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New studies suggest consciousness can't be judged solely by behavior, whether it's a chatbot discussing philosophy or a bee searching for nectar. Researchers are increasingly focusing on the internal mechanisms of brains and computers, concluding that today's AI is likely not conscious while leaving open the possibility for both conscious insects and future machines.

Astronomers have developed a technique that allows them to detect cloud cycles on distant exoplanets. Using data from the James Webb Sapce Telescope (JWST), the astronomers found that mornings and evenings on the gas giant WASP-94A b have extremely different weather patterns: mornings are riddled with sand clouds, while the skies are clear in the early evenings. By isolating the clouds, researchers can more accurately measure a planet’s atmosphere and provide a clearer picture of the planet’s composition. WASP-94A b, for example, has much less oxygen and carbon than astronomers perviously calculated, making its atmosphere much more like Jupiter than they had originally thought.

New research shows how unmagnetized worlds like Mars can still deflect some of the Sun's solar wind. Unlike magnetospheres that form around planet's like Earth, this effect takes place in Mars' ionosphere. It's called the Zwan-Wolf effect, and it's not clear how deep into the atmosphere it operates.

Among critics of “wokeness,” an increasingly heated debate has emerged about what should be done about university disciplines shaped by postmodern-derived Critical Social Justice theories—most notably Gender Studies. Some argue that these fields should be dismantled entirely. Others believe they should be reformed to operate under the normal standards of academic inquiry.

The Reform vs. Abolition Debate 

The term “woke” originated in Black American history to describe awareness of real and widely recognized systemic injustice, as in being alert to the very real oppression going on in society. In its contemporary usage, however, it has expanded to refer to a theoretical framework in which social injustice is understood to be embedded in the assumptions and biases we are all said to have been socialized into, but be largely unaware of—White supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, and cis/heteronormativity. Critics have adopted the term disparagingly because it reflects the central problem with this framework: that its adherents believe themselves to possess a critical awareness of hidden systems of power, while those who question them are implied to remain asleep. 

Throughout history, ideological movements convinced of their own correctness have adopted similar assumptions. They begin with the premise that they are right and then seek ways to explain away why this is not evident to everybody else. Rather than accept disagreement as legitimate and engage with it, they devise frameworks, which hold that others are ignorant or willfully oblivious. We see this in religious traditions, in which nonbelievers are described as blind while converts are said to have “seen the light,” and in contemporary culture through concepts such as being “red-pilled”1, 2 (drawn from The Matrix), in which only those who have awakened can perceive reality as it truly is. 

The core problem with this epistemology is that it renders itself unfalsifiable and impervious to critique or self-correction. Criticism is preemptively dismissed as further evidence of its central claim: that most people remain blind to social reality. Critics broadly agree that such circular reasoning is incompatible with rigorous academic inquiry. Universities exist to produce knowledge, which requires supporting hypotheses with evidence, accepting attempts at falsification, and engaging in open scholarly critique. Where critics differ is in how to respond when academic disciplines fail to meet these standards. Some argue that such fields should be reformed to meet them, while others believe they should be dismantled altogether. 

Gender Studies as a Test Case 

Many identity-based academic fields draw on these theories, but many recent debates have focused on Gender Studies, which provides a useful test case. In considering whether it should be reformed or abolished, two questions are especially important. 

First, are the subjects it addresses—sex, gender, and sexuality—important aspects of human life, about which it is valuable to develop reliable knowledge and careful ethical reasoning? Given that human beings are a sexually dimorphic, sexually reproducing species, I submit that the answer is yes. 

Second, what kind of intellectual environment is most likely to produce that knowledge and ethical reasoning? One possibility is a reformed university environment that upholds viewpoint diversity, interdisciplinary research, high evidentiary standards, and robust critique. The alternative is to remove the subject from academia altogether, leaving discussion of these issues largely to ideologically homogeneous alternative spaces. 

Since the problems within Gender Studies emerged from the dominance of a single theoretical framework, and that dominance has produced poor scholarly outcomes, reforming the field to meet the standards of rigorous academic inquiry seems the better option. The core issue is not whether the study of sex, gender, and sexuality should exist, but whether any single theoretical framework should be insulated from the standards of evidence and critique that define academic inquiry. Indeed, reforming the field and displacing its current theoretical framework may ultimately be the same project. 

This debate reflects a broader philosophical and epistemological divide across contemporary culture between those who prioritize individual liberty and plurality, and those who seek to impose a single vision of the common good on everybody. Do we want to preserve a society in which individual liberty, viewpoint diversity, and the free exchange of ideas are valued? And do we believe that such a society provides the best way to discover truth, reconcile differences, and consign bad ideas to the dustbin of history? 

A Case Study: Simovski and Haltigan 

The conflict between the “reform” and “abolish” positions was recently illustrated in a disagreement between Nicole Barbaro Simovski, a social scientist and Director of Communications at Heterodox Academy, and J.D. Haltigan, Professor of Developmental and Evolutionary Psychopathology. In “Viewpoint Diversity vs. Women’s and Gender Studies,”3 Simovski addresses the problem of academic departments that have become ideologically dominated by Critical Social Justice theories. She considers the debate over whether such fields should be required to introduce greater viewpoint diversity or dismantled altogether, and argues for the former approach. As she concludes: 

The most pressing question facing higher ed—and its leaders—right now is not necessarily whether ideologically homogeneous departments should be preserved as-is or dismantled altogether (though we’re seeing the latter already in some places), but whether universities are willing to do the harder work of reopening them to genuine inquiry. Viewpoint diversity is not just a box-checking exercise; rather it is a requirement for knowledge production and teaching. When it is absent, disciplinary progress stagnates, students unenroll, and the door is opened for political actors to step in to resolve the problems universities have avoided. 

Simovski’s proposal is to bring different approaches to the study of sex, gender, and sexuality into dialogue so that competing hypotheses can be tested against each other through normal scholarly processes. Haltigan responded bluntly, “[This is] the problem with Heterodox Academy in a nutshell. You don’t introduce viewpoint diversity into something like ‘Gender Studies.’ You abolish it. It is not science. It is not knowledge. It has no place in the university.”4 Here, Haltigan is likely referring to the “Critical” theoretical framework that currently dominates the field, rather than to any study of sex, gender, or sexuality. But Simovski’s argument is precisely that opening the field to more rigorous forms of critical inquiry would allow those topics to be studied in ways that meet normal academic standards. 

Simovski replied by arguing for the value of bringing different disciplinary approaches into dialogue. For example, biological evidence about the distribution of sex traits could be examined alongside sociological analyses that attempt to explain why theories of a “sex spectrum” arise. Doing so allows scholars to consider the strongest version of the “spectrum” claims while also presenting the case for a sex binary grounded in biological evidence. In her view, excluding either sociological or biological approaches would simply shut down inquiry rather than advance understanding.5

A framework that regards evidence, reasoned argument, and falsifiability as tools of oppression cannot participate in the processes through which universities produce knowledge.

There is, of course, a profound difference between empirical sociological research that studies the different beliefs people have about sex, gender, and sexuality, and Gender Studies rooted in Queer Theory that is opposed to such rigorous sociological research on principle. In her piece, Simovski does not go into detail about what it might look like in practice to bring together scholars working within these very different epistemological frameworks. I will consider that question below. Simovski’s concern is instead the broader principle of interdisciplinary collaboration and viewpoint diversity. 

The problem is the theories, not the subject. 

On that broader principle, I agree with Simovski. Fields addressing sex, gender, and sexuality should be opened to genuine critical inquiry and include scholars from relevant disciplines. These are complex subjects that intersect with multiple areas of scholarship. Biology is central to the study of sex and reproduction; evolutionary and cognitive psychology can illuminate questions about psychological sex differences; sociology helps us understand how different groups conceptualize sex, gender, and sexuality; and philosophy offers competing frameworks for addressing their ethical dimensions, including gender-critical feminism and social conservatism. 

However, I also agree with Haltigan that the theoretical framework currently defining Gender Studies cannot be sustained under the normal standards of academic inquiry. This is not simply one perspective among many whose claims can be weighed against competing hypotheses. To the extent that postmodern-derived theories, including Queer Theory, reject the possibility of objective knowledge, treat evidence, reason, and debate as instruments of oppressive power, and resist falsification, they do not meet the basic criteria by which academic claims are evaluated. A framework that regards evidence, reasoned argument, and falsifiability as tools of oppression cannot participate in the processes through which universities produce knowledge. 

Illustration by ALE+ALE for SKEPTIC

My own stance on theories such as Queer Theory is informed by having studied them intensively for 17 years, both inside and outside the academy. These approaches are often deliberately obscure and counterintuitive, which means that many people support or oppose them on the basis of political alignment rather than a clear understanding of their claims. Yet when those claims are made explicit, they can be assessed against the same standards applied elsewhere in academia. 

Many people, for example, assume that supporting the rights of same-sex attracted and gender-nonconforming individuals requires endorsing Queer Theory. In fact, most people in those categories do not subscribe to it, and many object strongly to being “queered.” Historically, greater social acceptance of homosexuality and gender nonconformity emerged alongside the development of biological and psychological research, which treated these traits as natural variations within a sexually reproducing species, rather than as moral or political categories. 

By contrast, Queer Theory interprets sex, gender, and sexuality through political and discursive frameworks. It seeks to destabilize categories of sex, gender, and sexual orientation and to understand them chiefly in terms of power relations and identity. In doing so, it rejects the biological foundations of sex, and demands affirmation of gender identity as a form of political activism in place of empirical inquiry to discover what is true, or philosophical debate to consider what is ethical. It can plausibly be argued that this shift has undermined earlier progress toward social acceptance—an empirical and philosophical question best examined within a reformed academic environment where competing arguments can be tested. 

This is precisely why the positions associated with “reform” and “abolition” are not, in fact, opposed. Opening this area of study to genuine viewpoint diversity would not preserve these theories in their current form; it would require them to defend their claims under conditions in which those claims can be tested. To the extent that they cannot meet those conditions, they will not endure. 

Reform as the Most Effective Way to Abolish Bad Ideas 

What would it actually mean to open Gender Studies to genuine critical inquiry? Two basic requirements would be necessary: 

1. genuine viewpoint diversity and 
2. a clear expectation that scholars acknowledge competing hypotheses and respond to criticism in accordance with normal academic practice. 

The study of sex, gender, and sexuality is not inherently illegitimate, and opening it to rigorous inquiry would mean including scholars from disciplines that examine these subjects using established methods, including biology, psychology, sociology, and relevant philosophical frameworks. Scholars would be expected to present their claims alongside competing explanations and respond directly to criticism—standard practice across academia, where hypotheses are proposed, alternatives considered, and evidence weighed through ongoing debate. 

Under these conditions, students would encounter a genuinely pluralistic intellectual environment. They could examine questions about sex, gender, and sexuality from multiple perspectives, while understanding how those perspectives differ and how well they are supported. Claims about the sexually dimorphic nature of humans, or about the nature of sexual orientation, or individual variation in traits considered masculine or feminine could be evaluated biologically. Questions about gender roles could be explored through evolutionary psychology, empirical sociology, gender-critical feminism, liberal individualism, or social conservatism. 

Unlike fields such as biology, which are defined by a shared methodological framework, Gender Studies is a more conceptually open field concerned with the study of “gender.” As such, it has no clear basis for restricting itself to a single theoretical approach. Indeed, it emerged from Women’s and Feminist Studies and includes a long tradition of scholarship critical of the very concept of gender, making the exclusion of gender-critical perspectives particularly difficult to justify on academic grounds. 

Scholars within Gender Studies would also be expected to engage with interdisciplinary critique of their own research or theoretical papers. It would not be acceptable to declare certain claims, such as those relating to gender identity “not up for debate,” or to dismiss skepticism of it as a denial of people’s right to exist, or engage in any moves to prevent knowledge claims from being tested and refined. The expectation would be that disagreement would be engaged with as it actually is. In Who’s Afraid of Gender?6 feminist and queer philosopher Judith Butler defines an “anti-trans ideology movement” and then declares it contradictory and incoherent. She does so by conflating socially conservative views that endorse traditional gender roles with gender-critical feminist views that reject them, even though these have been utterly opposed to each other for decades and, arguably, centuries. 

It would be far more productive to examine these competing perspectives directly. Consider the value of an open debate between gender conservatives, who see gender roles as a natural expression of sex differences important to societal health; gender- critical feminists, who see them as oppressive social constructs harmful particularly to women; gender identity “queer” theorists, who argue that an internal sense of gender is ubiquitous and more fundamental than biological sex; and evolutionary psychologists, who recognize both significant psychological sex differences and individual variation, typically without drawing prescriptive conclusions.7 A university setting is precisely the place where such views can be compared rigorously, their assumptions examined, and their evidential support assessed. 

Where better to undertake this kind of analysis than within a university’s Gender Studies department? 

If such reforms were applied consistently, several outcomes would be likely. The most committed adherents of postmodern-derived queer theory would likely leave the field. Because their theoretical framework treats debate, evidence, and falsification as mechanisms through which “dominant discourses” maintain power, a system that requires open argument and engagement with competing evidence therefore conflicts with the ethics and epistemology of the theory itself. Rather than defending their claims under those conditions, many would likely choose to resign. They might present this as having been forced out, but since they had been welcomed to meet standard academic expectations, such claims would be less likely to persuade a broader audience or generate the kind of backlash that often accompanies perceived suppression. 

Liberal societies create conditions in which disagreements can be contested through argument and evidence rather than through coercion and force.

Some might remain and attempt to defend their ideas in direct comparison with approaches grounded in biology, psychology, empirically rigorous sociology, or competing ethical frameworks. In that case, students and scholars would be able to assess clearly how those theories perform when subjected to the same standards of evidence and critique that apply elsewhere in academia. They are highly unlikely to fare well. Those who fear that simply allowing such ideas to be expressed will make them more persuasive may underestimate either the poverty and incoherence of Queer Theory or the ability of students and scholars to evaluate arguments critically. 

This is how flawed ideas are properly and lastingly defeated. 

Importantly, such a reform would also preserve intellectual fairness. On the possibility that critics are mistaken and have missed demonstrable valuable insights from Queer Theory, a reformed academic environment would allow it to demonstrate that. Theories that survive open scrutiny deserve to endure; those that cannot lose credibility. 

Either way, the result would be the same: ideas about sex and gender would be evaluated through evidence and argument rather than protected through ideological insulation. 

Why Censorship Backfires 

There are always those who argue that allowing ideas to be expressed and debated strengthens them. This view rests on a strongly social constructivist assumption: that people are socialized into accepting dominant discourses uncritically. From this perspective, harmful ideas must be suppressed rather than challenged. Advocates therefore support banning, penalizing, or “no-platforming” views they regard as dangerous so that only approved perspectives are widely encountered. 

This logic has long motivated Critical Social Justice activists seeking to control permissible discourse within universities, but it also appears among some of their opponents. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo, for example, has argued explicitly for emulating this strategy of Critical Theorists in order to replace “woke” discourses with conservative ones through institutional control.8

Those who value the free exchange of ideas for the purposes of knowledge production and conflict resolution reject this approach consistently. They argue that suppressing ideas violates freedom of belief and expression, and that bad ideas are best defeated by exposing them to criticism. Universities, in this view, are precisely the place where flawed ideas should be tested, debated, and, where necessary, dismantled. This is not a “soft” approach. It is precisely because I regard these theories as deeply flawed that I argue they should be exposed to open scrutiny rather than suppressed. Suppression protects ideas; scrutiny exposes them. 

The historical record provides little support for the claim that censorship achieves its intended aims. As uncompromising free speech advocates Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen argue in their paper “Would censorship have stopped the rise of the Nazis?”9 attempts to suppress extremist movements frequently have the opposite effect of strengthening them. Attempts to suppress ideas typically make them more attractive and give their proponents the glamour of being persecuted by the establishment for being the holders of The Truth “they” don’t want you to know. We see clear examples of this dynamic more recently. 

Did the speech policing and cancellation tactics of the Critical Social Justice movement in the United States reduce racism and sexism or increase acceptance of gender identity? Or did they provoke resentment, contribute to the growth of alternative media spaces, and fuel an anti-woke backlash, alongside declining support for LGBT-related policies?10 The causes of Donald Trump’s election are complex and contested, but resentment toward identitarian activism is widely cited as a motivating factor. Even those who view his election positively would acknowledge that it was not the outcome intended by censorious activists. 

Suppression protects ideas; scrutiny exposes them.

Similar questions arise in the United Kingdom. Did efforts to censor criticism of gender identity and immigration policy increase acceptance of trans identity and a more pro-immigration stance among the general public? Or did this lead to widescale resistance in which Britain became known as “TERF Island”11 while Reform, campaigning on an anti-immigration platform, rapidly gained unprecedented support and overtook the two established parties in popularity?12 Whatever one’s evaluation of these developments, they run counter to the aims of those advocating censorship. 

It is, of course, possible to argue that these developments would have occurred regardless, or even more rapidly, without attempts to restrain them. But claiming that the rise of the antiwoke had nothing to do with resentment at the authoritarian tactics of the woke requires dismissing a large body of public reaction to overreach. At minimum, these cases provide disconfirming evidence for the position that censorship is a good way to make disapproved ideas go away. 

The Authoritarian Cycle 

One striking feature of this dynamic is that many critics of wokeness on the political right readily acknowledge that censorship by Critical Social Justice activists helped provoke the recent anti-woke backlash. Some go further, portraying right-wing illiberalism as simply a response to left-wing excess. Yet the reasoning often stops there. The likelihood that adopting similarly authoritarian tactics might produce a comparable backlash against them is rarely considered. There is little reason to think the dynamic that undermined the authority of the identitarian left would not eventually undermine their own movement as well. 

One explanation may lie in a common psychological tendency: those deeply convinced of their own correctness often assume that, once opposing views are suppressed, others will eventually come to recognize the truth of their position. Their ideas, they imagine, will then remain dominant indefinitely—a belief that might be described as “real authoritarianism has never been tried.” 

In reality, authoritarianism has been tried repeatedly. Throughout history, systems built on the imposition of a single ideological orthodoxy have tended to produce cycles in which one dominant ideology replaces another, each suppressing dissent until it is eventually displaced in turn. The only political arrangements that have shown any lasting success in interrupting this cycle have been liberal democracies. By protecting freedom of belief and speech and by building institutions that support viewpoint diversity, liberal societies create conditions in which disagreements can be contested through argument and evidence rather than through coercion and force. 

Unfortunately, this insight remains deeply counterintuitive to many people. Advocating viewpoint diversity often provokes impatience or frustration. Liberal commitments to open debate are frequently caricatured as a kind of polite pluralism in which everyone expresses their opinions indefinitely while congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness and nothing ever gets resolved. From this perspective, insisting on viewpoint diversity appears to be a naive half-measure or an unwillingness to confront bad ideas decisively. It is often portrayed as an idealistic defense of abstract freedoms in a world where, many believe, material realities demand more forceful action. 

I believe this is mistaken. While individual liberty certainly does matter as a principle in itself, and upholding it consistently is fundamental to protecting the founding principles of liberal democracies like the United States of America, there is also a strategic and pragmatic argument for defeating bad ideas with better ones. It works. If we compare Western liberal democracies, which have at least imperfectly protected individual liberty, open debate, and viewpoint diversity, with societies that have not—or with those same societies before they developed liberal democratic institutions—the advantages of this system become clear. Liberal institutions have proven far more effective at producing knowledge, resolving social conflicts, and advancing human rights. 

Illustration by ALE+ALE for SKEPTICWhere do we go from here? 

The United States now has a window of opportunity to reform its universities by opening disciplines captured by a single, deeply flawed ideology to genuine inquiry, interdisciplinary critique, and viewpoint diversity. Doing so would allow those theories to be examined and challenged in ways that are both legitimate and lasting. 

Attempting instead to suppress such ideas would have the opposite effect. It would shield them from the scrutiny that universities are uniquely positioned to provide, removing precisely the conditions under which they would be forced to defend themselves against criticism—and ultimately fail to do so. Rather than losing credibility, they would be able to retreat while plausibly claiming persecution, a narrative that historically tends to increase both their glamour and public sympathy. 

Should public opinion shift and a future election bring a different political party to power, those who attempted to suppress woke ideas may find they have unintentionally created ideal conditions for those ideas to return with renewed strength. More importantly, they will have helped entrench the norm that governments may determine which ideas are permissible within universities. If academic inquiry can be regulated by the state today to eliminate woke ideas, it can just as easily be regulated tomorrow to eliminate ideas that challenge a different political orthodoxy. 

Universities would then find themselves in the extraordinary position of having the boundaries of legitimate scholarship shift with every electoral cycle. Institutions that are meant to produce knowledge would instead become instruments of whichever political faction happened to hold power at the moment. 

That is not how knowledge is produced in a liberal society.

Scientists using the Euclid space telescope found a red-dwarf brightness “gap” in the population of a globular cluster—an ancient, crowded collection of stars. A similar gap was detected by the Gaia observatory in nearby stellar populations, but it has never before been seen in a globular cluster.

Parents report loving their partners less within the first year of having a child, but that doesn't mean the feeling is permanent or inevitable

A patch of ocean south-east of Greenland is the only place on Earth that is cooling, and it could be a sign that the warm water "conveyor belt" in the Atlantic is slowing down

Researchers at EPFL have developed a chip-scale ultrafast laser that performs on par with traditional tabletop femtosecond lasers. The innovation could make advanced laser technologies far smaller, cheaper, and more accessible for applications ranging from medical diagnostics to atomic clocks.

. . . is dire. It is in fact so dire that although I have movies and photos of Vashti and of the last hen and her brood of nine, I am not mentally prepared to put them up, as they evoke bad memories and deep sadness. (As you may recall, both broods left the pond, almost certainly because they were harassed by drakes.) Vashti came back and re-nested in her old nest (!); she’s now sitting on a brood of seven eggs. The second hen, who was never named, has also returned but hasn’t (yet) nested, but is accompanied by an aggressive drake.

I have been keeping a careful eye on what is going on in the pond, and I’m quite worried about Vashti, whose brood is set to hatch within two weeks. Once a day I call her down to the pond for a feeding and a bath. She stays for about 15 minutes, gobbling up a big meal, preening for a while, and then quickly flying back to her nest to incubate the eggs. But over the past week or so, the damn drakes have been chasing her when they see her, driving her out of the pond, quacking and hiding nearby. It is only with considerable effort that I can get her away from the drakes so she can eat and go back to her nest. Note that the drakes aren’t trying to attack her; they want to mate with her. And she doesn’t want to mate!

What this means is that when she finally comes down with ducklings, she and her brood will be mercilessly harassed, just like the last hen and her brood. And that means that in all likelihood they will flee the pond, which means certain death for the ducklings.

I thus have a hard choice: let them come to the pond and take their chances, or arrange for the brood (and mother, if all possible) to be captured and either taken to a distant body of water or to a wildlife rehab facility.  The first alternative is unpalatable, as it involves the death of the entire brood, but I think it’s likely if I don’t intervene. Lately I have been moving towards to the second alternative:  letting Facilities and the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors take over and recover everyone if they can. Getting the ducklings is relatively easy, though they’ll be in the water very quickly after they jump. But getting Mom is a job for pros, as she can fly away.

My priority is to save lives, not entertain the University community with the sight of ducklings—ducklings who won’t last on the Pond more than a day or two.

It’s always been a great joy for me to help rear the babies up to fledging, but compared to the loss of lives, that is a selfish attitude. I think I will go by the words of Maimonides, “If you save one life, it is as if you saved the world entire.”  To me that means that I could save an entire life for each duckling rescued. It’s a hard decision and a sad one, but if the goal is to save lives, the strategy is clear.

The good news is that all five turtles put in the pond last fall survived the winter. Here they are sunning on a rock yesterday. There are four red-eared sliders and one yellow-bellied slider—two subspecies of a single species.

 

It’s a familiar annual question, that we’re already hearing as we enter into June. “What are those two bright objects in the west?” They’re none other than the two brightest planets in the sky, Jupiter and Venus. Keep an eye on the dusk sky over the next week, and you’ll see the two worlds getting ever closer to each other in the west. Though this happens every year or so, an evening conjunction assures that lots of the general public will see one of the best planetary pairings of 2026.

Reader Mark Joseph, inspired by my post on leucistic Australian ducks, went in an example and some other photos. Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Your post this morning coincidentally arrived as did this photo from a person in our birdwatching group; it’s a leucistic house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus):

And, to give you a small set instead of a singleton, here are a couple of my feeble efforts, all taken with an iPhone in suburban southwestern Michigan. Hopefully, you can use them. I know even less about flowers and insects than I do about birds, so all identifications are courtesy of Gemini.

A zinnia (This specific variety is likely a Zinnia elegans, such as the ‘Canary Bird’ or ‘Benary’s Giant Yellow’ cultivar”) with a bumblebee (“specifically consistent with the Common Eastern Bumblebee, Bombus impatiens). I have enjoyed taking photos of flowers and insects together:

Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea stoebe, sometimes classified as Centaurea maculosa). Unfortunately, it is invasive:

A crabapple tree and a closeup.  This closeup helps narrow it down to a Sargent Crabapple (Malus sargentii) or a Siberian Crabapple (Malus baccata).

Sargent Crabapple (Malus sargentii) or a Siberian Crabapple (Malus baccata):

This is a Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus) or a Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus).These two species look nearly identical from a distance and are the two most common bats found roosting on residential brick walls across North America.

Brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys).When we first moved here and I decided to take some pictures, I got all excited because I was able to get a really good picture. Then I found out it was a stink bug, and invasive to boot. So, not a new species of peacock. But, it’s one of the things evolution has produced. Order Hemiptera, the “true bugs.”

A Shaggy Inkcap (Coprinus comatus), commonly known as a Shaggy Mane or Lawyer’s Wig. The next day the cap is just black goo, and the day after, nothing is left but the stem:

My mental map of the universe has evolved over my life, partly due to new scientific discoveries and partly due to my own education. As if often the case, as you learn more, things get more complicated. The simplistic picture I had as a child was that the universe consisted of many galaxies in which there are many stars and around which there are planets, likely something similar to our own solar system. I have had to modify this model dozens of times, and perhaps I need to make another little tweak. This has to do with where planets exist.

First, galaxies are not randomly distributed throughout the universe. They are bound together in local groups, those groups are gravitationally bound into galaxy clusters, which in turn are part of superclusters which are finally organized into giant filaments, the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe. So our universal address is – the Sol system within the Milky Galaxy, part of the Local Group within the Virgo Cluster which is part of the Laniakea Supercluster.

At some point I also learned that not all stars (and therefore, not all planets) exist within galaxies. Estimates of the number of stars within and between galaxies just overlap, so they may be equal, but the average estimates indicate that likely 1-10% of all stars are not in galaxies. They are wandering between galaxies, mostly within galaxy clusters. The first intergalactic star was discovered in 1997. It is likely that most such stars were formed within galaxies (you need clouds of gas and gravitational disturbances for stars to form) but then were flung out because of gravitational interactions with other objects, such as a black hole. Two galaxies colliding can also spray their stars throughout the cluster. It is also very likely that such stars would retain their planets.

In fact, intergalactic stars would be a great place for life. They would not be at risk from nearby supernova or gamma ray bursts. There is also a much lower density of cosmic rays outside of galaxies (they are largely produced within galaxies and are trapped by magnetic fields within galaxies). So space travel would also be much easier within an extragalactic solar system. They are also likely to be extremely isolated from other systems, and their nighttime sky would be much darker. Some would have only some distant smudges of other galaxies. But many would have spectacular views of nearby galaxies dominating their sky.

At some point I also learned that within the Milky Way there are more rogue planets wandering between stars than there are planets gravitationally bound to stars. There are likely about a trillion planets orbiting stars, and 4-5 trillion rogue planets. These are less likely to host life as we know it, without the warmth of a nearby star. But it is possible for such planets to host chemosynthetic life within subsurface oceans. Moons of rogue gas giants may also be warmed by tidal forces. It’s even possible for some worlds to have thick hydrogen atmospheres which could keep the surface of the planet warm enough to have liquid water for billions of years.

A recent study, theoretically at least, may add another location where there are a surprising number of planets – around supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies (including the Milky Way). Quick caveat – this is an ArXiv preprint publication, so not yet peer-reviewed. It is based on modeling and simulations without any confirmation from observational data.

Some supermassive black holes are called active galactic nuclei (AGN) if they are actively “feeding” on a disc of matter swirling around them. These astronomers were interested in whether or not this disc of material could form into planets. It is generally considered that such swirling discs of material are too hot to allow matter to clump together and form planets, but they considered the conditions as you get further and further from the AGN. Their simulations found a sweet spot where the temperature and radiation are low enough to allow for planet formation while still having enough matter to clump into planets. Essentially you end up with a distance gradient of “doubling time” – the amount of time on average for any clump of rock and dust to double its mass. Some regions would have only slow growth and produce only pebbles. Others would have rapid growth, enough to exceed the mass necessary for stars to ignite. And in between – lots of planets.

They estimate there could be tens of millions of planets around a single AGN. They also hypothesize that there may be many exotic objects in these regions. For example, you could have a rapid enough doubling time and a sufficient supply of dust that an object could form entirely of dust (no significant hydrogen or other gas) and yet exceed the mass of star formation. What would happen to such an object? We have no known examples. Some actual stars may also form in this region.

Any planets forming around an AGN would likely be a terrible place for life, this being a generally hostile environment. This also is a tiny number of potential planets compared to the number of star-bound and rogue planets in the galaxy. If this turns out to hold up under peer review, and if observations confirm their predictions, then this would be an interesting small tweak to our models of where everything is in the universe. It would be most interesting for the potential for exotic objects to exist in these regions. Microlensing would be capable of detecting such objects around AGNs, so this is a testable hypothesis.

The post Planets Around Black Holes first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

Rachel Carson’s look at the dire effects of industrial and agricultural pollution birthed the modern environmental movement when it was first published – and remains as crucial a read today, finds Rowan Hooper

New medicines are getting better. But so is our ability to get them where they need to go.

The post Revolutions in Drug Delivery first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

A glacier could have carried the giant sandstone at the centre of Stonehenge southwards from north-east Scotland, but this scenario appears unlikely

Researchers have discovered how microscopic imperfections and atomic vibrations can be used to control a powerful quantum effect in an advanced material. The effect can turn alternating electrical signals from the environment directly into the kind of current electronic devices need, without traditional components. As temperature changes, the signal can even flip direction, giving scientists a new way to tune device performance.

Researchers have discovered how microscopic imperfections and atomic vibrations can be used to control a powerful quantum effect in an advanced material. The effect can turn alternating electrical signals from the environment directly into the kind of current electronic devices need, without traditional components. As temperature changes, the signal can even flip direction, giving scientists a new way to tune device performance.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered unusual chemistry in interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, including the first direct detection of methane on a visitor from another star system. The comet also contains exceptionally high levels of carbon dioxide, making it unlike most comets born in our solar system. Scientists believe the methane was hidden beneath the surface and only emerged after solar heating reached deeper icy layers.

In our final installment in the series, we'll examine all the close calls, possible candidates, and instances in which extraterrestrial signals could not be ruled out

When Robert Trivers died this year, I lost a friend and the world lost one of the few people who genuinely understood why we lie to ourselves. Skeptic readers know his work even if the name sits just out of reach—his fingerprints are on half of modern evolutionary psychology. Bob once let me fly him out to lecture my state pharmacy association on the science of deceit: a room full of pharmacists learning, from the man who worked it out, that the mind is built to fool its own owner before it fools anyone else. He was generous like that, and funnier than his reputation. That idea—self-deception as design, not defect—is where any honest account of our species has to begin.

It’s also the first entry on a list I’ve spent years assembling in an attempt to gather the load-bearing findings about human nature—scattered across biology, psychology, economics, and anthropology, buried in thousands of pages no busy person will ever read—and compress them into something you can hand to a friend. What follows is the compression of the compression. Seven ideas. If they’re new to you, they will rearrange how you see nearly everything. If they’re not, consider this the map of where the bodies are buried. 

The line between clear sight and self-deception runs through every skull, and it does not stop running because you’ve read an article about it. 

A warning before we start: there is no flattering way to read this list. I am implicated in every item on it. So are you. 

1. You are the mark, not the con artist. 

Trivers’s central insight, laid out in The Folly of Fools, is that self-deception is not a malfunction. It’s an adaptation. The most convincing liar is the one who believes his own lie—he leaks no tells, because there’s nothing to leak. So natural selection built minds that hide their real motives from the conscious tenant upstairs. The unsettling part is the part most people skip: in this arrangement, the “you” that experiences your own reasoning isn’t running the con. You’re the one being conned. Your sense of why you do what you do is a press release, not the minutes of the meeting. 

2. The rider works for the elephant. 

Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor, with the mechanism supplied by Daniel Kahneman’s two systems: conscious reasoning (the rider) imagines it’s steering, but the automatic, emotional, intuitive part (the elephant) decides first—in milliseconds—and the rider’s actual job is to invent justifications after the fact. When you form a political opinion, you do not reason your way to it. You feel your way to it, then reason your way to a defense. This is why facts so rarely change minds. You’re not arguing with someone’s logic. You’re arguing with their elephant, and the rider you’re talking to is just the press secretary. And here’s the twist that should keep an honest person up at night: the implication is notthat morality is arbitrary. There are almost certainly better and worse answers to how conscious creatures should treat one another—Sam Harris is right that the moral landscape has real peaks and valleys. The problem is that the machinery generating your moral certainty was never built to track those peaks. It was built to track your tribe. 

Our power has outrun our self-knowledge. That gap is no longer a curiosity. It’s the central problem of the species. 3. You are a monkey with a machine gun. 

For the overwhelming majority of our existence, we lived in bands of roughly 150, chased scarce calories, faced physical threats, and tracked reputation face-to-face. That world is gone. The brain is not. You are running twenty-first-century software—cable news, dating apps, global markets, eight billion strangers—on hardware and instincts shaped over deep evolutionary time, in a world that vanished in an eyeblink by comparison. Nearly every modern pathology is this mismatch wearing a different mask: obesity is the calorie-seeking system in a world of abundance, social-media misery is the status-tracking system run at a volume it was never built for, chronic stress is a threat-detection system designed for lions and now triggered by email. Our power has outrun our self-knowledge. That gap is no longer a curiosity. It’s the central problem of the species. 

4. Tribalism is a feature to be managed, not a bug to be solved. 

This is the sentence most people across the spectrum get wrong. Progressives tend to think tribalism is ignorance that education will cure. Conservatives think it’s a virtue when aimed at the right targets. Libertarians think clear thinking dissolves it. All three are wrong, because the impulse to sort the world into us and them is as deep in the architecture as language. You will not eliminate it. The groups that out-survived the others were the ones that cooperated inside and competed outside, and you are their descendant. The functional question is never how to abolish tribalism but how to channel it—through cross-cutting institutions, productive competition, and norms of engagement. Societies that manage it thrive. Societies that let it run loose produce Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Weimar. The historical record on this is not ambiguous. 

5. The Blank Slate is not just wrong—it’s dangerous. 

Steven Pinker’s target is the still-dominant assumption that humans arrive infinitely malleable, with no nature worth mentioning—that every difference between individuals, groups, and sexes is pure socialization. The science doesn’t support it. But the deeper problem is moral, not empirical. If people have no nature, then anyone who refuses to be molded to your program must be acting in bad faith—stupid, corrupt, or evil. That inference is the seed of every utopian catastrophe in history. The planners who believed they could manufacture a New Man had the power. They lacked the knowledge. The gap between the two filled with corpses. You cannot modulate what you refuse to acknowledge; a pilot who denies gravity does not fly well. 

6. Patternicity will fool you, and it feels exactly like insight. 

This one belongs to Skeptic’s own founder. Michael Shermer’s point is that the brain is a pattern-detection machine with the sensitivity dial turned all the way up—because mistaking a shadow for a predator a hundred times is cheaper than mistaking a predator for a shadow once. So we find faces in clouds, meaning in coincidence, conspiracies in noise. Layer motivated reasoning on top, and you don’t just find patterns everywhere; you preferentially find the ones that confirm what your tribe already believes. The feeling of having seen through to the truth is generated by the same machinery whether or not there’s anything there. Which means the conviction can’t be your evidence. It never could. 

The smartest reasoners are often the most expertly biased, because they’re better at building the defense. 7. Design for the animal, not the angel. 

Here’s the payoff, and it’s strangely hopeful. The systems that work are the ones built for the creature that actually exists. Markets succeed because they channel self-interest instead of pretending it away—the butcher feeds you out of his own interest, not his benevolence. The American founders built checks and balances not for angels but for the ambitious, self-interested primates who would actually hold power. “If men were angels,” Madison wrote, “no government would be necessary.” The institutions that fail are the ones designed for a species we wish we were. Understand the animal, and you can build a civilization worthy of it. Deny the animal, and the animal runs the show. 

♦ ♦ ♦

There’s an eighth idea, and it’s the one that makes the other seven dangerous to summarize: the bias blind spot. We can see every distortion clearly—in other people. Hand a sharp partisan a list like this one and watch him aim it across the aisle, never once at himself. The studies are brutal on this point: greater intelligence and scientific literacy don’t reduce motivated reasoning on identity-defining issues. They supercharge it. The smartest reasoners are often the most expertly biased, because they’re better at building the defense. 

So I’ll say what the science forces me to say. Nothing on this list exempts me from anything on this list. I am the mark in my own mirror as surely as Trivers was in his—and he knew it, and knowing it was the closest thing to an escape hatch our species has ever found. Solzhenitsyn wrote that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. The line between clear sight and self-deception runs through every skull, and it does not stop running because you’ve read an article about it. 

You are not the exception. Neither am I. But the effort to catch yourself—to ask, before the next certainty hardens: Is this my thinking or my tribe’s? Is this evidence or is it rationalization?—is the one thing the animal can do that the animal it evolved from could not. 

That effort is what my book The Why Behind Things is for. This was the cheat sheet.