Free Republic

Dozens of climate scientists and environmental groups are calling for museums of science and natural history to “cut all ties” with fossil fuel companies and philanthropists like the Koch brothers. A letter released on Tuesday asserts that such money is tainted by these donors’ efforts to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. “When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge,” the letter states. “This corporate philanthropy...

In 1928, as America lurched towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin revealed his master plan - nature was to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour. Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life...

More adults in the United States believe the theory of evolution is correct, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 51 per cent of respondents think that humans and other living things evolved over time, while 42 per cent say they existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Charles Darwin’s "The Origin of Species" was first published in 1859. The book details the British naturalist’s theory that all organisms gradually evolve through the process of natural selection. Darwin’s views were antagonistic to creationism, the belief that a more powerful...

Forrest M. Mims III Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III. Recently citizen scientist Forrest Mims told me about a speech he heard at the Texas Academy of Science during which the speaker, a world-renowned ecologist, advocated for the extermination of 90 percent of the human species in a most horrible and painful manner. Apparently at the speaker's direction, the speech was not video taped by the Academy and so Forrest's may be the only record of what was said. Forrest's account of what he witnessed chilled my soul. Astonishingly, Forrest reports that many of the Academy members present gave...

(found at the Global Warming News Site)Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job? Some Claim Disinformation Campaign Attempted to Create the Impression Scientists Were Broadly Divided WASHINGTON, March 26, 2006 — - American attitudes about global warming are shifting, according to a new poll by ABC News, Time magazine and Stanford University -- but it has taken years for the public perception of the problem to catch up with the warnings.That lack of concern may have been just what big oil wanted.It's not as if the information hasn't been out there: A new ad by the Environmental Defense Fund...

Scientists say they have shown how male homosexuality could be passed from generation to generation. Nature encourages mothers to pass on a "gay trait" to their male offspring by boosting their fertility, the Italian University of Padova team believes. This would keep the pattern of gay inheritance alive, they told the Royal Society's Biological Sciences journal. Critics of the theory argue a gay gene would eventually be wiped out because gay couples do not procreate. Inheritance theory There is controversy about whether sexual orientation is a matter of choice, the authors of the study admitted to the journal. Campaigners say...

CHICAGO (AP) -- New research highlights a frustrating fact about science: What was good for you yesterday frequently will turn out to be not so great tomorrow. The sobering conclusion came in a review of major studies published in three influential medical journals between 1990 and 2003, including 45 highly publicized studies that initially claimed a drug or other treatment worked. Subsequent research contradicted results of seven studies -- 16 percent -- and reported weaker results for seven others, an additional 16 percent. That means nearly one-third of the original results did not hold up, according to the report in...

About a year ago, the Centers for Disease Control issued a highly publicized report stating that obesity-related health problems kill 400,000 Americans every year -- an "epidemic" second only to smoking in causing preventable deaths. The story was big news. A host of outside skeptics, however, such as the Center for Consumer Freedom, questioned the findings, and their efforts eventually forced the CDC to admit that at least part of the study was flawed. Now, despite even more critical evidence, the CDC says its mistakes don't matter.