Carl Zimmer ran a Science Writing Workshop at Yale University a few weeks ago.
Do you remember this cover? It caused a minor uproar a few weeks ago [see Explaining the New Scientist Cover].What on earth were you thinking when you produced a garish cover proclaiming that "Darwin was wrong" (24 January)?Darwin was wrong about a lot of things but the tree of life wasn't one of them. It's still an accurate metaphor for most of the history of life—certainly the parts Darwin wrote about.
First, it's false, and second, it's inflammatory. And, as you surely know, many readers will interpret the cover not as being about Darwin, the historical figure, but about evolution.
Nothing in the article showed that the concept of the tree of life is unsound; only that it is more complicated than was realised before the advent of molecular genetics. It is still true that all of life arose from "a few forms or... one", as Darwin concluded in The Origin of Species. It is still true that it diversified by descent with modification via natural selection and other factors.
Of course there's a tree; it's just more of a banyan than an oak at its single-celled-organism base. The problem of horizontal gene-transfer in most non-bacterial species is not serious enough to obscure the branches we find by sequencing their DNA.
President Obama (USA) just arrived in Canada. Here he is being greeted by Governor General Michaelle Jean. You can see the complete video on YAHOO! News.
As most of you know, Gould (1941 - 2002) was a critic of the hardened version of the Modern Synthesis. He thought that evolutionary theory needed to be updated to include some things that the originators of the Modern Synthesis were unaware of—or rejected prematurely.The modern synthesis, as an exclusive proposition, has broken down on both of its fundamental claims: extrapolationism (gradual allelic substitution as a model for all evolutionary change) and nearly exclusive reliance on selection leading to adaptation.Ryan Gregory discusses this paper in detail on Genomicron [Gould (1980)]. If you want to be informed in this debate you absolutely must read what he has to say about this key paper in evolutionary theory.
[Image Credit: Photograph of Stephen Jay Gould by Kathy Chapman from Lara Shirvinski at the Art Science Research Laboratory, New York (Wikipedia)]
Gould, S.J. (1980) Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? Paleobiology 6:119-130.
Gould, S.J. (1982) Darwinism and the expansion of evolutionary theory. Science 216:380-387.
Most people do not understand current ideas about evolution. The following is a brief summary of the Modern Synthesis of Genetics and Evolution as put forth by evolutionary biologists in the late 1940s.The term "evolutionary synthesis" was introduced by Julian Huxley in Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942) to designate the general acceptance of two conclusions: gradual evolution can be explained in terms of small genetic changes ("mutations") and recombination, and the ordering of the genetic variation by natural selection; and the observed evolutionary phenomena, particularly macroevolutonary processes and speciation, can be explained in a manner that is consistent with the known genetic mechanisms.The original version of the Modern Synthesis included mechanisms other than natural selection, especially random genetic drift. Later on, there was a hardening of the synthesis so that natural selection became the predominant mechanism and drift was relegated to a bit part (see Mayr quotation, above). The original version is described by Douglas Futuyma as ....
Ernst Mayr (1980) "Some Thoughts on the History
of the Evolutionary Synthesis" in The Evolutionary Synthesis,
E. Mayr & W.B. Provine eds. Harvard University Press.
The major tenets of the evolutionary synthesis, then, were that populations contain genetic variation that arises by random (ie. not adaptively directed) mutation and recombination; that populations evolve by changes in gene frequency brought about by random genetic drift, gene flow, and especially natural selection; that most adaptive genetic variants have individually slight phenotypic effects so that phenotypic changes are gradual (although some alleles with discrete effects may be advantageous, as in certain color polymorphisms); that diversification comes about by speciation, which normally entails the gradual evolution of reproductive isolation among populations; and that these processes, continued for sufficiently long, give rise to changes of such great magnitude as to warrant the designation of higher taxonomic levels (genera, families, and so forth).This description would be incomprehensible to Darwin since he was unaware of genes and genetic drift. The Modern Synthesis differed from Darwinism in four important ways:
Futuyma, D.J. in Evolutionary Biology,
Sinauer Associates, 1986; p.12
The Modern Synthesis was a theory about how evolution worked at the level of genes, phenotypes, and populations whereas Darwinism was concerned mainly with organisms, speciation and individuals. This was a major shift in emphasis and those who fail to appreciate it find themselves out of step with the thinking of evolutionary biologists.
- It defined evolution as a change in the frequency of alleles in a population; an idea based on population genetics.
- In addition to natural selection, it recognized random genetic drift as an important mechanism of evolution.
- It recognized that characteristics are inherited as discrete entities called genes. Variation within a population is due to the presence of multiple alleles of a gene. Variation is caused by mutation.
- It postulated that speciation is (usually) due to the gradual accumulation of small genetic changes. This is equivalent to saying that macroevolution is simply a lot of microevolution.
Hutchison, C.A. 3rd, Phillips, S., Edgell, M.H., Gillam, S., Jahnke, P., and Smith, M. (1978) Mutagenesis at a specific position in a DNA sequence. J. Biol. Chem. 253:6551-6560.
Sanger, F., Air, G.M., Barrell, B.G., Brown, N.L., Coulson, A.R., Fiddes, C.A., Hutchison, C.A., Slocombe, P.M., and Smith, M. (1977) The nucleotide sequence of bacteriophage phiX174. Nature 265:687-695.
Sanger, F., Coulson, A.R., Friedmann, T., Air, G.M., Barrell, B.G., Brown, N.L., Fiddes, J.C., Hutchison, C.A. 3rd, Slocombe, P.M., and Smith, M. (1978) The nucleotide sequence of bacteriophage phiX174. J. Mol. Biol. 125:225-246.
Smith, M., Brown, N.L., Air, G.M., Barrell, B.G., Coulson, A.R., Hutchison, C.A. 3rd, and Sanger, F. (1977) DNA sequence at the C termini of the overlapping genes A and B in bacteriophage phi X174. Nature 265:702-705.
Today's Monday's Molecule really is a molecule. Your task is to identify the molecule from the cartoon shown here. It won't be sufficient to just find the name of the molecule, you will also have to identify the significance behind determining its chemical structure. 
Despite frequent warnings of the inadequacy of education in the United States, citizens here are still among the world's most scientifically literate, a Michigan State University researcher said.Who would 'av thunk it? American are better at critical scientific reasoning because there are more science-receptive citizens. And it even extends to the law.
You can thank those general education requirements that force English majors to sit through biology classes and budding engineers to read Hemingway, Jon Miller said.
...
Fifty years after English novelist and physicist C.P. Snow warned of a disturbing lack of scientific literacy among the cultural elite and a parallel literary void among Britain's scientists and technologists, little has changed in most of the world, Miller argued. And that's part of what keeps the U.S. at the forefront of scientific endeavor and technological innovation.
"What makes the American market and society different," he said, "is that we have more science- and technology-receptive citizens and consumers, and as a society we're willing to spend money for basic science and have been doing that for years."
Americans as a group tend to be more open-minded about innovations such as genetically modified food, he said. Scientific reasoning also works its way into such disciplines as law, he noted, where facts are routinely marshaled to support or disprove theories.
1. Personally, I don't think there's all that much difference between science literacy in the USA and other Westeren industrialized nations. However, the idea that the USA is actually superior to other nations does strain belief, somewhat.
At my talk last Friday I was asked about the field of evolutionary psychology. This seems to be a popular topic among educated non-scientists. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most people are only interested in human evolution—that doesn't mean I can't be disappointed.It is because of hormones that male and female brains differ. While there is no evidence for differences in intelligence (as was believed in the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth - women were not even allowed to vote until 1920!), to deny that differences exist is simply wishful thinking. Evolution cares nothing for either misogyny or feminism; it cares not for what is moral or immoral, just or unjust: without caring at all, it builds survival machines to carry genes into the next generation.Emphasizing differences between men and women is a common theme these days. Some of these differences are due to genetic differences between men and women (e.g. hormones) and some are just cultural differences that have no genetic component. The trick is to distinguish between those differences.
But what has this to do with religious beliefs among women? Quite a bit actually. When we look at some of the behavioral and psychological differences between women and men, we can glimpse some of the adaptations necessary for our ancestors' survival.
With this in mind, we can begin to understand why it is so essential for women to fit into their social group. Exclusion would have meant extinction since those women who could not live in accord with the other members of their group would have had fewer or no descendants. Thus, the evolutionary pressures that shaped the need to live in harmony with the group pressed more strongly on women than on men. This is not to suggest that there were not strong evolutionary pressure for males, too, to conform, indeed there were. However, males who risked upsetting the status quo and did so successfully would have gained an advantage in their own reproductive success. Females who tried the same would not.Like most people who advocate the evolution of specific behaviors, Elisabeth Cornwell is not spelling out the details of her proposal. Let's try and fill in the blanks.
)Religion is a human invention, the gods and goddesses that have come and gone during our short history have all displayed the best and (more often) worst human traits. They fell in love, jealousy was common, revenge, anger and trickery prevailed, the struggle for power was universal, and all could be brought to folly and woe due to excessive hubris, greed, and lust. Soap operas pale in comparison! What concerns me, though, is that religion reflected the culture of the times - and, for better or worse, the religions most prominent today are all rather ancient beasts that grew out of a time when women were subservient to men, and often considered as property to be bartered, battered, and controlled.One of the main criticisms of evolutionary psychology is that its proponents are often guilty of cultural bias. They tend to extrapolate from the culture they know to all of human behavior. This is an important criticism since the stories are not about biological evolution within a small society but about the evolution of human behavior—all humans.
So we are back to our original question: Why do women today continue to fall victim to an archaic system of beliefs that foster misogynistic behavior? Why are women even more likely to be religious than men? The simple answer is that it is safe. Please don't take this as a slight against women -- it isn't. Male/female differences exist, but I'm certainly not suggesting that risk taking is a better option than playing it safe. After all, women are less likely than men to die doing incredibly stupid things (check out the Darwin Awards it is nearly exclusively male 'winners'). But the fact that women are less likely to push the status quo for fear of social exclusion and even retribution makes a lot of evolutionary sense.Actually it doesn't make a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective except as an epiphenomon. Female ape brains may be biologically different from male ape brains and those differences may make it easier for females to form groups. The fact that, today, women in Western industrialized nations tend to be more religious than men could be entirely due to culture.
1. shamans is the correct plural of shaman.
[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]
For more, see Pop Evolutionary Psychology, Modern women are excellent gatherers, Changing Your Mind About Evolutionary Psychology, Please Tell Me This Is a Joke, and Changing Your Mind: Are Humans Evolving?.
I just received an email message from András Pellionisz informing me that in America the concept of junk DNA is "dead as a doornail." He "proves" his case in an article on his website [HoloGenomics].A Eureka Moment concerning the fractal character of neurons led in turn to a novel picture of genomics where protein structures act back recursively upon their DNA code -- in outright contradiction to prevailing orthodoxy. A household name in neuroscience for his tensor network theory, Dr. András Pellionisz has recently had another far-reaching discovery borne out. This insight has now received striking confirmation in stunning results from the new field of epigenetics -- promising a whole raft of novel medical diagnoses and therapies.THEME
Sunnyvale, Calif. (PRWEB) July 16, 2008 -- A landmark article on "The Principle of Recursive Genome Function" (received December 7, accepted December 18, 2007) by András J. Pellionisz appears online in Springer's e-Journal Cerebellum.
The paper marks the first anniversary of an historic event--the release of pilot results for ENCODE, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project. Building on the results of the Human Genome Project, the ENCODE effort revealed a far more complex DNA coding sequence than was ever previously imagined. "There's a lot more going on than we thought," said Collins, who was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Dr. Collins issued a mandate a year ago "the scientific community will need to rethink some long-held views".
A happy few did not need to rethink either the "central dogma of molecular biology" (Crick, 1956) or the misnomer of "junk" DNA (Ohno 1972), since they never believed them in the first place. The dictum claiming that a flow of information from proteins back to DNA "never happens" or the idea that 98.7% of the human genome should be disregarded as junk was never very believable.
Today's Monday's Molecule really is a molecule. Your task is to identify the molecule from the cartoon shown here. It won't be sufficient to just find the name of the molecule, you will also have to identify the significance behind determining its chemical structure.
The term Genetic Fallacy is used to describe fallacious arguments that attack an idea based on its origins (genesis) and not its current validity. Quite honestly, I find current Darwinist efforts to get the old Brit toff off the hook for racism embarrassing. Far from differing from his generation's racist beliefs, Darwin wanted to provide solid scientific support for them. And to the extent that anyone accepts the argument in Descent of Man, they accept a racist argument.
Has anyone noticed how Darwinists carefully protect themselves from having the issue framed bluntly in those terms?
Chuck Lorre is a TV producer. One of his shows is Two and a half men, another is The Big Bang Theory. Chuck Lorre has a blog but it's a strange kind of blog—no comments allowed and the titles of each posting are just numbers. Many (all?) of them appear in the credits at the end of his shows. A wise man once told me that we are all God in drag. I like that. Sometimes when I'm in a public place or sitting at a stop light, I'll watch people walking by and I'll silently say to myself, "He's God. She's God. He's God. She's God." Before long I always find myself feeling a warm sense of affinity for these strangers. The experience is even more powerful when I do this while observing a person who is clearly suffering. On occasion I'll test my little spiritual practice by turning on Fox News. Within minutes I become an atheist.
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