General Science
evolvingthoughts | October 1, 2008
In the light of the ongoing automation of impact factors, usually by somewhat opaque algorithms or procedures, a number of editors of various biomedical jounrals have asked to be taken off a new European reference index. I have taken the liberty of formatting the text below the fold in paragraphs. It was taken from the HOPOS-L@listserv.vt.edu forum for history and philosophy of science, and originally on the H-NET List on the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology [mailto:H-SCI-MED-TECH@H-NET.MSU.EDU].
From: Finn Arne JørgensenDate: Tue, September 30, 2008 2:31 pm
Journals…
evolvingthoughts | September 28, 2008
Readers know I think religion is post-agricultural, which raises some difficulties if we find evidence of organised religious behaviours before the onset of agriculture. The case in point here being Göbeli Tepe. Now a recent model of the process of cereal domestication has set back the beginnings of agriculture some ten thousand years earlier than the c10kya version, the "rapid onset" model, in favour of a "protracted transition" model.
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog has a very nice roundup of the issues, and there is a summary at Science Daily. The crucial question resolved by this…
evolvingthoughts | September 25, 2008
I can't believe I saw this before Bora did:
Hat tip the heekster on talk.origins
sa smith | September 25, 2008Creationists: Experts in being arrogant idiots.
These sources promoting the classic "junk DNA" icon of neo-Darwinism need updating, as a Yale University news release from earlier this month recalls the fact that "[i]n the last several years, scientists have discovered that non-coding regions of the genome, far from being junk, contain thousands of regulatory elements that act as genetic 'switches' to turn genes on or off." In this case, the junk triggered genes that control human thumb and foot development.
WHAT?!?!?!
Non-coding DNA can promote and enhance gene transcription??
Are you all…
evolvingthoughts | September 22, 2008
Science blogging is a relatively new phenomenon, the impact of which is slowly becoming clear. Gone are the days when an albino silverback philosopher was a top ranking science blogger (I am quite happy to be a philosophy of science blogger, and not take credit for anything I didn't earn). I recently had a paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution on the topic, which was more an analysis of how they functions for those used to the older publishing trajectories. Now Sciblings Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith have an advocacy paper in PLoS Biology, in which they seek to legitimate…
sa smith | September 22, 2008Okay, so there are like 20,000 polar bears left.
4,000 tigers.
1,600 Pandas.
Meh, who cares, right? I mean, there are still some. 1,600 plus the ones in zoos. 'Endangered' animals are fine! Yeah... No. Minor problem with decreasing population numbers: Its more than just the numbers. Its genetic diversity within those numbers. If those 1,600 pandas are all we have left, and those 1,600 pandas are genetically similar, they are in big trouble.
Easy example? Tasmanian Devils. While there are still 20,000-50,000 Tasmanian Devils left, they are being slaughtered by an infectious tumor. An…
evolvingthoughts | September 15, 2008
Mohan Matthen, a philosopher of biology, has a very nice takedown of Thomas Nagel's qualified support for teaching creationism on his blog. Hat tip Leiter.
Richard Losick has an excellent piece on the problems of using cultured lab strains when studying microbes, at Small Things Considered.
A new blog on politics and science, A Vote for Science, has started up at the mothership. Hopefully, when the present unpleasantness in the US has concluded for four years, we can get onto some wider and more interesting matters.
Wesley Elsberry has a plaintive cri de coeur about the joys of sleep…
evolvingthoughts | September 14, 2008
It occurs to me that I don't have a good list of these, so I invite you all to list and name your favourite science journalism narratives. You know, the sorts of things that journalists must squeeze every science story into, no matter what the actual content. Journalists in general have at best a few dozen of these pigeonholes into which to force every "news" story, and science is no exception. I'll start off with three of my favourites:
Frankenscience: scientists have done something that is going to cause the end of the world, major cancer, or they Meddled With Things Man Was Not Meant To…
evolvingthoughts | September 12, 2008
Here is a roundup of links and stuff that I don't have time to blog on right now.
A. C. Grayling replies in a piece of beautiful snark to Steve Fuller's response to his review of Dissent over Descent. Thony is not permitted to point out any further historical inaccuracies...
Leiter reports that a philosopher who blogs, from Yeshiva, James Otteson, may have been removed because he said things on the blog that are sexist, or at least interpreted to be, according to Inside Higher Education.
Will Thomas at Ether Wave Propaganda has the first of a series on the historian Simon Schaeffer, on…
evolvingthoughts | September 11, 2008
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…
evolvingthoughts | September 10, 2008Another guest post by Thony Christie
John recently provided a link to a review of Steve Fuller’s newest book by Anthony Grayling. On the whole I find Professor Grayling’s comments excellent and applaud his put-down of Fuller but then in the last section of his review he goes and spoils it all, at least for me, by seriously abusing the history of science. As I recently took Rodney Stark to task for his misuse of the history of science in the cause of Christianity I feel obliged in the interest of fairness to do the same to Grayling. Just because I think he is on the right side does not give…
evolvingthoughts | September 7, 2008
No, the large Hadron Collider won't destroy the earth. Go on, bet me everything you own against everything I own that there's be no strangelets or black holes as a result. You'd get four or five years enjoying my wealth. Meanwhile morons have threatened to kill physicists who are trying to understand the universe...
Bush and co. (I mean that literally - they are effectively a corporation) continue to do harm.
How white are you? [I'm not very white racially, but then I suspect I'm not very human; see avatar]
Losers in Sydney can go to a million comments party. Superlosers (those who don…
evolvingthoughts | September 6, 2008
Thony Christie, a regular commenter on this blog, is also a historian of science, and he sent the following guest post that I thought well worth publishing.
Commentator “Adam” asked John’s opinion on a book he is reading, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark, saying that he himself was not knowledgeable enough to judge this work. He then produced three short quotes from the book as representative of Stark’s thesis. John dismissed the quotes in his usual pithy style; From what you quote, it is about 100% wrong.
Actually…
sa smith | September 6, 2008If youre a long time reader of SciBlogs, you probably remember when James Watson was on the advisory board of SEED. You also probably remember he was removed from that position after he made some idiotic racist (and sexist) remarks.
In a wonderful bit of scientific lulz, Craig Venter recently compared his genome with that of James Watson and made some predictably astute observations about race, genes, and drugs.
'Individual Genomes Instead of Race for Personalized Medicine' (its open access right now!)
Lets say you have a headache, so you decide to take some Tylenol. It dissolves in your…
evolvingthoughts | August 31, 2008
For my sins, I was once a public relations guy, for an educational institution, and I held positions roughly in that domain (e.g., as public communications manager for a medical research institute, although I managed the means not the message) for the bulk of my professional life until I finally took up a position as an academic philosopher four years ago. It was not my vocation, I hasten to add, but the way I supported my book habit and fondness for eating and feeding my family.
I have been asked to address a science communication class on the failure of science to communicate to the…
evolvingthoughts | August 21, 2008
So says a committee of the UK House of Lords:
Systematic biology and taxonomy - the science of describing and identifying plants and animals - is in critical decline and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) must act before it is too late.
Of course, this is not the first time this has been said, and recommendations made before have not been acted upon:
"Systematic biology appears to be suffering the consequences of a situation where diffuse responsibility (among government departments) results in no responsibility," the report says.
Concerns about the state of…
evolvingthoughts | August 14, 2008The heir apparent to some minor European royal family has again demonstrated his lack of knowledge and trust in scientific matters. The Prince, who has previously said that he talks to plants and consults gurus, apparently failed to talk to any actual, you know, scientists who might clear up a few confusions he has. Of course the environmental extremists have leapt all over it.
He has now said this in the august paper of record in Britain, the Daily Telegraph:
The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world's worst environmental disaster, The Prince of Wales has…
evolvingthoughts | August 12, 2008
A retired chemist has had his home lab confiscated in Maryland because a government official was scared of it. Sayeth Robert Thompson:
Pamela Wilderman, the code enforcement officer for Marlboro, stated, "I think Mr. Deeb has crossed a line somewhere. This is not what we would consider to be a customary home occupation."
Allow me to translate Ms. Wilderman's words into plain English: "Mr. Deeb hasn't actually violated any law or regulation that I can find, but I don't like what he's doing because I'm ignorant and irrationally afraid of chemicals, so I'll abuse my power to steal his…
evolvingthoughts | August 7, 2008
Having blown my own trumpet, I should mention that there are a few other articles in the same edition of Biology and Philosophy (which I hadn't seen until now) on Gavrilets' view of adaptive landscapes now on Online First: Massimo Pigliucci has a very nice historical summary of Sewall Wright's initial metaphor and ideas and how they changed (it hadn't occurred to me, but should have, that the landscape metaphor fails to deal with new mutations, which change the landscape itself (although I did say something like this in my 1998 paper). Anya Plutinski discusses the iconography of Wright's…
sa smith | August 6, 2008As I said in my chat with PZ on Blogging Heads, Im probably not the best person to talk to about the problems women face in science. Why? Meh, my parents have always encouraged me in the sciences (CONSTRUX WHOO!). They threw me on a bus, by myself, to Space Camp when I was 10. Aunts and uncles who live in The City would take me to museums and botanical gardens and state parks when Id visit them. I had great high school teachers and college professors for my science classes. Bossman has always made it perfectly clear that sexism against me is unacceptable, and to come to him if anything…