You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. --Mark Twain
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is formerly a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not battling creationists or modeling species ranges, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
Razib Khan has a good response to my post yesterday about biopunks, including this: I obviously support this movement and its intents (I've met a few of the people who are prominent in it). But we need to keep perspective here. This will probably be analogous to the free or open source software movement; the base of tinkers will be much larger than corporations and academic institutions, but it isn't going to expand to cover the majority of the public. But so what? Most us can probably agree that the ad hoc decentralized elements of the software engineering community have...
Via USA Today, we learn about a study showing that people who meditate frequently behave in a more rational manner than non-meditators, and they do so because different parts of their brain take charge of certain kinds of decisions. The study was based around a common test of rational behavior called the Ultimatum Game. Two people sit at a table. One of them is given a sum of money ($20 in this case), and is told to split that however she wants with the other. Before she makes that decision, the other subject is told that if he rejects the...
For some perspective on yesterday's story about MRSA and other bugs found on BART train seats, let's turn to Good Magazine, which interviews microbiologist Pat Fidopiastis about a separate study, funded by Clorox, which found bacteria on shopping cart handles. Fidopiastis writes: none of this means much unless you can show me a significant risk involved with coming in contact with a shopping cart. You might be able to say that "X percent" more kids get sick if they touch a shopping cart handle versus a bathroom door knob, for example. But what are the actual numbers? Is this like...
Michael Egnor is still upset. Earlier, he penned an inaccurate, misleading, and … well … egnorant defense of his views on abortion, responding to my critique of his claim that personhood is easy to define. His earlier reply repeatedly and incorrectly attempted to associate the content of this blog with my employer. As the sidebar on every page makes clear, the opinions expressed here are not those of NCSE. People who try to tag content here as reflecting NCSE policy or views instantly lose a lot of credit in my accounting of their literacy. Egnor continues that trend in his...
I know Christopher Maloney is a quack because this is how quacks act. PZ Myers wrote a blog post way back when pointing out that Maloney is a quack, a naturopathic "doctor" in Maine. He urged parents to skip vaccinating their kids, and to have them drink berry juice and take garlic pills instead. That isn't how the real world works, alas. The flu vaccine really does stop the flu, while black elderberry has nothing like the clinical evidence required for this sort of recommendation. Rather than taking that criticism to heart, Maloney had his wife, a lawyer, send nastygrams...
That's the full video from my panel at Netroots Nation this summer. Mark Sumner (DailyKos's DevilsTower, and the author most recently of The Evolution of Everything), Greg Dworkin (DailyKos's DemfromCT), and Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (co-authors of the excellent and important Merchants of Doubt.), joined me to talk about threats to science in today's society, and what scientists have done to fight back. Don't miss my discussion of Leviathan melvillei and the Fail Whale....
Calitics has the story about that whooping cough epidemic: With whooping cough now at epidemic levels, it's becoming clear that one of the primary culprits is the idiotic trend over the last 10 years of parents, mostly affluent whites, opting out of vaccination out of a baseless fear that the vaccines are unsafe....
Via ObWi, we learn that the Pope took time out of his busy schedule to extend the AIDS crisis in Africa: While medical workers advocate the use of condoms to help prevent the spread of AIDS, the Church insists on fidelity within heterosexual marriage, chastity and abstinence. "The problem cannot be overcome by distributing condoms. It only increases the problem," the pontiff told reporters on board the plane headed for Africa. While in Cameroon, he will visit charities, meet Muslim leaders and attend a gathering of bishops trying to chart the Church's role in bettering Africans' lives.If Mr. Ratzinger really...
The Washington Post reports that the Red Cross has fallen on hard times: The American Red Cross said yesterday that it has depleted its national disaster relief fund and is taking out loans to pay for shelters, food and other relief services across seven Midwestern states battered by floods.The Bush economy and high gas prices have led people to reduce their donations as floods and tornados have swept across the nation. As a result "The disaster relief fund today is completely depleted. The balance is zero," according to Jeffrey Towers, chief development officer for the American Red Cross. The solution...
An LA Times report on a study of the HPV vaccine summarizes it by saying "Overall, the new results indicate that the vaccine is not living up to its initial prospects." But is that true? Here's what the reporter said mere paragraphs earlier about the findings: Among women who had not previously been exposed to types 16 and 18, the vaccine reduced the risk of precancerous lesions caused by those two strains by 98%. "The overall message, in my mind, is that among susceptible young women, the vaccine was highly effective in preventing HPV-16 or -18 precancerous cervical lesions," [study...
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
