evolution
oracknows | June 13, 2011Remember Deepak Chopra?
He's the physician (yes, physician) whose grasp on real science is so tenuous and whose ability to abuse multiple scientific disciplines, ranging from quantum physics to astronomy to genetics to medicine, simultaneously in the service of woo is so amazing that a few years ago I once coined a term representing the only word you ever need to use to refer to Chopra's blather: Choprawoo. Yes, I realize that the term "Choprawoo" is completely redundant if you're a skeptic and realize just how full of pseudoscientific nonsense Chopra's blather is. On the other hand, for the…
pharyngula | June 10, 2011Hey, it's on youtube already. There may be a few moments where I look a bit strained — that's because the video projector wasn't working well, and we actually had it sitting on the floor kind of crookedly aimed at the screen, and a helpful fellow was maneuvering it to make sure the part I was referring to was on the screen rather than the wall or the ceiling. But fortunately for you, those clever folks who produced the video spliced my slides directly into the video.
It's all about the real history of Haeckelian recapitulation and why evolution doesn't predict the crazy stupid things…
mikethemadbiologist | June 9, 2011Or maybe wild-ass speculation. As the data continue to come in about the E. coli outbreak in Germany caused by E. coli O104:H4 HUSEC041 (well, everything but the public health and epidemiological data which are a contradictory, incoherent mess), it appears that one of the things that has made this strain so dangerous is its ability to make Shiga-like toxin--a compound that stops cells from making proteins cells--the mechanism is similar to that of the biowarfare agent ricin (Note: there are several different Shiga-like toxins; for clarity, since it's not germane to this post, I'll lump…
pharyngula | June 4, 2011Here's his latest.
Also remember, Aron Ra, DPR Jones, Lone Frank, and I will be on the Magic Sandwich Show tomorrow at 8pm GMT, live from Dublin. Tune in!
gregladen | May 31, 2011Welcome to the Thirty Sixth Carnival of Evolution. The world of blog carnivals is in a state of flux and uncertainty these days, with the distinct possibility of a mass extinction just around the corner. One of the oldest, longest running, and most important carnivals, I and the Bird, issued its last issue only a few days ago, and the Keepers of the Carnival of Evolution themselves are said to be thinking about ways that this whole carnival thing can be made to work better. That could, I suppose, mean killing it and replacing it with something else. We are hopeful that this will not be…
jtoney | May 24, 2011The Rap Guide to Evolution Music Videos, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust.
I've been exploring the use of rap and pop culture to teach science and mathematics, ranging from Lupe Fiasco to Linkin Park, but that topic is for another day. But anyone interested in evolution, whether student or teacher, could find this "Evolution Rap" a refreshing approach.
Bottom line: learning should always be this fun.
Lyrics:
"Yo, yo, the Origin of Species
Ain't no feces, dawg, believe me..."
And that's all I could think of
So then I thought, this needs to be re-written
By looking at the similarities in…
jrosenhouse | May 16, 2011Update, May 17, 2:35 pm: Many thanks to Jerry Coyne for clearing up the question of Richard Dawkins's views on human inevitability in evolution. As I thought, Dawkins does not hold the view Ruse attributed to him. Coyne has Dawkins's response to Ruse's piece, so follow the link and go have a look.
It's been all book, all the time around here. The first draft of the BECB (that's the big evolution/creation book) has benefited mightily from the heroic efforts of a number of proofreaders, but this has meant a certain amount of rewriting to produce the second draft. I'm putting the finishing…
kcollins | May 16, 2011Nifty Fifty Speaker Carl Zimmer is often called one of the nation's most astute, informed and lyrical science writers. Specializing in communicating about the wonders and mysteries of evolution, biology and neuroscience, Carl Zimmer - in such books as The Tangled Bank, Parasite Rex, and Soul Made Flesh - writes with such grace, skill and clarity that he makes even difficult subjects like natural selection and the brain understandable and exciting to readers who have little formal education in science.
"I like to write books about subjects that greatly intrigue me --subjects that I want to…
pharyngula | May 12, 2011Faces are weird. They really are largely accidents of development — all the fine features that we consider lovely sculpted signifiers of beauty are really just products of developmental processes, and what we recognize as pretty is actually just a good job of assembly. I've been talking about this bizarre way the human face is built for many years, especially since my interest in teratology means I spend a fair bit of time looking at cases where the assembly goes drastically wrong (in fish, not people; I can make things go wrong in fish embryos in ways that would send the mob after me with…
gregladen | May 6, 2011So Amanda had this TV. It had a remote. The remote sucked. It was broken. Then I moved in and with me came a universal remote. Lucky Amanda. I programmed the universal remote (a Radioshack 5 in 1) to handle the TV as well as a DVD player and a stereo. The remote handled everything. The old remotes hung around for a while occasionally being used, but then disappeared. Then we got a different DVD player and I had forgotten that the remote was a universal jobbie, so we just started using the remote for the DVD player Then we got an iPod cradle with speakers and a Roku. I purchased a…
pharyngula | April 27, 2011
I've been giving talks at scientific meetings on educational outreach — I've been telling the attendees that they ought to start blogs or in other ways make more of an effort to educate the public. I mentioned one successful result the other day, but we need more.
I give multiple reasons for scientists to do this. One is just general goodness: we need to educate a scientifically illiterate public. Of course, like all altruism, this isn't really recommended out of simple kindness, but because the public ultimately holds the pursestrings, and science needs their understanding and support.…
cagapakis | April 20, 2011Symbiosis is everywhere. From the Greek for "living with," symbiosis is simply a close association between two different species in nature. These relationships can be mutualistic, parasitic, or somewhere in between. Bacterial symbionts live inside bodies, like the bacteria that help us and other animals digest our food, and they live inside cells, like the bacteria that live in plant roots and provide their hosts with nitrogen. They can be metabolic, hygienic, or photosynthetic; ectosymbiotic, on the host surface, or endosymbiotic, inside the host's cells. Back in the 1860's biologists…
tfk | April 20, 2011Via USA Today, we learn about a study showing that people who meditate frequently behave in a more rational manner than non-meditators, and they do so because different parts of their brain take charge of certain kinds of decisions.
The study was based around a common test of rational behavior called the Ultimatum Game. Two people sit at a table. One of them is given a sum of money ($20 in this case), and is told to split that however she wants with the other. Before she makes that decision, the other subject is told that if he rejects the share offered to him, neither player will get any…
oracknows | April 19, 2011I'd like to thank Buckeye Surgeon for reminding me of something I had seen and wanted to blog about but totally forgot about. Maybe it was so forgettable that I should just skip it, but as a surgeon I actually don't think so. Basically, it's a story of a surgeon making a fool of himself. I know, I know, that's such an impossibility that it's well nigh inconceivable, but it actually did happen. Perhaps what brought my attention to this sordid tale is that there is a connection to the University of Michigan, where I went to both undergraduate and medical school.
The surgeon in question is Dr.…
jtoney | April 13, 2011
Source.
On April 29, Prince William and Kate Middleton will exchange wedding vows with Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury presiding. More than two billion viewers are expected to witness the event with well wishes for this handsome couple, with Britain's future in mind. I wish them all the best, with opportunities and joy that they cannot even imagine today.
Archbishop Williams is a learned theologian but is not without controversy with his statements about the 9/11 attacks, Muslims and British law. My focus here, however, is to explore his thoughts about faith and science. I…
sa smith | April 12, 2011A couple weeks ago, Teh Discovery Institute held some kind of revival 'conference' at a local Evangelical church. The Usual Suspects were there-- Caseytits, West, some other guy, but also my HIV Evolution BFF Michael Behe. I ended up not being able to go due to a scheduling conflict. I was at a conference on HIV Evolution, which as we all know, according to the worlds most preeminent HIV researcher Michael Behe, doesnt exist.
So Ive been Googling around trying to get a recap of what went down.
Apparently, nothing.
As the kids say, "not a single fuck was given that day".
Not one blog post…
tsmith | April 11, 2011We all know of once-respected scientists who ended up going off the deep end, adhering to an unproven idea despite massive evidence to the contrary. Linus Pauling and his advocacy of megadoses of Vitamin C, or Peter Duesberg's descent into HIV denial. It's all the more disappointing when the one taking a dive is a woman, since there are, compared to men, relatively fewer female "big names" in the sciences. So when one goes from views that were, perhaps, outside of the mainstream (but later proven largely correct) to complete science denialism, it makes it all the more depressing. Even worse,…
pharyngula | April 10, 2011Paul Nelson has deigned to write a two-part essay on "Ontogenetic Depth", his sciencey made-up term for a metric that he claims makes evolution essentially impossible. We've been wrangling over this for a long time — he and Marcus Ross introduced this in a poster at the Developmental Biology meetings in 2004, titled "Understanding the Cambrian Explosion by Estimating Ontogenetic Depth", and in our conversation at that time I certainly got the impression that he and Ross were busy collecting this peculiar thing alien to creationists called "data". I have asked him multiple times over the last…
jrosenhouse | April 8, 2011Having had so much fun during my last sojourn to the University of Maryland, I decided to repeat the experience this past Wednesday. Richard Dawkins was speaking, you see.
Here he is on stage during the introductions:
I attended with Douglas Gill and Clinton Jenkins, both of the University of Maryland Biology Department. And since we are all highly connected VIP's, we wound up sitting in the center of the second row. Impressed? I sure was!
Dawkins had little trouble filling the venue:
There was an overflow room as well. My informal impression was that a significant majority…
hrynyshyn | April 8, 2011Tennessee's House passed this disingenuous piece of legislation the other day. They're not to the first to try this sort of thing and they probably won't be the last.
HB0368
00242666
-1-
HOUSE BILL 368
By Dunn
AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49,
Chapter 6, Part 10, relative to teaching scientific
subjects in elementary schools.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE:
SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Chapter 6, Part 10, is amended by
adding the following as a new, appropriately designated section:
(a) The general assembly finds that:
(1)…