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An Open Letter to all Men in Science

"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." -John Stuart Mill No one becomes a master overnight, and practically no one does it without the outside help and support of not just a mentor, but of a number of peers, advisors and other allies along the way. At least, that was my story. Image credit: University of Baltimore. I remember being an undergraduate. I remember the combined struggles of rigorous academics, self-confidence crises, trying to figure myself out as a person, and trying to make friends and forge relationships all at…

Does Dark Matter affect the motion of the Solar System?

"To disagree leads to study, to study leads to understanding, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I'll end up loving your theory." -John Wheeler Out there in the Universe, there's a lot to marvel at. Over billions of years, gravity has attracted different portions of the expanding Universe together into large superclusters and filaments, each made up of clusters, groups, and individual galaxies separated by great cosmic voids. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, and Millenium Simulation. From the observations of this structure…

Missions to Mars and Nuclear Fusion

“We are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to being able to send men to the moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Given the will, we could have humans on Mars within a decade.” -Robert Zubrin Of all the planets in the Solar System beyond our own, none has captured our imagination quite like Mars has. Image credit: NASA, via http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA02570.jpg. From science-fiction fans to scientists and everyone in between, our understanding of the red planet is presently greater than it ever has been in the past. With multiple…

Every Galaxy will have New Stars for Trillions of Years!

"It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight." - Neil Armstrong Indeed, all that glitters so brilliantly in the cosmos does so because of the stars that have formed throughout it. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team. Over the 14 billion-or-so years that our Universe has been around, we've formed hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone. Image credit: ESO / Serge Brunier (TWAN), Frederic Tapissier. Given that our galaxy is just one of at least hundreds of billions in the observable Universe, the number of stars that have formed over our Universe's history is a…

Weekend Diversion: Discover the Night Sky for Yourself!

"They will see us waving from such great heights 'Come down now,' they'll say. But everything looks perfect from far away 'Come down now,' but we'll stay." -The Postal Service Whether you're under urban, city skies, where only a few dozen stars are visible on a clear night, or beneath some of the darkest skies on Earth, the Universe is out there, and you can get started discovering it, right now, for yourself. You can have yourself, as Bishop Allen would sing, Another Wasted Night,or you can take advantage of it. For me, I currently live in Portland, OR, where the twilight looks like this.…

This is what racism looks like

Trigger warning: This post contains several images of racist or similar messages found through history and throughout the world, including a handul from the US over the last few weeks. These are provided as documentation to go along with the text of this blog post and to inform the reader of the nature of these messages. Most of the images are from mainstream media and are regarded as genuine. If you feel any are not, indicate so in the comments if you like. An antisemitic graffiti in Lithuania. I am a scientist who studies race and racism and related topics. This includes the critique…

The FTC Complaint on Clay Aiken

It seems that yesterday's post with the press release was a bit dated. An actual FTC complaint has been filed and you just have to see it. I'll post the entire thing below the fold, along with the "evidence" they attached to it, which amounts to an interview where Aiken kinda sorta denies being gay. Their complaint is that the record company conspired to create a public image that was different from his private life. Why this is the least bit surprising to anyone with more than basic brain stem function is beyond my ability to understand. I hope they don't find out that all that time that…

The Mirecki Fiasco

Given the events of the last few days and this highly controversial post at the Panda's Thumb, it is time that I finally addressed the Paul Mirecki situation. For those who may not know, Mirecki was, until recently, the chairman of the religious studies department at Kansas University. He was planning to teach a class there next year about ID as mythology, which caused quite a bit of controversy, especially when someone released several emails that he had written on the listserv of a campus skeptic's group that were rather crude and unprofessional. The ensuing brouhaha hit its crescendo when…

Most Overrated and Underrated Movies

Joe Carter has a post where he lists the 100 most overrated and underrated movies of all time, by arbitrary category. They're listed by category, with the most overrated movie listed first, then the most underrated movie listed next. As would be expected, I agree with some of them and not with others. For instance: Movie about fraternities: Animal House | PCU (I hesitate to include these two together simply because the criminally overhyped John Belushi shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as comic genius Jeremy Piven.) I haven't seen PCU, so I can't comment on that one, but I do…

Analysis of Behe's Testimony, Part 4: The Sterility of ID

During his testimony, Michael Behe continually brought up the big bang as being comparable to intelligent design. His intent was to show that some people objected to the big bang because it had religious implications as well, but that didn't mean that the big bang theory wasn't a genuine scientific theory. And that's true, as far as it goes. But the analogy fails for a number of reasons and I want to focus on the key reason, which I think also shows why ID hasn't contributed anything to our understanding of the natural history of life on earth. It's true that the big bang theory was…

Meat Eating in Human Prehistory

All human hunter-gatherer groups that have been studied incorporate meat in their diets. Studies have shown that the total dietary contribution of meat varies a great deal, and seems to increase with latitude so that foragers in subarctic and arctic regions eat a lot of meat while those living near the equator eat less. It is probably true that tropical and subtropical foragers obtain more of their calories from plants than from meat over any reasonable amount of time. The meat consists primarily of mammals for most groups, but fish, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates can reach high…

Why are some animals rare, and why is this very important?

A friend of mine told me this story: As a special forces soldier, a Green Beret, he was alone and traveling through a dense area of jungle in or near Viet Nam during the 1960s. Enemy soldiers were nearby and he intended to pass through their patrol area to arrive at some safe destination, but he fully expected to run into a trip wire, a sentry, or a squadron of hostiles. His rifle was loaded and ready to fire at any moment. Suddenly, a figure loomed in front of him. Without waiting for even a fraction of a second, he fired on it with lethal effect. The figure fell to the floor of the jungle…

Aircraft contrails can cause precipitation by "seeding" clouds

A repost: In a paper that is about to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, researchers Andrew Heymsfield, Patrick Kennedy, Steve Massie, Crl Schmitt, Zhien Wang, Samuel Haimov and Art Rangno make the claim that "The production of holes and channels in altocumulus clouds by two commercial turboprop aircraft is documented for the first time. ... Holes and channels in supercooled altocumulus clouds can be the result of homogeneous ice nucleation induced by turboprop and jet aircraft at temperatures warmer than previously accepted for commercial aviation…

Why has rheumatic fever declined in the U.S.?

Speaking of chronic diseases caused by microbial agents, one of the earliest characterized of these is the group A streptococcus (Streptococcus pyogenes). In addition to causing acute diseases such as strep throat and scarlet fever, a wide range of post-infectious sequelae (complications that appear following resolution of infection) have been attributed to S. pyogenes. It can cause glomerulonephritis, a kidney disease. It's long been known infection with the organism can lead to a condition called Sydenham's chorea, a neurologic disease characterized by jerky movements. Infection with S…

Did Macbeth have mad cow?

I love these historical analyses of disease--real, or fictional. One historical event that has been the subject of much speculation over the decades has been the Plague of Athens, a mysterious outbreak that is thought to have changed the direction of the Peloponnesian War, and for which the cause still remains uncertain: [2] As a rule, however, there was no ostensible cause; but people in good health were all of a sudden attacked by violent heats in the head, and redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural…

Treating Big Molecules Like Electrons: "Real-time single-molecule imaging of quantum interference"

Richard Feyman famously once said that the double-slit experiment done with electrons contains everything that's "'at the heart of quantum physics." It shows both particle and wave character very clearly: the individual electrons are detected one at a time, like particles, but the result of a huge number of detections clearly traces out an interference pattern, which is unambiguously a wave phenomenon. The experiment has been done lots of times, but a particularly nice realization of it comes from Hitachi's R&D department, where you can see both still images and video of their experiment…

One cannot be handcuffed by data on a fundamental moral issue of this kind?

Um, well, yes. What is this stuff? Pointed out to me first by Russell - see-also his Troglodyte narrative. This is about something sent to, or from, John Podesta which has surfaced via the increasingly-suspect Wikileaks. Which is to say MEMORANDUM JANUARY 28, 2014. CLIMATE: A UNIFYINF THEORY TO THE CASE. An unified theory of climate? Excellent... we've all been looking for that. After reading some dodgy websites I think it was sent by Chris Lehane ("a Democratic strategist and Steyer confidant"; or, if you're RS, one of "K-Street's famed Masters of Disaster". I don't even know what K-…

Blast From the Past: Letter to and From Luis Alvarez

I have mentioned before that when I was a kid, I wrote a letter to Luis Alvarez, the 1968 Nobel laureate in Physics, asking some questions about his theory that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs, which had been featured in a NOVA special. I got a very nice letter back from him, very graciously correcting the dumber questions I asked. This made a very favorable impression, which in turn played a role in getting me to include him in the work-in-progress. Since I was thinking about Alvarez for the book, I asked my parents if they still had a copy of the letter, which for many years I had…

Ten Years Before the Blog: 2006-2007

In which we look back at a particularly eventful year for the blog. ------------ The ScienceBlogs archives aren't really set up very well for reading straight through, so as we reach this part of our historical recap, I've changed methodology. Since I have better analytics for the ScienceBlogs years than the Steelypips ones, I've got a list of the most-read posts in the history of the blog on ScienceBlogs, which I'm using as a starting point for the recap. This is a highly imperfect method, I realize, and the recent "upgrade" of Google Analytics made it inordinately difficult to get this…

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor - Chapter 70

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 69 Table of Contents Chapter 71 Chapter 70 Sunbugs, February 12, 2058 We adjusted slowly to the changes in our household. It felt funny sleeping in dad's old bed. Edie didn't say a word when I got rid of the old mattress and rearranged the room. I think she understood perfectly. The guest room became Anna's new bedroom. She was proud to have her own room, until it came to sleeping alone. It was not unusual to wake up and find her curled up beside us. My sex life with Olivia had been boisterous and exuberant. With Edie, love making was quieter…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 41

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 40 Table of Contents Chapter 42 Chapter 41 Theft and Meditation, June 27, 2056 I was between classes in mid-afternoon when Edie phoned.   "Luc. There are men in the shed stealing things."   "Call the police."   "I did. There's no answer."   "What?"   "I tried to stop them, but..."   "Where are the police?"   "I don't know."   "Okay. Lock the door and stay in the house. I'll be right there." I knew she would probably be safe, because of the heavy metal door and frame.   "Good."   I hung up and called the police while I checked my schedule. I…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 33

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 32 Table of Contents Chapter 34 Chapter 33 Jon Visits, January 27, 2056 On Sunday Jon called to say he would be dropping around to visit next week. The Senator was scheduled to hold a series of meetings with Provincial and First Nation leaders. He didn't know when he would be free, but he would make a point of seeing us. I felt a little odd being just another scheduling point in my brother's busy life, but I resolved not to let it put me off. Anna was running a fever and Edie was tired, so I didn't have time to dwell on it. On Tuesday, when I…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 19

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 18 Table of Contents Chapter 20 Chapter 19 Rio Triste, October 22, 2055 Fifteen scientists formed the Mandate group and one staff person, a terrifyingly severe Dutch woman who managed schedules and bills. She never said more than two words to me the whole time I was there. The locals were a mixture of Spanish descendants, blacks and natives in various proportions. Most of them seemed to think we were a bunch of arrogant, ignorant bastards useful only as victims. They paid attention to us only because we had money. The ecologist literally…

ID and Common Ancestry

One of the things I've been saying for a long time about "intelligent design" is how frustrating it is trying to get IDers to spell out what they think actually happened. They've got lots of criticisms of evolutionary theory, but no model of their own for the natural history of the earth. Some of them claim that ID doesn't really deny evolution but works well with it. For instance, Bruce Gordon posits that ID is compatible with practically any position on the natural history of life on earth, and with evolution specifically: First of all, what has come to be called 'design theory' is at best…

Stanley Crouch and Nat Hentoff

I've been doing some reading today of two of my favorite living essayists, Stanley Crouch and Nat Hentoff. They are both intellectuals, cultural observers, literary critics and, primarily, jazz critics. Both have written for the Village Voice. Both are also relatively controversial figures, for different reasons. Crouch is controversial for many reasons. He is a black intellectual who still uses the term "negro"; he calls afrocentrism a "simple-minded hustle" and Louis Farrakhan "insane"; and he has had a few major run-ins with colleagues, one of which led to his dismissal from the Voice. He…

Messier Monday: Messier's Greatest Mistake, M40

"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." -Dale Turner This April Fools' day, even though the rest of the internet revels in trickery, happens to fall on a Monday. Over here at Starts With A Bang, that means it's time for Messier Monday, an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects catalogued by Charles Messier in the 18th Century to help comet-hunters avoid confusion. Today, the catalogue boasts 107…

The Unseen Lights in Our Backyard

"As a boy I believed I could make myself invisible. I'm not sure that I ever could, but I certainly had the ability to pass unnoticed." -Terence Stamp When we look up at the night sky from a dark location here on Earth, somewhere around 6,000 stars greet you on a clear night. Image credit: Tamas Ladanyi (TWAN). This is just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars that actually make up our galaxy, which makes sense, considering how large our galaxy is and how vast the distances between the stars is. You'd probably think that the stars we can see are pretty representative of the…

The Christmas Tunes Experiment: Results

So, what are the results of the Christmas Tunes Experiment? I've had a playlist of the songs on the Jefitoblog Holidy Mix Tape (plus a few other things) locked into the iTunes Party Shuffle while I work on the computer at home. At work, I stuck with the usual four-and-five-star playlist in the lab, because, well, the lab is not the place to debut new music. The results were pretty mixed, but not as bad as I feared it might get. The list, with commentary on each song, is reproduced below the fold. Les Brown And His Band Of Renown - I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm (Psapp's Lady Remix). I have…

A Good Craftsman Never Blames His Tools

Over at Effect Measure, Revere (or one of the Reveres, anyway, I'm not certain if they're plural or not) has posted another broadside against PowerPoint, calling it "the scourge of modern lecturing." This is something of a sensitive point for me, as I use PowerPoint for my lectures in the introductory classes. I've been using it this way for more than five years, and I like to think I've gotten to be pretty good at it. I fully expect this to be brought up in my tenure review, though, and to have to justify my use of PowerPoint in class. Here's the thing: PowerPoint is a tool, nothing more. It…

The Heffernan Conundrum

A lot of Twitter energy was soaked up Friday afternoon by a half stupid article by Virginia Heffernan at the New York Times. Sparked by Sodamageddon, she takes a look at ScienceBlogs for the first time, and doesn't like what she sees: Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast that they can be jerky in the service of anti-charlatanism, that's not what's bothersome about them. What's bothersome is that the site…

Let The Eagle Soar

Golden Eagle I hope I won't disappoint you ... this is not about John Ashcroft. It is about golden eagles (actually, maybe its about one golden eagle in particular). A repost from wayback. The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) has been in decline for a very long time, so you may not know it formerly bred in a much wider range of habitats, across the entire U.S. Today it is known as a mountain eagle because this is where it is generally found, at least in North America. Any experienced birder will tell you that in places like Minnesota nine out of ten, or maybe 99 out of 100 golden…

Fry On the Problem Of Evil, Part Two

There's lots of good blog fodder out there, but I don't want to let too much time go by before finishing my discussion of Stephen Fry's presentation of the Problem of Evil. See Part One for the full context. Of all the responses I've seen to Fry's interview, there was one that was so bizarre and demented that we just have to take a look at it. And it came from an unexpected source--Larry Moran: This video is making the rounds and a lot of atheists are wetting their pants over Stephen Fry's response to the question of what he would would say to “he, she, or it” if he encountered god when he…

First Take the Log Out Of Your Own Eye...

Writing in The New Statesman, Cristina Odone laments what she sees as liberal intolerance of religion. The article is quite long, but here's the opening: I couldn't believe it. I was trying to discuss traditional marriage – and the state was trying to stop me. Incredible, in a 21st-century European country, but true. I was invited to speak at a conference on marriage last summer, to be held at the Law Society in London. The government had just launched a public consultation on changing the law to allow same-sex marriage. The conference was a chance for supporters of traditional marriage to…

A Preacher Turned Atheist

Jerry Coyne directs our attention to a harrowing, but important, article from The New York Times Magazine. It is a profile of Jerry DeWitt, a former Pentecostal preacher who discovered, after more than twenty-five years in the biz, that he no longer believed any of the things he was preaching. Here's the opening: Late one night in early May 2011, a preacher named Jerry DeWitt was lying in bed in DeRidder, La., when his phone rang. He picked it up and heard an anguished, familiar voice. It was Natosha Davis, a friend and parishioner in a church where DeWitt had preached for more than five…

XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome: PI FAIL

One 'insider' thing I hope ERV readers learn about science from this blag, is that in science, controversies are completely normal, everyday occurrences. Outsiders might think scientists are 'mean' when dealing with anti-vaxers/Creationists/whatever, but how we treat non-scientists manufacturing a controversy is no different than how we react to one another in a real scientific controversy. For example, Behe feigned offense when I pointed out he was a friggin IDiot regarding HIV-1 evolution, yet technically, my response to him was muted (what got published was not my first draft *blink*).…

Casey Luskin

*swoon* Casey Luskin is as breathtakingly sexy in person as he is on film. Im going to pass out. Hes like a WOW gnome. **SWOON!!!!** Update: Shit. Im hungry. Update #2: Casey is trying to justify 'cdesign proponentsists'. Srsly. Srsly. Update #3: The next time I hear someone say 'Creationists are such good public speakers' Im going to hog-tie said person, drag them to Seattle, and make them listen to a presentation by John West or Casey Luskin. By the time we got to Caseys talk, a couple dozen people had left, and others were napping, playing on iPhones, etc. I was reading papers for…

What Goes on at a Math Conference?

I just got back from six days in San Diego, participating in the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings. Why “Joint”? Because they are jointly sponsored by the two major American mathematical organizations. I refer, of course, to the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the Amercian Mathematical Society (AMS). (No Monty Python jokes, please.) The Joint Meetings are one of the highlights of the mathematical calendar. It's an enormous affair, with several thousand mathematicians attending. That day in December when the book-length program arrives is an exciting one in my little corner…

On Putting Words in Einstein's Mouth

Modern media being what it is, I should get out in front of this, so: I am guilty of putting words in Einstein's mouth. I mean, go watch my TED-Ed video on particles and waves, or just look at the image up top-- that very clearly shows Einstein saying words that he probably never said. And it's my fault. Well, OK, I didn't actually put those words in his mouth-- the animator did that. What I wrote is "Einstein himself described [the photoelectric effect] as the only truly revolutionary thing he did." Which isn't really a quote, but a paraphrase. And it's really a paraphrase of something…

Time Management, or A Day in the Life

In comments to the Sagan post, Niall asked about how I spend my time. This is about to change, as today is the last day of my class for the fall term, then we have an extended break, but it's probably interesting in a life-in-academia way to put up my schedule at the moment: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 06:00 - Alarm goes off. Wake up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head. Release dog, start breakfast prep. 06:30 - Wake SteelyKid, take her downstairs, give her breakfast. The usual division of labor is that I get the food, then carry her upstairs to go to the bathroom (because she's tired…

On Private Science Funding

A couple of weeks back, DougT won this year's Nobel betting pool, and requested a post on the subject of funding of wacky ieas: could you comment on this: http://www.space.com/22344-elon-musk-hyperloop-technology-revealed.html and the phenomenon of the uber-rich funding science in general. It seems to me that there used to be more private funding of science, and there still is a lot. But is government funding crowding out private funding (political question), is government funding necessary for Apollo and CERN b/c it’s so huge, is private funding more “out there” and therefore on the tails of…

On Public Speaking Across Disciplines

We had a faculty meeting yesterday, at which one colleague suggested that in addition to our "Writing Across the Curriculum" requirement, we should have a "Speaking Across the Curriculum" requirement to teach students oral presentation skills. This provoked a bit of tittering about the possible acronym, but it's not an obviously awful idea. The basic problem is the same as with the WAC requirement: there isn't actually all that much that really crosses the curriculum. Presentation standards and styles are dramatically different between disciplines, whether you're talking about oral or written…

The Jewish View of Creationism? Really?

Update: I have revised the original post to reflect the observation made by ProgJohn in comment five, and Raka in comment eleven.   Over at HuffPo, Rabbi Adam Jacobs presumes to explain “The Jewish View of Creationism.” The title alone is a bad sign. The standard line is that if you put ten Jews in a room you get eleven opinions. The idea that there is a Jewish view of anything is pretty unlikely. Jacobs focuses entirely on the question of the age of the Earth, and not of biological evolution. He writes: To the secularist, the notion that we should flippantly toss aside hundreds of…

Monday Math: A Rant About Fractions

Recent editions of Monday Math have seen us working pretty hard. So how about we lighten the mood a bit and think about fractions. Let us start with the obvious. Fractions have tops and bottoms. Got that? Numerators and denominators exist only in elementary and middle school math classes. Their sole purpose is to make mathematics as offputting and unpleasant as possible. If you refer to the top of the fraction and the bottom of the fraction everyone knows what you mean. Say numerator and denominator (which come respectively from Latin words meaning roughly “one who numbers” and “that…

The Big Darwin Bicentennial

By now you have surely heard that Charles Darwin turns 200 today. Happy Birthday! In honor of that fact, Darwin articles in various media outlets are currently a dime a dozen. Some good, some pretty bad, many just standard boilerplate. Here's one that caught my eye, from The Times of London. It was written by Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and extols the virtues of blending faith with science. Let's have a look. Towards the end of his life Darwin wrote: "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist." The science opens me not only to puzzles and to…

The Trouble With Science Journalism

Recently, ScienceBlogs own Abbie Smith made some trenchant remarks about the problems with science journalism. The combination of sensationalism with writers who frequently do not understand the work about which they are writing leads to some serious difficulties for scientists wishing to communicate with the public. Abbie was talking specifically about reporting on AIDS, and used the example of presenting every small breakthrough in AIDS treatment as tantamount to a cure. It all seemed pretty noncontroversial to me, but then science journalist George Johnson got cartoonishly offended by…

The Difference Between Mathematics and Biology?

As part of my daily diet of news sites and blog reading I keep an eye on various creationist websites. This is done partly as opposition research. It's always good to know what the crazy people are getting excited about. But it is also because they frequently link to interesting articles I might have overlooked otherwise. Over at Uncommon Descent, Denyse O'Leary helpfully linked to this article by Carl Zimmer from the November 10 issue of The New York Times. The article discusses recent developments in genetics, and how hey are changing long-held notions of what a gene is. It's…

The Problem of Moderation

It's probably a little foolish to continue this on a Saturday, but I'd like to wrap up the giant framing/ religion/ screechy monkeys mess and get back to more pleasant topics, at least for a while. Putting it off until Monday would make this more visible, but it would also drag things out, so I'm just going to get it out of the way now. In the wake of my two recent posts about the "framing" controversy, I've gotten a number of comments and emails on the general topic of speaking out. These come in two basic forms, which I would paraphrase as: It's very important for people with more moderate…

Another botanical clinical trial doomed to failure from day 1

This post appeared originally on 8 Feb 2006 at the old site for this blog. A frequent reader and commenter, Joe, suggested that I repost it here as it illustrates many common problems with clinical trials of botanical medicines. You'd think the funding folks would learn at the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). But, not as evidenced by the report in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine detailing the lack of efficacy of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) extract in the treatment of benign prostatic hypertrophy. Yet another well-designed double-blind,…

Language evolution witnessed in lab experiments

Simon Kirby and Hannah Cornish are watching evolution take place within the confines of their laboratory. But they are studying neither bodies nor genes; their interest lies in languages, and how they change over time. Regardless of school lessons and textbooks, most of the features of the languages we speak are learned by listening to the words of native speakers. Their sentences convey their thoughts, but they also hint at the structure of the language they are spoken in. That allows people who are learning a new language to infer something about its structure by listening to the way its…

Dolphins dolphins dolphins

I'm a little late to this particular debate, but it's long been one of my favorite subjects, ever since I had a most intriguing encounter with a wild member of the species Tursiops truncatus, in Australia 16 years ago. More about that later. I, too, was taken aback by the recent media coverage of Manger's study of dolphin intelligence. What was even more surprising than his study, however, was his flipper flippant comment that dolphins trapped in tuna nets must be stupid because, "If they were really intelligent they would just jump over the net because it doesn't come out of the water."…