…and this is a 
Perhaps you are a scientist. And perhaps you have wondered how badly the popular press could possibly mangle your research. Wonder no more: we have discovered a new maximum.
Behold this research summary in The Daily Galaxy, and be amazed!
It's about a paper in the ACS Journal of Physical Chemistry B. It's straightforward physical chemistry using some cool tools to image the formation of double helices of DNA: it's simply addressing the question of how complementary strands align themselves in solution. It's physical chemistry, OK? It's about tiny molecular interactions…until the Daily Galaxy gets ahold of it. Now it's about how DNA uses telepathy.
DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet.
Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the "amazing" ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA's chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
…
In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences. No one knows how individual DNA strands could possibly be communicating in this way, yet somehow they do. The "telepathic" effect is a source of wonder and amazement for scientists.
Cue the theremins, everyone, and bring on the reanimated corpse of Rod Serling to narrate this sucker. Audience, say "OOOOOoooooOOOOOOOOooOOH!"
Oh, wait. Read the actual paper, first. It turns out that not only are the scientists not mystified, but they provide a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon, and go on to give some alternatives, even. None of them involve molecular telepathy. They actually are amazed at the ability of these molecules to align…at distances of one whole nanometer!
Pay especially careful to the first sentence of the following paragraph. If you are a journalist writing a summary of a paper, claiming that it says no one knows how the two molecules recognize each other, you should probably read more closely a paragraph that begins, "We hypothesize that the origin of this recognition may be as follows." It's a clue that an explanation will follow.
We hypothesize that the origin of this recognition may be as follows. In-register alignment of phosphate strands with grooves on opposing DNA minimizes unfavorable electrostatic interactions between the negatively charged phosphates and maximizes favorable interactions of phosphates with bound counterions. DNAs with identical sequences will have the same structure and will stay in register over any juxtaposition length. Nonhomologous DNAs will have uncorrelated sequence-dependent variations in the local pitch that will disrupt the register over large juxtaposition length. The register may be restored at the expense of torsional deformation, but the deformation cost will still make juxtaposition of nonhomologous DNAs unfavorable. The sequence recognition energy, calculated from the corresponding theory is consistent with the observed segregation within the existing uncertainties in the theoretical and experimental parameters. This energy is ˜1 kT under the conditions utilized for the present study, but it is predicted to be significantly amplified, for example, at closer separations, at lower ionic strength, and in the presence of DNA condensing counterions.
So, their preferred explanation is that there are electrostatic interactions between the molecules that favor pairs that fit together well. Not telepathy. As cautious investigators, they also suggest some alternative explanations; perhaps telepathy will appear here? Or maybe elves?
Presently, we cannot exclude other mechanisms for the observed segregation. For instance, sequence-dependent bending of double helices may also lead to homology recognition by affecting the strand-groove register of two DNA molecules in juxtaposition. The juxtaposition of bent, nonhomologous DNAs may also be less energetically favorable under osmotic stress, since it may reduce the packing density of spherulites. In addition, formation of local single-stranded bubbles and base flipping may cause transient cross-hybridization between the molecules, as proposed to explain Mg2+ induced self-assembly of DNA fragments with the same sequence and length. We consider it to be rather unlikely in this instance, since the probability of bubble formation in unstressed linear DNA of the studied length is very small in contrast to the case where topological strain is relieved by bubble formation in small circular DNA molecules. Furthermore, bubble formation would distort the cholesteric order of spherulites and we see no evidence of this in spherulites composed of a single type of DNA molecule.
I'm so disappointed. Telepathy isn't mentioned once in the whole danged paper, and there aren't even tiny diaphanous fairies tugging at the molecules. And no, the Intelligent Designer doesn't appear, either.
Baldwin GS, Brooks NJ, Robson RE, Wynveen A, Goldar A, Leikin S, Seddon JM, Kornyshev AA (2008) DNA Double Helices Recognize Mutual Sequence Homology in a Protein Free Environment. J. Phys. Chem. B 112(4):1060-1064.
Physical Science
Comments
Posted by: Zifnab
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October 13, 2009 11:33 AM
I once held opposite poles of a bar magnet a few inches apart and they moved towards each other. Wicked Sorcery that! I was forced to burn both magnets for their witchery.
And explain wind! Wtf is up with that?!
Posted by: Peter G.
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October 13, 2009 11:33 AM
I've said it before and I'll say it again: college journalism programs cater to those whose best high school subject was typing.
Posted by: neon-elf.myopenid.com
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October 13, 2009 11:45 AM
Scientist: We hypothesize...
Reporter: Oh, so you don't know!
Scientist: Presently, we cannot exclude other mechanisms for the observed segregation.
Reporter: Yeah, you don't know how it works, you said that already.
*sigh*
Posted by: vasha7
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October 13, 2009 11:47 AM
Here's what Weird Things says about the Daily Galaxy: "When you’re looking for a glaring example of bad information and sensationalistic articles, The Daily Galaxy, a popular science tabloid, never disappoints. Their writers are either touting some nonexistent breakthrough in anti-aging research about to make humans immortal, or breathlessly quoting people authoritatively saying pseudoscientific things with a very profound tone, and filling their articles with glaring errors."
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution
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October 13, 2009 11:47 AM
If you want real entertainment, go on and read through the comments under the article... there are some seriously fucking loopy people out there that really think themselves quite intelligent... it's uproariously funny... some of my favorites from the comments:
oh... and my personal favorite:
Wheeeeee!
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 13, 2009 11:49 AM
They actually are amazed at the ability of these molecules to align…at distances of one whole nanometer!
I know you're taking the piss on the journalists' attempt at exaggerating the issue to "miraculous" proportions, but considering the actual size of the molecules involved, that actually is a notable distance.
Hence, of course, why there would be interest in discovering the mechanisms involved to begin with.
Posted by: Epinephrine
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October 13, 2009 12:06 PM
As neon-elf points out, the "journalist" probably doesn't understand that a hypothesis isn't the equivalent of a guess.
It's very frustrating, I have done the analysis and write-up for some federal documents on health, and I've watched my carefully chosen words get ruined by editing - perfectly sensible statements like "there is insufficient evidence to suggest a change in the rate of X" becomes "rates of X haven't changed."
It's true that scientists come across as unsure of anything, but it's not a problem with us, it's a problem with all the people who are certain of things about which there isn't certainty!
A friend of mine explained that they need a different set of psychological questions for science/math types when screening them, as they answer questions quite differently from the norm. Questions like, "would you ever ..." get overanalysed and frequently the "wrong" answer is selected by the science/math types, as they can indeed envision situations that would cause them to elicit the undesireable behaviour in question.
Posted by: MGG
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October 13, 2009 12:10 PM
O_o! And this is why my last straw when it comes to mainstream "science" news happened a long time ago. Did you know reticulated pythons are highly venomous and can kill with one bite?
Posted by: Matt Penfold
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October 13, 2009 12:16 PM
Anyone want to bet Mooney will be blaming the scientists ? Still I suppose inept journalists must feel a sense of solidarity.
Posted by: VinzKlortho
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October 13, 2009 12:19 PM
The guy who did the article probably read the proposed explanation for why it happened, only understood 3 or 4 words in the explanation, and came to the conclusion that if he didn't know why it happened then no one must know why it happened.
Posted by: Alpharabius
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October 13, 2009 12:24 PM
Here's how the review author went about the writing process:
hmm, what should I review today, I know this DNA stuff is big. Its like genetic and stuff.
quick net search keywords: Double cool free DNA homeopathy
Google: do you mean homology
author: yeah sure whatever
Google: DNA Double Helices Recognize Mutual Sequence Homology in a Protein Free Environment
author: ooh double helices, I be that's better than single DNA helix. suck on that Jim, this will totally rock.
Okay let me read this thing:
blah blah .. surprising features [GOLD] .. blah blah
charged sugar phosphate [nice, I'll just make a note: super charged neon-y thingy], bla blah , DNA-DNA - this must be big - hypothesis [hmm mystery]
ok this hurts my brain, what's in the conclusion:
blah blah .. big words .. blah blah .. homologeous [ooh that's like homeopathy ] blah blah .. intriguing [ok I figured it out]
author begin writing:
surprising super charged DNA puzzle scientists and is intriguing. Further proof for homeopathy!
KA-CHING - lets go grab a beer.
Posted by: llewelly
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October 13, 2009 12:25 PM
What?!? DNA not telepathic?!? Next you'll tell me it doesn't encode God's message to his creation!
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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October 13, 2009 12:40 PM
Ha ha, godless scientists, explain that if you can.
oh, you can, and have, explained it?
Well, you still can't explain the Big Bang, so there's a God.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: woo woozy
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October 13, 2009 12:41 PM
"Explanation: None, at least not yet."
"There is no known reason why..."
"No one knows how..."
BUT...
"The "telepathic" effect is a source of wonder and amazement"
Uh huh. Contradict yourself, much, do you? Nobody has an explanation or knows why, but the explanation is telepathy and it's amazing!
I think I'll go find a bin to throw up in now...
Posted by: Alverant
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October 13, 2009 12:53 PM
As a regular reader of Daily Galaxy, I have to say I'm very disappointed. The site does have cool CGI art sometimes. Where does everyone else get their science news? DG is becoming less of a site for science news and more of a site to give ideas for science-fiction stories.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 13, 2009 12:56 PM
Where does everyone else get their science news?
I typically find a visit the scientific periodicals section at the local uni library to be the only reliable thing.
other than that, I've found physorg to be tolerable:
http://www.physorg.com/
Posted by: wayofdisaster
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October 13, 2009 12:57 PM
Not only that, but the headline is supposed to say "baffled", not stumped. C'mon Daily Galaxy, don't you even know the classic clichés?
Posted by: Ichthyic
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October 13, 2009 12:59 PM
ooh, speaking of which, this was a fun little article:
http://www.physorg.com/news174645271.html
Posted by: Brownian, OM
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October 13, 2009 1:00 PM
Well, no. Not in the words that are written on the paper (or digitally encoded in the electronic medium), but clearly in the ideas transmitted by the authors via the æther.
Poor scientists. So cut off from the wonder and mystery of the universe by your close-minded, dogmatic adherence to mundane materialism. You all know so very little.
Gotta go--my phone is ringing. It does that every time someone wants to talk to me. I mean, how does it know?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler
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October 13, 2009 1:04 PM
... there aren't even tiny diaphanous fairies tugging at the molecules.
That's just because those secular instruments are so crude.
Once their work is completed, Top Scientists™ will emerge from their secret laboratory in the uncharted caverns of Kentucky to awe their skeptical colleagues with the wonders revealed by the new cold-fusion-powered Ham-O-Tron SuperScope - the tireless atto-angels!
Posted by: kopd
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October 13, 2009 1:09 PM
Fixed that for ya.
Posted by: Brownian, OM
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October 13, 2009 1:24 PM
The sound for the video accompanying the article can be found here.
Posted by: Gregory Greenwood
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October 13, 2009 1:24 PM
"As cautious investigators, they also suggest some alternative explanations; perhaps telepathy will appear here? Or maybe elves?"
Of course! Magic DNA-assembling elves! It's all so obvious.
I knew Elrond had to have a day job. How else would he pay for that sweet Rivendell pad?
Posted by: sasqwatch
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October 13, 2009 1:30 PM
nanometer? I thought you said light-year.
Posted by: Greg F.
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October 13, 2009 1:51 PM
Oh the Daily Galaxy...
Unfortunately for a supposed popular science site, they have some real hacks working on their articles. And this isn't the first time they completely and totally misrepresented a paper to make inane, sensationalistic claims:
http://worldofweirdthings.com/2009/06/20/who-wants-to-be-immortal-anyway/
And when they're not trying to make it up as they go along, they make people like Stephen Hawking sound like they're channeling Ray Kurzweil:
http://worldofweirdthings.com/2009/07/04/the-daily-galaxy-strikes-again/
Posted by: MrFire
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October 13, 2009 1:53 PM
Celtic_Evolution @5:
Here's my choice:
WTF?
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip
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October 13, 2009 1:55 PM
@llewelly #12: I though God's message to his creation was carved into 30-foot tall letters in the side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains.
Posted by: Takma'rierah
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October 13, 2009 1:56 PM
The real fun begins when you train yourself to focus all of your DNA's telepathy at once, and make other people stick to you! It's a good way to get chicks.
Posted by: hje
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October 13, 2009 2:03 PM
Well that certainly makes RecA's/Rad51's work a lot easier.
Posted by: Didac
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October 13, 2009 2:08 PM
So, for DNA recombination during meiosis the role of proteins is convenient but not essential?
Posted by: NoUnicorns
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October 13, 2009 2:17 PM
wayofdisaster@17
I thought it was supposed to be "stunned" scientists. My favourite headline from the late, lamented (well, for the comedy, I mean) Weekly World News was something like "Dinosaurs Found on Mars, Stunned Scientists Report".
Posted by: Travis
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October 13, 2009 2:25 PM
Wow, that is amazing news. I am going to have to read that website regularly now, just looking at the top page I see a number of potentially interesting and crazy ideas to blog about. A goldmine of wacky.
Sounds a lot like the site would appeal to the guy I chatted with while waiting at the bus terminal this weekend. He was excited when he found out I studied physics because he is studying alchemy and he was quite excited about the element 115 confirming some form of matter known for cneturies but only recently found by modern science. I wonder if there is a story on that site about this.
Posted by: sendaianonymous.wordpress.com
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October 13, 2009 2:37 PM
Funny how somewhere between the author's brain and their typing hands "well, I couldn't really parse that" turned into "NO ONE KNOWS". Self-validation much?Also:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174
Posted by: Sili
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October 13, 2009 2:43 PM
Of course they can't find evidence for telepathy.
They forgot to use the proper, twelve-stranded, Atlantean DNA instead of the damaged, two-stranded stuff.
Sheeessh. Don't you people ever listen to Richard Dawkins?
Posted by: Sastra
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October 13, 2009 3:11 PM
The reason this paper is evidence for telepathy is because DNA is information, and information is conceptual. Everything is made out of Thought.
That's the problem with modern scientists: they're still stuck in dualism.
Posted by: apweiler
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October 13, 2009 3:32 PM
I thought the "DNA telepathy" thing sounded familiar. One of the authors, A Kornyshev, gave a colloquium talk at my university (Exeter, UK) earlier this year about (presumably) the same research, and to be fair to the journalists here, he himself did use the phrase "DNA telepathy" in the title of that presentation. Of course, the rest of the reporting is atrocious, but Kornyshev himself does seem to be prone to, er, colourful language.
Posted by: Doug Little
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October 13, 2009 4:18 PM
Translation : I haven't been able to read the explanation put forth by the scientists as my online dictionary is currently malfunctioning.... Oh my god is that the deadline, better wrap this baby up.Posted by: Gilgamesh
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October 13, 2009 4:29 PM
This mangled article is an example of the decline of hardcopy & online newspapers. Prior to the internet, the public had to read this type of mistranslated drivel because it was the only information available in wide distribution.
Now there is opportunity to get the news from closer to the truth instead of from a newspaper reporter whose education is a mile wide and an inch deep. Its' a wonder we learned much when everything had to pass through such dense meat filters.
I see a business model for those within the scientific community who can write well and for the better editors being forced out of their newspaper seats. It will not work though if we are unable to break free of the proud know-nothings who are strangling education.
Posted by: Shadow
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October 13, 2009 5:22 PM
CE @5 wrote: Wheeeeee!
Perhaps, given the text under discussion, a better comment would have been:
Wooooooooooooo!
It seems that the article was 'reaching out' to the LCD and the woo infested.
Posted by: Jeff Eyges
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October 13, 2009 10:27 PM
I say it all the time - take out the name "Jesus", and there's NO difference between the blathering of evangelicals and those of New Age people. Two sides of the same coin.
Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot
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October 13, 2009 11:03 PM
Its Gnomes. With little hammers.
I know coz the sound of the damn anvils is keeping me awake at night!
Posted by: Daddy Stegosaurus
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October 13, 2009 11:14 PM
"Genetic “telepathy”? A bizarre new property of DNA" is the headline for the article from the American Chemical Society's weekly PressPac. I'm not sure who wrote it, but they certainly bear some of the blame for attracting hack journalists to that paper.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/acs-acs012208.php
Posted by: Don Smith
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October 13, 2009 11:34 PM
Come on PZ! They said "at a distance" and you know full well that a nanometer is a distance. And you know, "telepathic" and "electrostatic" are spelled nearly identically. Anyone could make that mistake!
Posted by: The Ungodly Goddess
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October 13, 2009 11:42 PM
In related news, scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, images in the mirror have the "amazing" ability to recognize similarities in objects outside the mirror. Somehow they are able to identify one another and move in tandem! Also, falling water is able to psychically "tell" exactly the shape of a hole below and arrange itself so as to fit the shape of the hole. (Insert Twilight Zone music)
Posted by: scarshapedstar
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October 14, 2009 6:33 PM
The other day, I pushed the top of one Lego into the bottom of another Lego, and they stuck together!
Praise Telepathic Lego Jesus!
Posted by: Richard Otter | October 16, 2009 5:11 PM
There was another really exciting "action at a distance" paper published in PNAS 106, p15237 Boal et al.
Nothing mysterious, but who would of thought DNA binding proteins could communicate with each other through a telephone wire of DNA?