Sohan Lalwani

<3 I love this type of science

The incompleteness of the fossil record is acknowledged in every paleontology textbook. That is why scientists use many methods to cross-check the fossils. These include stratigraphy, radiometric dating, molecular clocks, and comparative anatomy. None of these stand alone, and none of them rely on belief or assumption. They are grounded in physics, chemistry, and biology and are all testable and falsifiable. You do not get to hand-wave them away by pretending they are just "interpretations." Radiometric dating, which you seem to distrust, is one of the most rigorously tested tools in geology and paleontology. The decay rates of isotopes like uranium two thirty eight and potassium forty are not estimated. They are measured and have been repeatedly confirmed in the lab. These decay rates are unaffected by temperature, pressure, chemical environment, or anything else that would make them unreliable. They act as atomic clocks and are trusted by physicists, chemists, and geologists alike. When scientists date rocks, they do not just look at one isotope. They check several systems that decay at different rates. When they all converge on the same date, you have confidence. This is called concordia dating, and it works. We can date moon rocks, meteorites, Earth rocks, and volcanic ash layers with this method. And it works the same everywhere. The reliability is not up for debate. It is experimental fact. Now let us look at faunal succession, which you called a biased assumption. Actually, it is an observed regularity in the stratigraphic column. We find trilobites below dinosaurs, and we find dinosaurs below mammals. Always. Everywhere. You can look across continents, and the pattern holds. This is not something scientists invented because it fits a theory. The theory arose because the pattern was observed. It is inductive reasoning. You bring up Darwin and habitat diversity. Yes, Darwin noted that islands and continents with similar climates had different species. But that is not an argument against evolution or the fossil record. It is a key insight that helped him understand descent with modification. The Galapagos finches are not examples of separate creation. They are textbook cases of adaptive radiation, where a common ancestor diversified into multiple species to fill different ecological niches. The same logic applies when comparing ancient fossils. A Triassic archosaur and a Jurassic theropod are not simply animals from two different habitats. They are clearly related in form, limb structure, pelvis shape, and dentition. They follow a progression through time that is backed up by both the fossil record and molecular data. There is no case in the fossil record where modern elephants are found in Cambrian rocks or where whales are found with Permian amphibians. If the fossil record were just habitat-based differences, we would expect complete chaos. But we do not find chaos. We find order. Let us talk about speciation. You claim there is no evidence for the origin of species through evolution. That is simply incorrect. Speciation has been observed directly, both in the lab and in the field. Cichlid fish in African lakes have split into dozens of species in a few thousand years. Fruit flies have formed new reproductively isolated populations in laboratory settings. Even in vertebrates, like the apple maggot fly, we have seen populations diverging into distinct forms that no longer interbreed. This is speciation. But yes, macroevolution takes time. You cannot expect to see an elephant evolve from a shrew in one lifetime. That is not how gradual accumulation of change works. Evolution is not about instant transformations. It is about small genetic changes accumulating over millions of years. The fossil record gives us snapshots of these stages. For example, we have step-by-step transitions from early horses to modern ones, from jawed fish to tetrapods, from early whales to modern cetaceans. On the topic of the asteroid, it is not just a guess that a meteor ended the Cretaceous. We have a global layer of iridium, which is rare on Earth but common in asteroids. We have a spike in shocked quartz, glassy spherules, and soot that matches a global firestorm. And we have the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, a one hundred eighty kilometer wide impact structure that dates precisely to sixty six million years ago. The data do not suggest an asteroid hit. The data scream it. The extinction pattern fits the impact hypothesis too. Marine plankton, non avian dinosaurs, flying reptiles, and ammonites disappear right at that boundary. Mammals, birds, and some reptiles survive. This selective extinction is what you would expect from a sudden catastrophic event. And it is not just about dinosaurs. About seventy five percent of species went extinct worldwide. It left a mark in every ecosystem and in every geological record. You also bring up organisms like cockroaches, coelacanths, and mosquitoes and ask why they are still around if evolution is real. That is a strange question. Evolution is not a ladder. It does not imply that all organisms must change dramatically or go extinct. If a form works well, it can remain stable. Coelacanths live deep in oceans and have few predators and little environmental change. They did not have strong selective pressures to change. They are not unchanged, by the way. Their genes show change. But their basic body plan remains because it still works. On dominance, your skepticism is misplaced. Dinosaurs dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over one hundred fifty million years. That is not a theory. That is what the fossil record shows. Their bones appear in nearly every Mesozoic terrestrial deposit, in vast numbers and diversity. From the dog-sized Compsognathus to the towering Argentinosaurus, they filled herbivore and carnivore niches. They were not isolated anomalies. They were the core of the ecosystem. Compare that with today. Mammals dominate land ecosystems. That is not controversial. You would not say mammals are a myth because echidnas and crocodiles still exist. Dominance does not mean every single animal fits the pattern. It means the majority of biomass and ecological roles are filled by that group. Dinosaurs did that in their time. You suggest that scientists interpret fossils to fit their ideas. That is backward. Scientific interpretations change as new data appear. Archaeopteryx was discovered after Darwin proposed evolution. It had feathers and teeth and a long bony tail. It changed the understanding of birds. Tiktaalik was predicted to exist in a specific rock layer, and was found exactly there. It is a transitional form between fish and tetrapods. These are not retrofitted interpretations. These are testable predictions fulfilled by evidence. Also, you say evolution is not directly observed. That is simply false. We observe bacterial evolution all the time. Resistance to antibiotics evolves in real time. We see influenza evolve so rapidly that we need new vaccines every year. Evolution is not stuck in the past. It is happening now. It is observed in genetics, in morphology, and in ecological studies. It is one of the most testable and confirmed theories in all of science. The claim that we only "retreat to the fossil record" is a gross misrepresentation. Evolutionary biology rests on multiple lines of evidence. Paleontology is just one of them. Others include embryology, comparative anatomy, biogeography, and molecular genetics. The patterns are consistent across all these fields. For example, the gene sequences of humans and chimpanzees are over ninety eight percent identical. Our chromosomes match nearly one for one, including the fused chromosome two. The origin of species has not only been inferred. It has been documented in ring species, in laboratory studies, in natural experiments, and in comparative genomics. It is not a last resort. It is the main course. If you want to believe otherwise, you are free to do so. But you are not challenging a few weak guesses. You are taking a swing at one hundred sixty years of cumulative research supported by hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed studies. Science is not built on suspicion. It is built on evidence. You can be skeptical all you want, but if you want to reject radiometric dating, the fossil record, biogeography, genetics, and observed speciation, then you are not just disagreeing with evolution. You are disagreeing with physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. That is a tall hill to climb. You do not have to believe the Earth is ancient or that life evolved. But if you are going to reject all that, you better have a system that can explain everything science already explains, and more. Because evolution explains why your arms and a bird’s wings share the same bones. It explains why embryos of mammals, reptiles, and birds all start off with pharyngeal arches and tails. It explains why marsupials dominate in Australia but not in Africa or Eurasia. It explains patterns in nature that are otherwise inexplicable. So yes, I can tell you which species dominated after the dinosaurs. Mammals did. Especially placental mammals. They radiated into new niches, leading to ungulates, primates, bats, whales, and eventually humans. That is not a wild guess. That is observable in the fossil record, in the molecular clock, and in comparative anatomy. The burden is not on scientists to stop using evidence. The burden is on critics to present better explanations. So far, I have seen a lot of doubt but not a single alternative model that explains the same phenomena with greater accuracy or predictive power. That is the real difference between science and suspicion. Science works. Doubt just stalls. It isn’t “some meteorite” like the smaller ones that often crash into the earths atmosphere, it was 6 damn miles long. There is a ton of evidence to confirm this including the impact site itself in the Chixclub impact site. Also, during the Cretaceous biological diversity was extremely high, within the fossil record it is seen as ending abruptly. Biodiversity as a whole was not under threat as seen during the Permian or Triassic, it ending spontaneously suddenly by external factors is a way more probable explanation that it being gradually. Instead of attacking paleontologists with no evidence, gather some form of evidence to stimulate discussion.

I appreciate your clarification about evolution not being synonymous with speciation. I used to think evolution always meant the formation of new species, but I’ve come to understand that evolution, at its core, is any change in allele frequencies within a population over time. Speciation is just one potential outcome of that process, not the definition itself

to some extent you are right to point out that survival in nature is not always about being the strongest or “fittest” in the everyday sense. Many factors, including chance, injury, or being young and vulnerable, affect whether an individual lives or dies. Fitness in biology is really about how well an organism passes on its genes to the next generation, not just how long it lives or how tough it seems. It’s also true that no individual organism lives forever. What evolution cares about is the ability of a species, or more precisely, populations within a species to reproduce and pass on traits. So, survival isn’t the end goal by itself; it’s reproduction that matters. Regarding acquired traits, modern science shows that most changes an organism gains during its life (like muscle growth or injuries) are generally not inherited by offspring because they don’t change the genetic code in reproductive cells. Though there are some exceptions involving epigenetics, these don’t replace the role of DNA changes in evolution. Evolution happens over many generations through small changes in populations. These changes can accumulate and lead to new species forming over time. So while individuals don’t evolve, populations do, through processes like natural selection, mutation, and genetic drift. Dude this doesn’t answer the question at all or help them understand, it’s just snarkiness. Calm down for gods sake. You don’t seem to understand this well so I will ask you a question simply, after the KPG asteroid what type of anomaly rose to ecological dominance? Animal not Anomaly apologies

This is funny as hell but not good for current context. I’d avoid doing this next time. My friend, please learn to not take everything at face value. The intent of this person was not ill, it was numerous :)

Oh, ok. Remember kids, the west didn’t spread HIV to make you suffer!

Though the claim has no current evidence, it still exists and is perfectly viable propaganda to a person that doesn’t read at all.

Gaining such estimates on casualties are always flawed, as such is the case in Gaza. Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies have committed war crimes and ethnic based violence. Keep in mind a huge reason this war started was an Russian minority ethnic group in Ukraine claiming they faced discrimination. Here’s a bright idea o’ intelligent nations. Let’s not bomb the shit out of each others health facilities. 🤯 I put the “🇵🇸🤝🇮🇱” so everyone understands my point that peace is required in that both sides must reach an agreement. What I did do is assist in locating alternate routes for Gaza’s civilians to free in the meantime. Again, it’s quite a pathetic statement right now hence why I am working on it further.

Sure, this I can do potentially.

Damn it. Well what else can I do?

I am currently writing a formal statement to the UN, I will be including my email in the rare scenario they do see it, here is it so far. being who still believes that even in war, there must be limits. There must be boundaries that protect the innocent, the wounded, the children, and the caretakers who risk everything to keep them alive. That is why I am urging the world to enforce a six to eight kilometer nonconflict zone around all hospitals in Gaza. This is not a symbolic gesture. This is a rational, calculated, and absolutely necessary step to prevent more death and irreversible trauma. Let us start with standard artillery. The M795 155 millimeter high explosive projectile, commonly used by NATO-aligned forces, has a fragmentation radius of approximately 150 meters and a danger radius exceeding 500 meters. The M982 Excalibur, a GPS-guided artillery shell, has a smaller circular error probable but still generates lethal fragmentation over wide areas. Cluster munitions such as the M483A1 or the Israeli M85 deliver dozens of submunitions, each capable of detonating over a radius of 20 meters, often failing to explode on impact and leaving behind live ordnance in civilian areas. Thermobaric weapons, including the Russian TOS-1A and various air-dropped fuel-air explosives, can affect structures and human lungs within a radius of 500 to 2000 meters due to overpressure and heat. These weapons create blast waves that cannot be precisely contained, especially in densely built environments. These weapons are not designed for surgical use in cities. They should be explicitly banned from use in Gaza’s urban sectors. Even drone-dropped munitions such as those deployed from IAI Harop loitering munitions or Elbit SkyStriker systems can cause disproportionate civilian damage when detonated within residential zones. The collateral effects of aerial thermobarics or wide-area explosives violate the principles of distinction and proportionality enshrined in international humanitarian law. Now consider the geography. In Gaza, no hospital is isolated. They are all surrounded by apartment towers, clinics, daycares, and breadlines. When a military objective appears within two kilometers of a hospital, the hospital becomes tactically surrounded. Even if the building is not struck directly, the concussive wave and collapse of adjacent structures can render it unusable. Let me be specific about where civilians must be given a safe chance to flee. From northern Gaza, residents near Jabalia and Beit Lahia must be allowed to evacuate through the corridor beginning near Street 10 in Beit Hanoun. The precise recommended checkpoint for initiating civilian movement is at coordinates 31.5553° N, 34.5442° E. From there, they should be funneled south along the Al-Sikka corridor, with a protected secondary waystation established at 31.5416° N, 34.5299° E. This route bypasses the most heavily targeted eastern districts and connects with central medical staging areas within a safe six kilometer radius. In central Gaza City, civilians and ambulances from the Rimal and Tal al-Hawa districts should evacuate using the Al-Rashid coastal road. The optimal emergency corridor should initiate at 31.5026° N, 34.4491° E, moving southwest along the coastline, with a protected transit checkpoint near 31.4757° N, 34.4015° E. This route remains relatively flat and avoids areas previously cratered by artillery. It is crucial that all airburst munitions and drones be restricted within an eight kilometer radius of this evacuation path. Further south, in Khan Younis, families trapped in eastern neighborhoods such as Abasan and Bani Suheila must have clear access through agricultural roads leading westward. The designated staging checkpoint should begin at 31.3535° N, 34.3469° E, moving west along the Route 4 bypass road toward the humanitarian checkpoint at 31.3508° N, 34.3080° E. Military assets must remain outside an eight kilometer perimeter from this corridor to ensure safe passage to the European Gaza Hospital and affiliated relief shelters. From Rafah, where overcrowding has turned temporary tents into permanent encampments, evacuation efforts must prioritize the zone beginning at 31.2869° N, 34.2570° E. From there, movement northward must be enabled toward the open transit zone near 31.3124° N, 34.2822° E, which sits along one of the last viable open spaces not yet subject to aerial bombardment. This pathway, if kept free from guided missile or indirect fire systems, could serve as an evacuation artery toward UN-coordinated aid stations. But these routes only work if the tools of war are kept far enough away. Do not use 155 millimeter artillery shells within ten kilometers of residential hospitals. Do not use cluster munitions within urban blocks. Do not deploy thermobaric weapons in cities under siege. Do not permit drone strikes in corridors where civilians move by foot or stretcher. The Geneva Conventions demand that hospitals and civilians be protected. But protection does not mean declarations or empty statements. It means calculating blast radii. It means drawing real-world perimeters. It means saying clearly which weapons should never be fired where people sleep, heal, or bleed. Six kilometers gives margin for error. Eight gives space for life to continue. We have the maps. We have the coordinates. We know the blast zones. If we choose not to enforce these buffers, we are no longer watching a war. We are watching a slow annihilation, enabled by silence. I have seen doctors suture wounds while standing in puddles of their own hospital’s drinking water. I have seen bloodied children wheeled across rubble on plastic tabletops because gurneys are gone. I have seen desperate families running into open air because the basement shelter is already full of bodies. This is not collateral. This is collapse. And it is preventable. A six to eight kilometer nonconflict zone around hospitals and civilian corridors is not idealism. It is operational realism. It is the legal minimum. It will not stop the war. But it will protect the places where humanity still survives. If we cannot spare six kilometers to protect the healers, then we have already surrendered our claim to civilization. Six kilometers minimum. Eight if you care enough. That is not just a line. It is the last one left. It is quite pathetic,, but it’s what I have at the moment. I need any and all suggestions possible for information to be included.

I was talking with some folks on here I think it was @studiot and I got the same error tryna reenter the thread.

Perhaps try to draw attention from the scientific community. Here’s my best advice, the idea they have should be stored privately in the Open Science Framework (OSF) and the idea could be shared on ResearchGate for communication on it.

My friend, I mean you. Now I feel as safe as civilians once Sarajevo was not being sieged. Yipee!

I’d like to know where in a rats ass we concluded this Yes with all the unneeded side commentary and sarcasm Can we stop victimizing and jumping the gun? Please stop assuming the other sides position or motives, it’s quite frankly stupid. Please stop twisting my words, I’m not blaming anyone for facism or racism, kindly attempt to gain nuance for once.

It does Dawg what are we talking about now

I hear your concern, and I agree that we should always be wary of relying on surface-level knowledge. But with respect, it's not accurate to assume that pointing out prominent women in history is simply parroting factoids or ignoring deeper structures. Recognizing that societies have long been male-dominated does not mean we should erase the contributions of women who challenged those structures. In fact, acknowledging those women is a necessary part of understanding the full picture — they were often working against the dominant current, which makes their impact even more significant. To say otherwise is to flatten history into an either-or binary, when in reality it’s far more layered and complex. This is like the 4% statement. Speaking with the terms modern medicine, there is plenty of information on women’s health and such. I’d say it perhaps needs a more robust database as do all forms of medicine. Saying it’s overall lacking is very misleading.

Lord, my friend when did I say it’s a one off I also don’t remember ever starting this thread, how did this appear?

Zinaida Grecianîi, Wonnie Boedhoe, Wilma Salgado, Violeta Chamorro, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Verica Kalanović, Valérie Pécresse, Tansu Çiller, Tarja Halonen, Syda Namirembe Bumba, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Sophie Thévenoux, Sanna Marin, Roza Otunbayeva, Quentin Bryce, Portia Simpson-Miller, Penny Wong, Patricia Busignani, Ossouka Raponda, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, Nancy Astor, Mira Cosic, Milka Planinc, Michèle Jean, Michelle Bachelet, Mette Frederiksen, Mary Robinson, Marie-Christine Mboukou, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, Maria Pintasilgo, Maria Luis Albuquerque, Margaret Thatcher, Liz Truss, Lamia Assi, Laura Liswood, Laura Chinchilla, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Kim Campbell, Khaleda Zia, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Julia Gillard, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, Jeanne Sauvé, Iveta Radičová, Ingrida Šimonytė, Indira Gandhi, Hilda Heine, Helena Embalo Nosolini, Hanna Suchocka, Golda Meir, Giorgia Meloni, Gail Shea, Felisa Miceli, Fatima Fialho, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Dilma Rousseff, Dalia Grybauskaitė, Clotilde Niragira, Christine Lagarde, Christina Romer, Bóurjana Krîto, Bintou Sango, Bidhya Devi Bhandari, Benazir Bhutto, Anne Craine, Angela Merkel, Aung San Suu Kyi, Soong Ching-ling, Sükhbaataryn Yanjmaa, Khertek Anchimaa-Toka, Isabel Perón, Corazon Aquino, Kim Campbell, Elisabeth Domitien, Jeanne Sauvé, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Dilma Rousseff, Michelle Bachelet, Julia Gillard, Margaret Thatcher, Tarja Halonen, Violeta Chamorro, Laura Chinchilla, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Khaleda Zia, Tansu Çiller, Roza Otunbayeva, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, Mary Robinson, Joyce Banda, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, Sylvie Kinigi, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, Ruth Perry, Catherine Samba-Panza, and Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir. Its a fairly small list as its about .1% due to a variety of factors and not it singularly being male dominated Women have overall had a profound effect on societies, believe it or not to some extent they birth the people who run the empires etc. Shocker I know. Some women do have unreasonable expectations, likewise men but it does exist. Tapputi-Belatekallim, Merit-Ptah, Peseshet, Agamede, Agnodice, Theano, Myia, Aesara of Lucania, Aspasia of Miletus, Artemisia of Caria, Cleopatra the Alchemist, Hypatia of Alexandria, Mary the Jewess, Maria Prophetissima, Perictione, Sosipatra of Ephesus, Hildegard of Bingen, Pandrosion of Alexandria, Trotula of Salerno, Metrodora, Paulis of Ephesus, Yuhanna bint al-Qass, Lubna of Córdoba, Miriam the Prophetess, Fatima al-Fihri, and Empress Wu Zetian. ARE SOME VERY NOTABLE PEOPLE. Overall it pales in comparison relative to popular male scientists but popularity ≠ importance. Some people like Lubna of Córdoba contributed substantially in mathematics and even lead the creation of the Medina Azahara So were colored male scientists, discrimination isnt only a female issue. :) UNRELATED but I happen to come from the nation with the first female president globally

Interesting, having knowledge on not just how many attempts happened but also details like the methods used or the circumstances around them does make a difference in understanding and ultimately preventing suicide. I do concede partially. Are you referring to someone?

My dude are we fucking serious. Constipation isn’t a disease either brother 😭 You have 0 evidence, and 0 clinical trial there is nothing to work with here man. You can’t say “this worked for 15 Chinese people so it’s gonna work for 8 billion other people.” THATS AN ANECDOTE. “My discovery, my theory, my law, my cure has solved my more than 6 years old problem of chronic constipation and also the same problem for other 15 people, I also hope I can use my physics talents to help other people solve their same problems.” My friend, this is a medical claim with 0 evidence at all, not the creation of the smallpox vaccine. With all due respect, calm down

Relative to science generally and in England, Rosalind Franklin played a crucial role in understanding the structure of DNA. Although she did not receive as much recognition in her lifetime, her X-ray images were key to identifying the double helix shape, which transformed genetics and biology. From Italy, Rita Levi-Montalcini discovered nerve growth factor, a protein essential for the development and survival of nerve cells. She won a Nobel Prize in medicine in 1986 for this discovery, which advanced our understanding of neurological diseases. In the United States, Barbara McClintock made pioneering discoveries in genetics, including the discovery of "jumping genes," which showed that DNA is more dynamic than previously thought. Her work won her the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983. Women have also made major contributions in fields beyond biology and physics. For example, Chien-Shiung Wu, a Chinese-American physicist, conducted important experiments that disproved a fundamental law in physics, changing how scientists understood atomic behavior. Even in ancient times, women like Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician and astronomer in Egypt, taught and advanced knowledge in geometry and philosophy. Though historical records are limited, her influence was strong enough to be remembered through centuries. Relative to mathematics , in the 18th century, Émilie du Châtelet from France translated and explained Isaac Newton’s work on calculus and physics, making it accessible to wider audiences and influencing Enlightenment science. In the 19th century, Sofia Kovalevskaya, a Russian mathematician, became the first woman in modern Europe to earn a doctorate in mathematics. She made significant advances in analysis and partial differential equations, and she was a respected university professor in Sweden. American mathematician Emmy Noether, often called the mother of modern algebra, revolutionized abstract algebra and theoretical physics in the early 20th century. Her theorem linking symmetries and conservation laws remains fundamental in physics today. In the mid-20th century, Mary Cartwright from England contributed to chaos theory and nonlinear differential equations, work that later influenced fields as diverse as meteorology and engineering. Contemporary women mathematicians include Manjul Bhargava, though male, often credited with promoting women in math, and more directly, women like Maryam Mirzakhani from Iran. Mirzakhani was the first woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal, mathematics’ highest honor, for her work in geometry and dynamical systems. According to UNESCO data, as of the early 2020s, women earn roughly 30 to 50 percent of bachelor’s degrees in mathematics worldwide, depending on the country. For example, in the United States, women earned about 43 percentof undergraduate math degrees in recent years. In Eastern European countries, that percentage is often higher. My significant condolences, no person should ever have to see nor experience such. I am here if you wish to “vent” =)

Older statistics may be more flawed or not have as accurate data comparative to newer studies

Its an older paper as you stated, the majority of modern statistics points to a 1-5-2x rate.

How so? In education, science, literature?