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Why there are no missing links

This topic came up earlier this week: creationists are always yammering about the "missing link" and how it's missing and therefore evolution is unsupported by the evidence. It's total nonsense, since evolution doesn't predict a "missing link", but it seemed worthwhile to explain why, since there was a recent publication of some exciting data that demonstrates the real complexity of the situation. Jim Foley and John Hawks and Carl Zimmer have written up the story of the Denisovans. To summarize, another group of Pleistocene humans have been sequenced, called the Denisovans — their identity is…

New rules: there are some things you are not allowed not to say anymore

Sorry, fellow atheists, but if you thought you could just get away with sitting quietly and not making a noise, you're doomed. The situation is worse than simply some silly believers flying into a snit because horribly militant, aggressive, obnoxious atheists put up signs that say something offensive and vile, like "you can be good without god" — you thought if you just avoided confronting people with such criminal sentiments, you'd escape their notice and condemnation. But soon, they'll be coming for you if you are insufficiently fervent in cheerleading for god. Look at this: a group of…

Shush! This is an Examining Room!

It can't be avoided. Once a year you make the trek to the gynecologist's office for the annual exam. For various reasons, the whole experience is extremely unpleasant for me, and yet I go, because I try to take care of my health. And hey, I have health insurance! And it pays for the annual exam. Lucky me, I don't even need a referral to see my gynecologist. Though I do get to pay the higher copay for "specialists". This is especially maddening as my primary care physician, a woman I respect and dearly love, could do the exam for me - and does, for many of her other patients - but my…

Political science

I like to joke that in Kansas, biology is political science. Even when I'm doing job interviews outside of this grand state, people usually get the joke, or need only slight prompting to get it. I take this to be a sad commentary on the state of politics in Kansas. There is no doubt that the discovery of Tikaalik plays into political battles over creationism in schools. I have even less doubt that the discoverers of that "fishapod" would still have been just as excited by that discovery without the political issues. It's a fascinating discovery, as are the results in thousands of articles…

Science is a tool, not an ideology

Mark, over at Cosmic Variance, surveys The Perils of Poor Science Journalism, dismantling an article about climate change by Chris Monckton (not George Monbiot). Mark asks: Could it really be the fact that an important ingredient in the frightening implications of climate models is that scientists from many institutions are deliberately violating the laws of physics to arrive at the conclusions they desire? This is essentially what Monckton had argued, but no sensible person would really think that that's how science moves forward. The advantage of science as a way of asking questions about…

Ozone holes and climate change

Before we begin, I should point out that the ozone hole and the greenhouse effect are totally different. A lot of people get confused about that, and I'm about to talk about both phenomena, so I'd hate to contribute to that confusion. In 1980, scientists examining satellite measurements of the atmosphere over Antarctica noticed that a lot of data were missing. Checking through their FORTRAN code, they found that a data integrity check that tossed numbers that were improbably low was removing data from most of the southern polar region. In 1987, the nations of the world agreed to phase out…

Just graduate students and researchers?

John Wilkins recently announced that he has an article about science blogging in press over at Trends in Ecology & Evolution, and many congratulations to him. The piece is definitely worth a look, appraising science blogs in terms of how they impact science communication and may benefit historians, but there was one aspect of the paper that bothered me. While many science bloggers are graduate students and researchers (as mentioned in the paper) there are many, like myself, who do not have such ties to academic institutions. Indeed, there are many bloggers who can write eloquently and…

A few thoughts on Sea Monsters

I'm not much of a fan of the Walking With... series/Dinosaur Planet/When Dinosaurs Roamed America documentary format. (And don't get me started on the Chased by... and Prehistoric Park stuff.) The visuals are ok and it's hard to say no to reconstructions of some of my favorite prehistoric creatures, but most of the time I just end up being bored. I want to know about the science and hear what paleontologists have to say, not see a "Just so story," and I'm sorry to say that the IMAX film Sea Monsters falls into the same, dull storytelling mode. The film starts out with a group of "…

A science section on Huffpo? Sweet Jebus, no!

JL Vernon is lobbying to have Huffpo dedicate a section of their undeservedly popular, cheesy website to science. He makes a superficially reasonable argument: to work within the belly of the beast to promote good science, in opposition to the tripe they usually publish. I'm sympathetic, really I am, but I see the Huffpo as a dead cause. I also think Vernon fails to grasp the problem here. For instance, he complains about the refusal of anti-creationists to debate the opposition. The most resounding message emerging from the opposition is the idea that having "real science" share a platform…

ID is a career killer

Note: As Larry Moran rightly points out in the comments everything isn't all about putting out papers and us science bloggers should put out graphs of our own publication rates, as well. For my own part, I've contributed nothing so I couldn't even make a graph, but I know there has been some discussion about some of the leading spokesmen for evolution and their publication rates (Dawkins and Gould, for example, have put out plenty of popular works, but how did that affect the amount of technical work they accomplished?). The point that jumping on the ID bandwagon adversely affects…

Who's that monkey in the mirror? (Part 2)

Yesterday I noted how many of the Hominidae pass the "mirror test"; orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. Gorillas, however, fail the test. Why should this be? The following video might give us a clue; The juvenile in the baboon is scared as soon as it sees itself in the mirror, and this makes sense because direct eye contact is considered aggressive in baboons, just as it is in gorillas. The key to passing the mirror test is the ability to look at the image in the mirror long enough to match up the movements and realize that the…

Think, think, think...

Hmmm... I must admit that the attention this blog has been getting as of late has left me astonished (when I first started writing I wondered if anyone would ever read my posts), and Eric of The Primate Diaries has given my ego another boost by bestowing The Intellectual Blogger Award upon me (my only regret is that I can't give him the same award in return). Part of the joy of receiving such recognition is passing it on, however, and I've been thinking long and hard about which other bloggers really get my mental wheels turning when I read their work. Envelope, please... The Anterior…

RP: Cat in the Hat comes back and gets small

Note: The following is a repost from some time ago. Today is the officially day to celebrate Dr. Seuss, so here is my Seuss-related post. Enjoy. In the second Cat in the Hat book (I think it is the second one), the Cat reveals that he has more smaller cats under his hat. They are labeled A - Z with Z being so small you can't even see. Question: What is the sequence of sizes for successive cats? How big would Cat Z be? Here is the first picture that Cat reveals Cat A. It is not trivial to measure their relative sizes because they are in different positions. I drew two circles, one…

More Punkin Chunkin Centrifugal Machine

This year's episode of Punkin Chunkin is coming up (I think tomorrow). Discovery just showed a teaser commercial with the specifications for one team's machine. If you are not familiar with Punkin Chunkin (World Championship Punkin Chunkin), the basic idea is to project some pumpkins. (note, if you waiting for the Discovery Channel show for the 2009 Punkin Chunkin, don't click on the previous link, it has the results already). One of the categories for Punkin Chunkin is the centrifugal machine. These are machines that spin pumpkins around really fast in circles to shoot them. They are…

Creationist McCain picks creationist VP

From a 2006 debate: Next, [moderator] Carey asked about teaching alternatives to evolution - such as creationism and intelligent design - in public schools. … PALIN: “Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. “Healthy debate is so important and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And, you know, I say this, too, as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject -- creationism and evolution. “It’s been a healthy foundation for me. But don’t be…

Unit conversions for mere mortals

So, you are taking a college science course. Maybe it is physics, maybe it is chemistry, maybe its a lab. Either way, you always end up with these problems that involve unit conversions. You think you have the hang of it, but sometimes you make some mistakes. Here is my explanation for converting units. Convert units? Me? Why? I have google. Yes, that is true, google (for the most part) does an excellent job at unit conversions. But....I doubt your instructor will let you use google on your test. Don't you think you should have a good idea of how to do it? Don't worry. Unit conversion only…

The Iron Cross - or: Why is Gymnastics so Darn Difficult?

I know the olympics are basically over. Really, I should have posted this earlier. Anyway, the gymnastics feat that always impresses me is the Iron Cross (I think that is what it is called). I know you have seen this, but here is a picture from wikipedia:  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_(gymnastics)) Why is this so impressive? Why is this so difficult? Let me start with something completely different that is exactly the same (in some ways). Here is a heavy box hung from a rope that has…

Love and Creativity

Over at Mind Matters, we've got a wonderful new column on the cognitive benefits of falling in love by Nira Liberman and Oren Shapira. It turns out that serious romance - but not short-sighted lust - leads us to think in a more abstract manner, attuned to the subtle connections that we often overlook. (Of course, sometimes it's important to ignore these remote associations, which can be a distraction.) The end result is that subjects cued to contemplate love are significantly better at solving insight puzzles, while subjects primed with thoughts of lust excel at logic puzzles: Love has…

The Stress Spiral

Natalie Angier has an excellent column on the self-defeating feedback loop triggered by chronic stress. According to a new paper, when mice are chronically stressed, they end up reverting to habit and routine, even though these same habits are what led to the chronic stress in the first place: Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines…

Excellent analysis of the Creation “Museum”

People are still going to the ghastly Creation "Museum" in Kentucky — it's actually doing a bang-up business. Fortunately, some of the people going are critics who can see its troubling flaws. When I went, what leapt out at me was the intellectual dishonesty of the place; it mimics a museum, but it isn't, and it pretends to understand evolution when it doesn't. I walked through it with a little alarm bell in my head going "wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong" nonstop. Ideas Man picks up on another aspect of the "museum": it's a temple to fear. Everywhere you go, it portrays violence and bloody…

Is Marriage Passe?

In the latest Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh argues (with her usual panache) that the institution of marriage is passé, and that it's time to cast off the antiquated concept of eternal monogomy: Sure, it [marriage] made sense to agrarian families before 1900, when to farm the land, one needed two spouses, grandparents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white-collar work and washing machines, and our life expectancy has shot from 47 to 77, isn't the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete? This post isn't about whether Loh is right; I've only been married 9 months, so I'm not qualified to…

Home Field Advantage

The Lakers-Magic game last night was quite the thrill-ride: it's now the morning after, and my pulse has only begun to return to its resting rate. (Full disclosure: I'm a Lakers fan.) The game was played in Orlando and the big moment came when the Lakers' Derek Fisher nailed a three-pointer at the end of regulation. The loud Orlando crowd went totally silent; you could actually hear the collective intake of breath. Why did this matter? Why was I suddenly (over)confident that the Lakers would win? Because home field advantage is a really big advantage (especially in the NBA) and it only takes…

Daydreams

An interesting new study on mind-wandering and the default network was recently published in PNAS. The scientists, led by Kalina Christoff of UBC and Jonathan Schooler of UCSB, used "experience sampling" in an fMRI machine to capture the moment of daydreaming: essentially, subjects were given an extremely tedious task and, when their mind started to wander (this was confirmed with subjective reports and measurements of task performance), had changes in their brain activity recorded in the scanner. It's been known for nearly a decade that daydreaming is a metabolically intense mental process,…

Traffic

I've always been fascinated by traffic. (I grew up in LA, so I had plenty of time to indulge my interest.) City streets are a complex system in which seemingly insignificant changes - a broken street light, a stalled car, a poorly designed highway merge - can have dramatic consequences. In this sense, it's a useful metaphor for all sorts of intricate systems, from gene regulation to neural networks. Perhaps the single greatest mystery of my childhood was this: Why do freeways get clogged when there isn't an accident? I would fantasize on my way to elementary school - we would often be sitting…

The Color of Creativity

The brain is like a Swiss Army knife, stuffed full of different mental tools that are well suited to different situations. Sometimes, we want to flex the prefrontal cortex, and really exert our rational muscles. And then there are other situations (like picking a strawberry jam) where thinking too much can be a real problem, and we should rely instead of the subtle signals emanating from the emotional brain. It's no surprise that how we think - the particular mode of thought that we lean on at any given moment - can be influenced by our surroundings. For instance, when men are shown revealing…

Vitamin D responsible for racial disparities in health?

I got interested in vitamin D a few years ago because I was trying to figure out a plausible explanation for why many of the genetic variants implicated in lighter skin seem to have risen in frequency relatively recently, 10,000 years ago, when modern humans have been extant at higher latitudes on the order of 30,000 years. So I started mooting the speculative idea that the switch to agriculture might have reduced vitamin D levels. Initially I assumed that rickets was the main issue, but over the past few years there has been a veritable explosion in the medical literature pointing to…

Teaching Carnival #9: Are we done with the term yet?

Welcome to Teaching Carnival #9. I realize that you, gentle reader, may be affiliated with a school whose term has already ended. You may be easing into those first intoxicating weeks of the summer break, where your "to do" list seems more theoretical and less urgent. Academic calendars are somewhat arbitrary, so I know it's not your fault, but I'll thank you not to gloat. Some of us are in the End Times right now, hoping that our post-apocalyptic world resembles a summer break. It may be too soon to call it. In any event, this Teaching Carnival is dedicated to the teachers and learners…

David Brooks on Obama

David Brooks annoys me just as much as the next Democrat - I especially dislike his oversimplifications of neuroscience - but he has a great column today on Barack Obama. Since it's behind the wall of Times $elect, I'll quote liberally: Barack Obama should run for president. He should run first for the good of his party. It would demoralize the Democrats to go through a long primary season with the most exciting figure in the party looming off in the distance like some unapproachable dream. The next Democratic nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would come…

Voodoo, Religion and Faulty Causation

Ever since David Hume - our first great psychologist - it has been a well known fact that causation is a figment of our imagination. Although we perceive event A as causing event B, this perception is an illusion: necessary causation is not inherent in nature. As Hume wrote: "We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which have been always conjoin'd together, and which in all past instances have been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that from the constant conjunction the…

The Saga of Katrina Animals

For me, one of the most heartbreaking images of Katrina was a picture of a dying dog, resting underneath a junked car. At a certain point, the press photographs of bloated human bodies floating on the greasy Louisiana water became numbing - they were just too awful - and it was this image of a sick mutt that reminded me of Katrina's tragic scope. Thousands of animals were left behind by their owners, and thousands more wandered the streets after the authorities separated owners and pets in the shelters. Some animals survived when their owners didn't. But the sad saga of Katrina animals…

Animals in the lab, animals on the plate: trying to make sense of the muddled middle.

This week my students (the ones who you already know are so smart) and I talked in class about the ethics of research with animals. One thing that came up in these discussions is the likelihood that a lot of people hold internally inconsistent views when it comes to how we ought to treat animals. It's true that there are folks who try hard to be completely consistent: they're not only against animal experimentation, but they don't eat animal flesh, or eggs, or milk, or honey, don't wear leather, don't kill the ants that have taken up in their kitchen, etc. Or, on the other end of the…

Uncertainty and Panic

Brian Knutson, a very clever neuroeconomist at Stanford, sheds light on some of the cognitive biases currently holding back the economy over at Edge.org. From the perspective of the brain, uncertainty is hell: The brain responds to uncertain future outcomes in a specific region, and ambiguity (not knowing the probabilities of uncertain outcomes) provokes even greater activation in this same region. Further, insular activation precedes risk avoidance in investment tasks, and is even more pronounced before people "irrationally" avoid risks (i.e., or violate the choices of a risk-neutral,…

The Certainty Bias

Over at Mind Matters, I've got an interview with Dr. Robert Burton on the danger of certainty and its relevance during a presidential election: LEHRER: To what extent does the certainty bias come into play during a presidential election? It seems like we all turn into such partisan hacks every four years, completely certain that our side is right. BURTON: The present presidential debates and associated media commentary feel like laboratory confirmation that the involuntary feeling of certainty plays a greater role in decision-making than conscious contemplation and reason. I suspect that…

Oxytocin

I was on the Takeaway last week talking about this study: We examined the role of serotonin transporter (5-HTT) and oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genes in explaining differences in sensitive parenting in a community sample of 159 Caucasian, middle-class mothers with their 2-year-old toddlers at risk for externalizing behavior problems, taking into account maternal educational level, maternal depression and the quality of the marital relationship. Independent genetic effects of 5-HTTLPR SCL6A4 and OXTR rs53576 on observed maternal sensitivity were found. Controlling for differences in maternal…

Glucose, Self-Control and the Prefrontal Cortex

Cognitive Daily has a typically great review of some recent research connecting blood glucose levels and self-control: Matthew Gailliot, along with Baumeister and six other researchers, asked 103 psychology students to fast for three hours before watching a video [the video required subjects to ignore salient stimuli, much like the stroop task]. Half the students were told to ignore the words, while the rest weren't required to exercise any self-control. Blood glucose levels were measured before and after this task. The students exercising self-control had significantly lower glucose levels…

Religion and Morality

Here's Drake Bennett: In a set of experiments carried out in 2005 by the economists Nina Mazar and Dan Ariely, of MIT, and On Amir, a marketing expert at the University of California at San Diego, subjects were given a timed test of general-knowledge questions and paid for each correct answer. They varied the setup of the experiment and found that people would tend to cheat when given the chance, but that the risk of being discovered did not deter them. Even more surprisingly, the experimenters found a way to limit cheating that had nothing to do with the threat of getting caught. When they…

The Gendered Brain

There are so many stupid studies of the gendered brain that it's easy to conclude that good research into psychological sex differences is impossible. But that would be a mistake. I think one of most interesting recent investigations into the cognitive differences of men and women comes from a clever neuroeconomics experiment, designed by Colin Camerer and Read Montague. It's called the trust game, and it goes like this: at the start of each of 10 rounds, an "investor" is given an imaginary stake of $20. They can keep it all, or "invest" some of it with a "trustee". Any money that gets…

The Transparent Society makes religion obsolete?

The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality: We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers.…

Hawai`i in Iceland: The style of the Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls eruption

The eruption at Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls continues on - the explosive spatter and bomb eruptions at the new central vent (on the second fissure) were impressive all night, making the hikers/cars/aircraft look like mites in comparison. This eruption has, so far, followed the pattern of Hawaiian-style volcanism quite well, so I thought it could be a good time to talk about what exactly Hawaiian-style volcanism is. There is a sequence of events that leads up to and follows the start of an Hawaiian-style eruption - although this sequence can stop at any point along the way - but it is…

...because we said so

PZ Myers responds to a podcast debate between Chris Mooney and Ron Lindsay about accommodationism and New Atheism. I haven't listened to the podcast, so I don't know who won or who lost, or what brilliant points were or weren't made. I do know that the title of PZ's post reflects the general New Atheist triumphalism about the podcast, and yet his post doesn't match the title. The title is: "We aren't angry, we're effective, which is even scarier." From that title, I'd expect some sort of clear statement of what effect PZ wishes to have, and then clear evidence showing that the strategy is…

Sunday in a free Egypt

For the last 13 days, Tahrir Square has been the seed of a free Egypt. Within that square, which I recall filled 7 lanes deep with honking cars even late at night, the architects of Egypt's democratic revolution have created their own democratic nation. The protesters police themselves, maintain their own defenses at the entries to the square, feed the hungry in makeshift kitchens, care for the sick in makeshift hospitals. Yesterday, a couple was married in the square, the first wedding ceremony in a free Egypt. On Friday, Coptic Christians protected the square while the Muslims prayed,…

Slightly more on politics

The other day I laid out a bit of my position on the importance of being self-consciously political, and Amanda Marcotte has a great post on a related issue: Nowadays, however, the verb âto politicizeâ is used, 90% of the time, to suggest that politics and government are silly little trifles that shouldnât be involved when something really serious is on the table. Thatâs how the word has been used in the past week, by right wingers trying to deflect criticism of their very serious actions by suggesting that this massacre is too serious to involve politics. But you see it a lot, and sadly not…

TSA Backlash week

I travel a lot for work, and to see my family on the East Coast. As such, I keep a fairly close eye on changes in TSA screening, and have always been a bit squicked by the backscatter machines (or porno scanners, as I've seen them called). My issue is mostly discomfort with some random person looking at me naked; it's an invasion of privacy that I don't appreciate. The health arguments against them seem dubious, but then again, the security argument seems little better. No terrorist plot has been detected at the checkpoint. How large a risk of cancer should I tolerate for no obvious…

Climate change legislation didn't hurt Democrats

There's been some debate among the climate hawks about last night's election returns. Politico posted a story suggesting that the toll was especially hard on Democrats who supported the landmark climate change legislation passed by the House last summer. Kate Sheppard observed that quite a few of the Democrats who opposed the bill also lost their seats, and Chris Mims (formerly of Scienceblogs, now at Grist) argues that the election wasn't a referendum on climate change, pointing to the significant numbers of bill supporters who survived last night. NRDC finds the same thing. The tricky…

Kagan for Supreme Court

I'm honestly undecided about Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. She's got a distinguished record of legal service and scholarship, though few publications to document her views. Larry Lessig likes her, Glenn Greenwald doesn't. At the end of the day, President Obama likes her, and the general sense is that the Senate will like her well enough. She'll be confirmed, becoming the 3rd woman on the current Court, and the 4th ever to serve on the nation's highest court. Maybe Diane Wood will get the nod next time. There's been some obnoxious nosecounting about her religious views,…

Global warming becomes a creationist target

For the last year or so, I've been in touch with a reporter at the New York Times about a growing trend of creationists adding global warming to their enemies lists. Tomorrow, her story â Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets â hits the front page of the paper of record: Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nationâs classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools. In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss…

Ben Stein waxes nostalgic

Ben Stein, for those of you who have forgotten, played a bit role in the classic '80s movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He played the annoying economics teacher, a role he was uniquely qualified for by being boring and having been bored by his father, an accomplished economist. Stein parlayed his fame into a few books on financial planning and a regular column for the New York Times which was canceled when he became a spokesman for a scammy credit check service. Along the way he made what many regard as "one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a long time." In making Expelled, Stein…

Our god the state

Tom Rees of Epiphenom has a new paper out, Is Personal Insecurity a Cause of Cross-National Differences in the Intensity of Religious Belief?. The abstract: Previous research has shown an apparent relationship between "societal health" and religiosity, with nations that exhibit higher mean personal religiosity also tending to provide worse social environments. A possible cause is that exposure to stressful situations (i.e. personal insecurity) increases personal religiosity. To test this hypothesis, income inequality, a widely available proxy for personal insecurity, was compared with other…

Complex traits & evolution

Adaptive Complexity takes issue at a post over at Information Processing over race & genetics. On that specific topic, let me just quote Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza: [my question] Question #3 hinted at the powerful social impact your work has had in reshaping how we view the natural history of our species. One of the most contentious issues of the 20th, and no doubt of the unfolding 21st century, is that of race. In 1972 Richard Lewontin offered his famous observation that 85% of the variation across human populations was within populations and 15% was between them. Regardless of whether…

Around the Web: Resources on vaccination, anti-vaccination and why people don't trust science

Welcome to my latest "liberation bibliography" project. This time around I'm gathering resources concerning the recent rather worrying trend towards people not vaccinating their children. In particular the last couple of months have seen multiple cases where vaccination has been in the news, from statements by politicians, outbreaks among hockey players and at amusement parks and many others. There's been an awful lot written about vaccines and their safety recently and my aim here is to gather some of the best information, both in terms of outlining the main events as well as some commentary…