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.

Bankers aim to maximise profits. Scientists aim to understand reality. But Mike Peacey of the University of Bristol suggests, based on a new model he has just published in Nature, that both professionals are equally likely to conform to whatever views are prevalent, whether they are right or wrong.

Elizabeth Parris (above) the CEO of Bioviva USA Inc, has become the very first human being to successfully, from a biological standpoint, reverse the  age of her white blood cells, thanks to her own company’s experimental therapies.

Bioviva utilizes intramural and extramural peer-reviewed research to create therapies for age-related diseases (Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart-disease), and now, they have reversed 20 years of ‘telomere shortening’ in a human for the first time.

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.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has yet again been caught exaggerating  ‘global warming’ by fiddling with the raw temperature data.

This time, that data concerns the recent record-breaking cold across the northeastern U.S. which NOAA is trying to erase from history. If you believe NOAA’s charts, there was nothing particularly unusual about this winter’s cold weather which caused sharks to freeze in the ocean and iguanas to drop out of trees.

Tech-savvy parents are using big tech’s new A.I. systems — Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant — as surrogate babysitters. But what happens when children start viewing these bias-ridden systems as authority figures?

According to the research firm eMarketer, approximately 68 million consumers use A.I. assistants on their phones or voice-enabled smart speakers like the Amazon Echo, Google Home, or Apple’s new HomePod. They are especially popular among parents, many of whom are setting up assistants in children’s rooms.