Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Is this the trick that proves homeopathy isn't hokum?
2001
IT'S a chance discovery so unexpected it defies belief and threatens to reignite debate about whether there is a scientific basis for thinking homeopathic medicines really work.
A team in South Korea has discovered a whole new dimension to just about the simplest chemical reaction in the book—what happens when you dissolve a substance in water and then add more water.
Conventional wisdom says that the dissolved molecules simply spread further and further apart as a solution is diluted. But two chemists have found that some do the opposite: they clump together, first as clusters of molecules, then as bigger aggregates of those clusters. Far from drifting apart from their neighbours, they got closer together.
The discovery has stunned chemists, and could provide the first scientific insight into how some homeopathic remedies work. Homeopaths repeatedly dilute medications, believing that the higher the dilution, the more potent the remedy becomes.
Some dilute to "infinity" until no molecules of the remedy remain. They believe that water holds a memory, or "imprint" of the active ingredient which is more potent than the ingredient itself. But others use less dilute solutions—often diluting a remedy six-fold. The Korean findings might at last go some way to reconciling the potency of these less dilute solutions with orthodox science.
German chemist Kurt Geckeler and his colleague Shashadhar Samal stumbled on the effect while investigating fullerenes at their lab in the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. They found that the football-shaped buckyball molecules kept forming untidy aggregates in solution, and Geckler asked Samal to look for ways to control how these clumps formed.
What he discovered was a phenomenon new to chemistry. "When he diluted the solution, the size of the fullerene particles increased," says Geckeler. "It was completely counterintuitive," he says.
Further work showed it was no fluke. To make the otherwise insoluble buckyball dissolve in water, the chemists had mixed it with a circular sugar-like molecule called a cyclodextrin. When they did the same experiments with just cyclodextrin molecules, they found they behaved the same way. So did the organic molecule sodium guanosine monophosphate, DNA and plain old sodium chloride.
Dilution typically made the molecules cluster into aggregates 5 to 10 times as big as those in the original solutions. The growth wasn't linear, and it depended on the concentration of the original. "The history of the solution is important. The more dilute it starts, the larger the aggregates," says Geckeler. Also, it only worked in polar solvents like water, in which one end of the molecule has a pronounced positive charge while the other end is negative.
But the finding may provide a mechanism for how some homeopathic medicines work—something that has defied scientific explanation till now. Diluting a remedy may increase the size of the particles to the point when they become biologically active.
It also echoes the controversial claims of French immunologist Jacques Benveniste. In 1988, Benveniste claimed in a Nature paper that a solution that had once contained antibodies still activated human white blood cells. Benveniste claimed the solution still worked because it contained ghostly "imprints" in the water structure where the antibodies had been.
Other researchers failed to reproduce Benveniste's experiments, but homeopaths still believe he may have been onto something. Benveniste himself doesn't think the new findings explain his results because the solutions weren't dilute enough. "This [phenomenon] cannot apply to high dilution," he says.
Fred Pearce of University College London, who tried to repeat Benveniste's experiments, agrees. But it could offer some clues as to why other less dilute homeopathic remedies work, he says. Large clusters and aggregates might interact more easily with biological tissue.
Chemist Jan Enberts of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands is more cautious. "It's still a totally open question," he says. "To say the phenomenon has biological significance is pure speculation." But he has no doubt Samal and Geckeler have discovered something new. "It's surprising and worrying," he says.
The two chemists were at pains to double-check their astonishing results. Initially they had used the scattering of a laser to reveal the size and distribution of the dissolved particles. To check, they used a scanning electron microscope to photograph films of the solutions spread over slides. This, too, showed that dissolved substances cluster together as dilution increased.
"It doesn't prove homeopathy, but it's congruent with what we think and is very encouraging," says Peter Fisher, director of medical research at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. "The whole idea of high-dilution homeopathy hangs on the idea that water has properties which are not understood," he says. "The fact that the new effect happens with a variety of substances suggests it's the solvent that's responsible. It's in line with what many homeopaths say, that you can only make homeopathic medicines in polar solvents."
Geckeler and Samal are now anxious that other researchers follow up their work. "We want people to repeat it," says Geckeler. "If it's confirmed it will be groundbreaking".
From issue 2316 of New Scientist magazine, 10 November 2001, page 4
IT'S a chance discovery so unexpected it defies belief and threatens to reignite debate about whether there is a scientific basis for thinking homeopathic medicines really work.
A team in South Korea has discovered a whole new dimension to just about the simplest chemical reaction in the book—what happens when you dissolve a substance in water and then add more water.
Conventional wisdom says that the dissolved molecules simply spread further and further apart as a solution is diluted. But two chemists have found that some do the opposite: they clump together, first as clusters of molecules, then as bigger aggregates of those clusters. Far from drifting apart from their neighbours, they got closer together.
The discovery has stunned chemists, and could provide the first scientific insight into how some homeopathic remedies work. Homeopaths repeatedly dilute medications, believing that the higher the dilution, the more potent the remedy becomes.
Some dilute to "infinity" until no molecules of the remedy remain. They believe that water holds a memory, or "imprint" of the active ingredient which is more potent than the ingredient itself. But others use less dilute solutions—often diluting a remedy six-fold. The Korean findings might at last go some way to reconciling the potency of these less dilute solutions with orthodox science.
German chemist Kurt Geckeler and his colleague Shashadhar Samal stumbled on the effect while investigating fullerenes at their lab in the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. They found that the football-shaped buckyball molecules kept forming untidy aggregates in solution, and Geckler asked Samal to look for ways to control how these clumps formed.
What he discovered was a phenomenon new to chemistry. "When he diluted the solution, the size of the fullerene particles increased," says Geckeler. "It was completely counterintuitive," he says.
Further work showed it was no fluke. To make the otherwise insoluble buckyball dissolve in water, the chemists had mixed it with a circular sugar-like molecule called a cyclodextrin. When they did the same experiments with just cyclodextrin molecules, they found they behaved the same way. So did the organic molecule sodium guanosine monophosphate, DNA and plain old sodium chloride.
Dilution typically made the molecules cluster into aggregates 5 to 10 times as big as those in the original solutions. The growth wasn't linear, and it depended on the concentration of the original. "The history of the solution is important. The more dilute it starts, the larger the aggregates," says Geckeler. Also, it only worked in polar solvents like water, in which one end of the molecule has a pronounced positive charge while the other end is negative.
But the finding may provide a mechanism for how some homeopathic medicines work—something that has defied scientific explanation till now. Diluting a remedy may increase the size of the particles to the point when they become biologically active.
It also echoes the controversial claims of French immunologist Jacques Benveniste. In 1988, Benveniste claimed in a Nature paper that a solution that had once contained antibodies still activated human white blood cells. Benveniste claimed the solution still worked because it contained ghostly "imprints" in the water structure where the antibodies had been.
Other researchers failed to reproduce Benveniste's experiments, but homeopaths still believe he may have been onto something. Benveniste himself doesn't think the new findings explain his results because the solutions weren't dilute enough. "This [phenomenon] cannot apply to high dilution," he says.
Fred Pearce of University College London, who tried to repeat Benveniste's experiments, agrees. But it could offer some clues as to why other less dilute homeopathic remedies work, he says. Large clusters and aggregates might interact more easily with biological tissue.
Chemist Jan Enberts of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands is more cautious. "It's still a totally open question," he says. "To say the phenomenon has biological significance is pure speculation." But he has no doubt Samal and Geckeler have discovered something new. "It's surprising and worrying," he says.
The two chemists were at pains to double-check their astonishing results. Initially they had used the scattering of a laser to reveal the size and distribution of the dissolved particles. To check, they used a scanning electron microscope to photograph films of the solutions spread over slides. This, too, showed that dissolved substances cluster together as dilution increased.
"It doesn't prove homeopathy, but it's congruent with what we think and is very encouraging," says Peter Fisher, director of medical research at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital. "The whole idea of high-dilution homeopathy hangs on the idea that water has properties which are not understood," he says. "The fact that the new effect happens with a variety of substances suggests it's the solvent that's responsible. It's in line with what many homeopaths say, that you can only make homeopathic medicines in polar solvents."
Geckeler and Samal are now anxious that other researchers follow up their work. "We want people to repeat it," says Geckeler. "If it's confirmed it will be groundbreaking".
From issue 2316 of New Scientist magazine, 10 November 2001, page 4
Does a cat always land on it's feet?
Does a Cat Always Land on Its Feet?
by Fiorella Gambale, Ph.D.
Institute for Feline Research
Milano, Italy
Cats have excellent balance, and are remarkably acrobatic. When turned upside down and dropped from a height, a cat generally has the ability to land on its feet. Until now, no one has systematically investigated the limits of this phenomenon. In this study, I dropped a cat upside down from various heights, and observed whether the cat landed on its feet.
Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 6 Feet
I dropped the cat from a height of six feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.
Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 5 Feet
I dropped the cat from a height of five feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.
Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 4 Feet
I dropped the cat from a height of four feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.
Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 3 Feet
I dropped the cat from a height of three feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.
Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 2 Feet
I dropped the cat from a height of two feet. I did this one hundred times. The cat always landed on its feet.
Dropping a Cat Upside Down from a Height of 1 Foot
I dropped the cat from a height of one foot. I did this one hundred times. The cat never landed on its feet.
Discussion
Popular belief is that "a cat will always land on its feet." My experiments show this to be true for drop heights ranging from six feet down to two feet. It is not true at a drop height of one foot.
Does a cat land on its feet when dropped from a height of less than one foot? This preliminary study indicates that the answer may be no. However, further experiments, preferably with the same cat, are needed to settle the question.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank the cat, "Esther," for her initial cooperation in this experiment. Thank you, also, to Esther's owner, M.R. Young. And special thanks to the organization PFTAR (People For the Tarring-and-Feathering of Animal Researchers), whose indiscriminate yacketing inspired this project.
Original article
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Horizon - War on Science
The theory of evolution is under attack from a controversial new idea called intelligent design. But is it science?
Background and summary of documentary.....
When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day – that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.
In the late 1980s Phillip Johnson, a renowned lawyer and born-again Christian, began to develop a strategy to challenge Darwin. To Johnson, the evidence for natural selection was poor. He also believed that by explaining the world only through material processes was inherently atheistic. If there was a god, science would never be able to discover it.
Johnson recruited other Darwin doubters, including biochemist Professor Michael Behe, mathematician Dr William Dembski, and philosopher of science Dr Stephen Meyer. These scientists developed the theory of intelligent design (ID) which claims that certain features of the natural world are best explained as the result of an intelligent being. To him, the presence of miniature machines and digital information found in living cells are evidence of a supernatural creator. Throughout the 90s, the ID movement took to disseminating articles, books and DVDs and organising conferences all over the world.
To its supporters, intelligent design heralds a revolution in science and the movement is fast gaining political clout. Not only does it have the support of the President of the United States, it is on the verge of being introduced to science classes across the nation. However, its many critics, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, fear that it cloaks a religious motive – to replace science with god.
Throughout the 20th century Christian groups resisted the theory of evolution. Many US states did not teach it until 1968 when the Supreme Court ruled that banning the teaching of evolution contravened the first amendment of the constitution of America, the separation of church and state. It was however still legal to teach religion as part of science class until the Edwards vs. Aguillard case in 1987, where mentioning a theory called 'creation science' in biology lessons was also deemed unconstitutional. This left evolution as the only theory of biological origin that science teachers were allowed to teach.
In 2005, the school board of Dover, a small farming community in western Pennsylvania, became the first in America to adopt the theory of intelligent design. The move divided the community and the small town became the centre of national attention. The school board voted to teach the ninth grade biology class that there are gaps and problems with the theory of evolution and to present intelligent design as an alternative.
Dover science teacher Bryan Rehm and his wife Christy believed that this new policy was not only anti-science, but religious and therefore unconstitutional. By promoting religion it was a violation of the law passed in 1987. The Rehms and nine other parents and teachers filed a law suit against the school board. Neighbour was pitted against neighbour in the first legal challenge to intelligent design.
After 40 days of trial, Judge John E Jones III ruled against the school board, stating: "We have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."
Evolution supporters heralded this victory as the damning blow to the intelligent design movement. However, as history shows, law suits have little effect on the support for creationism in a country where over 50% of citizens believe that God created humans in their present form, the way the bible describes it.*
Background and summary of documentary.....
When Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution nearly 150 years ago, he shattered the dominant belief of his day – that humans were the product of divine creation. Through his observations of nature, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This caused uproar. After all, if the story of creation could be doubted, so too could the existence of the creator. Ever since its proposal, this cornerstone of biology has sustained wave after wave of attack. Now some scientists fear it is facing the most formidable challenge yet: a controversial new theory called intelligent design.
In the late 1980s Phillip Johnson, a renowned lawyer and born-again Christian, began to develop a strategy to challenge Darwin. To Johnson, the evidence for natural selection was poor. He also believed that by explaining the world only through material processes was inherently atheistic. If there was a god, science would never be able to discover it.
Johnson recruited other Darwin doubters, including biochemist Professor Michael Behe, mathematician Dr William Dembski, and philosopher of science Dr Stephen Meyer. These scientists developed the theory of intelligent design (ID) which claims that certain features of the natural world are best explained as the result of an intelligent being. To him, the presence of miniature machines and digital information found in living cells are evidence of a supernatural creator. Throughout the 90s, the ID movement took to disseminating articles, books and DVDs and organising conferences all over the world.
To its supporters, intelligent design heralds a revolution in science and the movement is fast gaining political clout. Not only does it have the support of the President of the United States, it is on the verge of being introduced to science classes across the nation. However, its many critics, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, fear that it cloaks a religious motive – to replace science with god.
Throughout the 20th century Christian groups resisted the theory of evolution. Many US states did not teach it until 1968 when the Supreme Court ruled that banning the teaching of evolution contravened the first amendment of the constitution of America, the separation of church and state. It was however still legal to teach religion as part of science class until the Edwards vs. Aguillard case in 1987, where mentioning a theory called 'creation science' in biology lessons was also deemed unconstitutional. This left evolution as the only theory of biological origin that science teachers were allowed to teach.
In 2005, the school board of Dover, a small farming community in western Pennsylvania, became the first in America to adopt the theory of intelligent design. The move divided the community and the small town became the centre of national attention. The school board voted to teach the ninth grade biology class that there are gaps and problems with the theory of evolution and to present intelligent design as an alternative.
Dover science teacher Bryan Rehm and his wife Christy believed that this new policy was not only anti-science, but religious and therefore unconstitutional. By promoting religion it was a violation of the law passed in 1987. The Rehms and nine other parents and teachers filed a law suit against the school board. Neighbour was pitted against neighbour in the first legal challenge to intelligent design.
After 40 days of trial, Judge John E Jones III ruled against the school board, stating: "We have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."
Evolution supporters heralded this victory as the damning blow to the intelligent design movement. However, as history shows, law suits have little effect on the support for creationism in a country where over 50% of citizens believe that God created humans in their present form, the way the bible describes it.*
Friday, May 11, 2007
Don't pit science against religion
* 08 July 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
* Lawrence Krauss
THE popular debate about intelligent design has, I am happy to say, discredited fundamentalists who want to censor science for religious reasons. It has also exposed pseudo-scientific organisations such as the Discovery Institute for what they are. Nevertheless, in pitching misguided evangelicals against the scientific community, it has had one negative effect: it has encouraged scientists to counter-attack by criticising religious faith in general.
Such attacks are nothing new. One of the more outspoken scientific opponents of religion, physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, has said: "There are good people, and bad people. Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it is religion." It was a brilliant sound bite, but one of Weinberg's less vituperative statements is more instructive: "Science does not make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to not believe in God." His point is that before the advent of modern science, all natural phenomena were viewed as miraculous, for want of any better explanation.
I agree with Weinberg that science has made it possible to dismiss God, and this, I believe, lies at the heart of efforts by religious fundamentalists to censor science in schools. However, the first sentence of his quote is equally significant. Questions and assertions about design and purpose lie outside the realm of science so long as these things cannot be empirically tested. Thus, science may never make it impossible to believe in God, even if we ultimately develop a scientific understanding of all phenomena right back to the beginning of time.
This point was well made by the Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître, who was the first to demonstrate that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted a big bang. When Pope Pius XII interpreted his result as a validation of Genesis, Lemaître countered that this was inappropriate. The big bang, he said, was a scientific theory that could be tested. Anyone choosing to use it to validate their belief in God, or as evidence that God is irrelevant, is doing so from their own religious convictions, and not from science.
There is a lesson for all scientists here. I know from experience that the great successes of our scientific exploration of the universe can tempt us to dismiss anything other than scientific understanding as of secondary importance. But spirituality, and with it religious faith, is deeply ingrained in human culture, and many people rely on their religious convictions to make sense of life. Whatever one's personal views about religion, it is undeniable that scientific understanding alone does not encompass the range of the human intellectual experience.
Scientists who fail to appreciate this, and who attack religious beliefs for being unscientific, do their discipline a disservice, not least because such attacks are themselves unscientific. This is why, while I am sympathetic with many of the points he raises, I disagree with Richard Dawkins's unfettered attack on God. Not only is it inappropriate to try to convince people of the validity of scientific theories by first arguing that their deeply held beliefs are silly, it is also clear that the existence of God is a metaphysical question which is, for the most part, outside the domain of science. Now more than ever it is important to understand the limits of science. The phrase often used to defend aspects of evolution has particular significance here: the absence of evidence is not evidence for absence.
This is not to say that all theological interpretations are beyond scientific criticism. A fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible is in clear violation of physical evidence. The Earth is not 10,000 years old; the presently observable universe was not created in seven days; the sun did not stand still in the ancient sky. Scientists can help explain why these literal interpretations of the Bible are not consistent pillars on which to build a faith - at least for anyone who rides in cars, flies in planes or uses any other technologies that rely on the same laws of nature that tell us why these things are incompatible with the universe in which we live.
“People of faith are ill served by ignorance, but that doesn't make faith and ignorance synonymous”
Yet scientists go too far when they attack more generally any belief in divine purpose. From a strategic point of view it's a waste of energy. It plays into the hands of those who claim that the scientific method itself is akin to atheism, and it weakens any efforts to speak out against those groups who regularly distort scientific education in the name of religion, preferring to promote ignorance rather than risk any threat to the faith of their flock. To counter these threats we need to argue compellingly that people of faith are ill served by ignorance, rather than argue that faith and ignorance are synonymous.
Lawrence Krauss is director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio. His latest book is Hiding in the Mirror (Viking, 2005)
From issue 2559 of New Scientist magazine, 08 July 2006, page 20
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
* Lawrence Krauss
THE popular debate about intelligent design has, I am happy to say, discredited fundamentalists who want to censor science for religious reasons. It has also exposed pseudo-scientific organisations such as the Discovery Institute for what they are. Nevertheless, in pitching misguided evangelicals against the scientific community, it has had one negative effect: it has encouraged scientists to counter-attack by criticising religious faith in general.
Such attacks are nothing new. One of the more outspoken scientific opponents of religion, physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, has said: "There are good people, and bad people. Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it is religion." It was a brilliant sound bite, but one of Weinberg's less vituperative statements is more instructive: "Science does not make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to not believe in God." His point is that before the advent of modern science, all natural phenomena were viewed as miraculous, for want of any better explanation.
I agree with Weinberg that science has made it possible to dismiss God, and this, I believe, lies at the heart of efforts by religious fundamentalists to censor science in schools. However, the first sentence of his quote is equally significant. Questions and assertions about design and purpose lie outside the realm of science so long as these things cannot be empirically tested. Thus, science may never make it impossible to believe in God, even if we ultimately develop a scientific understanding of all phenomena right back to the beginning of time.
This point was well made by the Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître, who was the first to demonstrate that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted a big bang. When Pope Pius XII interpreted his result as a validation of Genesis, Lemaître countered that this was inappropriate. The big bang, he said, was a scientific theory that could be tested. Anyone choosing to use it to validate their belief in God, or as evidence that God is irrelevant, is doing so from their own religious convictions, and not from science.
There is a lesson for all scientists here. I know from experience that the great successes of our scientific exploration of the universe can tempt us to dismiss anything other than scientific understanding as of secondary importance. But spirituality, and with it religious faith, is deeply ingrained in human culture, and many people rely on their religious convictions to make sense of life. Whatever one's personal views about religion, it is undeniable that scientific understanding alone does not encompass the range of the human intellectual experience.
Scientists who fail to appreciate this, and who attack religious beliefs for being unscientific, do their discipline a disservice, not least because such attacks are themselves unscientific. This is why, while I am sympathetic with many of the points he raises, I disagree with Richard Dawkins's unfettered attack on God. Not only is it inappropriate to try to convince people of the validity of scientific theories by first arguing that their deeply held beliefs are silly, it is also clear that the existence of God is a metaphysical question which is, for the most part, outside the domain of science. Now more than ever it is important to understand the limits of science. The phrase often used to defend aspects of evolution has particular significance here: the absence of evidence is not evidence for absence.
This is not to say that all theological interpretations are beyond scientific criticism. A fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible is in clear violation of physical evidence. The Earth is not 10,000 years old; the presently observable universe was not created in seven days; the sun did not stand still in the ancient sky. Scientists can help explain why these literal interpretations of the Bible are not consistent pillars on which to build a faith - at least for anyone who rides in cars, flies in planes or uses any other technologies that rely on the same laws of nature that tell us why these things are incompatible with the universe in which we live.
“People of faith are ill served by ignorance, but that doesn't make faith and ignorance synonymous”
Yet scientists go too far when they attack more generally any belief in divine purpose. From a strategic point of view it's a waste of energy. It plays into the hands of those who claim that the scientific method itself is akin to atheism, and it weakens any efforts to speak out against those groups who regularly distort scientific education in the name of religion, preferring to promote ignorance rather than risk any threat to the faith of their flock. To counter these threats we need to argue compellingly that people of faith are ill served by ignorance, rather than argue that faith and ignorance are synonymous.
Lawrence Krauss is director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio. His latest book is Hiding in the Mirror (Viking, 2005)
From issue 2559 of New Scientist magazine, 08 July 2006, page 20
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