# kb

id: science-on-tap-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_on_Tap-0.md
category: reference
title: Science on Tap
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_on_Tap
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:10.740969+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-on-tap-20260505-0
summary:
Science on Tap is the social-cultural initiative of Yivsam Azgad, head of the Media Department and art curator of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The project began in 2010, under the title "Beer, Science, and Fun", as a gesture to the city of Rehovot on its 120th anniversary. In this framework, some 35 scientists and graduate students went to bars and pubs in Rehovot to talk with the patrons about open questions in science and the newest advances on the forefront of global science. On the same night, research students went to the city center and led a “science comics” session for children in which they created their own science comics, inspired by the Nano Comics series put out by the Weizmann Institute of Science and edited by Yivsam Azgad. This initiative was highly successful and was covered by the media in Israel and the world. The scientists, artists, and politicians posed a challenge to the organizers: To reproduce this success in Tel Aviv. In response to the challenge, Azgad decided, with the support of the Weizmann Institute of Science president, Prof. Daniel Zajfman, to organize the event in Tel Aviv under a new name: Science on


id: science-outreach-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_outreach-0.md
category: reference
title: Science outreach
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_outreach
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:12.020189+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-outreach-20260505-0
summary:
Science outreach, also called education and public outreach (EPO or E/PO) or simply public outreach, is an umbrella term for a variety of activities by research institutes, universities, and institutions such as science museums, aimed at promoting public awareness (and understanding) of science, including trust-building, and making informal contributions to science education. == Scope and history == While there have always been individual scientists interested in educating the public, science outreach has recently become more organized. For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) now requires all of its projects to organize suitable outreach activities. Also working to inform the public are organizations such as Communicating Astronomy to the Public and the Washington Declaration on Communicating Astronomy to the Public that organize conferences for the public on science issues and make efforts to put outreach on a more general institutional footing. Recently, an increasing number of projects have hired designated outreach scientists (part-time or full-time) that handle public relations for their project. There are also specialized outreach providers such as the Education branch of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado and the Education and Public Outreach Group at Sonoma State University which offer to organize a project's outreach


id: science-theatre-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_theatre-0.md
category: reference
title: Science theatre
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_theatre
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:13.289399+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: science-theatre-20260505-0
summary:
Science theatre is a form of theatre or set of performances in which science is central. It aims to give insight into the essence or impact of science by stimulating thinking about science or the societal impact of science. == Examples == Within science theatre, several approaches exist. Roughly speaking, a distinction can be made between the genres in which science or technology is more or less a subject and theatrical goals are central the genres in which science or technology is central and theatre is a more or less accidental means of stimulating the understanding of the artefacts, methodology, concepts and functioning of science and technology the genres in which science or technology is central and theatre is a more or less accidental means of stimulating the understanding of and discussion on societal functioning, meaning and impact of science and technology A famous representative of the first genre is the piece Copenhagen by Michael Frayn. Examples of the second genre are pieces by chemist and Nobel Prize winner Carl Djerassi, while pieces by the English science theater group Y-touring fits into the third genre. The latter has been visiting successful secondary schools for years with pieces about, for example,


id: scienceupfirst-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScienceUpFirst-0.md
category: reference
title: ScienceUpFirst
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScienceUpFirst
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:14.518439+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scienceupfirst-20260505-0
summary:
ScienceUpFirst is a Canadian initiative launched to counter misinformation online, especially about COVID-19. Launched January 25, 2021, it brings together independent scientists, health care providers and science communicators. == Goals and history == The initiative is the result of conversations between Senator Stan Kutcher and Timothy Caulfield, who were discussing ways to counter misinformation about COVID-19. In April 2021, the Government of Canada announced $2.25 million in funding for two new projects to increase uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, one of which was ScienceUpFirst. The initiative received $2,590,682 in new funding through the Canadian Association of Science Centres from the Public Health Agency of Canada's Immunization Partnership Fund. The groups aims at disseminating information created by its members or selected from credible sources. Starting in March 2021, it also plans to track misinformation online and post science-based content to oppose it. In addition to recruiting athletes and celebrities, it's building a network of volunteers to increase the distribution of the selected information. The initiative will be especially active against misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination, which threatens to have an impact on vaccination rates. Caulfield commented that the amount of disinformation circulating in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is unlike anything experienced


id: skype-a-scientist-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_a_Scientist-0.md
category: reference
title: Skype a Scientist
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_a_Scientist
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:15.743354+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: skype-a-scientist-20260505-0
summary:
Skype a Scientist is a nonprofit educational organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that enables scientists to video conference with students in classrooms. It began as an informal program in 2017, founded by Sarah McAnulty while she was a graduate student at the University of Connecticut. As of 2019, almost 15,000 classrooms and over 7,000 scientists from a total of 43 countries had participated in video conferencing sessions. == History == Sarah McAnulty came up with the idea for Skype a Scientist in 2016 while she was a graduate student in molecular and cell biology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Inspiration for the program came from the growing distrust of scientists and the rise of anti-intellectualism in US society. McAnulty was concerned that scientists were portrayed in media as "cold and calculating" and aimed to connect people with scientists through video conferencing to dispel those stereotypes, and to "get people trusting scientists again". In 2017, McAnulty matched volunteer scientists with teachers and classrooms by hand using a Google spreadsheet, which she shared repeatedly on Twitter and Tumblr. She collected information from scientists and teachers and matched them based on their time zones and type of scientist requested if available.


id: soapbox-science-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapbox_Science-0.md
category: reference
title: Soapbox Science
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapbox_Science
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:21.095376+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: soapbox-science-20260505-0
summary:
Soapbox Science is a public outreach platform that promotes women working in science and the research that they do. The events turns public spaces into an area for learning and debate, in the spirit of Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner. Soapbox Science encourages scientists to explain their research to members of the public using non-traditional methods (for example, there is no use of a projector or slides). Speakers typically make props at home to explain the processes behind their research. Soapbox Science launched in London in 2011, where it was led by Seirian Sumner and Nathalie Pettorelli. It aims to showcase eminent female scientists across the world. == History == Soapbox Science launched in London in 2011, led by Seirian Sumner and Nathalie Pettorelli and funded by L'Oreal UNESCO For Women in Science Scheme, Zoological Society of London and the Science & Technology Facilities Council. Soapbox Science formed a partnership with Speakezee in 2016. The first three annual events 2011-2013 ran in London, in 2014 events ran in London, Bristol, Dublin, and Swansea. In 2015 more cities joined including Exeter, Manchester, Newcastle, Belfast and Glasgow, all in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 2016, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Galway,


id: the-story-collider-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_Collider-0.md
category: reference
title: The Story Collider
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_Collider
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:22.289777+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-story-collider-20260505-0
summary:
The Story Collider is a US-based non-profit group dedicated to telling true, personal stories about science. Their mission is to empower both scientists and nonscientists alike with the skills they need to tell these stories and share them through their live shows and podcast, with the goal of exploring the human side of science. == Programs == === Live events === Every year, The Story Collider produces between 40 and 50 live storytelling shows across the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Canada featuring stories about science that are both "stand-up funny and powerfully confessional," according to The Wall Street Journal. The organization now regularly holds shows in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta, Toronto, Vancouver, and Wellington, New Zealand. In addition, The Story Collider has worked with various partners to produce one-off shows in other locations. Past and current partnerships include public radio's Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, St. Louis Public Radio, Springer Nature, Scientific American, the American Geophysical Union, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, Fermilab, and universities such as Yale, Cambridge and


id: vert-dider-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vert_Dider-0.md
category: reference
title: Vert Dider
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vert_Dider
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:23.538041+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: vert-dider-20260505-0
summary:
Vert Dider is a non-profit volunteer project focused around translating and dubbing scientific and educational videos for Russian-speaking audience. == History == The project was created in 2013 by Ilya Abilov, who himself was engaged in voicing the first videos. The studio is supported and developed by volunteers helping it evolve. The studio’s leading activity is translating and dubbing videos related to science. Over a thousand videos are currently available through the studio’s official public page on VK social media site. The list of translated into Russian and dubbed videos include videos from a number of educational YouTube channels, lectures, debates and documentaries. On January 19, 2016, was the day when Vert Dider started cooperating with BuzzFeed media company. In early 2017 Vert Dider started a YouTube channel for videos in English. That same year the studio joined efforts with the educational project SciOne to conduct interviews with Walter Lewin, Robert Sapolsky, Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins and James Watson. The studio has been a Harry Houdini Awards media partner since the Russian analogue to James Randi’s One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge was founded. === Lectures === In October 2015, the studio started translating Richard Feynman’s Messenger Lectures into Russian. By


id: youtube-in-education-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_in_education-0.md
category: reference
title: YouTube in education
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_in_education
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:24.848307+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: youtube-in-education-20260505-0
summary:
YouTube in education refers to the use of the video-sharing platform YouTube for educational purposes in both formal and informal learning environments. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that 51% of YouTube users say the platform is very important for helping them learn new skills, representing 35% of all U.S. adults. Since YouTube's launch in 2005, educational institutions like MIT OpenCourseWare and TED have used the platform to distribute content, while independent creators have developed popular educational channels such as Khan Academy, Smarter Every Day, and Vsauce. The platform has been adopted across various educational fields, including medical education, where studies have shown both benefits and limitations in teaching clinical skills and anatomical concepts. YouTube also created YouTube EDU in 2009 as a dedicated repository for educational content from institutions and creators. == History == YouTube was founded as a video sharing platform in 2005 and is now the most visited website in the US as of 2019. Almost immediately after the site's launch, educational institutions, such as MIT OpenCourseWare and TED, were using it for the distribution of their content. Soon after, many independent creators began to experiment with science learning. Some of the most popular early educators


id: scientific-controversy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_controversy-0.md
category: reference
title: Scientific controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:26.533179+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scientific-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Sustained scientific controversy, sometimes scientific debate is any substantial disagreement among scientists. A scientific controversy may involve issues such as the interpretation of data, which ideas are most supported by evidence, and/or which ideas are most worth pursuing. Controversies between scientific and non-scientific ideas are not within the realm of science and are not true scientific controversies. A genuine scientific controversy entails an ongoing discussion within the wider scientific community. Well known examples include the debate over the existence of the atom that lasted until the turn of the 20th century, the Bohr–Einstein debates, the linguistics wars, and the debate over the causes of ADHD. == Intra-academic debate == Constructive debate within the scientific community is widely viewed as essential to the progress of science as a whole. Critique and debate leads to an environment in which ideas are rigorously and extensively cross-tested and in which mistakes which one individual might not catch are able to be justified by another, and additionally, the environment can push the development of new research programs, discovery of new evidence, and the forward movement of scientific consensus. Debate among scientists within a primarily academic setting can take one of many forms: two important forms,


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-0.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
The current campaign for an academic boycott of Israel was launched in April 2004 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. PACBI argues that Israeli academic institutions are complicit in perpetuating the Israeli occupation and therefore should be subject to boycott in order to advance BDS goals. Since then, proposals for academic boycotts of particular Israeli universities and academics have been made by academics and organizations in Palestine, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Supporters say the boycotts is intended to pressure Israel to change policies they describe are discriminatory towards the Palestinians. The campaigns for academic boycott of Israel have led to fierce debate. Opponents argue that boycott advocates apply different standards to Israel than other countries, that the boycott is counterproductive, a collective punishment of Israeli academia, a tactic to threaten the existence of the State of Israel, and also that the campaign is antisemitic. Support for academic boycotts of Israel has been more prevalent among faculty in the humanities and social sciences than in the sciences. Despite this debate, academic boycott measures have been undertaken around the world,


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-1.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
=== Association of University Teachers === On 22 April 2005, the Council of Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted to boycott two Israeli universities: University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University. The motions to AUT Council were prompted by the call for a boycott from nearly 60 Palestinian academics and others. The AUT Council voted to boycott Bar-Ilan because it runs courses at colleges in the West Bank (referring to Ariel College) and "is thus directly involved with the occupation of Palestinian territories contrary to United Nations resolutions". It boycotted Haifa because it was alleged that the university had wrongly disciplined Ilan Pappé for supporting a student who wrote about attacks on Palestinians during the founding of the state of Israel. The University denied having disciplined the lecturer. Union members claimed that staff and students [of Israeli universities] who seek to research Israel's history in full are often "victimised". The AUT's decision was immediately condemned by Jewish groups and many members of the AUT. Critics of the boycott within and outside the AUT noted that at the meeting at which the boycott motion was passed the leadership cut short the debate citing a lack of time. Specifically, the Board of Deputies


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-2.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
The ironic thing, is if we had put this to delegates a couple of weeks ago, before the international pro-Israeli lobby started this massive campaign emailing delegates and trying to deny us our democratic right to discuss whatever we like, it probably wouldn't have passed. People feel bullied, and what we have seen is a hardening of attitudes. All they achieved was making the delegates determined to debate and pass the motion. Tamara Traubmann and Benjamin Joffe-Walt, reporting for The Guardian, conducted an analysis of "whether the campaigns against such boycotts are actually motivated by concerns for academic freedom, or whether they are using the universalist ideal to stifle critical discussion of Israel". They describe their findings this way: Through discussions with anti-boycott campaigners and a trace of the most common emails (not necessarily abusive) sent to the union and handed over by Natfhe, we found the vast majority of the tens of thousands of emails originated not with groups fighting for academic freedom, but with lobby groups and thinktanks that regularly work to delegitimise criticisms of Israel. === University and College Union === Since 2007, the UCU has been controversially involved in the academic boycotts of Israel and for


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-3.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
=== Following Operation Cast Lead === In March 2009, shortly after the Gaza War, a call for an academic boycott in France was published on the web with over 50 signatures, including Daniel Bensaïd, Gérard Toulouse of the Académie des sciences, coauthor in 2003 of Les scientifiques et les droits de l'homme with Lydie Koch-Miramond who had also signed and defended the boycott of Israel in 2002, Mireille Fanon-Mendès-France, and Roland Lombard, President of the Collectif Interuniversitaire pour la Coopération avec les Universités Palestiniennes. They called "in the first place to impose a program of boycott, divestment, and sanctions," following the creation of the French organization BDS France. In the spring of 2009, the Association of Academics for the Respect of International Law in Palestine (AURDIP) was created by the group of academics who had initiated the 2002 call, in alliance with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel PACBI and with the British organization British Committee for the Universities of Palestine. AURDIP was created with two primary missions: (1) To promote the application of international law in Israel and Palestine; specifically to oppose Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and Israel’s settlement policy, which fly


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-4.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
Others may interpret the boycott differently, but I have no problem collaborating with Israeli scholars and artists as long as we do not participate in any Israeli institution or have Israeli state monies support our collaborative work. The reason, of course, is that the academic and cultural boycott seeks to put pressure on all those cultural institutions that have failed to oppose the occupation and struggle for equal rights and the rights of the dispossessed, all those cultural institutions that think it is not their place to criticize their government for these practices, all of them that understand themselves to be above or beyond this intractable political condition. Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, is on the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. Dabashi supports boycott efforts targeting both Israeli individuals and institutions: The divestment campaign that has been far more successful in Western Europe needs to be reinvigorated in North America – as must the boycotting of the Israeli cultural and academic institutions ... Naming names and denouncing individually every prominent Israeli intellectual who has publicly endorsed their elected officials' wide-eyed barbarism, and then categorically boycotting their


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-5.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
Until April 2013, no American school had ever divested from or imposed an academic boycott on Israel despite strong boycott campaigns. Former President of Harvard University Larry Summers has called Israel-boycott efforts "anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent". In 2007, nearly 300 university presidents across the United States signed a joint statement denouncing the boycott movement. In 2010, a group of 15 American university professors launched a campaign calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Many universities and prominent scholars criticized the ASA's support of the boycott. Brandeis University, Pennsylvania State University, Indiana University and Kenyon College decided to withdraw from the ASA. The American Council on Education, an umbrella organisation of 1,800 institutions, the American Association of Universities which represents 62 schools across the US and Canada, and the American Association of University Professors all condemned the boycott. Ninety-two university presidents including of Harvard, Brown, Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Duke, Stanford, Boston, Columbia, Chicago, New York University, Dartmouth College, Wesleyan, Florida, University of Miami, Western Kentucky University, University of Connecticut and University of Washington, condemned the boycott and distanced themselves from the ASA. Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust said, "academic boycotts subvert the academic


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-6.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
== Ireland == In April 2013 the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) passed a motion calling for an academic boycott of Israel. Following a referendum among NUI Galway students in March 2014, the NUI Galway Students' Union officially began supporting the campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. In December 2022 the Union of Students in Ireland unanimously passed a motion to support BDS and "denounce the apartheid that Israel is committing in Palestine". The motion also called on the European Students Union (ESU) "to re-evaluate the membership of Israel and support any Palestinian efforts to engage with ESU". Trinity College Dublin cut ties with Israeli institutions in 2025. == South Africa == === Campaign to boycott Ben-Gurion University === On 5 September 2010, a nationwide academic petition was initiated by academics supporting a termination of a partnership agreement between the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and Ben-Gurion University (BGU); a long-standing partnership dating back to apartheid era relations between the two institutions. Well-known academics such as Professors Breyten Breytenbach, John Dugard, Mahmood Mamdani, Antjie Krog and Achille Mbembe are signatories to the academic petition, which is also backed by Vice-Chancellors from four universities in South Africa. Amid widespread public


id: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel-7.md
category: reference
title: Academic boycott of Israel
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_boycott_of_Israel
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:27.825907+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: academic-boycott-of-israel-20260505-0
summary:
== Criticism == A prominent Palestinian academic, former president of Al-Quds University, Sari Nusseibeh, has argued against academic boycotts of Israel, telling Associated Press "If we are to look at Israeli society, it is within the academic community that we've had the most progressive pro-peace views and views that have come out in favor of seeing us as equals.... If you want to punish any sector, this is the last one to approach." He acknowledges, however, that his view is a minority one among Palestinian academics. A study focusing on the impact of academic boycotts on academic freedom and discourse, based on interviews during the Gaza war that began in 2023, found that Israeli academics faced overt and covert discrimination, obstacles to collaboration, and potential long-term career challenges. Participants in the study stressed the need to keep science separate from politics and preserve cross-border collaboration as essential for advancing research and addressing global challenges. Cary Nelson argues that while boycott resolutions are unlikely to affect Israeli policy, they risk politicizing and damaging the reputation of the humanities, undermining open debate, and shaping public opinion in ways that may harm academia itself. The Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan told the Guardian that


id: alphachip-controversy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaChip_(controversy)-0.md
category: reference
title: AlphaChip (controversy)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaChip_(controversy)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:29.075305+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alphachip-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The AlphaChip controversy refers to a series of public, scholarly, and legal disputes surrounding a 2021 Nature paper by Google-affiliated researchers. The paper describes an approach to macro placement, a stage of chip floorplanning, based on reinforcement learning (RL), a machine learning method in which a system iteratively improves its decisions by optimizing performance-based reward signals. The primary technical question is whether the new techniques are better than existing (non-AI) techniques. Both internal Google studies and external attempts to replicate the algorithm have failed to show the claimed benefits. No head-to-head comparison is available because the data used in the paper is proprietary, and Google has not released any results from running its algorithm on public benchmarks. This has resulted in considerable skepticism over the paper's claims. In addition, the inability of others (both inside and outside of Google) to replicate the claimed results have sparked concerns about the paper’s methodology, reproducibility, and scientific integrity. The lead researchers of the Nature paper were affiliated with Google Brain, which became part of Google DeepMind, and later spun off into the company Ricursive. == Motivation for research: Macro placement in chip layout == Chip design for modern integrated circuits is a complex,


id: alphachip-controversy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaChip_(controversy)-1.md
category: reference
title: AlphaChip (controversy)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaChip_(controversy)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:29.075305+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alphachip-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Internal dispute at Google and legal proceedings === In 2022, Satrajit Chatterjee, a Google engineer involved in reviewing the AlphaChip work, raised concerns internally and drafted an alternative analysis, (Stronger Baselines) arguing that established methods outperformed the RL approach under fair comparison. In March 2022, Google declined to publish this analysis and terminated Chatterjee's employment. Chatterjee filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit, alleging that representations related to the AlphaChip research involved fraud and scientific misconduct. According to court documents, Chatterjee's study was conducted "in the context of a large potential Google Cloud deal". He noted that it "would have been unethical to imply that we had revolutionary technology when our tests showed otherwise" and claimed Google was deliberately withholding material information. Furthermore, the committee that reviewed his paper and disapproved its publication was allegedly chaired by subordinates of Jeff Dean, a senior co-author of the Nature paper. Google’s subsequent motion to dismiss was denied, holding that Chatterjee had plausibly alleged retaliation for refusing to engage in conduct he believed would violate state or federal law. === External controversy === The external questions can be summarized in four main points: (a) Are the claims supported by the evidence provided? (b) Did


id: alphachip-controversy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaChip_(controversy)-2.md
category: reference
title: AlphaChip (controversy)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaChip_(controversy)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:29.075305+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alphachip-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
== Nature editorial actions == In April 2022, the peer review file for the Nature article was included as a supplementary information file. In September 2023, Nature added an editor's note to "A graph placement methodology for fast chip design" stating that the paper's performance claims had been called into question and that the editors were investigating the concerns. On 21 September 2023, Andrew B. Kahng's accompanying News & Views article was retracted; the retraction notice said that new information about the methods used in the Google paper had become available after publication and had changed the author’s assessment, and it also said that Nature was conducting an independent investigation of the paper’s performance claims. By late September 2024, the editor's note was removed without explanation, but Nature published an addendum to the original paper (dated 26 September 2024). The addendum introduced the name AlphaChip for the proposed RL technique and described methodological details that critics had previously identified as missing, including the use of initial ( x , y ) {\displaystyle (x,y)} locations. The addendum addressed some methodological details but still lacked the full training and evaluation inputs needed for independent replication. == Author responses and ensuing debate ==


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-0.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The question of the race of the people of ancient Egypt was raised historically as a product of the early racial concepts of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was linked to models of racial hierarchy primarily based on craniometry and anthropometry. A variety of views circulated about the racial identity of the Egyptians and the source of their culture. Some scholars argued that ancient Egyptian culture was influenced by other Afroasiatic-speaking populations in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, or West Asia, while others pointed to influences from various Nubian groups or populations in Europe. In more recent times, some writers continued to challenge the mainstream view, some focusing on questioning the race of specific notable individuals, such as the pharaoh represented in the Great Sphinx of Giza, the native Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, the Egyptian queen Tiye, and the Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII. Mainstream Western scholars reject the notion that Egypt was a "white" or "black" civilization; they maintain that applying modern notions of black or white races to ancient Egypt is anachronistic. In addition, scholars reject the notion—implicit in a black or white Egypt hypothesis—that ancient Egypt was racially homogeneous; instead, skin colour varied between the peoples


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-1.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
In 1839, Jean-François Champollion suggested that: "In the Copts of Egypt, we do not find any of the characteristic features of the ancient Egyptian population. The Copts are the result of crossbreeding with all the nations that successfully dominated Egypt. It is wrong to seek in them the principal features of the old race." This memoir was made in the context of the first tribes that would have inhabited Egypt, his opinion was noted after his return from Nubia. In 1839, Champollion's and Volney's claims were disputed by Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, who blamed a misunderstanding of the ancients for spreading a false impression of a "Negro" Egypt, stating "the two physical traits of black skin and woolly hair are not enough to stamp a race as negro" and "the opinion that the ancient population of Egypt belonged to the Negro African race, is an error long accepted as the truth. ... Volney's conclusion as to the Negro origin of the ancient Egyptian civilization is evidently forced and inadmissible." Gaston Maspero, a 19th-century French Egyptologist, stated that "by the almost unanimous testimony of ancient Greek historians, they (Ancient Egyptians) belonged to the African race, which settled in Ethiopia." Heinrich Karl Brusch,


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-2.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
In 2025, members of the UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of New Volumes IX, X and IX of General History of Africa reviewed the 1974 Symposium with the availability of new sources of data. This volume featured 60 scholars from 28 countries across every continent, with the International Scientific Committee consisting of 16 member specialists appointed by the UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay. These committee members included Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Paul Lovejoy, Tayeb Chenntouf, Anshan Li, Hilary Beckles and Vanicléia Silva Santos. The international publication featured multidisciplinary views across several chapter sections on the population formation of Egypt. UNESCO International Scientific Committee Chair and archaeologist, Augustin Holl, stated that Egypt was situated in an intersection between Africa and Eurasia but affirmed "Egypt is African" with a fluctuating distribution of African and Eurasian populations depending on historical circumstances. Coordinating reviewer, historian and archaeologist Doulaye Konate stated the volume featured a general review of the archaeology of sub-Saharan Africa and “one of the strengths of the work is an emphasis on the African roots of the Egyptian civilization”. He later stated the Volume II of General History of Africa had integrated the Pharaonic civilization into a ‘Negro-African bosom’. In a chapter review


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-3.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Egyptian historian and archaeological inspector at the Ministry of Antiquities, H. A. A. Ibrahim, examined the megalithic complex of Nabta Playa, Upper Egypt to understand the cultural and population influences of the Holocene on pre-dynastic Egypt. She cited an anthropological study confirming the appearance of a Sub-Saharan high status child in a ceremonial centre and concluded that the megalithic structures had close resemblance to comparable structures in the Sahelian and Sub-Saharan regions of Africa. In another chapter on the population genetics of pharaonic Egypt, geneticist Jean Phillipe Gourdine adduced correlative sources of linguistic, anthropological, paleontological and genetic evidence which demonstrated African affinities with specific Neolithic and predynastic remains at the Naqada, Badari and Adaima sites in Upper Egypt. He referenced a number of studies performed by Eric Crubézy, this included genetic analysis on the modern Upper Egyptian population in Adaima which identified genetic markers common across Africa, with 71% of the Adaima samples carrying E1b1 haplogroup and 3% carrying the L0f mitochondrial haplogroup. This was supported by an anthropological study by Cruzeby in the pre-dynastic cemetery at Adaima (3700 BCE) which found the notable presence of dental markers, characteristic of Khoisan people, (25%) among several children’s teeth." Gourdine also stated


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-4.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Views from Egyptologists and African historians === Frank J. Yurco outlined in a 1989 article that "In short, ancient Egypt, like modern Egypt, consisted of a very heterogeneous population". He also wrote in 1990: "When you talk about Egypt, it's just not right to talk about black or white .... To take the terminology here in the United States and graft it onto Africa is anthropologically inaccurate". Yurco added that "We are applying a racial divisiveness to Egypt that they would never have accepted, They would have considered this argument absurd, and that is something we could really learn from." Yurco wrote in 1996 that "the peoples of Egypt, the Sudan, and much of North-East Africa are generally regarded as a Nilotic continuity, with widely ranging physical features (complexions light to dark, various hair and craniofacial types)". British Africanist, Basil Davidson, summarised in 1990, that "It follows that the Ancient Egyptians were Africans even if immigrants also trickled in from Asia and southern Europe. Where the ancient Egyptians were black or as brown in skin colour as other Africans may remain an issue of emotive dispute; probably they were both". Gamal Mokthar, editor of the UNESCO General History of


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-5.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Robert Morkot wrote in 2005: The ancient Egyptians were not 'white' in any European sense, nor were they 'Caucasian'... we can say that the earliest population of ancient Egypt included African people from the upper Nile, African people from the regions of the Sahara and modern Libya, and smaller numbers of people who had come from south-western Asia and perhaps the Arabian peninsula. Felix Chami wrote in 2006 that Egyptian iconography had shown "that their physical type, like most of the people of the African communities, was both black and brown." Fekri Hassan wrote in 2021 in regards to the origins of Egypt that "the original African populations of the Nile Valley, who showed a local gradual change in physical traits from south to north due to distance, hosted peoples who drifted from southwest Asia". William Stiebling and Susan Helft wrote in 2023 on the historical debate concerning the race and ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians in light of recent evidence. They argued that the physical appearances would have varied along a continuum from the Delta to the Nile’s source regions in the south. The authors specified that “some ancient Egyptians looked more Middle Eastern and others looked more Sudanese


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-6.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
== Scholarly views on bias == Various scholars have highlighted the role of colonial racism in shaping the attitudes of early Egyptologists, and criticised the continued over-representation of North American and European perspectives in the field. Diop in his work, The African Origin of Civilization argued that the prevailing views in Egyptology were driven by biased scholarship and colonial attitudes. Similarly, Bruce Trigger wrote that early modern scholarship on the Nile Valley populations had been "marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism". Criticism has also been levelled at modern anthropological studies of Nile valley populations. This has related to interpretations of biological Africans. These past approaches have been viewed to subscribe to a narrow craniometric paradigm which classifies certain African populations as “True Negroes”, whilst categorising Egyptians, Nubians, Somalians as non-Africans despite having a shared biocultural evolutionary climate. Smith wrote in 2018 that a common practice among Egyptologists was to "divorce Egypt from its proper northeast African context, instead framing it as fundamentally part of a Near Eastern or "Mediterranean" economic, social and political sphere, hardly African at all or at best a crossroad between the Near East, the eastern Mediterranean and Africa,


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-7.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
== Present-day controversies == Today the issues regarding the race of the ancient Egyptians are "troubled waters which most people who write about ancient Egypt from within the mainstream of scholarship avoid." The debate, therefore, takes place mainly in the public sphere and tends to focus on a small number of specific issues. === Greco-Roman accounts of Ancient Egypt === A range of scholars have cited the classical observations of prominent Greeks and Romans as forms of primary evidence to denote the physical appearance of the early Egyptians. Some historical accounts have drawn close physical and cultural resemblances between Egyptians and Ethiopians whereas others have associated them more closely with northern Indians. In the fifth century BCE, Greek historian, Herodotus, described the Egyptians as having “melanchrones skin and wooly hair and secondly, and more reliably for the reason that alone among mankind the Egyptians and the Ethiopians have practiced circumcision since time immemorial.” Herodotus also wrote that the Ammonians of Siwa Oasis are "colonists from Egypt and Aethiopia and speak a language compounded of the tongues of both countries". In the first century BCE, Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, in his work Bibliotheca Historica, reported that the Ethiopians claimed that Egypt


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-8.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Older literature maintained that the label "God's Land", when interpreted as "Holy Land" or "Land of the gods/ancestors", meant that the ancient Egyptians viewed the Land of Punt as their ancestral homeland. Flinders Petrie believed that the Dynastic Race came from or through Punt and that "Pan, or Punt, was a district at the south end of the Red Sea, which probably embraced both the African and Arabian shores." Moreover, E. A. Wallis Budge stated that "Egyptian tradition of the Dynastic Period held that the aboriginal home of the Egyptians was Punt...". James Breasted in 1906 argued that the term Ta netjer was not only applied to Punt, located southeast of Egypt, but also to regions of Asia east and northeast of Egypt, such as Lebanon, which was the source of wood for temples. Modern scholars have noted that the term was applied to the Land of Punt, the exact location had historically been a subject of scholarly debate with a spectrum of views associating Puntland with regions extending from Ethiopia to southern Arabia. Recent consensus has now located the region in modern northeast Africa due to the prevalence of indigenous goods and animals which are reflected in Egyptian reliefs


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-9.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy, based on CT data from his mummy, determining his skin tone and eye color is impossible. The clay model was therefore given a coloring, which, according to the artist, was based on an "average shade of modern Egyptians". Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice president for mission programs, said, in response to some of those protesting against the Tutankhamun reconstruction: The big variable is skin tone. North Africans, we know today, had a range of skin tones, from light to dark. In this case, we selected a medium skin tone, and we say, quite up front, 'This is midrange.' We will never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the color of his eyes with 100% certainty.... Maybe in the future, people will come to a different conclusion. When pressed on the issue by American activists in September 2007, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass stated "Tutankhamun was not black." In a November 2007 publication of Ancient Egypt magazine, Hawass asserted that none of the facial reconstructions resemble Tut and that, in his opinion, the most accurate


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-10.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The race and skin color of Cleopatra VII, the last active Hellenistic ruler of the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, established in 323 BC, has also caused some debate, although generally not in scholarly sources. For example, the article "Was Cleopatra Black?" was published in Ebony magazine in 2012, and an article about Afrocentrism from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch mentions the question, too. Mary Lefkowitz, Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College, traces the main origins of the black Cleopatra claim to the 1946 book by J. A. Rogers called World's Great Men of Color, although noting that the idea of Cleopatra as black goes back to at least the 19th century. The black Cleopatra claim was further revived in an essay by afrocentrist John Henrik Clarke, chair of African history at Hunter College, entitled "African Warrior Queens." Lefkowitz refutes Rogers' and Clarke's hypotheses, on various scholarly grounds. Scholars identify Cleopatra as essentially of Greek ancestry with some Persian and Sogdian Iranian ancestry, based on the fact that her Macedonian Greek family (the Ptolemaic dynasty) had intermingled with the Seleucid aristocracy of the time. Michael Grant states that Cleopatra probably had not a drop of Egyptian blood and


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-11.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The identity of the model for the Great Sphinx of Giza is unknown. Most experts believe that the face of the Sphinx represents the likeness of the Pharaoh Khafra, although a few Egyptologists and interested amateurs have proposed different hypotheses. An early description of the Sphinx, "typically negro in all its features", is recorded in the travel notes of a French scholar, Volney, who visited Egypt between 1783 and 1785 along with French novelist Gustave Flaubert. A similar description was given in the "well-known book" by Vivant Denon, where he described the sphinx as "the character is African; but the mouth, the lips of which are thick." Following Volney, Denon, and other early writers, numerous Afrocentric scholars, such as Du Bois, Diop and Asante have characterized the face of the Sphinx as Black, or "Negroid". American geologist Robert M. Schoch has written that the "Sphinx has a distinctive African, Nubian, or Negroid aspect which is lacking in the face of Khafre", but he was described by others such as Ronald H. Fritze and Mark Lehner of being a "pseudoscientific writer". David S. Anderson writes in Lost City, Found Pyramid: Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices that Van Sertima's claim that


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-12.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Ancient Egyptian tombs and temples contained thousands of paintings, sculptures, and written works, which reveal a great deal about the people of that time. However, their depictions of themselves in their surviving art and artifacts are rendered in sometimes symbolic, rather than realistic, pigments. As a result, ancient Egyptian artifacts provide sometimes conflicting and inconclusive evidence of the ethnicity of the people who lived in Egypt during dynastic times. In their own art, "Egyptians are often represented in a color that is officially called dark red", according to Diop. Arguing against other theories, Diop quotes Champollion-Figeac, who states, "one distinguishes on Egyptian monuments several species of blacks, differing...with respect to complexion, which makes Negroes black or copper-colored." Regarding an expedition by King Sesostris, Cherubini states the following concerning captured southern Africans, "except for the panther skin about their loins, are distinguished by their color, some entirely black, others dark brown. University of Chicago scholars assert that Nubians are generally depicted with black paint, but the skin pigment used in Egyptian paintings to refer to Nubians can range "from dark red to brown to black". This can be observed in paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Huy, as well as


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-13.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
Manu Ampim, a professor at Merritt College specializing in African and African American history and culture, claims in the book Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret, that many ancient Egyptian statues and artworks are modern frauds that have been created specifically to hide the "fact" that the ancient Egyptians were black, while authentic artworks that demonstrate black characteristics are systematically defaced or even "modified". Ampim repeatedly makes the accusation that the Egyptian authorities are systematically destroying evidence that "proves" that the ancient Egyptians were black, under the guise of renovating and conserving the applicable temples and structures. He further accuses "European" scholars of wittingly participating in and abetting this process. Ampim has a specific concern about a wall painting depicting in a scene from the Book of Gates identified as the 4th Division, 5th Hour. an Egyptian funerary text the in the Tomb of Ramesses III (KV11). The Book of Gates is a funerary text appears in a number of New Kingdom tombs, and they were usually provided for the guidance of the soul of the deceased. The Egyptians did not assign a name to this text; it was later termed 'Livre des Portes' (Book


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-14.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
==== Fayyum mummy portraits ==== The Roman era Fayum mummy portraits attached to coffins containing the latest dated mummies discovered in the Faiyum Oasis represent a population of both native Egyptians and those with mixed Greek heritage. The dental morphology of the mummies align more with the indigenous North African population than Greek or other later colonial European settlers. ==== Black queen controversy ==== The late British Africanist Basil Davidson stated "Whether the Ancient Egyptians were as black or as brown in skin color as other Africans may remain an issue of emotive dispute; probably, they were both. Their own artistic conventions painted them as pink, but pictures on their tombs show they often married queens shown as entirely black being from the south." Ahmose-Nefertari is an example. In most depictions of Ahmose-Nefertari, she is pictured with black skin, while in some instances her skin is blue or red. In 1939 Flinders Petrie said "an invasion from the south...established a black queen as the divine ancestress of the XVIIIth dynasty" He also said "a possibility of the black being symbolic has been suggested" and "Nefertari must have married a Libyan, as she was the mother of Amenhetep I, who was


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-15.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The Black Egyptian hypothesis is the hypothesis that ancient Egypt was a "Black", homogeneous civilization. At a UNESCO symposium in 1974 there was consensus that Ancient Egypt was indigenous to Africa. However, Diop's hypothesis that Ancient Egypt was a "Black" civilization was met with "numerous objections" in 1974 which revealed "a disagreement which remained profound even though it was not voiced explicitly. In respect of certain sequences, the criticisms arose out of the line of argument put forward." The majority of the objections "raised were of methodological nature" which ranged from the need for reliable statistical data to further research projects in several fields such as archaeology and physical anthropology before final conclusions on the peopling of Egypt could be made. There was also "total disagreement" from the majority of scholars in the 1974 conference on the hypothesis that Ancient Egypt had been a homogenous population until Persian times with several scholars favouring the hypothesis of a mixed population. Subsequent reviewers of the 1974 symposium debate and the UNESCO publication have presented a range of views on the outcome of the debate. Larissa Nordholt argued that Diop's chapter was politically motivated, having been published only due to being in line


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-16
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-16.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
=== Asiatic race theory === This theory was the most dominant view from the Early Middle Ages (c. 500 AD) until the early 19th century. The descendants of Ham were traditionally considered to be the darkest-skinned branch of humanity, either because of their geographic allotment to Africa or because of the Curse of Ham. Thus, Diop cited Gaston Maspero "Moreover, the Bible states that Mesraim, son of Ham, brother of Chus (Kush) ... and of Canaan, came from Mesopotamia to settle with his children on the banks of the Nile." By the 20th century, the Asiatic race theory and its various offshoots were abandoned but were superseded by two related theories: the Eurocentric Hamitic hypothesis, asserting that a Caucasian racial group moved into North and East Africa from early prehistory subsequently bringing with them all advanced agriculture, technology and civilization, and the Dynastic race theory, proposing that Mesopotamian invaders were responsible for the dynastic civilization of Egypt (c. 3000 BC). In sharp contrast to the Asiatic race theory, neither of these theories proposes that Caucasians were the indigenous inhabitants of Egypt. At the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script" in Cairo


id: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-17
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy-17.md
category: reference
title: Ancient Egyptian race controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:30.372855+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ancient-egyptian-race-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
The Dynastic race theory, which has been rejected by modern scholarship, is the hypothesis that a Mesopotamian force had invaded Egypt in predynastic times, imposed itself on the indigenous Badarian people, and become their rulers. The Mesopotamian-founded state or states were supposed to have conquered both Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the First Dynasty of Egypt. The theory was proposed in the early 20th century by Flinders Petrie, who deduced that skeletal remains found at pre-dynastic sites at Naqada (Upper Egypt) indicated the presence of two different races, with one race differentiated physically by a noticeably larger skeletal structure and cranial capacity. Petrie also noted new architectural styles—the distinctly Mesopotamian "niched-façade" architecture—pottery styles, cylinder seals and a few artworks, as well as numerous predynastic rock and tomb paintings depicting Mesopotamian style boats, symbols, and figures. Based on plentiful cultural evidence, Petrie concluded that the invading ruling elite was responsible for the seemingly sudden rise of Egyptian civilization. In the 1950s, the dynastic race theory was widely accepted. While there is clear evidence the Naqada II culture borrowed abundantly from Mesopotamia, the Naqada II period had a large degree of continuity with the Naqada I period, and the changes which


id: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy-0.md
category: reference
title: Brouwer–Hilbert controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:31.712335+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-0
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The Brouwer–Hilbert controversy (German: Grundlagenstreit, lit. 'foundational debate') was a debate in twentieth-century mathematics over fundamental questions about the consistency of axioms and the role of semantics and syntax in mathematics. L. E. J. Brouwer, a proponent of the constructivist school of intuitionism, opposed David Hilbert, a proponent of formalism. Much of the controversy took place while both were involved with Mathematische Annalen, the leading mathematical journal of the time, with Hilbert as editor-in-chief and Brouwer as a member of its editorial board. In 1928, Hilbert had Brouwer removed from the editorial board of Mathematische Annalen. == Background == The controversy started with Hilbert's axiomatization of geometry in the late 1890s. In his biography of Kurt Gödel, John W. Dawson, Jr observed that "partisans of three principal philosophical positions took part in the debate" – these three being the logicists (Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell), the formalists (David Hilbert and his colleagues), and the constructivists (Henri Poincaré and Hermann Weyl); within this constructivist school was the radical self-named "intuitionist" L. E. J. Brouwer. === History of Intuitionism === Brouwer founded the mathematical philosophy of intuitionism as a challenge to the prevailing formalism of David Hilbert and his colleagues, Paul Bernays,


id: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy-1.md
category: reference
title: Brouwer–Hilbert controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:31.712335+00:00
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parent: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-0
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=== The law of excluded middle extended to the infinite === Cantor (1897) extended the intuitive notion of "the infinite" – one foot placed after the other in a never-ending march toward the horizon – to the notion of "a completed infinite" – the arrival "all the way, way out there" in one fell swoop, and he symbolized this notion with a single sign ℵ0 (aleph-null). Hilbert's adoption of the notion wholesale was "thoughtless", Brouwer alleged. Brouwer in his (1927a) "Intuitionistic reflections on formalism" states: "SECOND INSIGHT The rejection of the thoughtless use of the logical principle of the excluded middle, as well as the recognition, first, of the fact that the investigation of the question why the principle mentioned is justified and to what extent it is valid constitutes an essential object of research in the foundations of mathematics, and, second, of the fact that in intuitive (contentual) mathematics this principle is valid only for finite systems. THIRD INSIGHT. The identification of the principle of excluded middle with the principle of the solvability of every mathematical problem." This Third Insight is referring to Hilbert's second problem and Hilbert's ongoing attempt to axiomatize all of arithmetic, and with this system,


id: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy-2.md
category: reference
title: Brouwer–Hilbert controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:31.712335+00:00
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parent: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-0
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=== Objections related to the law of the excluded middle and induction === In van Heijenoort's commentary preceding Weyl's (1927) "Comments on Hilbert's second lecture on the foundations of mathematics" Poincaré points out to Hilbert (1905) that there are two types of "induction" (1) the intuitive animal-logic foot-following-foot version that gives us a sense that there's always another footstep after the last footstep, and (2) the formal version – e.g. Peano's version: a string of symbols. Poincaré, Weyl, and Brouwer claimed that Hilbert tacitly, and unjustifiably, adopted formal induction as one of his premises. Poincaré (1905) asserted that, by doing this, Hilbert's reasoning became circular. Weyl's (1927) agreement and Brouwer's polemics ultimately forced Hilbert and his disciples Herbrand, Bernays, and Ackermann to reexamine their notion of "induction" – to eschew the assumption of a "totality of all the objects x of an infinite collection" and (intuitionistically) assume that the general argument proceeds one x after another, ad infinitum (van Heijenoort p. 481, footnote a). This is in fact the so-called "induction schema" used in the notion of "recursion" that was still in development at this time (van Heijenoort p. 493). This schema was acceptable to the intuitionists because it had


id: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy-3.md
category: reference
title: Brouwer–Hilbert controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:31.712335+00:00
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parent: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-0
summary:
He does not appear to use this in the formalist's sense, but there is some contention around this point. Gödel specifies this symbol string in his I.3., i.e., the formalized inductive axiom appears as shown above – yet even this string can be "numeralized" using Gödel's method. On the other hand, he doesn't appear to use this axiom. Rather, his recursion steps through integers assigned to variable k (cf his (2) on page 602). His skeleton-proof of Theorem V, however, "use(s) induction on the degree of φ," and uses "the induction hypothesis." Without a full proof of this, the "induction hypothesis" could be assumed to be the intuitive version, not the symbolic axiom. His recursion simply steps up the degree of the functions, an intuitive act, ad infinitum. Gödel's proofs being intuitionistically satisfactory and infinitary are not incompatible truths, as long as the law of the excluded middle over the completed infinite isn't invoked anywhere in the proofs. Despite the last-half-twentieth century's continued abstraction of mathematics, the issue has not entirely gone away. A hard look at the premises of Turing's 1936–1937 work led Robin Gandy (1980) to propose his "principles for mechanisms" that have speed of light as a


id: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy-4.md
category: reference
title: Brouwer–Hilbert controversy
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer–Hilbert_controversy
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parent: brouwer-hilbert-controversy-20260505-0
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== Bibliography == W.S. Anglin 1994, Mathematics: A Concise History and Philosophy, Springer–Verlag, New York. ISBN 0-387-94280-7. Herbert Breger, 2000. "Tacit Knowledge and Mathematical Progress", appearing in E. Groshoz and H. Breger (eds.) 2000, The Growth of Mathematical Knowledge, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht Netherlands, ISBN 0-7923-6151-2, pages 221–230. Martin Davis, 1965. The Undecidable: Basic Papers on Undecidable Propositions, Unsolvable Problems, and Computable Functions, Raven Press, New York, no ISBN. This includes: Emil Post, 1936. "Finite Combinatory Process. Formulation I", with commentary (pages 288ff) Emil Post, 1941 unpublished until 1965. "Absolutely Unsolvable Problems and Relatively Undecidable Propositions: Account of an Anticipation", with commentary, (pages 338ff) van Dalen, Dirk (1990). "The war of the frogs and the mice, or the crisis of the Mathematische annalen". The Mathematical Intelligencer. 12 (4): 17–31. doi:10.1007/BF03024028. S2CID 123400249. On the battle for editorial control of the journal Mathematische Annalen between Hilbert and Brouwer, stemming in part from their foundational differences. Martin Davis, 2000. The Engines of Logic, W. W. Norton, London, ISBN 0-393-32229-7 pbk. Cf. Chapter Five: "Hilbert to the Rescue" wherein Davis discusses Brouwer and his relationship with Hilbert and Weyl with brief biographical information of Brouwer. John W. Dawson, Jr, 1997. Logical Dilemmas: The


id: carbonaceous-sulfur-hydride-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonaceous_sulfur_hydride-0.md
category: reference
title: Carbonaceous sulfur hydride
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonaceous_sulfur_hydride
date_saved: 2026-05-05T04:17:32.954945+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: carbonaceous-sulfur-hydride-20260505-0
summary:
Carbonaceous sulfur hydride (CSH) is a potential superconductor that was announced in October 2020 by the lab of Ranga Dias at the University of Rochester, in a Nature paper that was later retracted. It was reported to have a superconducting transition temperature of 15 °C (59 °F) at a pressure of 267 gigapascals (GPa), which would have made it the highest-temperature superconductor discovered. The paper faced criticism due to its non-standard data analysis calling into question its conclusions, and in September 2022 it was retracted by Nature. In July 2023 a second paper by the authors was retracted from Physical Review Letters due to suspected data fabrication, and in September 2023 a third paper by the authors about N-doped lutetium hydride was retracted from Nature. CSH is an uncharacterized ternary polyhydride compound of carbon, sulfur and hydrogen with a chemical formula that is thought to be CH8S. Measurements under extreme pressure are difficult, and in particular the elements are too light for an X-ray determination of crystal structure (X-ray crystallography). == Background == Prior to 1911, all known electrical conductors exhibited electrical resistance, due to collisions of the charge carrier with atoms in the material. Researchers discovered that in certain


