The use of obscene or taboo language – or swearing, as it’s more commonly known – is often seen as a sign that the speaker lacks vocabulary, cannot express themselves in a less offensive way, or even lacks intelligence.

Studies have shown, however, that swearing may in fact display a more, rather than less, intelligent use of language.

While swearing can become a habit, we choose to swear in different contexts and for different purposes: for linguistic effect, to convey emotion, for laughs, or perhaps even to be deliberately nasty.

The renowned Smithsonian Institute recently published an article “Scientists Create a New Form of Light by Linking Photons.” Yeah, a “New Form of Light” – really?

This revolutionary discovery is eloquently described by freelance journalist Marissa Fessenden in a post published as noted above. The research report she refers to has recently been  published in the Science magazine, authored by no less than ten authors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, Princeton University, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Maryland(NIST/UM) , and the University of Chicago, surely, all renowned institutes of higher learning and top notch research. The lead author, Dr. Qi-Yu Liang, currently hails from the NIST/UM.

We are often told that we should trust only scientific studies appearing in ‘respected’ peer reviewed journals. But is the peer review system the true gold standard of scientific merit?

In Britain and elsewhere independent scientists are becoming increasingly frustrated and dismayed as to what mainstream publications class as ‘good science.’ Doubts are rising, even among the elite, as evidenced in the UK’s Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) reporting on the Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication (FSSC). In ‘Peer review: not as old as you might think’ (June 25, 2015) The THES asks: “Is peer review broken?”

In my previous essay (https://principia-scientific.com/the-problem-argumentation/), I reviewed some of the wisdom given to the National Academy of Science by Richard Feynman in a 1955 address titled—The Value of Science.  The title of the previous essay was:  The Problem—Argumentation.  Which the portion of Feynman’s wisdom reviewed did not directly address.  But I now consider how he closed his address as the solution to the problem of argumentation.

Serendipity provided two apropos quotes separated by 80 years.  One by Churchill and another by the current U.S. president.

Never give in, never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.  Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.—Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) “Never Give In Speech” Harrow School, 1941

For the first time, scientists were able to use satellites to map the potential warming effect of large-scale changes to vegetation on the Earth’s surface.

“Our results show that vegetation-cover change over the period 2000–2015 has produced on average a brighter but warmer land surface,” reads a new study published in the journal Nature.

Developed by researchers at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the filter uses a type of graphene known as Graphair which is made from soybean oil.

Graphene itself is often touted as a ‘wonder material’ that is up to 200 times stronger than even the strongest steel and conducts electricity better than copper.

Immanuel Velikovsky’s (in)famous book “Worlds in Collision” (1950) stirred tremendous controversy in the then scientific community as it alleged that, within historical times, Earth had experienced “close encounters” with Venus and Mars to the extent that electrical phenomena (plasma-like discharges) between Earth and each of its neighbors caused cataclysms recorded in human history.

‘Strong Influence Of Solar Activity’ On 1850s-2014; Ocean Temperatures, ‘Small Contribution From CO2’

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC) and computer modeling, the Sun’s role in modern-era climate change checks in at somewhere slightly above nothing.

Through first-of-their-kind supercomputer simulations, researchers, including a Northwestern University professor, have gained new insight into one of the most mysterious phenomena in modern astronomy: the behavior of relativistic jets that shoot from black holes, extending outward across millions of light years.

New research from The Australian National University (ANU) and ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science suggests natural rainfall variation is so great that it could take a human lifetime for significant climate signals to appear in regional or global rainfall measures.

“We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations… and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.” [1-2]

Man-made global warming is not going to make it harder to predict the weather, according to a new study by University of Missouri scientists.

The jet stream is key to the ability of meteorologists to forecast short-term weather patterns, and Atmospheric scientist Anthony Lupo and doctoral student Andrew Jensen wanted to see if adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere would affect jet stream flow.

I have written before that Galileo Galilei is the founder of modern physical science.  This because his book, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, is its foundation.  On May 30, 2016 I discovered Principia Scientific International (PSI).  An article http://principia-scientific.org/prevailing-theories-have-been-proven-wrong-before/ by Keith Byer had been posted the day before.  And May 30^th I made my first comment of many to follow.

Since we’ve now been living with the global warming story for 30 years, it might seem hard to believe that science could now come up with anything that would enable us to see that story in a wholly new light.

But that is what I am suggesting in a new paper, just published in the UK by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, thanks to a book called Groupthink, written more than 40 years ago by a professor of psychology at Yale, Irving Janis.

What Janis did was to define scientifically just how what he called groupthink operates, according to three basic rules. And what my paper tries to show is the astonishing degree to which they explain so much that many have long found puzzling about the global warming story.

Russian officials aren’t very worried about how polar bears will survive in the face of man-made global warming.

“Representatives of other Arctic regions and the scientific community were more concerned about climatic change and its negative effect on polar bears, but these issues do not loom large with us,” Yegor Vereshchagin, the head wildlife conservation official in Chukotka, said at a meeting of Arctic nations in early February.