Josh Mitteldorf

Josh Mitteldorf studies evolutionary theory of aging using computer simulations. The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. This makes the mechanism challenging to understand and to model. more at http://mathforum.org/~josh

What Gödel Wrought

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The Enlightenment was a three-century European movement to tame the world under the reign of Reason. It began with René Descartes and Isaac Newton in the 17th century, expanding the domain of science; in the 18th century, Emmanuel Kant sought to rationalize faith itself, with his monograph, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. In … Read more

All together now…

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If a star is big enough to explode at the end of its natural life, but not big enough to form a black hole, it will explode on the outside, while collapsing on the inside from gravity. Collapse is halted when all the electrons and protons merge to form neutrons, and all the neutrons come … Read more

An adjustment to Newton’s gravity?

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For 85 years, astronomers have noted that there is more gravity than they can account for in the galaxies that they see, in clusters of galaxies, and in the dynamics of the whole universe. What is the invisible source of that extra attraction? Last week there was striking new evidence for a dark horse theory — … Read more

CO2 is the Least of our Worries

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Listen to the author reading this essay. Last week, Nobel physicist John Clauser came out of the Clausit to speak his own inconvenient truth about global warming and CO2 . No good deed goes unpunished. Another physicist who was a personal hero of mine has expressed similar views. This is a big subject, and I don’t feel engaged enough with … Read more

Placebo controls—gold standard for EFFICACY trials—have no place in SAFETY trials

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In a recent study of heart medications (REDUCE-IT), mineral oil was used as a “placebo”. Mineral oil is not a biological substance, and the body rejects it with nausea and diarrhea. Some of the adverse effects of mineral oil are listed here. There is no reason to use mineral oil as a “placebo” instead of (for example) olive … Read more

A Brief History of Science

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For those of us in the thick of it, there is great irony in the fact that the Scientific World View led to the deepest, most abstract theory in the history of science which actually falsified the Scientific World View. Most scientists today are acting as though this had never happened. ——————— From the time … Read more

It’s about time!

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“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!” — attributed variously to Yogi Berra and to Niels Bohr By the time you get to the end of this essay, you may be wondering whether Berra got the phrase from Bohr, or Bohr picked it up from a premonition of a Yogi-ism to come. … Read more

Origin of Life: Unsolved or Unsolvable?

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I am drawn to think about experimental facts that point to the need for rethinking the foundations of today’s science. This has been a theme of some of the articles on this blog page. I consider the mystery of life’s origin to be a phenomenon in this category. How did the first living things emerge … Read more

Cosmic April Fool

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When Isaac Newton discovered the equations that govern motion of the planets through the heavens, he was able to solve them with pencil and paper much faster than the planets themselves were moving. Thus he was able to make useful predictions. Solving the equation — even when it involves oodles of numerical computations by hand … Read more