A Scientific Study Said WHAT?

I was listening to an NPR program a couple of days ago about how 2011 has been a year for scientific take-backs. Some of the supposed discoveries of recent times, such as zeroing in on a cause for aging, have gotten second looks by the scientific community. Some of the conclusions of these studies were rethought in 2011. Unfortunately, such news adds fuel to the anti-science flames that burn in the hearts and minds of some fundamentalist Christians. They want desperately for science to fail so that they can claim a victory for their dysfunctional religious theories like creationism. But these latest headlines do not cast doubt on the scientific process. There is no cause for scientists to hang their heads in shame. Quite the contrary: The news story on NPR shows how science works, and works very well. That is what science does; it corrects itself and moves on.

In today's world of blogs and up-to-the-second headline updates the pressure on the news media to report the latest scientific discoveries is tremendous. And the pressure on researchers to produce is equally intense. If you are a government-funded scientist working to discover something new or prove a favorite hypothesis, it is very tempting to report the positive results of a study you have conducted. And it is equally tempting for media to publish the results of scientific studies prematurely. That's because the consumers of information, the American public, are eager to find the answers to those vexing problems of life: How to slow the aging process, the best new drug therapy to treat X disease, the next new technological gizmo coming over the horizon. But what the media, and the public, seldom realize is that most of the scientific studies that are published in the mainstream media have not been published in peer-reviewed science journals yet. Some never get published in peer-reviewed science journals. Yet they are eaten up as a smorgasbord of facts by the general public. Then, after further scrutiny reveals flaws in the data or errors in procedure, the public gets irritated by the whole process and eventually becomes jaded and detached.

The researchers doing the studies may not have done anything wrong from a scientific standpoint. But the premature release of information, especially when accompanied by unverified conclusions, eventually can lead to distrust of the scientific process by the public. The scientific method is the best way of finding answers to nature's puzzles. But when researchers start forming their conclusions too early and leaking them to the public, they only do science a disservice. The proper manner by which the public should be informed of scientific research is to wait until after a study or an experiment has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Even then the caveat is to assume that any findings are tentative until they have been verified by independent researchers. Even after repeated verification, conclusions in science cannot typically be assigned a certainty of 100 percent. Science works by the process of inductive reasoning, which almost never yields 100-percent certitude. But that's fine; if a theory is useful in predicting outcomes it is a perfectly satisfactory theory. Its value is in its usefulness.

So when you read about the latest scientific discovery or about the results of a new study, drill down into the details of the story to find out if it is a single study that has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, or is it the end result of multiple research projects that is embraced by the scientific community as a whole? Be wary of the former, and understand that at some point, the rosy picture often painted by single studies often fades quickly.

How the French Influence English

This blog entry is not on one of my usual topics of religion or politics, and I am not even complaining about anything. It's just a subject my daughter and I have played around with recently and I thought it noteworthy.

Have you ever noticed how adding the modifier "French" in front of a common word sometimes makes it sound so much better? Here are a few examples. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Toast vs french toast
Kiss vs french kiss
Bread vs french bread
Cut vs french cut
Dip vs french dip
Manicure vs french manicure
Horn vs french horn
Pastry vs french pastry
Hens vs French hens
Braid vs french braid
Wine vs French wine
Maid vs French maid
Poodle vs french poodle
Doors vs french doors

Some people might be tempted to add french fries to the list, but in common usage, saying "fries" implies french fries unless preceded by another modifier, such as home fries or curly fries. Also, some of these items have little to do with the country of France or with French culture and most do not even need to be capitalized. French cut, for example, refers to a style of lengthwise cutting of vegetables. Use a capital letter only when the item refers to something actually associated with the country of France and is not part of a common phrase.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

What exactly is Christmas and why does it have an entire season devoted to it. Most holidays get a single day; Christmas gets a whole month.

Charlie Brown, that affable but misunderstood Peanuts character was struggling with that question in the 1960s cartoon classic. Near the end of the program, Linus, the most insecure of the Peanuts bunch, swallowed his insecurities long enough to march out on the stage, in the spotlight, and recite a bible verse from memory. It was the biblical account of the birth of Christ.

It was not, however, the Christmas story. Linus mentioned nothing about Christmas in his monologue. The bible mentions nothing about it anywhere in any of its verses. So what is it?

I would think the world was about to come to an end if I ever made it through the entire month of December without hearing someone say something like, “It’s time we started remembering the true meaning of Christmas,” or “Let’s put the Christ back in Christmas.” Others are appalled that we sometimes abbreviate Christmas as Xmas.

Of course, the people who say that are most likely not familiar with the history of the holiday. The Greek word for Christ begins with an X, and that is where the abbreviated form Xmas originally came from.

But when was Christ ever in Christmas? I mean, officially, it never happened if you go back to the source, the bible. Nothing in the bible tells us to honor Jesus’ birth. In fact, it was considered improper to celebrate anyone’s birth in the first centuries of the Common Era.

But the early Catholic Church was having some growing pains. The Romans celebrated their god Mithras back in those days to celebrate the return of the sun god in the sky. This happened in late December just after the winter solstice.

Church leaders were shrewd. They knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to compete head on with such a well-established pagan practice. So they infiltrated it. As with all other Christian holidays, Christmas is a co-opted corruption of a pagan festival. The church made up a holiday to commemorate the birth of Christ and called it Christ’s Mass. Never mind that Jesus was not born in winter, they needed it to coincide with the solstice.

So, originally, Christmas was a public relations ploy by the early church to infiltrate an already-established religious practice.

Now, let me quickly point out that I’m not against Christmas at all. It is still my favorite season of the year because it’s a time when families seem closer and the atmosphere is festive. What can be wrong with that?

But Christmas is, by and large, a secular holiday, not a religious one. It does not have its roots planted in the Christian bible. Churches embrace it because it presents an opportunity to provide outreach more so than at most other times of the year. But even most bible scholars will acknowledge the whole baby-in-a-manger story even as told in the bible is at least partly apocryphal.

So celebrate Christmas as you always would. But just keep in mind its true roots. They have more to do with public relations than with Jesus. That part of Christmas, which is really its true meaning, is still intact.