The bacteria are reducing gold ions to elemental gold. They are not "creating" or "extracting" gold. This simple oxidation/reduction chemistry.

This study now makes clear how a meme like "Obama is responsible for rising gas prices" starts and moves around. The people repeating it are too dumb to realize how what they are saying is impossibly stupid.

Why is this absolute bullshit repeated non-stop about the ACA? Or some other bullshit variant like "we have to pass it to see what's in it"? Nancy Pelosi never said that. Nobody ever said that. It is as accurate as saying Al Gore claimed he invented the internet. I guess if you repeat a lie enough, people really do believe it.

Anyone know if this would violate contracts with AT&T? I mean, if you agreed to a 2-year contract, and after a month they double their rates, I would think you would then be allowed to move to a different carrier.

I just noticed these people at Berkeley are SCIENTISTS! They're just like the the other scientists at NASA and elsewhere who are obviously faking their data to get those lucrative NSF grant funds! Really, people, how can scientists be trusted at all. What we need are a panel of non-scientists, like, say, the GOP candidates for president, to carefully evaluate the data until this elaborate hoax of Al Gore's can finally be forgotten.

I was enjoying that story immensely right up until the point where I remembered the first law of thermodynamics.

When I RTFA, it reminds me a bit of the Davis-Barnes effect, as described by Irving Langmuir's talks on Pathological Science.

Agree on the weird "informative" mod. The only "life form" on that list is a virus, assuming you classify them as alive.

I believe the last two digits of pi are 42.

Wow. That's the exact opposite of what happened. Rather's methods and papers were reviewed by a panel and found to contain deliberate fraud. That's why he was fired from CBS.

This is like the "no transitional fossils" argument against evolution. Every time you point out one, the deniers insist it's not a transitional fossil and continue the zombie meme of denial. Or the "evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument". It doesn't matter how many times you refute this, it will continue on and on as a zombie.

Both climate change and evolutionary biology are similar, right? Both fields are given millions in funding, right? If either one discovers the truth (that neither climate change nor evolution is true), they will lose all that money for their work. Hence, they are suppressing negative data. Neither evolution nor climate change is really science.

Well, that's the argument anyway.

Try telling that to the Police when they stop you. Works every time.

Hate to be a buzzkill, but I've cured cancer in mice dozens of times with experimental agents.

None of those agents have ever cured cancer in humans. Most of them have done nothing in clinical trials. Survival rates for lung cancer, for example, haven't changed since the 1960s.

The lack of new cancer drugs has gotten so bad that some drug companies want to move the goalpost. Instead of objective goals like increased survival, the increase in more subjective things like "quality of life" is touted as the benefit of the drug.

I've often wondered if they couldn't do this sort of thing with DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, and Majel Barrett's voices to create a new animated series of TOS.

I watched the complete ST:TAS last fall and was amazed at the level of sophistication it had with respect to the writing, featuring the likes of David Gerrold and Larry Niven. I'd like to see it tried again with other SF writers.

I'm pretty sure I heard on Art Bell that fiber optics weren't invented on Earth. They were discovered in the Roswell crash. Kao should return this prize.