pharyngula

The Discovery Institute doesn't understand the protein folding problem. I mean that literally: they don't understand the problem. Scientists don't know the answer, but they have a clear understanding of the problem. PNAS published a "Perspective" article, "The Nature of Protein Folding Pathways,"…

Natural History Museum

The image below is a phylogram, illustrating the degree of variation in a sequence of mitochondrial DNA. The concept is fairly simple: if two DNA samples are from individuals that are evolutionarily distant from one another, they'll have accumulated more differences in their mitochondrial DNA, and…

I have to admit that my first response to these reports out of Britain that stem cells had been successfully used to repair a complete spinal cord transection was skepticism -- incredulity even. They're reporting that a man with a completely severed spinal cord at level T10-T11 is able to walk…

Browse this list of images…all of them of real, live, genuine zombified organisms. Just in time for Halloween!

A paper that made extravagant weight loss claims for green coffee beans has been retracted. This study had been touted by Dr Oz, of course -- no fraud is to ludicrous for him -- and rebutted by Scott Gavura, and I'm generally suspicious of any dietary supplement that promises weight loss without…

I just learned that the Blogess has "giant squid phobia". Several people are aware of my severe giant squid phobia and lovingly (?) sent me this video of a giant squid attacking a Greenpeace submarine, and that’s unsettling enough, but WHY IS THERE ANOTHER SQUID BEHIND IT SPITTING OUT…

I would be irresistible to the ladies if only I had bright blue inflatable throat sacs, like Hoplobatrachus tigerinus. Photorator

A guy named Andrea Rossi has been promoting this device call the E-Cat that produces huge amounts of energy by nuclear fusion: specifically, that it fuses hydrogen and nickel to produce copper and energy. And now there is a claim that this amazing result has been verified, in a remarkably gushing…

That atavistic cancer hypothesis is actually fueling the work of quacks: Orac has been getting threats from a Frank Arguello, who runs a crank cancer mill called "Atavistic Chemotherapy". It's amazing stuff. It goes on and on about how cancer represents a reversion to the old cell types of single-…

They announced their decision to shut down the organization and cancel future conferences yesterday. This is sad news -- it has always been an innovative, interesting event, but they faced a terrible hit when one of their founders, Bora Zivkovic, was slammed with charges of harassing women, and…

Okeanos Explorer Watch. It's very soothing.

HHMI

All right, Larry Moran, why did you post about this paper now? I finished the unit on the origins of life in my cell biology class over a week ago, and this summary of the metabolism first model of abiogenesis would have been very helpful. I first gave them a review of redox reactions in chemistry…

William Dembski spoke at the University of Chicago in August, and a video of the talk is available. I tried to watch it, I really did, but I ended up skipping through most of it (one of the advantages of seeing it on youtube!). Here's my rather stream-of-consciousness monolog as I was flicking like…

MBARI Watch the fishing lure action right here -- also pay attention to the closeups that reveal how transparent Grimalditeuthis is. It would be so cool to be able to see our own guts like that.

Allspice, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon -- they don't actually look all that appetizing.

That same bozo who sent me the Hitler quote sent me another image in reply: Fair enough. Darwin got a lot of things wrong. I'm actually going to be lecturing my intro biology students on where Darwin screwed up in a few weeks, focusing mainly on his bad genetics, but I'll toss that quote into the…

I have been down the rabbit hole. I got sucked down into a prolonged web search on the matter of pre-WWII eugenics, which is more than a little squicky, but was fascinated to discover a thriving community of correspondents which reminded me precisely of the various flavors of blog commenters today…

It's the Kinabalu Giant Red Leech of Borneo! This foot long beast isn't satisfied with merely sucking blood, it swallows its prey whole.

It's reassuring to know that it's not just other atheists who hate me, but that I also still piss off the creationists. In addition to the mob of atheist dudebros howling at my door, there has been a recent resurgence of creationist loonietarianism in my email. It seems to have been triggered by a…

Creationists are much vested in the idea of "suddenly" -- they love the idea of inserting the fingersnap of God into every abrupt transition. This is why they are infatuated with the Big Bang and the Cambrian Explosion, and why they flirted with the idea of renaming "Intelligent Design" to "Sudden…

Reyner Onggara Compare!

The ever-charming Sam Harris has smarmily connected me to Deepak Chopra, so now I'm getting a flood of both smug, superior cluelessness from the Vulcans of Planet Sam, and the spacey vacuous nonsense of the Chopralites. Thanks, Sam! Although, I must say, so far Chopra freaks are doing a better job…

No, really, there's a connection.

Vestigial organs are relics, reduced in function or even completely losing a function. Finding a novel function, or an expanded secondary function, does not make such organs non-vestigial. The appendix in humans, for instance, is a vestigial organ, despite all the insistence by creationists and…

Ocean Explorer

Prepare yourself. The Te Papa Museum of New Zealand has a new specimen locked in a vault: a colossal squid that will be thawed and dissected (they think!) on streaming video. Here is the necromantic chamber. Wait! No protective runes, no array of emergency thuribles, no pentagram, no mysterious…

You know I'm a bit sour on the whole artificial intelligence thing. It's not that I think natural intelligences are anything more than natural constructions, or that I think building a machine that thinks is impossible -- it's that most of the stories from AI researchers sound like jokes. Jon…

You've just got to love the word "thrip". David Jones Thrips of California