pharyngula

I was going to talk about a cool recent paper that described the evolution of novelties by way of modifying modular gene networks, but I started scribbling it up and realized that I was constantly backtracking to explain some fundamental concepts, so I stopped. I was concerned because one of the…

AAAAAAAAAARGH! Someone is wrong on the internet, and I don't know whether to scream or to facepalm! (I tried doing both at once, but then it just comes out as a muffled gargle.) Please go look at this creationist comic called "How Darwin Got It Wrong". It's typical creationist garbage, and…

(Also on FtB)

This is Hazel Jones. She has two vaginas. She has a condition called Uterus Didelphys. Variations of this condition aren't uncommon, occurring once in a few thousand births. The reproductive tract develops from paired tubes that fuse prenatally, and sometimes the fusion is incomplete, producing a…

Last week, I gave a talk at UNLV titled "A counter-revolutionary history of evo devo", and I'm afraid I was a little bit heretical. I criticized my favorite discipline. I felt guilty the whole time, but I think it's a good idea to occasionally step back and think about where we're going and where…

I don't get it. First there was Climategate, in which hackers illegally broke into a server at the University of East Anglia and stole a pile of emails from climate researchers. The denialists seemed to be fine with that, and quote-mined the heck out of the documents to find damning statements,…

(via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

(Also on FtB)

It's really easy to set up a completely fake peer-reviewed journal, which is a great boon to pseudoscientists, quacks, creationists, and con artists. They can be tripped up, though, since they aren't aware of all the inside jokes and strange habits of scientists. Here's one, a journal called "…

It's on! Students here at UMM got together and have organized their very own Midwest Science of Origins Conference, to be held in Morris on 30 March-1 April. As the big name speaker, they've got Neil Shubin to tell us all about Tiktaalik, and some other regional folk to talk about physics, biology…

It truly does, and someone has caught us out and published a stunning exposé that reveals the horrible, awful behavior that our goddess, Nature, endorses. You must read "God Hates Checkered Whiptail Lizards!!!" and weep. This is but one page of a devastating revelation. (Also on FtB)

(Also on FtB)

Have you ever walked around an 19th century (or earlier) graveyard? It gives you a depressing snapshot of the old reality: so many young women dead in childbirth, so many children reaped by diseases. We've been fortunate, we residents of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, that so many of those…

You will not escape the swarm. (via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

There's a reason I promote atheism and skepticism coupled with feminism, and it's not because I'm trying to foist a feminist ideology on skepticism. It's because skepticism drives me to consider discrimination and injustice as wrong, not just in an abstract moral sense, but unjustifiable and…

I was on Skeptically Speaking this week, weirdly and uncomfortably talking about the evolution of menstruation. I barrelled ahead anyway, even though I've got a Y chromosome and am not a member of the club. Fortunately, they also had Kate Clancy on to be a little more authoritative. (Also on FtB)

I'd been wondering about the credibility of David L. Abel, an Intelligent Design creationist who claims to work in the Department of ProtoBioCybernetics and ProtoBioSemiotics, Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc. I tried to track down this foundation with the lofty title, the million dollar…

Next step: lasers mounted on squid mantles. You puny humans are so screwed. (Also on FtB)

The editor of Life, Shu-Kun Lin, has published a rationalization for his shoddy journal. Life (ISSN 2075-1729, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/life/) is a new journal that deals with new and sometime difficult interdisciplinary matters. Consequently, the journal will occasionally be presented with…

That sad article on gyres as an explanation for everything has had more fallout: not only has it been removed from Science Daily's site, not only has Case Western retracted the press release, but one of the editors at the journal Life has resigned his position over it. The editorial board of the…

The Indiana Senate has approved this bill: The governing body of a school corporation may offer instruction on various theories of the origin of life. The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam…

I've been naughty and neglecting to announce these things, so let's start correcting that: here's the 44th Carnival of Evolution. (Also on FtB)

(Also on FtB)

The Fordham Institute has released their annual evaluation of state science standards. They are very tough graders — Minnesota got a "C". Ack! Mom & Dad are going to be pissed, how will we ever get into a good college at this rate? The Institute does a fairly thorough breakdown, so there are…

It must be tough running a charity. You've got a cause you care deeply about, and you're constantly juggling the game of having to spend money (in administration, advertising, staff) to raise money (for the cause!), and worse, of sometimes having to compromise to achieve your goals — you sometimes…

Aside from Mary, that is. (via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

Ah, the 19th century…when mad scientists were really mad, and not only that, they were popular at parties. In 1818, Dr Ure and Professor Jeffray obtained the freshly killed corpse of Matthew Clydesdale, only an hour from the hangman's noose, and proceeded to experiment on it with a battery in the…

You already know my feelings about that exploitive science publisher, Elsevier; I'm not the only one, and there's been a long, long history of anger over their publishing model — and it's not just scientists, but scholars in other disciplines who have been peeved. Now a boycott has coalesced. If…

Time is whipping by, I can tell — Darwin Day is next week! I'm going to have to whip up a talk for this event real soon, I think: it's Darwin on the Palouse, and I'll be talking at Washington State University in Pullman, WA a week from Thursday. They've paired me up with Dan Dennett that evening……

The words of the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu 'aleihi was-sallam) have been tested scientifically, and found hilarious. In work carried out under the direction of Dr. Jamaal Haamid, students at Qassim University examined a saying by the prophet, and have published it in a freely available pdf, The…