Free Republic

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s funding of stem cell research. The lawsuit, filed by Boston biological engineer James L. Shirley, asserted that the funding violated a 1996 law prohibiting federal taxpayer money from supporting work that harms an embryo. The Obama administration policy allows research on embryos that were harvested long ago through private funding ... ... The Court of Appeals overruled him, and (Judge Royce) Lamberth said Wednesday he is bound by the higher court’s ruling and dismissed the case. The White House hailed the ruling as a “victory for research and...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A climate change study that projected a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in temperature and massive worldwide food shortages in the next decade was seriously flawed, scientists said Wednesday. The study was posted on the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was written about by numerous international news agencies, including AFP. But AAAS later retracted the study as experts cited numerous errors in its approach. "A reporter with The Guardian alerted us yesterday to concerns about the news release submitted by Hoffman & Hoffman public relations," said AAAS spokeswoman Ginger Pinholster in an...

Note: Photo included. "White House Science ‘Czar’ Tells Students: U.S. Can’t Expect to Be Number One in Science and Technology Forever" SNIPPET: "The Obama administration’s top science and technology official, who has argued for the economic de-development of America, warned science students last Friday that the United States cannot expect to be “number one” forever. “We can’t expect to be number one in everything indefinitely,” Dr. John P. Holdren said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Holdren is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and chairs the President’s Council of Advisors...

The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was intended to put the climate change debate to rest. After all, it was supposed to provide irrefutable evidence of global warming. Instead, some errors in methodology and data have reinvigorated the opposition. What’s a beleaguered global warming scientist to do? How about a new approach, such as one with a ‘Hollywood touch’? Some in the general scientific community see the erosion of public confidence in global warming science spilling over to other branches of science as well. Because of this, many scientists recognize that there needs to be a new approach...

First Draft of the Neandertal Genome Sequence Released by Jeffrey Tomkins, Ph.D.* The highly anticipated initial draft assembly of the Neandertal genome was announced at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in the United States and at a European press conference.1 This genomic milestone involves approximately 3 billion bases of ancient human (Neandertal) DNA sequenced so far, which is the same amount of DNA contained in one set of human chromosomes or a single genome coverage. This is a major event in the booming scientific field referred to as “paleogenomics,” a discipline that...

It looks like president-elect Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor. Holdren is a professor of environmental policy at Harvard and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As Ron Bailey points out, he has been an activist on the ecological left and no friend of free markets. Perhaps more striking is his activism well beyond his own academic specialty, arguing, for instance, that scientists have a responsibility to advance the cause of the elimination of all nuclear weapons and seeking controls on population growth. And he didn’t say all this in the...

AAAS Promoting Sunday School Material The Darwinists continue to promote theology (as long as it is pro-Darwin-only): The book, “The Evolution Dialogues,” was written with the input of both scientists and theologians. Meant specifically for use in Christian adult education programs, it offers a concise description of the natural world, as explained by evolution, and the Christian response, both in Charles Darwin’s time and in contemporary America. It has a glossary of terms from both science and religion, with “bacteria” and “Biblical infallibility” defined on the same page. (Press release on The Evolution Dialogues, emphasis added) The AAAS's attempt to...

AiG’s Dr. David Menton, because of his scientific credentials, was able to sit in on some very revealing meetings in St. Louis. He told me, “Evolutionists have had it with biblical literalists, and they’re not going to take it anymore.” Dr. Menton had just attended the annual conference of the world’s largest scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). It featured a number of sessions on creation/evolution and how to combat creationists. Dr. Menton told me, “What I heard is of great importance to all who are concerned about biblical Christianity and the future of education...

ST. LOUIS—The first humans to spread across North America may have been seal hunters from France and Spain. This runs counter to the long-held belief that the first human entry into the Americas was a crossing of a land-ice bridge that spanned the Bering Strait about 13,500 years ago. The new thinking was outlined here Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The tools don’t match Recent studies have suggested that the glaciers that helped form the bridge connecting Siberia and Alaska began receding around 17,000 to 13,000 years ago, leaving very little...

Experts Convened by AAAS Call for Voter-System Research and Reform, Warning of Broad Vulnerability A panel of top experts on election technology and administration warned Tuesday that the American system of voting is broadly vulnerable to error and abuse, and called for a crash-course of study and reform to make results more reliable and to promote better access by voters, especially those who have historically encountered serious impediments to exercising their right to vote. In findings released after a weekend conference convened by AAAS, the 18-member panel concluded that research into new voting technology and the behavior of voters, election...