…and this is a 
Scienceblogs grows a little more, with the addition of two new blogs.
We now have Pamela Ronald talking about food and farm science at Tomorrow's Table. That should fill a gap in the coverage here!
The other entry might be of more interest to readers here, because of the topics covered. We've drawn David Sloan Wilson away from the awful Huffington Post, and he'll be posting on Evolution for Everyone. He's a very big name in evolution, and I've commented on his work before: I think he's provocative and interesting, but disagree strongly with him on some parts of his ideas about religion. I'll also be very interested in seeing him present his case for group selection.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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October 21, 2009 7:06 PM
If Wilson just quits conferring respectability on HuffPo, it's already a plus.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: jcaps | October 21, 2009 7:20 PM
"That should fill a gap in the coverage here!"
-oops, now you have 2 gaps.
Posted by: Sili
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October 21, 2009 7:20 PM
I guess I should keep an eye on TT and see if I can turn my sister on to to blogs. She's in farming.
Which of means she won't have the time to read, much less blog.
Posted by: Qwerty
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October 21, 2009 7:29 PM
Does this mean the Rev BDC and others aren't allowed to discuss the finer points of bacon anymore?
Posted by: Travis | October 21, 2009 7:41 PM
Very good to see this. One less respectable person over at the HuffPo up the average crazy over there and hopefully will make it seem less worth reading to the average person.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
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October 21, 2009 7:47 PM
Qwerty, on the everlasting thread we discuss everything--eventually. Bacon, and how it works into the Pharyngula opera for example...
Posted by: Cannabinaceae
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October 21, 2009 7:54 PM
Ah, group selection - a concept that sounds so good, we want it to be true, but absent arguments that don't fall apart, and evidence-n-stuff, we're so disappointed. Or at least that's how I interpret the field.
Posted by: Wes | October 21, 2009 8:45 PM
I'm a big fan of David Sloan Wilson. I also disagree with a lot of his ideas on religion, but I like how he's not afraid to challenge the status quo. Science needs guys like Wilson. I'll definitely be check his blog more often now that it's not at the evil HuffPo any more.
Posted by: InfuriatedSciTeacher
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October 21, 2009 8:47 PM
I went and read a bunch of Wilson's publications, as I wasn't all that familiar with them. Group selection in a vacuum is, frankly, silly, but the multi-level selection work strikes me a plausible. Evidence would be nice however, particularly things that can't be explained otherwise. Wilson talks about lancet flukes in one paper, stating that the individual organism that burrows into the ant brain and allows others to continue their life cycle are evidence of group selection. How is that not also evidence of kin altruism, as the flukes within the ant, or the eggs present, are all 50% identical, genetically, to the one sacrificing its life (they're all offspring of the same adult, or a large group of them are)?
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | October 21, 2009 8:58 PM
Personally, I'm more excited by the new food and farming science person. (Who would have guessed?)
MT is giving me login permission errors again, btw.
Posted by: Carson | October 21, 2009 9:12 PM
TELEVISION ALERT! Science Channel is running a great series about the history of our planet. It's a real winner
Posted by: Wayward son | October 21, 2009 9:37 PM
Pam Ronald is a great addition and although I didn't read her previous blog, I did read her book Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food which I think has a great overview of biotechnology and its potential benefits.
Posted by: Luke | October 21, 2009 9:48 PM
PZ,
If you haven't seen them and you are interested in David Sloan Wilson's case for "group selection", check out some of his Huff post. I'm glad he's come over to ScienceBlogs.
His Truth and Reconciliation for Group Selection series has been very nice.
Here's from the last few which are very good.
Group Selection in the Laboratory - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sloan-wilson/truth-and-reconciliation_b_266316.html
Group Selection in the Wild - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sloan-wilson/truth-and-reconciliation_b_292114.html
Multilevel Selection Theory, Salsa Style - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sloan-wilson/truth-and-reconciliation_b_202753.html
Finally, his excellent answer to Dawkins' "group delusion" post.
Dawkins Protest (to much) - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sloan-wilson/truth-and-reconciliation_b_190008.html
Posted by: cthellis | October 21, 2009 11:19 PM
"As someone who is seriously committed to studying religion from a scientific and evolutionary perspective, I'm here to say that the new atheists can't bring themselves to accept the facts about religion as a human construction. Read my six-part series on "Atheism as a Stealth Religion", now archived on my ScienceBlog site, for more."
...this will end well.
-_-
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 22, 2009 12:26 AM
D. S. W. seems to be playing a rather silly game of redefinition: whatever he wants to call a religion, is a religion. With equal logic, one could throw into the religion column mountain climbing or following Amanda Palmer on tour, as they entail sacrifice and hardship in the pursuit of some transformative beauty. Hopefully, he's gotten this out of his system and can go on to subjects interesting enough to actually have an argument about.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 22, 2009 12:34 AM
Oh, and what happens if one holds a Dawkinsian attitude about religion, but also considers multilevel selection models an interesting area to explore? Ghasp! Would that be a DOUBLE DEEP RIFT in the atheist community???
Posted by: Luke | October 22, 2009 12:47 AM
cthellis,
Yea, that series is fairly old news now, first posted in Dec. 2007 and Jan. 2008. It's still up on Huff with the lively comments section still in tact, last count the first two post received around 250 comments, last one VI, I just noticed has 50 (lots of critical comments, some supporters - lots of fun that was!).
It'll be interesting to see if gets new legs with his decision to re-post the series on ScienceBlogs so prominently, and we have another go round. I kind of hope like hell we do actually. For the most part I think he makes excellent points. I'm definitely one who wishes to scientifically study religion as a natural phenomena, for me that includes the beliefs, then start bashing out some theory - this is very similar to Dan Dennett's idea and I support him also on this (yes, we know its all crazy bullshit - call it crazy bullshit). They also both share the advocacy of the wider implications of Evolution. Somewhat related, I have recently enjoyed some ideas forwarded by Mike Shermer about why people believe that includes religious beliefs, such as his "agenticity" and "paternicity" ideas.
A quick run down of Mike's ideas for anyone interested.
Homo Religious: http://skepticblog.org/2009/08/18/homo-religious/
One of the reason I support such projects is because I think it may be our quickest way to a more secular and humanistic civilization. One in which science is cherished and people think more rationally about "superstition".
Posted by: truth machine
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October 22, 2009 4:27 AM
We've drawn David Sloan Wilson away from the awful Huffington Post, and he'll be posting on Evolution for Everyone.
His claim that science is a religion that worships truth is not just absurdly false, it's downright harmful. And apparently all comments are being held for moderation.
Posted by: Sigmund
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October 22, 2009 4:35 AM
I read his articles about new atheism as a religion and I have to say he does seem to be building a strawman with this one. In my opinion the new atheism movement is closely linked with another growing movement, that of skepticism. It is the principle behind skepticism, of looking for the evidence before accepting an idea, that is a strength of the allied 'new atheists'. He claims that new atheist ideas are being taken unquestioningly by their followers (I would dispute this) without appreciating that skepticism asks us to question ALL claims, whether they come from Ken Ham, PZ Myers or Richard Dawkins - or for that matter, David Sloan Wilson.
He seems to take for granted some things (for instance the idea that supernaturalism is not supported by the evidence and thus theistic religions are based on myths) without appreciating the difficulty in changing the public's mind on this important point. He advocates a more gentle, academically acceptable approach to the matter without acknowledging that there may be a valid case for utilizing both an aggressive(new atheist) AND an academic (his own) approach.
Comments don't seem to be appearing on his blog yet (held up in moderation - never the best sign, in my opinion) so lets see how open he is to real debate on this matter.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 22, 2009 7:09 AM
Nice spam currently at comment 20. :-)
Aren't they even 100 % identical? Or does the asexual reproduction come later in the life cycle?
GAAAH!!! If he claims that, he's nothing short of stupid.
That may just mean he's new to blogging and fears he'll be swamped with spam and/or hate mail immediately (as opposed to 2 weeks later). Tet Zoo was moderated for a long time and the same imagined reasons.
:-D
At least he has a sense of humor!
Posted by: Sigmund
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October 22, 2009 7:22 AM
David Marjanović, OM #21 said:
At least he has a sense of humor!
Too right he has!
"The new atheists will need to display a virtue typically associated with religion -humility- if they wish to join this enterprise."
If there's one thing I'd associate with humility its the idea that the one creator of the universe, - who incidentally, created it with me in mind - speaks to me and my friends alone, telling us exactly how to live our lives and gives us instructions on how to force others to run their lives.
Posted by: SEF
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October 22, 2009 7:51 AM
The religious have fake humility; just as they have fake morals, fake knowledge, fake tolerance, fake open-mindedness, fake ... pretty much everything really.
Posted by: cthellis | October 22, 2009 8:07 AM
Luke,
I haven't read through his earlier articles yet, but I was primarily alighting on his phrase "...can't bring themselves to accept the facts about religion as a human construction."
I kind of LIKE the "truth as 'God'" abstract, and think it could be used as a useful springboard to examining both philosophically, but is there anything from the Four Horsemen... from P Z... from Jerry... from basically ANYONE that makes it seem like the aren't looking at religion factually, as a human construction?
Perhaps that's more of a confrontational snipe and he doesn't really mean that in his longer articles, but that comment strikes me as woefully uninformed. Frankly, it's them "New"s treatment of religion decidedly in a factual/human-construction manner what gets so many theists up in arms.
What I'm not sure yet is what gets Wilson up in arms.
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk
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October 22, 2009 8:16 AM
David Sloan Wilson, the short form:
Jainism is good, therefore all religion is good. Now give me my Templeton prize.
Posted by: Sigmund
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October 22, 2009 8:46 AM
"What I'm not sure yet is what gets Wilson up in arms."
He seems to be mixing up two separate topics.
1. Is religion (supernaturalism) true.
and
2. Does religion confer an evolutionary advantage onto groups.
It seems to me that the new atheists have concentrated on the first question - where Wilson finds himself in agreement with them. This doesn't mean that the second question is irrelevant, but that seems to be the way he reads their priorities.
Posted by: InfuriatedSciTeacher
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October 22, 2009 9:22 AM
David M>
It would depend on whether or not the ant was infected only by one or more original larvae, from what I can tell. I'm far from an expert on that species.
Posted by: NewEnglandBob
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October 22, 2009 10:45 AM
I am NOT a fan of David Sloan Wilson at all but I subscribed to his blog and will give it a change.
Strike one against him already - I posted a 'welcome' last evening and it has not shown up. He is moderating (i.e. censoring) comments.
Posted by: Chris H | October 22, 2009 3:39 PM
Too bad about Pamela Ronalds. She shows no nuances in her opinion on GMO's.
It's not bad, she says, because we've been genetically selecting before. Ugh.
There are no problems, she says, because there has not been a single instance of harm to human health or the environment by GE crops - without showing the research that actually supports that claim.
People are "scared" because they are non-scientists.
This is a bad move for scienceblogs.
Posted by: windy | October 23, 2009 7:02 AM
If by "excellent" you mean "fucking stupid".
"Dawkins has now started to throw chairs, bite, and kick"- let me guess, DSW is one of the CIVIL ones?