Free Republic

Royal Society: Don’t Censor Misinformation; It Makes Things WorseEditor’s note: See also, “The Rise of Totalitarian Science, 2022 Edition.”A leading science organization, the Royal Society (Britain’s equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences), has put out a report discouraging social media censorship, with special reference to the COVID-19 pandemic:The Royal Society, the U.K.’s academy of sciences, published a study of online scientific and health misinformation Wednesday, investigating its root causes and brainstorming possible solutions. The scientists concluded that censoring content deemed to be misinformation is often harmful and antithetical to the principles of scientific inquiry…The report found that online censorship...

As many readers are probably aware, there has been an important new posting at Climate Audit about the Yamal affair. This posting is an attempt to set out the whole story of Yamal. It reworks an article I did in 2009 and incorporates new developments since that time. I hope readers find it useful. I have also prepared a Kindle version of the post, for which there is a small charge - click here:Please also consider hitting the tip jar.The story of Michael Mann's Hockey Stick reconstruction, its statistical bias and the influence of the bristlecone pines is well known....

Members of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom stated yesterday that President Barack Obama was obsessed with his perception of "street cred" and that he intentionally avoids things to keep it high. This comes after Mr. Obama snubbed the group, an organization of world-leading scientists, when they planned on awarding him the King Charles II medal. The medal is given out only in "extraordinary circumstances" to leaders who "made an outstanding contribution to furthering scientific research in their country." Sources also stated that the group was "deeply offended." According to a source in the British government: “The Royal Society...

Barack Obama snubs British scientists by refusing to receive Royal Society medal Barack Obama has snubbed Britain’s most eminent scientists by refusing to attend a Royal Society banquet in his honour at which he was to be awarded with a prestigious medal. By Heidi Blake 6:30AM BST 26 May 2011 The US President rejected the invitation from the world-leading group of scientists and instead chose to visit a south London state school. Sources close to the state visit said members of the Royal Society were “deeply offended” by the snub and had accused Mr Obama of being obsessed with his...

Eugenics … death of the defenceless The legacy of Darwin’s cousin Galton By Russell Grigg Few ideas have done more harm to the human race in the last 120 years than those of Sir Francis Galton. He founded the evolutionary pseudo-science of eugenics. Today, ethnic cleansing, the use of abortion to eliminate ‘defective’ unborn babies, infanticide, euthanasia, and the harvesting of unborn babies for research purposes all have a common foundation in the survival-of-the-fittest theory of eugenics. So who was Galton, what is eugenics, and how has it harmed humanity?...

January 14, 2008 Biofuels 'do more harm than good to environment' says Royal Society Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter of The Times Biofuels will cause more harm than good to the environment unless strict controls are imposed on how they are grown, the Royal Society has cautioned. While they have the potential to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, biofuels will devastate forests and other habitats unless controlled, scientists said. The Royal Society report of a 14-month inquiry was published as the European Union announced that its targets for biofuels are to be re-examined because of...

The Royal Society has made every paper submitted to it since 1665 available free of charge on the internet, opening one of the greatest storehouses of scientific knowledge to the public. Readers will be able to browse through countless papers of incalculable historical importance, including Halley's description of his comet, Watson and Crick's unravelling of the double helix structure of DNA and the first paper published by Stephen Hawking. Prof Martin Taylor, the Royal Society's vice-president, said the archive documents "the foundation of the modern scientific method". He added: "It puts you in touch with the great scientific masters in...

Paleontologists have uncovered a 25-million-year-old whale fossil with a monstrous set of teeth and enormous eyes on the coast of Australia.The discovery has researchers rethinking whales’ evolutionary history.Scientists were surprised to find that the vicious-looking specimen is an ancestor of modern baleen whales, gentle giants of today’s seas. The fossil suggests a creature that grew to a little more than 11 feet with teeth about an inch-and-a-half long. Baleen whales, which include the blue and humpback, feed by filtering plankton and small fish from seawater through hair-like fibers in their jaws. Their ferocious forebears, on the other hand, appear to...