the further side of the bed, his lips moved, endeavoring to speak, I moved his head back, thinking he needed more air, but again it moved away, and his eyes remained rivetted on a point some three feet above the bed, my eyes were at last drawn irresistibly to the same point in the darkness, as there was but 

a small shaded night lamp behind a curtain on the further side of the room. Slowly the point at which we were both looking grew gradually brighter, a light haze appeared, spread until it assumed bodily form, and took the likeness of Walt Whitman, standing upright beside the bed, a rough tweed jacket on, an old felt hat upon his head and his right hand in his pocket, similar to a number of his portraits, he was gazing down at Traubel, a kindly, reassuring smile upon his face, he nodded twice as though reassuringly, the features quite distinct for at least a full minute, then gradually faded from sight."

Besides such accounts of a full or nearly full human form arising from a misty cloud, there are numerous accounts of mysterious hands appearing from such a cloud or mist. We read the following in the book "Occult Science in India" by Louis Jacolliot:

"A slightly phosphorescent cloud seemed to have formed in the mid- dle of my chamber, from which semblances of hands appeared to go and come with great rapidity. In a few minutes, several hands seemed to have lost their vaporous appearance and to resemble human hands ; so much so, indeed, that they might have been readily mistaken for the latter. Singular to relate, while some became, as it were, more material, others became more luminous. Some became opaque, and cast a shadow in the light, while others became so transparent that an object behind them could be distinctly seen. I counted as many as sixteen....One of them, breaking away from the rest, flew toward me and pressed my outstretched hand. It was small, supple and moist, like the hand of a young woman....For nearly two hours a scene ensued which was calculated to set my head in a whirl. At one time, a hand brushed against my face or fanned it with a fan. At another, it would scatter a shower of flowers all over the room, or would trace in the air, in characters of fire, words which vanished as soon as the last letter was written."

On page 269 of the same account, we read the following account of a full human form arising from such a cloud:

'A cloud similar to the first, but more opaque and of a brighter color, hovered near the little furnace, which, at the Hindu's request, I had kept constantly fed with burning coals. By degrees it seemed to assume a human form, and I distinguished the spectre — for I cannot call it otherwise — of an old Brahminical priest kneeling by the side of the little furnace."

Although it involves only a paranormal cloud (but not such a cloud turning into a human form), the following notable passage from the book Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke may be relevant in this post. In the passage the author is describing his own experience:

"All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-colored cloud. For an instant he thought of fire, some sudden conflagration in the great city; the next he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe. Into his brain streamed one momentary lightning-flash of the Brahmic Splendor which has ever since lightened his life ; upon his heart fell one drop of Brahmic Bliss, leaving thenceforward for always an after taste of heaven. Among other things he did not come to believe, he saw and knew that the Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain. He claims that he learned more within the few seconds during which the illumination lasted than in previous months or even years of study, and that he learned much that no study could ever have taught. The illumination itself continued not more than a few moments, but its effects proved ineffaceable ; it was impossible for him ever to forget what he at that time saw and knew; neither did he, or could he, ever doubt the truth of what was then presented to his mind."

Below is the famous photo described as the "Ghost of Raynham Hall," as it appeared in the December 26, 1936 edition of the British magazine "Country Life." 

Postscript:  The description of seances of Franck Kluski by  anatomy professor F. W. Pawlowski is one of the most astonishing testimonies of paranormal phenomena ever recorded. Beginning here you can read an account of more than five pages, filled with the most extraordinary claims. The quote below is another example of the phenomenon referenced by this post's title:

"As the phantoms made their appearance I saw something resembling luminous smoke or fog floating above the head of the medium like a small cloud. This cloud moved to one side and in a few seconds became a human head, or else it would spread out vertically and become a complete human figure, which immediately began to walk about. The most astonishing and interesting part of these phenomena, so to speak their most important feature as far as I was concerned, was the absolutely human behavior of the apparitions. They acted precisely like guests at a party. As they passed around the table they greeted the more familiar participants with a smile of recognition, whereas they studied any newcomers attentively. The inquisitive look in their eyes is hard to describe. I could see from their efforts to understand our expressions, our smiles, our questions and answers, as well as from their actions, that they were particularly anxious to convince us of the fact that they were real beings and not illusions or hallucinations."