The "March for Science"–No Laughing Matter? Says Who?

“Most of what Science believed to be true only 50 years ago has since been shown to be false.”
Sorry, that is just so much BS. Go to a 50 year old science text and find what proportion is “false”. Even in Biology, a decade and a half after the discovery of the structure of DNA, the text books were factually correct more than 99% of the time.
Because one or two things were viewed incorrectly before they were corrected, that is far far from “most”.
Your statement is is false.

ferdberple, (on your knees facing East !
see how easy it is to get it wrong ???
you say “with all the inherent dangers that “WERE” (should be are ) present when the infallible “CHURCH” (should be religion ) “MEDDLED” (should be meddles ) in the affairs of state.

Now that I think about it, no scientific discovery comes to mind from the past 50 years to equal those of the previous half century.
The first pulsar was discovered in November 1967. That the expansion of the universe appears to be accelerating is an important discovery, if found valid. Understanding of subatomic particles has advanced. So has knowledge of the metabolism of microbes. That stomach ulcers are caused by an infection is good to know, but not a major revelation. Lucy, aka Australophithecus afarensis, was found in Ethiopia 1974. Ribozymes, RNA enzymes, were discovered in 1982, which fact is significant in origin of life research. Genome sequencing has advanced greatly in the past 50 years, building upon earlier work. Most of the advances of the past 50 years have been follow-ups on prior big breakthroughs.
Please help me out if you can think of some other developments during the past half century comparable to those from 1917 to 1966, from 1867 to 1916, from 1817-1866 or prior 50-year intervals. It seems to me that the past 50 years pale in comparison with the previous half century.
The proton was discovered in 1917 and the neutron in 1935. Nuclear fission was achieved in 1938. Quantum theory had its roots earlier in 1900 and 1905, but was formulated in the 1920s.
The Big Bang Theory was confirmed in 1964, thanks to radioastronomy. Space exploration began in the 1950s and ’60s.
Chemistry advanced in this period with valance bond theory and subsequent developments to shell theory in 1958.
As noted, plate tectonics dates from the 1950s and ’60s, and catastrophic floods finally accepted by geologists as real around the same time.
In 1919, the base, sugar and phosphate nucleotide unit of DNA was identified. X-ray diffraction studies of DNA began in 1937, leading to discovery of its structure in 1953. Its role in heredity was confirmed in 1952. Ribosomes were observed in the 1950s. The Krebs cycle was worked out in the 1930s, and photosynthesis in the late ’40s and ’50s.
That chromosomes are responsible for genetic inheritance was recognized during this period, although suggested earlier. The number of human chromosomes was correctly found to be 46 in 1956, rather than 48 as reported in 1923.
Penicillin was isolated from mold in 1928.
Physical anthropology advanced greatly during this period. Genus Australophithecus was discovered in South Africa in 1924, but the African origin of humans wasn’t fully appreciated until the Leakys’ discoveries in East Africa during the 1950s and ’60s.
I’m sure I’ve overlooked some major finds.

ferdberple,
“So in effect, scientists are promoting the Infallibility of Science, and then promoting this Infallibility of Science into the Political Arena, with all the inherent dangers that were present when the infallible Church meddled in the affairs of State.”
The infallible State? How dare any lesser gods meddle in the State’s affairs ; )
(Life sure seems simple when labels march around doing this and that . .)
Kids, the “State” was a few hyper-wealthy man-god type ruling elites back then, not “a government of, by, and for the people” . . that got ruined by the “Church”.

John,
Those states used the church to help oppress the people. Both Catholic and Protestant states were intolerant, but there was at least a shot at religious tolerance in some Protestant enclaves.
The Dutch rebels against the Hapsburgs included both Catholic and Protestant provinces.
After Charles V abdicated, the Holy Roman Empire enjoyed a certain kind of toleration, in which each local ruler could decide which communion, whether Catholic, Lutheran or later Calvinist, would be practiced in his principality, duchy, whatever. This usually aligned with the convictions of the populace. But religious tensions started breaking out more often in the early 17th century. When the relatively tolerant Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, died, he was succeeded by his Jesuit-educated cousin Ferdinand II. In 1618, the largely Hussite Protestant nobility and people of Bohemia dramatically rejected the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand by throwing his representatives out a window (the Defenestration of Prague), and the war was on.

Chimp – April 20, 2017 at 12:42 pm

“Now that I think about it, no scientific discovery comes to mind from the past 50 years to equal those of the previous half century. ”

No surprises there, Chimp, ……. given the fact that private funding for R & D has pretty much terminated during the past 50 years ……. as Federal government entities have been deciding who gets the R & D money ….. and what that money has to be expended on.
And Chimp, …… pleas re-think this statement of yours, to wit:
“….. but the African origin of humans wasn’t fully appreciated until the Leakys’ discoveries in East Africa during the 1950s and ’60s.”

“At least in Biology: discovery of splicing (late ’70s) and miRNA (’90s), and molecular confirmation of evolution(’80s onward).”
Confirming what exactly? Genetic coding is vastly more sophisticated than anything humans have ever produced . . How the hell that confirms Evolution, I have no idea. It’s pure bullshit as far as I can tell . . much like Climate Change “science” having proven human emissions are sending the world into a catastrophic meltdown . . because CO2 molecules can intercept certain wavelengths of radiation. Basically customized “proofs”, validated by people whose entire freaking career and reputations depend on them being confirmed . . backed by people who want more control of humanity.
Same game, as far as I tell. There’s those pesky unalienable rights, to be overcome ya know . . and it there’s no Creator, wallah, no unalienable rights . .

JohnKnight April 20, 2017 at 2:32 pm
How genetics confirms evolution has been repeatedly explained to you. The details of genomes in organisms more closely related and more distantly related shows precisely how they diverged and evolved. Molecular clocks are compared with the evidence from rocks to estimate divergence time as well as evolutionary relationships. Our genomes contain molecular fossil records.
You seem hung up on the size of genomes of multicellular organisms. Unicellular genomes are generally smaller. Sometimes much more so. For instance, in 2006, Carsonella ruddii, which lives off sap-feeding insects, took the record for the smallest genome, with just 159,662 base pairs of DNA and 182 protein-coding genes.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061009/full/news061009-10.html
By contrast, The human genome contains over three billion DNA base pairs and codes for an estimated 19 to 20,000 (constantly revised downward) protein-making genes.
The first protocells would have had even smaller genomes, probably RNA. The smallest known RNA virus genome is just 1700 bp long. A protocell needn’t have been any bigger, since it would have lived in such a food-rich environment that metabolic genes could have been few. The first one might have had but a single gene, ie protein-making sequence, or none in the strict sense, if all it did was replicate itself, ie making a new strand of RNA rather than a protein.
The genetic complexity which so transfixes you evolved over billions of years from much simpler beginnings. Biochemistry suggests hydrothermal vents as the incubators of life, but IMO evidence also supports a role for ice. But please bear in mind that abiogenesis is a process distinct from biological evolution, which operates on things already alive.

I should add that not all unicells have little genomes. A big single-celled relative of animals, the protozoan Amoeba dubia, has the largest known genome, at 670 billion base pairs. The genome of a cousin, Amoeba proteus, has “only” 290 billion base pairs, making it almost 100 times larger than the human genome.
The longest sequenced genome belongs to the loblolly pine, at 22.18 billion base pairs, making it more than seven times lengthier than the human genome. A total of 82% of the genome was made up of duplicated segments, compared with just 25% in humans. Plants are famous for polyploidy, as I’ve noted before IIRC, which is the process by which so many plant species have evolved in a single generation. Even so, humans have at least two whole genome duplication events in our ancestry.
The more I study genetics and genomics, the easier it is to see how tiny genomes four billion years ago managed to reach such enormous sizes by, presumably, just one billion years ago, if not before. Think of the ~80 trillion microbe generations during three billion years, at about one per 20 seconds. Starting with on the order of only 1000 base pairs, just 26 doublings, or one per 115 million years, gets you to 100 billion bp in three billion years (please check my arithmetic).

There is much written these days about the extent to which people have lost faith and trust in our historic institutions–government, clergy, medicine, even marriage. Well, the LAST “institution” I still trusted, thinking it was by definition objective, was Science. Then I got educated–and found out how much of “science” is exaggerated, data massaged, biased by design, up to outright lies and just follow the money. Anyone pushing CAGW, anyone pushing “death by saturated fat,” anyone claiming The Planet ™ is in need of “saving” instantly loses all credibility with me. They might as well be saluting a commie flag with the likes of Maxine Waters!

Chimp,
Might want to add Claude Shannon to your list.

Jim,
Those findings from the ’70s have been explained since. Other viruses infect different groups of monkeys and apes but also skipped humans and orangutans. These instances however are not evidence that humans didn’t evolve in Africa, any more than they indicate that African monkeys which weren’t infected evolved in Asia.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050328174826.htm
Not every primate on every continent is infected by all available viruses and gets the viral genome incorporated into its genome.

John,
Organisms inherit noncoding as well as coding material, mistakes and all. Their detailed evolutionary history is visible. It’s not just because they are similar. It’s because they share common descent, hence derived traits, good, bad and indifferent.
Consider vitamin C. Most animals can make it, but we and our closest relatives among the primates can’t. Guinea pigs and Indian fruit-eating bats also can’t make it, but their vitamin C genes are broken in different places from those of tarsiers, Old and New World monkeys and lesser and great apes, to include humans.
Explain please why in your fantasy world of Bronze Age fairy tales and fables, a creator of species would reuse broken genes for such an important nutritional enzyme for tens of millions of years? BTW, tarsiers are insectivores, not fructivores. Why did the creator condemn humans, other apes, monkeys and tarsiers to the risk of scurvy, but not our fellow primates, lemurs and lorises?
And why do you suppose that lemurs now live only on Madagascar, when the environment there could support the great panoply of African primates just as well? Previously lemurs lived not only on Madagascar, but Africa, North America, Europe and Asia. In fact, it appears that they evolved in then subtropical Paleocene/Eocene Wyoming. At least that’s where the oldest fossils have been found.
Sorry, but there is zero evidence for creation from any source, but least of all genetics. And all the evidence in the world against it. Any prediction made on the basis of the hypothesis of creationism is readily shown false.

John,
Frugivore. Not fructivore. My bad. Sorry.
Fruit-eater would have been a better choice.

John.
What your worship of Bronze Age myth calls “meandering BS: is known in the real world as “science”. You’re afraid to study reality because you know it will show your religion false.
Scary stuff for a true believer in nomadic mythology.
Happily, what you believe on the basis of blind faith doesn’t matter. Those whose jobs are to save lives and advance human understanding of nature know better.
You have nothing but spew. Hope it helps you deal with your utter insignificance, beyond the consideration that all people, no matter how pathetically deluded, deserve.
That you can’t handle the truth is your problem, not mine. I’ll go on saving lives, while you wallow in the antediluvian (!) mire.

Chimp – April 20, 2017 at 6:01 pm

“ IMO “computer science” isn’t science, except maybe applied.”

You are 100% correct with that statement.
There t’aint nothing scientificy about learning to “program a computer”.
“DUH”, every day there are thousands of people learning to “program” the “remote control” for their newly acquired TV//Satellite …… but no one has yet been stupid enough to refer to the aforesaid as being “Remote Control Science”.
It t’was in the late 60’s and 70”s that college Boards and Administrators figured out they were missing out on a horrendous “Cash Cow” by not offering potential students the opportunity to learn about and/or study the different “means & methods” of programming a computer. And as a “teaching aide” was the sole reason for the creation of the BASIC programming language. And when colleges began offering a Degree program in computer programming they had to give it an important sounding name ….. and thus the term Computer Science was coined.
And Chimp, concerning the fossil history of hominoids that we currently have knowledge of, keep in mind that all of said fossils evidence was found or discovered ….. at or above the current sea level of the present Holocene Interglacial …… which said “discoveries” have only been above sea level for the past 10K years …….. whereas the Family of Great Apes and their descendants have been resident on the earth’s surface for tens of millions of years.
And ps, …… the “missing link” is still missing that directly ties or connects Homo sapiens sapiens with any of the other extant species of hominoids (Great Apes). IMLO, Homo sapiens sapiens evolved their unique physical/mental attributes as a result of tens-of-thousands-of-years ….. of an extremely close relationship with a “water environment” from which they easily harvested all the food they required for a “leisurely” survival on the shores of salty lakes, salty seas and/or salty ocean tidal zones. And the above noted “missing link” may never be found …… until this interglacial is defunct and sea levels again begin to drop/decrease.

Chimp, states have always used whatever tools were available to keep the people subservient. Religion was just one. If it hadn’t been available, something else would have sufficed.

John, I agree. The most intolerant people I have ever met have all been atheists.
For all of Chimp’s whining about religious wars, atheists have killed way more people than religious people have.

MarkW April 21, 2017 at 7:56 am
You must not have read my earlier responses to you. The French religious wars were religious from start to finish. The TYW was strictly religious for most of its run, until about 2/3 of the way through, when France came in on the Protestant side. At that point it became both a religious and a dynastic war, but it began as religious and for the Protestants was until the end. In its last third, two Catholic dynasties were also fighting each other. But contrary to your assertion, the wars were not mainly dynastic. Not even close.
As for atheists killing more people, that is true for the 20th century, but not for any previous century. Hitler and Stalin were both raised Christian, and it showed. Hitler was actually a pagan rather than an atheist. Stalin and Mao were indeed atheists, or at least they pretended to be.
Napoleon was agnostic or atheist, but felt the need for a state religion to control the populace. Not all 19th and 18th century wars were religious in nature, some being balance of power struggles, but the worst were religious, like the Taiping Rebellion, in which tens of millions died. The Russo-Turkish wars were nominally religious, although in the Crimea, Christian France and Britain sided with Muslim Turkey.
In a sense however all modern European wars were religious. Prussian and later German Imperial and even N@zi Wehrmacht troops wore the motto, “Gott mit uns” on their belt buckles and other heraldic gear. Russian Imperial troops also used the same motto, “Съ нами Богъ!”.