What a sorry state science is in!

Neuroscience has its credibility problems, too. Photo: Anna Shvets at pexels

Science isn't what it's cracked up to be. From the methods used, to the manner in which findings are published, the scientific realm has shown repeatedly that it certainly is in a sorry state. What it comes down to is that research findings as reported cannot be believed! 

The "replication crisis" is the term given to the worrying fact that the conclusions in a large proportion of  studies cannot be reproduced when other scientists try to confirm the original findings. The paper by John Ioannidis in 2005 that sounded the alarm had the astounding title, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False".

As The Guardian's science editor, Ian Sample, points out, since then "three major projects have found replication rates as low as 39% in psychology journals, 61% in economics journals, and 62% in social science studies published in the Nature and Science, two of the most prestigious journals in the world". 

This is serious stuff:

The influence of an inaccurate paper published in a prestigious journal can have repercussions for decades. For example, the study Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet in 1998 turned tens of thousands of parents around the world against the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine because of an implied link between vaccinations and autism. The incorrect findings were retracted by The Lancet 12 years later, but the claims that autism is linked to vaccines continue.  (Source)

The new study, by the University of California San Diego's Rady School of Management, was published in the journal Science Advances. Ian Sample states that the study highlights the extent of ongoing reference to the false findings:

Studies in top science, psychology and economics journals that fail to hold up when others repeat them are cited, on average, more than 100 times as often in follow-up papers than work that stands the test of time.

The finding ... has led the authors to suspect that more interesting papers are waved through more easily by reviewers and journal editors and, once published, attract more attention.

Put more clearly:

...findings from studies that cannot be verified when the experiments are repeated have a bigger influence over time. The unreliable research tends to be cited as if the results were true long after the publication [of the experiment that] failed to replicate. [Source]

In addition:

"We also know that experts can predict well which papers will be replicated," write the authors Marta Serra-Garcia, assistant professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School and Uri Gneezy, professor of behavioral economics also at the Rady School. "Given this prediction, we ask 'why are non-replicable papers accepted for publication in the first place?'"

Their possible answer is that review teams of academic journals face a trade-off. When the results are more "interesting," they apply lower standards regarding their reproducibility. [Source]

Take note of the next statement, and then the explanation for giving prominence to what is interesting over what is true:

It has been claimed and demonstrated that many (and possibly most) of the conclusions drawn from biomedical research are probably false. 

A central cause for this important problem is that researchers must publish in order to succeed [in academia], and publishing is a highly competitive enterprise, with certain kinds of findings more likely to be published than others. Research that produces novel results, statistically significant results ... and seemingly 'clean' results is more likely to be published.

As a consequence, researchers have strong incentives to engage in research practices that make their findings publishable quickly, even if those practices reduce the likelihood that the findings reflect a true ... effect. 

The writers of this journal article - it's in Nature and authors include John Ioannidis, cited above - suggest scientists often attempt to game the system in order to achieve high publication numbers against their name to impress superiors.

As Ian Sample states:

The academic system incentivises journals and researchers to publish exciting findings, and citations are taken into account for promotion and tenure. But history suggests that the more dramatic the results, the more likely they are to be wrong.

Methods used can also be fault. The Nature article quoted above is titled,  "Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience". Wow! What a mountain of implications that statement sets down in the middle of those who are trying to reconcile the brain/mind conflict that a few scientists loudly promote. 

A further important issue is highlighted in that key Nature article as part of its conclusion.

Small, low-powered studies are endemic in neuroscience. ... Nevertheless, we should not assume that science is effectively or efficiently self-correcting. There is now substantial evidence that a large proportion of the evidence reported in the scientific literature may be unreliable. Acknowledging this challenge is the first step towards addressing the problematic aspects of current scientific practices and identifying effective solutions.

Finally, we need to consider another challenge to the reliability of  what is purported to be a scientific conclusion. And that challenge is wokeism, which arised from the Critical Justice Theory derived from the Frankfurt School's social theory approach in analysing society and the roots of injustice. By way of explanation:

On the political left, wokeness sometimes drifts into wokeism—a system of thought and behavior characterized by intolerance, policing the speech of others, and proving one’s own superiority by denouncing others. 

Within American society especially CJT has taken hold of academia, the mainstream news media, and largely, the Democratic Party. A feature of the American practice of this theory is the soft totalitariansm shown in enforcing its manifesto, which covers the diminishing of the status of the traditional family, and the rejection of the male/female reality of each human person. 

How this affects the reliability of the scientific endeavour was made clear by the capitulation of a heretofore reputable scientific website to the wokeism afflicting the United States. I'm referring to the website Science-Based Medicine, which has betrayed its previously principled goal of "evaluating medical treatments and products of interest to the public in a scientific light, and promoting the highest standards and traditions of science in health care". (Source)

This is what has happened:

If you read the site’s recent coverage..., you will come away thinking there is a big, broad, impressive body of evidence for youth gender medicine, that there isn’t any actual controversy here at all. Rather than evaluate the available evidence carefully, SBM defaults to just about every activist trope that has come to dictate the terms of this debate in progressive spaces. This is a disturbing example of what complete ideological capture of an otherwise credible information source looks like. Science-Based Medicine has “bought into the hype and failed to ask the hard questions”.(Source)

The topic that gave rise to SBM's loss of reputation is "how to best help gender dysphoric children and adolescents — that is, young people who feel a great deal of distress about their biological sex, which they will often (though not always) describe as a sense of profound identity mismatch and/or being “trapped in the wrong body”. (Source)  

This website's meltdown is chronicled by Jesse Singal, who has built up a formidable expertise on this issue. He has written a long account of how SBM's principals ran a book review of Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The reviewer, Dr Harriet Hall, who had written 700 articles on the website, was favourable in her review.

Lo and behold, in response to pushback to the positive review, the principals "decided to retract the review entirely, replacing it with a statement that it had failed to meet SBM’s normal editorial standards and denying that the move was related to political pressure from the SBM community or anyone else".   

Singal states:

SBM has, in the wake of this retraction, published three articles about Shrier, Hall’s review of her book, and the broader controversy over youth gender medicine...

All three articles contain major errors and misunderstandings and distortions, ranging from straightforward falsehoods to baffling omissions to the re-regurgitation of inaccurate rumors first circulated years ago. Activist claims that stretch or violate the truth are repeatedly presented in a credulous manner, while the myriad weaknesses in the research base on youth gender medicine are simply ignored. 

And this brings us back to my starting point as to reasons for the sorry state of science. Singal identifies the political, the human, factors in play in doing science, especially in the present climate: 

The basic problem here is what Scott Alexander calls “isolated demands for rigor”. This is a standard aspect of human nature, a close sibling of confirmation bias. When it comes to claims we don’t want to believe we will insist the evidence isn’t actually as strong as it appears, demand more and more clarification, shift the goalposts of the debate, and nitpick if necessary; for claims we do want to believe, we’ll wave weak evidence right through the gate without interrogating it too harshly, even if it suffers from exactly the same problems. 

In an outstanding piece of scholarship, Singal goes through the "thought pieces" subsequently run on SBM, pinpointing where statements offered in rebuttal to Shrier's information fail to achieve that goal. Here is the link to the second part of  Singal's effort to bring accuracy and truth to the debate. 

By truth, I refer to Singal's discovery of made-up quotes in one of the pieces that SBM ran after Hall's review was retracted. Though the principals did make some alterations to the pieces SBM ran when notified by Singal, it seems that the professional standing of the principals - one is academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine and the other is professor of surgery and oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine (to keep it brief ) - is no safeguard in what should be a clear-cut case of applying science-based medicine to a controversial topic. 

Without defenders from within science, the public is on its own. Bravo! Jesse Singal.

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How many children to have? Be generous!

More children or a home off the street? Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

Freddie deBoer, an American writer and academic, queries what it means to be pro-natalist. Does it mean that couples should have as many children as possible? He declares his support for the pro-natalist stance of "more humans, more human flourishing" - however, he poses a problem:

Isn’t that an argument for having all the babies, not just some babies? Wouldn’t this compel us to do everything we can to produce as many progeny as possible during our prime child-rearing years?

His challenge comes down to this:

If you think there’s a moral duty to have babies, by what rationale could you defend only having one or two or three?  

It's a good point to raise and it's worth looking at what a pro-natalist philosophy is. First, it's a philosophy of life where children are a blessing (from God) and where the family is set as the fundamental structure in society. Society and the state exist to support the family, given the essential contribution the family makes to society by way of caring for the needs of children and inculcating ethical, cultural, spiritual and social values so that they reach adulthood willing and able to serve the community.

Therefore, to answer deBoer, because of those duties, parents have to be responsible in weighing all the elements of their circumstances in order to make a responsible decision about parenthood. Here's an example of Church guidance for couples considering the number of children:

[Parents] will thoroughly take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those already born and those foreseen. For this accounting they will reckon on both the material and the spiritual conditions of the times as well as their state in life. Finally they will consult the interests of the family group, of society and of the Church. (50)

So there is nothing rash about such a decision. That is why pro-family policies can have an impact on family size decision-making. France has been particularly active on this, and its birthrate is significantly higher than comparable countries. [*]

In fact, many have commented on the statistics that show that women in particular want more children than they believe conditions allow. The New York Times reports on the finding that parents often feel overwhelmed:

As a result, the gap between the number of children that [U.S.] women say they want to have (2.7) and the number of children they will probably actually have (1.8) has risen to the highest level in 40 years. (From 1972 to 2016, men have expressed almost exactly the same ideal fertility rates as women: In a given year, they average just 0.04 children below what women say is ideal.)

Another factor to consider in the pro-natalist sphere is that there are areas where the Church condemns the decision to have a child. 

For example, the Church pleads with society not to condone, let alone encourage, the unfortunately common practice these days of "technological reproduction", or of single people or single sex couples contriving the birth of children that they wish to "have as their own". 

Here's how one Church document addresses the situation:

The desire to be a mother or father does not justify any "right to children," whereas the rights of the unborn child are evident. The unborn child must be guaranteed the best possible conditions of existence through the stability of a family founded on marriage, through the complementaries of the two persons, father and mother.[**]

And another document puts it this way:

A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of marriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right "to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of their parents,"  and "the right to be respected as a person from the moment of their conception." [***]

Still, the most common reason why pronatalists in developed countries do not have more children must have to be that society is a captive of consumerism and greed, pleasure and fame, and individualism. Parents are often distracted by the busyness and distorted expectations generated by social customs arising from these false values.

A change in values is also affecting Asia, including Vietnam where I live. A clear expression of this appeared in a Vietnamese newspaper article getting people's views on officials' appeal for families to have more children because Vietnam fears it will succumb to the social dis-ease linked to depopulation as in Japan and Korea. The newspaper report states:

Vu Gia Hien, a culture expert, said the low birth rate is also a matter of attitude. There has been a rise in materialism and individualism, he said. More people in [Ho Chi Minh City], the most modern in Vietnam, are focusing on finding a good job and and enjoying life, rather than dedicating themselves to a big family.

He said the city is adopting an increasingly materialistic view from more developed Asian countries [especially Korea and Singapore]. Beliefs about a child’s filial duty have also changed, he said. Fewer people now expect to depend on their children when they get old, and more are relying on insurance and savings.

However, the article does make clear that HCM City's birthrate of 1.46, the lowest in Vietnam, is severely affected by the high costs for a family trying to improve its living conditions. 

 The Church understands the difficulties of family life but urges generosity:

Trusting in Providence and refining the spirit of sacrifice, married Christians glorify the Creator and strive toward fulfillment in Christ when, with a generous human and Christian sense of responsibility, they acquit themselves of their God-given duty to procreate. Among the couples who fulfill their God-given task in this way, those merit special mention who with wise and common deliberation, and with a gallant heart, undertake to bring up suitably even a relatively large family. (50)

A very real example of why the Church encourages families to  life is given on deBoer's Substack post on this subject, where a comment by a mother naming herself Deco spells out the benefits a child can bring to parents and through them to society:

The biggest transformation was making me thoroughly invested in this world. Before I had my daughter, I could not care less about schools, neighborhoods, ideologies, politics, the future of our country, our culture, our world. I sat on the sidelines, watching in giggling amusement, feeling blessed that I was able to largely insulate myself against much of the annoyances in the ass-clown act that was life. 

I was going to do my time here on earth, have fun, be and do good in my tiny spot in the world, in my tiny social and professional circles, and check out when my time came. Having a child, the love of my life, has made me vulnerable and heavily invested in the world far beyond the tiny corner of it I'd previously carved out for myself.

...Before her, I was the quintessential selfish person, living only for myself. Now the stakes are sky high. There are many like me, people who don't focus on the long game because nothing tethers them to the future. 

For sure, children are a sign for society of fruitfulness, hope and solidarity. 

[*] See the New York Times report linked to on this post.

[**] Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 2005, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, U.S. edition (Washington).  

[***] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994,  Libreria Editrice Vaticana, CEPAC edition (Fiji).

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Technology sells spiritual opium to the masses

Electronic poison afflicts the young, but the rest of society, too

More worrying information has appeared in the past week about the power and impact of the products and platforms of the world's tech giants. In my post last week I showed how they were reshaping the way we live, harming young people especially, but transforming the way everyone relates to each other, whether friends or in our working life, and often dividing children from their parents. 

The latest news about the damage to society caused by the money-making machines that the big tech companies are - their profit margins are well above the norm within business generally - involves the Chinese conglomerate Tencent, but also Apple.

Reuters reported that Tencent had been forced to set new curbs on youngsters' access to its top video game, "Honor of Kings", after a state media article described online games as "spiritual opium" and "electronic poison". This criticism, expressed in an accurate and powerful manner, sent Tencent's shares tumbling as investors reckoned that "robber baron" days for the company may be coming to an end.

Tencent was also battered when Chinese prosecutors initiated a civil public-interest lawsuit against the company's popular social messaging app WeChat, adding that this was because its "youth mode" does not comply with laws protecting minors. Young people have certainly been neglected by the dominant players in the tech world.

Another example of that was Apple's admitting, after long campaigns by groups and agencies tyring to protect children online, that at last it saw the need to scan US iPhones for images of child abuse in order to curb the trade in this form of pornography.

 John Clark from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said:

With so many people using Apple products, these new safety measures have lifesaving potential for children who are being enticed online and whose horrific images are being circulated in child sexual abuse material.

Children left to play with a smartphone in their hands can easily be persuaded to do what they would never consider if they were supervised by their parents. However, once again, parents can be too busy or distracted because of the impact of technology, or just unaware of its dangers, to keep up the necessary oversight that new tech devices demands of parents.

In all this, China is showing itself willing to rein in its capitalist-corporate aristocracy because it retains a spiritual perspective as to the common good even in the midst of the Party's atheistic ideology. 

 As Reuters reported: 

Chinese authorities have called for minors to be better protected from online dangers, a sentiment echoed by state media this week which criticised the video gaming industry as well as online platforms that help promote celebrity culture.

The Verge adds some detail:

Tencent did not immediately comment about the lawsuit, but it said last week it would place restrictions on its "Honor of Kings" game —which the Chinese news article specifically referenced—for players under 18, limiting how long they can play the game daily. 

From Japan's Nikkei agency:

In 2018, the release of all new games stalled for months as Chinese authorities screened titles for any potential "bad influence" over minors.

Tencent's gaming business generated 156.1 billion yuan (US$24.1 billion) in revenue last year, accounting for over 30% of overall sales and ranking as the leading segment. The company invested heavily in titles capable of in-game purchases, a high-margin business.

Of course, it was not just the disregard of tech companies for the need to be proactive over the impact they are having in young people's lives that stirred the Chinese authorities. There was also the abusive behaviour toward customers and other businesses. The Verge continues:

The lawsuit is likely part of a larger crackdown by China on its largest tech companies in recent months; in April, it levied a $2.8 billion (18.23 billion yuan) fine against Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba because it claimed the company stifled competition. In July, the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered app stores to remove ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing’s app, claiming the company was collecting users’ personal data.

 And this from the Wall Street Journal:

As a result of China’s regulatory crackdown, the country’s large tech companies have come under greater scrutiny this year for practices that previously went unquestioned. One such issue raised by the tech-sector regulator is the “malicious blocking of website links” to other company sites and products, which keeps competitors locked out of major tech ecosystems and has created hard lines between rival platforms.

The point I am trying to drive home for greater awareness is that "what previously went unquestioned" in the evermore intrusive realm of new technology, run as it is in many parts of the world by the Big 5 American names, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon, but increasingly by Chinese entities also, must not be allowed to continue. 

The moral injury, that is, the damage to our emotions and spiritual integrity, inflicted by the design of the technologies or their associated devices which have been thrust at us without enough consideration of human needs, as we're rapidly realising, must be eliminated in the next generation of invention. Science and technology make a pathetic contribution to human advancement if each depletes the quality of life and curtails the common good.

In brief, and this is serious, we need to "unGoogle" our lives, in the wide sense, to have a thorough digital detox,  in order to maintain our integrity and ensure our spiritual resilience.

Bloomberg offers an insight into how we can reduce our ties to technology - and imagine if all the billions of excess cash earned by the elite few in the technology sector were put to a community use:

The State Council, China’s cabinet, published a circular Tuesday that outlined how Beijing aims to promote participation in sports and get more of the population to exercise. Those steps include renovating more than 2,000 sports parks, fitness centers and stadiums, as well as supporting small- and medium-sized companies that facilitate exercise, organize sporting events and produce fitness equipment. Shares of Anta, Li Ning and other firms in the sector rallied in response. 

I will leave you with two further articles that show how our day-to-day decision-making can be manipulated through the neglect of protection from technology - see here; and how the titans of technology can aspire to create a world in such a way that it rewards their own conglomerate handsomely even while producing new forms of "spiritual opium" within society. 

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Stories from the grateful and the living dead

Robert Webb in his London garden. Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Observer (cropped)

Instead of rushing madly back into "life" as the various impacts of  Covid-19 wane, I hope we make a deliberate effort to take stock of what the lockdowns and isolation and perhaps the fear of looking foolish by wearing a mask have taught us, or can teach us. As Winston Churchill said at the end of World War II: “Never let a good crisis go to waste". This was in the context of the effort to establish the United Nations organisation. 

Many people have found that their "life" pre-Covid was anything but fulfilling, rather, what was "normal" was a mess of misplaced goals, self-defeating moral decisions, superficiality and loneliness. Part of that superficiality was that unrestrained activity gave no time to assess what was really important in their life.

On the other hand, there have been those who have had - maybe still having - a rough time of it with the Delta variant of the virus now rampaging through cities and nations, but who have been led to see that there are important features of their life that make their life satisfying, that these provide a new direction for the future.

These features of life are prominent in lists of what enables a person to thrive: Relationships within the family and with friends, knowledge that the drive to earn more money is a killer when it comes to true happiness, time given instead to lasting works of literature or to the sweep of the cultural world, developing a personal skill or talent, and having an opportunity (and reason) to pray and meditate. 

That these features definitely are the key to a fulfilling life is borne out by the experience of people who have had a life-threatening condition. There is a symmetry between what they are grateful for and what is most important. We can look at two cases that highlight this point.

The first personal account was published this week where Andrew Stafford, a 50-year-old, talked about coming out the other side of open-heart surgery. He had had mental health difficulties over many years and he "had been warned of possible depression in the wake of the surgery".

However, he has been surprised at the outcome:

These days [...] I feel like a Zen master. Not that I’d recommend heart surgery as a solution to psychological trauma, but if nothing else it gave me a radical sense of perspective and gratitude, an attitude I wasn’t previously on familiar terms with.

For sure, gratitude is a neglected quality, firstly as it relates to being thankful for what exists or what happens in our life, but also as it extends to a readiness to show appreciation for something, and to return kindness.

Stafford states that he is newly grateful to his true friends, identified through their support amid the messy circumstances of his life, and also to strangers who stepped forward to carry some of his burden at the time of his surgery. In addition, he discovered that he could forgive those who let him down:

So I found forgiveness. I had always been harsh on myself. Now I realise how hard I had been on others, too. It was all just sweet life, and humans being human: magnificently multidimensional, maddeningly inconsistent. I was no different.

And joy: "Every second is a second chance. [...] I find fleeting moments of joy everywhere."

Finally, the practicalities of surviving a heart defect were another cause of gratitude: 

Most of all, I am grateful that I live in a country where, in the middle of a global pandemic, I was admitted to one of the best cardiac hospitals in the country, under the care of a brilliant surgeon and medical team, and walked away with a bill for $74 in medications.

The new perspective that his ordeal has given him allows Stafford to conclude:

I am outrageously lucky. The randomness of my good fortune is never lost on me. And yet I nearly threw away my own life more than once. I had to have it nearly taken away to rediscover my lust for it.

The second case of gratitude bubbling forth after a life-or-death situation involves a writer and actor who through a fortuitiously timed medical check was also found to need heart surgery to save his life.

Robert Webb reports one of his steps forward after his surgery, a change in the life he had been living: "Trying to be nicer on social media, limiting my contact with the news, turning inwards [...] the world feels new." Another: "I really did stop to smell the blossom in the trees; I listened to the songs of birds and admired the daffodils in all their trembling grace." 

The nutshell view:

Mainly I’m overtaken by gratitude. I was insanely lucky to get this over with before the virus struck, and my mended heart goes out to all those left waiting for treatment. I’m grateful for the Back [TV show] medical and to all the doctors and nurses, the ones we applaud on our doorstep every week and perhaps always should have. I wrote a book about someone getting a second chance and I thought at the time it was a work of fiction. I feel re-blessed by my children. I thank what higher will brought me to a wife like Abbie.

It's right and proper to thank that "higher will" who guides us in our lives, calling us from time to time to reflect on how we should live in order to be the best person we could possibly be, and to live life abundantly - see John 10:10.  In all, gratitude should prominent in our life as we use the Covid-19 crisis to set our life in order with a fresh perspective.

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Responding to "Social Justice" rhetoric

Language can be used well, meaning beautifully and accurately, or abused. To point out the difference here's an all-new Combatting Social Justice Rhetoric: A Cheat Sheet for Policy-Makers: 

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Catholic academy appoints new scientists

Priest and monk Gregor Mendel - discovered basis of genetics

There's no way to argue that religion is in conflict with science, certainly with regard to the Catholic Church, whose scientific members have included the founder of the study of genetics (Mendel) and the "Father of the Big Bang theory" (Lemaître).

In 1603 the Church supported the opening of an academy to bring scientists together and to encourage the study of the glorious world God has created. This academy faded after the death of its founder, but was reestablished in 1847 by Pope Pius IX and reconstituted in 1936 by Pope Pius XI.

Today, the members of the academy are eighty women and men from many countries who have made outstanding contributions in their fields of scientific endeavour. Many are not Catholics. Three new members have just been appointed, one a Nobel laureate in physics. They are:

Chen Chien-jen, an epidemiologist credited with handling Taiwan’s outstanding response to Covid-19. He earned his doctorate in epidemiology and human genetics from Johns Hopkins University in 1982. His research has focused on the long-term health hazards of environmental agents, such as arsenic, and on cancer risks of various hepatitis viruses.

Susan Solomon, a chemist and professor of environmental studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She worked for decades at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, conducted research in Antarctica and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. She is the founding director of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative, a university-wide coalition of experts working to address the challenges posed by climate change.

Donna Strickland, an optics physicist and professor at Ontario’s University of Waterloo; in 2018 she and Gérard Mourou won the Nobel Prize in physics for their development of chirped pulse amplification, a process for creating the intense laser pulses now used in industry and medicine, including for laser eye surgery. She has worked as a research associate at the National Research Council of Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and at Princeton University’s Advanced Technology Center for Photonics and Opto-electronic Materials. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations.

Since the conferences, deliberations and studies which it undertakes are not influenced by any one national, political or religious point of view, the academy constitutes an invaluable source of objective information upon which the Church can draw.

An objective assessment of new ideas arising in science is certainly required if monk Gregor Mendel's experience is anything to go by. In 1866 he published his conclusions from many years of experientation on the transmission of genetic traits only to be ignored: 

The science community ignored the paper, possibly because it was ahead of the ideas of heredity and variation accepted at the time. In the early 1900s, three plant biologists finally acknowledged Mendel’s work. Unfortunately, Mendel was not around to receive the recognition as he had died in 1884. (Source) 

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I agree! 'Imagine' is a stupid song!

John Lennon's song 'Imagine' came out in 1971 when I was in my early twenties. I loved the music, but as much as it's idealism appealed to me, the lyrics jarred because, as Lennon himself stated, the ideas could be out of the Communist Manifesto. That's not pleasant company. The song was used with a children's choir at the finale of the London Olympics in 2012, and now it appears at the opening of the Tokyo Olympics. Enough already! The song is a  failure - at least as an appeal for a united world. What Lennon proposes would destroy the unity of humanity.

The song's revival in Tokyo has prompted a video retort that dives into why 'Imagine' fails. From Los Angeles, Bishop Robert Barron, opens up how Lennon is way off track with his key ideas. In a slightly edited form, here's what Barron says: 

I’ve been a Beatles fan since I was about 12. Their songs have worked their way into my soul. In fact, I would say they probably provide my idea what good pop music sounds like, and of the four Beatles my favourite is John Lennon, who I consider to be perhaps the greatest popular songwriter of the 20th century. I love John Lennon with the Beatles, I loved him in his solo work.

I remember when he died in 1980 when he was killed. I was a college student in Washington and I deeply and sincerely mourned him.

now i say all that… just to let you know I’ve got absolutely nothing against the Beatles or against Lennon's work, But I must say I do not like the song “Imagine”.

This came to my mind when at the opening of the Tokyo Olympics the song was played and was sung by children's choir and then there were pre-recorded versions by different pop stars.

It was done as a kind of secular anthem. It was very clear that it was a song that should bring us all together.

I love the music. I think it's got a great arrangement. I love the way Lennon sang it - but I hate the lyrics of ‘Imagine’ and I bemoan the fact that it seems to become something of a secular anthem.

Look at some of these words: It begins this way, “Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us; above us only sky”.

Frankly, I can't imagine anything worse than that! To say “imagine there's no heaven, there's no hell”, means there is no finally absolute criterion of good and evil. There's no way finally to measure the difference between one person's private inclinations and another person's private inclinations.

There's no final moral judgment and, therefore, it's an invitation into a very dangerous space, the space described by the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky.  Once you stop believing in God then anything is permitted – a very dangerous space!

If you doubt me on this score, take a good hard look at the 20th Century. There were a lot of people in very influential political and cultural positions who imagined there was no heaven, and they piled up millions upon millions of corpses [under Hitler’s regime and the Communist powers in Russia and China]. This is nothing to get dreamy about. It’s a very dangerous proposition.

“Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too.”

First of all, I find it very amusing that they were singing this right after the parade of nations! So, into the Olympic stadium come all the different nations of the world and yet we're singing “Imagine there's no countries…”.

Again, the problem is not countries in themselves - that's just a way of naming what you know is particular to a given people. There's particularity to one's culture, one's political arrangement…, nothing wrong with countries in themselves.

The problem is when you bracket any moral consideration [with the idea that] there's nothing by which we can judge the activities of nations. We can say, “Well, that behaviour by a given country is no good and that one's better.”

See, [with] “imagine there's no heaven”, … there is no way to adjudicate disputes among nations.

Warfare comes from that much more than from countries in themselves. But what particularly rankles me in that verse – “no countries…nothing to kill or die for” - that's what we're always fighting about. But then the line at the end “and no religion, too” …

So, we've imagined there's no heaven, therefore there's no transcendent, there’s no God and now very clearly John Lennon wants us to imagine in this sort of dreamy-eyed way that there's no religion.

The implication common to many people on the secular left is that … nationalism is bad enough, but the real source of mischief is religion - that’s what people fight about.

Since about the 16th century [it’s been the] standard view that religious warfare is the source of all of our struggles. There was a study done about 20 years ago, a very, very careful objective study of all the wars in human history of which we have records. The conclusion was something like six percent of all the wars fought in human history could reasonably ascribe to religion. Far more deadly were tribalism disputes, political and colonial disputes.

In fact, look at the 20th Century again. Atheistic ideologies were responsible for far more violence than religion, so to this canard that religion is what we have got to get rid of if we want peace, I'd say au contraire: it's precisely when we bracket God, we bracket the transcendent, we bracket a sense of objective morality - that's when we have trouble.

Now I must admit the one that made me laugh out loud was when all these celebrities … singing this line: “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger; a brotherhood of man”.

I think all a lot of people hear is “brotherhood of man”. Now that is a wonderful thing, but go back to that opening line “imagine no possessions” and i tell you every single person singing that song was a multi-millionaire and I don't think it takes too great a leap of imagination to say that they probably all have multiple homes and fleets of cars and closets full of clothes.

In other words, I'd be willing to bet you a lot of money that they've got lots of possessions and I will give up my possessions the minute they give up theirs, and let's not hold our collective breath on that one.

Catholic social teaching would say there's nothing wrong with possessions in themselves. In fact, we defend the legitimacy of private property. The problem is if I lack a moral vision that allows me to place my own possessions within a wider moral context of the common good. That's when possessions can indeed become problematic - not possessions in themselves, but possessions apart from heaven.

Finally, if you want, apart from religion, apart from considerations of God, … to dream about that brotherhood of man [you have know] it is simply impossible to have a brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings if you bracket our common Father.

We can have economic and political and social and cultural organizations, and bonds with one another, but if you're talking about real brotherhood and sisterhood, in other words, a relationship of siblings, then that's impossible apart from a common father. If you bracket heaven, and bracket religion, you also ipso facto bracket anything like a brotherhood of man.

So, here's the bottom line: I love the Beatles, love John Lennon, love the music of ‘Imagine’; I mean, when it comes on the radio I still listen to it and sing along with it, but I don't take the words seriously.

We know that John Lennon was "a dreamer" - Lennon said he wanted a "nice" Communism - that he had a big heart, and a sharp social conscience, but this song showed he lacked a strong mind, the insight into the impact of sin that is needed to create a world where truly we all live as one. 

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