Lennart Kiil's blog

There are huge amounts of money involved in anything that can be related to climate change. I guess researchers in various fields are waking up to this fact.

Young Dane Michael Schantz Klausen - from a high school in Lyngby, near Copenhagen, Denmark - has received a prestigious price at the Open Chinese Championship for Young Researchers.

To pay tribute to Darwin I propose that we make year 2009 an international Darwin Beard Year. So grow your beards gentlemen!

1. Make sure results and conclusions presented to you have already been published in serious scientific peer reviewed journals.

Beware. In recent years it has become popular for public relations departments to send out press releases before publication has taken place in the journals.

2. Remember correlation does not necessarily imply causation.

This one is obvious, but there are still plenty of examples in science journalism showing that even some professional writers are not keenly enough aware of this.

3. Be aware of evaluative and normative language where such cannot be defended.

Science, on definition, cannot talk about how things ought to be. When you see expressions like 'too much' or 'too little' and so on, your are basically just looking at the prejudices of the author.

4. Sensational results or provocative angling?

Check sources and sponsors. There is a lot of sponsored research of high quality, but it never hurts to know who is behind.

No. I am not talking about the fact that she is a professor in history (or is it herstory in this case?)

I am talking about her views on gender.

Asked whether her appointment signified the end of gender inequality at Harvard, Prof Faust said: "Of course not. There is a lot of work still to be done, especially in the sciences."

So only the areas still dominated by male students, however slightly, are interesting from a gender perspective?

What about other areas more heavily dominated by women than sciences are by men?

Her background as a women's studies professor does not deny itself.

The following thoughts are concerned with the second part of Dawkins' TV-series 'The root of all Evil?' You will find the video beneath. The thoughs are also presented in random order, maybe I will have time to systematize all of this some day.

A large part of this second TV-program consists of criticism of the Old Testament, some of it rather anachronistic, but some of it justified since there are people who still take all parts of the Old Testament very seriously and literally. I have no beef with Dawkins on most of these issues.

Sky news has an article about the future of Humankind. It is really a rather silly article, but pretty entertaining.

It seems to me that Evolutionary Psychologists are pretty desperate for attention. Here are some predictions:

:: Men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

:: Women will develop lighter skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, even features and smooth hairless skin.

My blog on Evolution and ID has created a lot of feedback given through the contact form.

I will not be able to answer all the letters.

I have created a group called Science and Religion in which all further discussion and examination will take place.

I do not want the subject to clutter the front page for people who are not interested in the subject.

The eminent communicator of science, Richard Dawkins, has very strong opinions on religion. So strong, it seems, that they blind him of the wider perspectives.

He hosted and wrote the TV program 'The Root of All Evil' in which he presents his view that the world would be better of without religion.

Today's criticism aimed at Charles Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection' is mostly religiously motivated.

So called Intelligent Design is not by any stretch of the imagination Science. Intelligent Design is the heir to Creationism sometimes, oxymoronically, referred to as Scientific Creationism.

Intelligent Design proposes that Science is not able to sufficiently explain the organisms we find in the Natural World using the data available under materialism and naturalism.