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Correcting errors is now anti-religious bigotry?

That paper that cited the Creator for designing the hand has been retracted. The authors say it was a translation error -- that they assumed that "Creator" was synonymous with "nature" in English, and apparently, they weren't aware of the potential for willful misinterpretation of the word "design" in the creationist community. I can sort of accept that, except, of course, that they managed to write an entire complex technical paper on the physiology and anatomy of the hand in fluent English. I wouldn't have expected a retraction, though, but only a revision of an unfortunate mistake. Except…

The Drug Bust II: Big New Study Shows Antidepressants Have No Significant Effect

[This is a revised, expanded version of the original heads-up I put up last night.] A large new meta-analysis of SSRI antidepressant trials concludes that the drugs have essentially no therapeutic effect at all. The study, in PLOS Medicine today, comes on the heels of another study published a few weeks ago (I blogged on it here) showing that SSRIs have little therapeutic effect if you include the (unflattering) clinical trials the industry had previously hidden. The PLOS study is a meta-analysis of 47 clinical trials that account for almost all full data on clinical trials of SSRIs such as…

"Foo!" to "Are we shortening the Universe's life by observing it?"

(I know I'm not doing this any more, but I couldn't resist.) An article in New Scientist reports on musing by two reasonable and respected cosmologists— indeed, ones whom I've met myself— that our discovery of dark energy may have shortened the life of the Universe. To which I can only say "foo". And I say "foo" on two levels. Primarily, on the sensational way in which this is described by New Scientist. But secondarily, on the interpretations of quantum mechanics that respectable cosmologists are promoting. First of all, for a bit of perspective. The actual research paper on which this…

Dr. Tiller's murder, terrorism, and Christianists: a few (more) thoughts.

James Kirchick has an op-ed up in today's Wall Street Journal that addresses the reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Or so he might want to believe. In actuality, Kirchick is responding to the portion of the reaction that he wants to see, and not to the range of opinion that is out there. There is no appreciable number of people in this country, religious Christians or otherwise, who support the murder of abortion doctors. The same cannot be said of Muslims who support suicide bombings in the name of their religion. Not only has Kirchick clearly missed the moral munchkins…

HR 669 and Invasive Species Prevention: I Still Think It's A Good Bill

Over the last few days, there has been a fair amount of discussion about the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act (HR 669). Some of that has occurred in the comments on my blog post on the subject, and quite a bit more over at GrrlScientist's blog. So far, I haven't seen anything that leads me to change my view that the bill is, on the whole, a good piece of legislation. There are two main objections that I've seen that I'd like to specifically look at. The first is the possible impact that the bill would have on breeding species for conservation purposes. The second involves the…

Whose Issue Is This?

Sciencewoman ponders seen and unseen parenting responsibilities. In a discussion about parceling out responsibilities for a large project, the department chair expressed his desire not to unduly belabor a Department Dad because of his Very Special Parenting Responsibilities; Sciencewoman, however, he had no problem assigning the task to her. Until reminded by her colleague that Sciencewoman, too, is a parent. Why was Daddy's time more worth protecting than Mommy's? Well, one hopes the department chair has learned a lesson. What really burns my shorts even more, however, are the…

Telling The Story Of The Group

Raise your hand if you've been to diversity camp! You know - sometime during the academic year, your department head or dean announces there's going to be a diversity meeting/seminar/retreat. People grudgingly attend, they do some exercises to maybe show them just how prejudiced they actually are, they're told Diversity is Good!, and there's a little talk about how they can be more supportive of diversity. Everybody goes home feeling like they wasted an hour or day or weekend of their lives, and nothing substantially changes. No one has addressed why resistance to diversity is so…

How Do You Balance Nothing?

The word of the month is "balance", or so they tell me for the upcoming scientiae-carnival. I have been thinking for days about what I could write on this topic. What does balance mean to those without careers? I can talk about stuff from the past, how I made choices about balancing career and relationship over a period of several years. First there was the decision to leave my life in Philadelphia and all my friends to move to Kansas, because I wanted to continue living with Mr. Zuska. That was a hard decision, but I was able to find a job that represented a significant career advance…

Ashley Likes Science! But Not Isabella

When I lived in North Carolina, I got to know a woman who worked in one of the Research Triangle labs. She had a baby girl, and I occasionally baby-sat for her. She had named her daughter Melina, which I thought was an incredibly beautiful name for a little girl. I remarked upon this one time, and she said to me "yeah, I like it, and I figure when she's a little older she'll be nicknamed Mel, which isn't too girly." Melina's mother did not fit any "girly" stereotypes. She had rennovated her house pretty much on her own; she didn't dress in typical feminine garb, and she was, of course,…

Shake Off The Dust...

It's been a migrainey sort of week here at Chez Zuska, so in lieu of something new at the moment, I'm giving you a "best of Zuska" from the old blog site. By coincidence, it's also trash and recycling night here in my hometown. Read and decide for yourself. Shake Off The Dust Under Your Feet And as a follow-up to my last post, take a gander at what Female Science Professor has to say: At my university, there has never been a woman department chair in science, engineering, or math in the entire history of the university. A dean recently told me that it will probably be another decade or so…

The Life of a Postdoc

Found this blog via a comment on Young Female Scientist this evening Rising to the Occasion Saxifraga is in Scandinavia and says of herself I am a newly minted PhD in the natural sciences. I work as a research scientist and is currently holding a temporary position as an associate professor. I moved to a new country last year. I moved to a very remote place in the far north for the temporary position. I recently got engaged. we will move in together soon after four years of doing the long-distance relationship thing. I will be appointed assistant head of department when I return to my home…

Speaking of Mr. Vonnegut...

So I'm in the midst of trying to write a book, with a genetics theme and all. And so far, things look pretty good. I'm having fun anyway. But this is not what this post is about. This post is actually about a previous attempt to write a book, which was tentatively entitled "Towards Hannah: an Unusual Primer on Genetics and Biotechnology." Anyway the main pitch behind that book project was to focus on about a two year period of my life and use it as a backdrop to talk genetics. It even got representation which was neat at the time (and includes the Dr. Phil episode), but ultimately, the…

The hazards of oversimplifying cap + trade

A two-hour PowerPoint/Keynote presentation isn't enough time to explain the science of climate change, the political forces governing our response to it, and the economics involving in reducing greehouse gas-emissions. Oversimplification is an unavoidable hazard. Just imagine how much trouble you're going to get into if you try to compress all that into 10 minutes? Is it even possible to make a meaningful contribution in such a format? Annie Leonard's new short feature making the rounds of the net this week, The Story of Cap Trade, clocks in at 9:56. So you know there's going to be complaints…

Scientists as historians

I'm supposed to be marking essays, but the reaction to Thony's recent guest articles has triggered in me a conditioned reflex: the uses and abuses of history by scientists. Historians have a certain way to pursue their profession - it involves massive use of documentary evidence, a care taken to avoid naming heroes and villains, and in general a strong devotion to the minutae and detail of history, instead of the now-old-fashioned grand sweeps of a Toynbee or Marx. Sure, they disagree how to interpret things, including mindsets of agents in another time, but overall when a historian gives…

Fun with Christians and worldviews

The local evangelical students society had me along last night to talk about "Is belief in the Christian God rational?" I was on the negative, although I did ask them which side they wanted me to argue for. It was done in traditional debating format, and I found it incredibly restrictive - speakers were allowed to get away with introducing stuff they hadn't mentioned in their main point piece, and a number of things were left up in the air. Kudos to the undergraduate organisers Tim and Stewart for having a philosophy lecturer and a graduate student in physics and moral philosophy (…

Attentional Set: Set in stone?

This is a guest post by Daniel Griffin, one of Greta's top student writers from Spring of 2007. Does anything seem stick out about this sentence? I'm sure that if I told you to keep looking for yellow highlighted words, you would not have much trouble finding them in these first few sentences. You could even make it simpler for yourself and just look for any highlighted word. The only highlighted portions are yellow, so what is the difference? Let's say that by now you are used to searching for these highlighted words by just looking for a different color background than just the usual white…

Seven Days to Go: Tobacco, the Archetype of Corporate Attacks on Science

I just downloaded and read a small part of Judge Gladys Kessler's gargantuan 1742 page opinion in the Justice Department's tobacco industry racketeering case (PDF). The table of contents alone is 29 pages long! I must say, this looks like the best and most official documentation we will ever get of just how extensively the tobacco companies conspired to deceive the public about the health risks of their products. As far as courts unmasking attacks on science, it's right up there with Judge Jones' opinion in the Dover evolution trial. Few if any of us will have time to read Kessler's whole…

Extreme volunteering: What a "just world" has to do with helping others

The TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a bit of a guilty pleasure for our family. I've never been quite sure why we like it: the plot of the show is always the same. We're introduced to a family which has undergone some terrible tragedy through no fault of their own: the father has been blinded by the gunshot of a thief while he was working overtime at a convenience store, or the daughter is undergoing treatment for chemotherapy, or the grandmother has adopted six troubled teenagers. Despite (and sometimes because of) their best efforts, the family's home has fallen into extreme…

Paleo Blogs: Where the action is

During the past month Andy Farke of The Open Source Paleontologist has been considering the rise (and fall) of paleontology-oriented mailing lists (like the Dinosaur Mailing List and the VRTPALEO Discussion List). These lists are good for a lot of things, like quickly disseminating news to a large audience of specialists or requesting papers/information, but more and more in-depth discussions of paleontology are moving onto blogs. Andy has already covered some of the major points, but I wanted to add a few thoughts of my own. There are advantages and disadvantages to science blogging vs.…

Casual Fridays: How random are we?

This week's Casual Fridays study was inspired by this comment on the Random Number thread: When a freshman at Penn State too many years ago to count, the intro psychology prof did an amazing demonstration. I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this which I have long forgotten. He said he had written the numbers 1 through 5 in random order on a piece of paper. He then asked the very large class to read his mind and write down his number order. When the class compiled the answers, more than 50% of the class had his order, and so proved that telepathy was possible!!! The class was ecstatic,…

How hard do academics with kids really have it compared to the rest of the working world?

So I meant to have a nice post today addressing Ecogeofemme's challenge of describing how we write papers/proposals, but I haven't actually managed to do any writing today like I was supposed to. Instead, I am going to point out the at times thoughtful, at times heated discussion going on around the blogosphere about whether academics with kids really have it harder than the rest of working adults. The discussion originated from an IHE piece about new studies that found that academics had lower birth rates than doctors or lawyers. From there, Dean Dad wrote a post with his observations on…

Things to read, Weekend Edition

Turns out DC has, or once did have, a hidden subterranean labyrinth - and you thought it was just a plot device from last fall's South Park election special! Even better, it was dug by a lepidopterist. Take that, you engineers! ONE of the oddest hobbies in the world is that of Dr. H. G. Dyar, international authority on moths and butterflies of the Smithsonian Institution, who has found health and recreation in digging an amazing series of tunnels beneath his Washington home. The New York Times revealed its 50 most looked-up words, and Nieman Journalism Lab had commentary: "All of the 25-cent…

Meerkats teach

I don't know if you have ever seen this show on Animal Planet -- Meerkat Manor. It is disgustingly cute. It is about a family of meerkats that were followed over several years. Anyway, I love that show, so lately I have had meerkats on the brain. Some other researchers are also apparently interested in meerkats. Publishing in the journal Science, they have recently shown that meerkats teach their young how to hunt. Thorton and McAuliffe examined hunting in meerkats. Meerkats eat basically anything they are bigger than -- as you will note if you watch the show above. This would…

Where Economists Dare to Tread

Over at The Frontal Cortex, Jonah has a blog referring to a WSJ article impugning economic jurisdiction in questions outside the traditional bounds of economics. Specifically, the article cites a paper recently publicized by Cornell University claiming to establish a causal link between early childhood television viewing and autism. The thrust of the article is that the statistical tools used by economists are ill-equipped to address such questions and should be treated as suspect by the natural sciences. The answer, as with all things, is a bit of yes and a bit of no. I would like to begin…

Does knowledge of neuroscience erode the idea of free will?

The Economist has an article that wonders whether new knowledge into neuroscience and more particularly social pathologies will erode our belief in free will. I roll my eyes every time I read an article like this one, mostly because they tend to express an uniformed view about how the brain works: For millennia the question of free will was the province of philosophers and theologians, but it actually turns on how the brain works. Only in the past decade and a half, however, has it been possible to watch the living human brain in action in a way that begins to show in detail what happens…

Women in Math, Science, and Engineering, and Playing Video Games

There's a fair amount of evidence that spatial reasoning abilities and spatial attention are an important constituent of secondary math skills (basically everything after basic algebra)(1), and it stands to reason that secondary math skills are an important determinant of success in math-heavy careers. There's also a pretty large body of evidence that, on average, females perform worse than males on spatial reasoning and spatial attention tasks (e.g., the classic mental rotation task), and this difference is often taken to be one of the major factors in sex differences in math ability(2). It'…

Antidepressant Effect of Vitamin D???

There is a thought-provoking editorial in the openly-accessible Journal of Psychiatry of Neuroscience (JPN): Has the time come for clinical trials on the antidepressant effect of vitamin D?  (45 KB PDF).  In it, the editor of the the Journal, Simon N. Young, PhD, argues that there is enough evidence to justify increased research efforts. He points to a recent article in the Archives of General Psychiatry to support this view: Depression Is Associated With Decreased 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and Increased Parathyroid Hormone Levels in Older Adults Witte J. G. Hoogendijk, MD, PhD; Paul Lips, MD,…

Baclofen in the Treatment of Alcohol Withdrawal

I was a bit perplexed by a recent study on a new treatment for alcohol withdrawal.  Ordinarily, I am in favor of new treatment options, based on the supposition that nothing works for everyone, and having more options is good.  This counterbalances, to some extent, the anti-pharma screed about "me-too" drugs, but that is another story. href="http://www.aafp.org/afp/20040315/1443.html" rel="tag">Alcohol withdrawal is a significant clinical problem.  While most people who drink alcohol can simply stop, with no danger, people who routinely drink too much may go into withdrawal.  That is…

Anatomy of a false memory

WE BELIEVE THAT memory provides us with a faithful record of past events. But in fact, it is well established that memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature. In retrieval, a memory is pieced together from fragments, but during the reconstruction errors creep in due to our own biases and expectations. Generally, these errors are small, so despite not being completely accurate, our memories are usually reliable. Occasionally, there are too many errors, and the memory becomes unreliable. In extreme cases, memories can be completely false. False memory, or confabulation, is…

Balance is a nice idea, but my reality is closer to juggling.

Friday, my better half was preparing to cross the international dateline for a week-long business trip and my parents were getting ready to board a plane for a week-long visit at Casa Free-Ride. As I contemplated the prospect of digging out our guest room (known in these parts as "the place clean clothes go to wrinkle") it became clear to me that the chances of my finishing writing (and preparing overheads for) the two presentations I will be giving at the conference that starts the day after my parents depart before my parents' arrival were nil. Of course, this means that I will not be…

Time Trauma Truth and Other Matters

First of all, I want you to know that I've devoted my life to this blog post so now you have every reason to love it more than any other blog post. Sniff sniff. Or, could it be that I've been watching too much America's Got Talent (which, clearly, it does not, except that yo-yo guy was pretty good). I mean, seriously, if America's Got Talent then why is there Country Western Music? Anyway, I have noticed this trend of the argument for Not Being Voted Off The Island being that I've Invested Myself Emotionally Beyond Belief and I think that's a bad trend. Speaking of time, this was one of…

Forgive me if I'm truly puzzled by this attack...

Since this seems to be the day for applying Respectful Insolence⢠to people who say stupid things about me... Everyone knows that Dean Esmay and I don't exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things. Indeed, it could be safely said that Dean has nothing but contempt for me. It doesn't bother me. After all, I have to respect someone before his negative opinion of me can possibly bother me in the least. Between his HIV/AIDS denialism, his ignorant rants about cancer research, and his know-nothing conspiratorial "critiques" of the peer review system, Dean is clearly someone who has a far higher…

The Young Birder's Guide: A Bird Book for the Middle Schooler

Bill Thompson's The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of North America is a book that I highly recommend for kids around seven to 14 years of age. (The publishers suggest a narrower age range but I respectfully disagree.) This is a new offering written by Bill Thompson III and published by the same people who give us the Peterson Field Guide to the Birds and many other fine titles. The book includes excellent illustrations by Julie Zickefoose. A birder since childhood, Thompson says he would have loved a book like this one when he was just getting interested in birds. Now a father of two,…

The Oystercatcher and the Clam

One of those really cool and useful "evolution stories" gets verified and illuminated by actual research. And blogging! An oystercatcher is a wading bird of the family Haematopodidae, distributed in one genus, Haematopus. As is the case with many coast loving birds, there has been confusion about the limits of the 11 or so species known to exist worldwide. That itself is an interesting story (Hocke 1996), but one we will not go into now. Adult coastal oystercatchers (some species are not coastal) eat all sorts of animals found in the intertidal zone, including shellfish of all sorts,…

Primitive Cultures are Simple, while Civilization is Complex: Part 3

I previously noted that to survive as a Westerner, you can get away with participating in a culture that asks of you little more than to understand the "one minute" button on the microwave, while to survive in a foraging society you needed much much more. Moreover, I suggested that the level of complexity in an individual's life was greater among HG (Hunter-Gatherer) societies than Western societies. However, this is not to say, in the end, that one form of economy and society is more complex than the other. I happen to think that the maximum level of complexity ... of thought, social…

The Young Birder's Guide: A Bird Book for the Middle Schooler

Bill Thompson's Young Birder's Guide The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of North America (Peterson Field Guides) is a book that I highly recommend for kids around seven to 14 years of age. (The publishers suggest a narrower age range but I respectfully disagree.) This is a new offering written by Bill Thompson III and published by the same people who give us the Peterson Field Guide to the Birds and many other fine titles. The book includes excellent illustrations by Julie Zickefoose. A birder since childhood, Thompson says he would have loved a book like this one when he was just…

Open-minded to the point of brains falling out: Antivaccinationists appointed to federal autism panel

We've had one example this week of people with minds so open that their brains fell out at the Oxford Union, which invited Holocaust denier and British National Party leader Nick Griffin to "discuss free speech." Now, sadly, I see another, this time it's the United States government, which has invited die-hard antivaccinationists to be on a major federal panel about autism: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Advocates who believe vaccines may cause autism will join mental health professionals and neurologists on a new federal panel to coordinate autism research and education, the U.S. Health and Human…

Mark Steyn digs himself deeper

After falling for an obvious hoax, Mark Steyn has refused to correct his error. Instead he just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole. (My previous posts on this topic: 1 2 3). In his latest effort Steyn complains about how the meanies at Media Watch asked him what checks he made to prove the validity of Bryant's unlikely tale: But Chantal explained that she'd checked out the show and that the Media Watch concept involves them accusing you of something, you emailing back your 15,000-word response and then they pick the infelicitously phrased seven-word throwaway subordinate…

Persistence of controversy over the Confederate flag

Last week, when I speculated about reasons why there hasn't been a National Slavery Museum in this nation until the one slated to open in 2007, I mentioned the power of Confederate sympathies that still persists even to today in much of the South. Basically, in the eyes of many, the Confederacy has been romanticized, downplayng the brutality of slavery upon which the economy of the South was based for so long. Another example has cropped up in the Senate campaign of Senator George Allen (R) in Virginia: The Confederate battle flag still stirs passions - reverence in some, fear and loathing in…

Are CSIRO scientists still being gagged?

Back in 2006 it was revealed that scientists at the CSIRO had been forbidden from commenting on some impacts of climate change: JANINE COHEN: Kevin Hennessy is the coordinator of the CSIRO's Climate Impact Group. One of his jobs is to talk about the potential impacts of climate change. But there are some likely impacts of climate change that are clearly a no-go zone. Some scientists believe that there'll be more environmental refugees. Is that a possibility? KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: I can't really comment on that. JANINE COHEN: Why can't you comment on that? KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO…

Top Ten List: Cinema's Most Frightening Scenes Ever - Now Updated!

One of the delights of growning up in the pre-cable era was when the local station showed a horror film on Saturday nights. As kids we used to love to stay up late and cower under the blankets as we watched one monster after another stalk their hapless victims. "Don't go in there!" we screamed, but the fair-haired burgermeister's daughter never listened to us. Oh, the dreams we had back then. I think it was around this time that sales of nightlights took off. As teenagers we made it our duty to see every horror movie that was released, if for no other reason to have plenty of material on…

Rowling Leaves Her Fans Behind

Critique of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows below the fold. Spoilers ahead. I think it's important to get one thing straight right off the bat: I am a fan of the Harry Potter series. I think Rowling is a great storyteller, and I have enjoyed the series so far. I think she has seriously dropped the ball with her last book, and cheated her fans out of an equally engaging novel as well as a satisfying conclusion for the characters they have loved and followed for 10 years now. Overall, I think Rowling is tired of writing about the gang. Her strengths - quaint descriptions and character…

Ready to lose a few brain cells? You won't need them, apparently

Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon, has made a bizarre post in which he reveals that he knows nothing about how the brains he cuts up work. Egnor claims that it is impossible for the brain to store memories. Yes, he knows that neural damage can cause loss of memory, that certain delicate areas of the brain, if harmed, can destroy the ability to make new memories, and he waves those awkward facts away to announce that there is simply no way memory or information of any kind can be stored in a meat-organ like a brain. He doesn't say where memories are kept, then, nor does he account for any of the…

Amidst Syria's Madness, A Voice of Reason

On Friday, Aug. 19, National Public Radio's Melissa Block interviewed Syrian activist Alexander Page (a pseudonym used for protection). I conducted an interview with Alexander Page on July 31, via email. In this brief discussion, I learned quite a bit about his background and his motivation for continuing protests against a government that is pushing back hard against its own citizens. Dr. Jeffrey H. Toney: What is your background and education? Alexander Page: My alias name is Alexander Page. I'm 29 years of age. I've studied journalism and lived in Europe most of my life. The reason I…

Social Cognition in a Non-Social Reptile? Gaze-Following in Red-Footed Tortoises

Have you ever been at a party with lots of people chatting away, when for some unexplainable reason you felt compelled to turn and look at the front door of your friend's house...and just as you were looking, someone was just coming in from outside and closing the door? You couldn't have heard the door open since there was so much noise already inside - more likely you noticed that other people were looking at the front door. All of this probably happened without any explicit intention or awareness. If several others are all directing their attention at a specific point in space, there might…

Why do all cells have the complete genome?

Ophelia has summarized a series of science questions Richard Dawkins asked on Twitter. Hey, I thought, I have answers to lots of these -- he probably does, too -- so I thought I'd address one of them. Maybe I can take a stab at some of the others another time. I like this one, anyway: Why do cells have the complete genome instead of just the part that’s needed for their function? Liver cells have muscle-making genes etc. My short answer: because excising bits of the genome has a high cost and little benefit, and because essentially all of the key exaptations for multicellularity evolved in…

More on Misconceptions

I wrote previously about a couple of misconceptions in evolutionary genetics (random mutation and natural selection and decoding genomes). Razib and John Hawks have been rapping on genetic drift and neutrality. Razib thinks it's important to distinguish between molecular evolution and phenotypic evolution -- I agree, by the way, but drawing the line can be difficult. As John pointed out in another post on misconceptions, the one gene, one protein model is greatly flawed. However, there is a relationship between the genotype and the phenotype, and if much of molecular evolution can be…

The bad science of World War Z

World War Z was on the Netflix last night, so I made the mistake of watching it. It was terrible. Spoilers abound, so stop here if you care. The dreadful biology was offensive. Even if the plot were compelling -- it wasn't -- and the actors engaging -- they weren't -- it would have driven me bughouse mad. As it was, this looked like a movie in which someone had a CGI routine to render frenzied mobs, and they just had to use it over and over again. The central macguffin of the plot was to find Patient Zero of the zombie plague. Why, they don't explain; it would be scientifically interesting…

The Astronomy Community to Rob Knop : "Get out. You aren't good enough"

Whether or not that's the message that is intended to be sent, that is the message that is sent. Here's my deal. Vanderbilt has made it 100% clear that without funding at the level of an NSF grant, I will not get tenure, regardless of anything else. Indeed, my chair has told me that funding is the only issue he sees as being a serious question with my tenure case. (And, by the way, to the two new astronomers who are coming: I know that some dean told you it's a "myth" that tenure is dependent on funding. Unless I have been lied to, you were lied to during your interview.) For what I do,…

Hopeful Monsters and Hopeful Models

A hopeful monster is a mutant born with a genetically determined and large novel trait (compared to its parents) which confers enhanced fitness on that individual. This enhanced fitness increases the likelihood that the new mutant gene that determines this trait will be passed on and spread throughout the evolving population, so in a single generation a rapid process of speciation is initiated. For example, a fish with a mutation that causes both its eyes to grow on one side of its head could become the flounder of a new generation of flatfish. Well, just for the halibut, it might be fun…