If You Bet Against Einstein, Prepare to Pay Up

Last year physicists in Europe reported the detection of neutrinos that traveled faster than light, which would violate relativity. The prospect was intriguing if unlikely. Further investigation revealed some problems with the experimental setup, including a loose optical fiber connection that would pretty well account for the apparent speed discrepancy. Now measurements from a different detector show the neutrinos obeying the speed limit.

More here and here.


I think this whole episode is a nice example of how science works. An odd result was observed that contradicted well-established science. That being the case, every effort needed to be made to rule out bugs in the system, and it needed to be substantiated by others. In this instance bugs were found, however, and independent measurements fail to support the anomalous result. It's looking like the story essentially ends there.

There are people who seem to constantly lick their lips at the prospect of a major scientific paradigm being overthrown, and they think the resistance of scientists to jump headlong into the new way is simply because of hubris or materialistic blindness. They remind me, especially in this case, of Krusty the Clown, from The Simpsons, who once bet against the Harlem Globetrotters because he thought the opposing team was due for a win.

---

Continue reading...

2012 MTA Conference

FYI:

The 2012 conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association will be held on 6 April 2012 from 9am to 5pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conference is open to the public.

More info and registration here.

I won't be able to attend, but it looks interesting.

---

Continue reading...

Do Human Races Exist?

While the stir over the Bott gaffe on race was playing out last week, there was, coincidentally, a concurrent discussion in the science blogosphere about whether human races even exist, in a biological sense. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne recently took up the issue, and gave his view that races do exist, but they are hard to define and probably not of much biological relevance except occasionally in medicine. Nick Matzke responded at The Panda's Thumb (see Matzke's post for links to Coyne) and argued that genetic clustering that is sometimes interpreted as demarcating race is actually an artifact of incomplete sampling. You can read a similar debate between anthropologists here.

It seems like this question is the kind of thing that can be argued over endlessly, in part because the answer depends on how you define your terms. This isn't my field, but to my mind the answer seems to be both yes and no. Yes, humans in a geographic area can share a genetic history leading to genetic differences from other geographic areas, a small part of which is manifested in outward (or skeletal) appearance. So it's obvious that native Scandinavians are different than native Africans. But no, there are not any discrete demarcations that allow firm categorizations (or that determine how many categories there should be), and most differences change gradually over geographic distance. So there's no such thing as a genetically "pure" Scandinavian or African. And of course in today's mobile society everything gets even more confused as formerly geographically isolated people are able to intermingle and have children together.

So it seems to me that to speak of biological races is to use a contextual term of convenience, but it's prone to misunderstanding because for most people races are cultural identifiers (whether they realize it or not). My two cents.

---

Continue reading...