Rosie Redfield doesn't like the way genetics is taught in most university courses. She thinks we should re-design genetics courses (Redfield, 2012).
As a first step, geneticists need to step back from the current curriculum and decide what 21st century students really need to know about genes and inheritance. These decisions should be based on how students will use what they learn, and not on what we as geneticists value.
She proposes that modern genetics courses should concentrate on subjects that really interest students. Subjects like ...
Is genetic testing a wise thing to do? Is it a sound financial investment? Should I have full access to my genetic information? Should my insurer and my employer? Should athletes be tested for genetic modifications (“gene doping”)? Is it ethical to DNA-fingerprint all convicted criminals? All suspects? Did my genes make me gay? Are genetically modified foods safe? Are cloned animals ethical? How different are human races, and how different are we all from chimpanzees and gorillas?
I explained in an earlier posting why I think this is wrong: Questions for Genetics Students. My main concern was that we might be sacrificing fundamental concepts and principles of genetics (i.e. science) in an attempt to appeal to students.
Rosie's goals sound like noble goals but is it even realistic to address these issues in a genetics course? That's the question that Heather Zeiger asks in her post on Genetics Class 2.0.
Many of these questions are ones bioethicists have been contending with for years. Bioethics is a multi-disciplinary field that is usually occupied by philosophers and healthcare professionals, but in the last twenty years it has seen an influx of lawyers, scientists, and people from many other disciplines.
Redfield suggests that it is the role of the scientist to address ethical questions. However, something that Redfield does not state in her paper, is that scientists are rarely trained in anything that would be helpful in assessing ethical issues, such as moral philosophy or rhetoric, and most programs do not include history and philosophy of science.
Now, I rarely agree with anything posted on The Best Schools but this is a legitimate concern.
My position is that philosophers and healthcare professionals have been spectacularly unsuccessful at clarifying bioethical questions. I cringe just about every time I see a "professional" bioethicist on television. Most of them can't separate science from ethics and most of them are more concerned about appeasing religion than getting to the bottom of a difficult issue.
Scientists often make much more sense but that doesn't mean that all scientists are good at dealing with ethical issues. I teach a course that deals with ethical issues (cloning, reproductive technology, immunization) and I find that it's an excellent way to get students to think critically. However, I've learned a lot from my colleagues about ethics and philosophy over the years and I don't think I would be very effective without this background1.
I doubt very much that the average genetics teacher or TA can really be effective at handling ethical debates in their classrooms. I don't think you should build a course around such issues no matter how much the students want it.
My friend, Rob Allore, taught with me for several years. He's a scientist and a Jesuit priest. This year I'll be teaching with another friend, Chris DiCarlo, a philosopher and author of How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions.
Redfield, R. (2012) "Why Do We Have to Learn This Stuff?"—A New Genetics for 21st Century Students. PLoS Biol 10(7): e1001356. [doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001356]
I'm going to keep hammering on this until it sinks in.
We don't know how life began but one of the more fanciful hypotheses is that it began in a primordial soup of organic molecules supplied by meteors, comets, and violent lightening storms. The idea is that the ocean was full of glucose, amino acids, and nucleotides. Glucose and similar carbohydrates supplied the energy for life. Amino acids spontaneously came together to form proteins. Nucleic acids arose by stringing together pre-existing nucleotides or nucleosides.
In the most extreme version, the ocean itself was the primordial soup and concentrations of organic molecules were sufficient to drive the formation of life. A simple back-of-the envelope calculation indicates that the concentration of typical amino acids would have been about 0.1 nM (10-10 M) [Can watery asteroids explain why life is 'left-handed'?]. This is an unlikely scenario [More Prebiotic Soup Nonsense]. You won't get spontaneous formation of polymers in water at that concentration.
What's Wrong with this Picture?
Biology New Net posted a press release today from the American Institute of Physics: Researchers dig through the gene bank to uncover the roots of the evolutionary tree. It advertises the work of William Duax and his colleagues, including some high school students who work in his lab on Fridays.
Ever since Darwin first published The Origin of the Species, scientists have been striving to identify a last universal common ancestor of all living species. Paleontological, biochemical, and genomic studies have produced conflicting versions of the evolutionary tree. Now a team of researchers, led by a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and including area high school students, has developed a novel method to search the vast archives of known gene sequences to identify and compare similar proteins across the many kingdoms of life. Using the comparisons to quantify the evolutionary closeness of different species, the researchers have identified Actinobacteria, a group of single membrane bacteria that include common soil and water life forms, as the base of the evolutionary tree. They will present their findings at the annual meeting of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA), held July 28 – Aug. 1 in Boston, Mass.
New enzymes often evolve from old ones via a gene duplication event. This gives rise to gene families encoding evolutionarily related enzymes with similar, but different enzymatic activities.
There are two principle ways to evolve related modern enzymes with specific activities. The first way postulates an ancestral enzyme that catalyzes a specific reaction (e.g. A1 → B1). Following a gene duplication event, one of the copies evolves an enzyme that catalyzes a completely different (but chemically related) reaction: A2 → B2.
Most people think that this is by far the most common pathway. That's because they are used to thinking that enzymes are highly specific—that's what's emphasized in most biochemistry courses. They think that it should be possible to reverse engineer the evolutionary pathway on the right-hand branch and thus transform one enzyme to another.
Anna Kuchment was there [Google Science Fair: Winners tackle breast cancer, hearing loss and water quality]. Just once, I'd like to see a science fair winner who actually did science and discovered something about the natural world that has nothing to do with technology or applications.
An expectant crowd gathered last night inside an airplane hangar at a flight school in Palo Alto, California to hear the winners of the second annual Google Science Fair. The grand prize went to Brittany Wenger, 17, of Sarasota, Florida, who wrote a computer program to help doctors diagnose breast cancer less invasively. Jonah Kohn, 14, of San Diego, Calif. won his age category for creating a device that converts sound into tactile vibration to improve the music-listening experience for the hearing impaired; and a trio from Spain won the 15 to 16 age category for documenting the hazardous and non-hazardous organisms found in water from different parts of their country.
Anna Kuchment works for Scientific American and posts on a blog called Budding Scientist: Everything you always wanted to know about raising science-literate kids.
I heard on CNN that applications for gun permits are on the rise in Colorado. Apparently there are people who think that arming everyone will cut down on crime. They seriously believe that if more people in the Aurora Theater shooting were packing then there would have been fewer deaths and injuries. The idea is that a gunfight between the psychotic killer and an average citizen would have resulted in the killer's death.
Here's a bit of news from Toronto that might help put this in perspective. On June 2, 2012 a gang member opened fire on another gang member in the food court of the Toronto Eaton Centre. The intended target was killed but so was a nearby shopper. Three others were wounded. On July 15, 2012 two or three rival gang members decided to have a gunfight at a barbecue in a Toronto suburb. One of them was wounded. Two innocent bystanders were killed and 22 others were wounded [Scarborough shootings: What really happened on Danzig?].
Turns out that the average citizen isn't a very good shooter. More often than not, they miss their intended target and hit someone else. Lots of people die in gunfights, not just the bad guys—it's called collateral damage.
Imagine what the death toll in Aurora might have been with more than one person blasting away with an automatic weapon.
All civilized nations have strict gun control laws. Their citizens have this strange notion that killing other people is never a viable option and they can't imagine why anyone would deliberately buy guns with the intention of shooting a fellow citizen, even in self defense or prevention of a presumed crime.
I guess some nations have a long history of solving problem with gun violence and it's difficult to abandon that option.
Image Credits: Charlton Heston (top), Tombstone (bottom)
Many species are not really "species" according to the biological species concept. They are not reproductively isolated from their closest relatives. A little bit of hybridization occurs in nature leading to the invasion of "foreign" alleles into the main population; a phenomenon known as gene flow.
Sometimes the invading alleles can become fixed (or very prevalent) in the population. This is what is presumed to have happened with Neanderthal or Denisovan alleles in modern humans. Rare matings between modern human ancestors and Neanderthal, for example, led to some gene flow between the populations [How many species of humans were there?].
The spread of invasive mitochondria is an extreme example of the fixation of invasive alleles. The example of polar bear evolution [Speciation in Bears] shows us that mitochondrial DNA can enter a population through a rare mating with an individual from another "species" and then become fixed in the new population over many thousand years.
The question is how does this fixation of "foreign" mitochondria occur? Is it an accident due to random genetic drift or do the foreign mitochondria confer a selective advantage over the original mitochondria? It seems unlikely that the mitochondria in one population (e.g. brown bears) are better than those in a foreign population (e.g. polar bears) that has adapted to a different environment.
John Hawks seems to want to have his cake and eat it too [Polar bear mtDNA replacement] ...
In any single population, the behavior of mtDNA is rarely outside the very wide range of dynamics that happen by genetic drift alone, but that's more a sign of the extremely wide range of possibilities that drift allows. (This is why it took so long to demonstrate a problem with mtDNA in phylogenetic reconstruction). Now we know of many instances like polar bears, where the mtDNA genealogy has a different topology than that typical of nuclear genes. Moreover, we know that across many populations of different species, mtDNA is systematically less variable than the expected ratio from the nuclear genome. So it seems that once it enters a population, mitochondrial DNA sometimes spreads more rapidly and broadly than the typical gene. This dynamic sometimes may reflect extreme population histories, such as population bottlenecks and large-scale migrations. But in many cases it probably reflects selection on the mitochondrial genome.
This is one of those issues where a little bit of evidence would be extremely helpful. Is it true that the fixation of foreign mitochondrial DNA is more common than, say, the fixation of Y chromosomes or the fixation of X-linked genes? What about other genes? Does maternal inheritance of mitochondria influence fixation?
Jerry Coyne suggests that there's something special about mitochondria (and chloroplasts) [A new study of polar bears ...].
The problem is that, for reasons we don’t fully understand, mtDNA also moves between species during hybridization much more readily than does nDNA, and that can screw up species relationships. This is true for both animals and plants, and not just for mtDNA either: in plants, DNA from another organelle, the chloroplasts (site of photosynthesis, this DNA is called “cpDNA”) also moves between species more readily than nDNA.
....
We see this situation over and over again in biology. We don’t really know why mtDNA (and cpDNA) leak so readily between species, but we do know that this leakage makes it dicey to use only organelle’s DNA to make species trees. But the reason for this leakage compared to nDNA (so common to be almost a “rule of biology”) would make a useful paper topic for some enterprising graduate student.
Is it really true that mtDNA is more commonly fixed than nuclear alleles? Is it still true when you take into account maternal inheritance? I hope someone assigns this problem to a graduate student and I hope the graduate student takes care to rule out drift and accident.
Image Credit: Moran, L.A., Horton, H.R., Scrimgeour, K.G., and Perry, M.D. (2012) Principles of Biochemistry 5th ed., © Pearson Education Inc. page 419 [Pearson: Principles of Biochemistry 5/E]
I read an interesting article a few months ago. It was a study of the phylogeny of bears with an emphasis of the origin of polar bears. In theory, it should be possible to put a date on the speciation event and to identify the probably ancestor of the modern polar bear.
The first thing you have to know is that polar bears and brown bears are not distinct species as defined by the biological species concept. This definition of "species" requires that there be no interbreeding with other populations, otherwise it's not a true species. (See Jerry Coyne's analysis of the problem with respect to humans.)
Polar bears and brown bears can mate to form hybrids, although this doesn't happen very often in the wild because the two "species" are geographically separated. The interesting question is when did these two populations diverge.
Many people thought the question had been answered a few years ago when Lindqvist et al. (2010) published the sequence of polar bear mitochondrial DNA ad compared it to that of other bears.
The result is shown here on the left in a figure taken from the recent paper in Science (Hailer et al, 2012). The Lindvist et al. paper showed conclusively that polar bears are relatively young as a "species" (about 150,000 years) and that they clearly arose from within the brown bear clade.
This result was somewhat surprising but not revolutionary. However, there were some experts on speciation who, questioned the conclusion; notably, Jerry Coyne [Do “polar bears” exist?]. They cautioned that using mitochondrial DNA could be misleading.
The latest study in Science shows that their concerns were justified. Hailer et al. (2012) lookd at 14 nuclear genes and constructed the tree shown shown below on the right.
This study indicates that polar bears diverged from brown bears about 800,000 years ago. Furthermore, the two populations of bear (brown and polar) form distinct clades.
What does this mean? It probably means that about 150,000 years ago there was a brief fling between a male polar bear and a female brown bear. The female offspring, carrying brown bear mitochondria, mated with male polar bears and all of their progeny contained brown bear mitochondria with mixtures of brown and polar bear alleles in their nuclei. Over time, the brown bear mitochondria became fixed by random genetic drift in the polar bear population.
This explains why the two trees differ and why you have to be cautious about using mitochondrial DNA in constructing phylogenies.
The story doesn't end there.
Just this week, a new paper appeared in PNAS confirming this result (Miller et al., 2012). Many of the authors are the same ones on the Lindqvist et al. (2012) paper. They are refuting the conclusions of their earlier paper by now showing that the sequence of nuclear genes indicate an earlier divergence of brown bears and polar bears.
I put off blogging about the Science paper because there were more important things to do and because it would have been difficult to explain the problem and the explanation. Fortunately, Jerry Coyne has now taken up the task of explaining the result at: A new study of polar bears underlines the dangers of reconstructing evolution using mitochondrial DNA. Please read his explanation of gene flow in bears based on his extensive knowledge of speciation.
The only issue I have with Coyne's explanation is that I don't think he gives enough emphasis to the idea that fixation of brown bear mitochondria in polar bears could be a genetic accident.
UPDATE: Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science already wrote about this three months ago [Polar bear origins revised – they’re older and more distinct than we thought]. John Hawks emphasizes Jerry Coyne's warning about using mitochondrial DNA and discuss the implications for hominid evolution [Polar bear mtDNA replacement].
Hailer F, Kutschera VE, Hallström BM, Klassert D, Fain SR, Leonard JA, Arnason U, Janke A. (2012) Nuclear genomic sequences reveal that polar bears are an old and distinct bear lineage. Science 336:344-347. [Abstract] [DOI: 10.1126/science.1216424]
Lindqvist, C., Schuster, S.C., Sun, Y., Talbot, S.L., Qi, J., Ratan, A., Tomsho, L.P., Kasson, L., Zeyl, E., Aars, J., Miller, W., Ingólfsson, O., Bachmann, L., and Wiig, O. (2010) Complete mitochondrial genome of a Pleistocene jawbone unveils the origin of polar bear. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 107:5053-5057. [doi:10.1073/pnas.0914266107]
Millera, W., Schuster, S.C., Welch, A.J., Ratan, A., Bedoya-Reina, O.C., et al, (2012) Polar and brown bear genomes reveal ancient admixture and demographic footprints of past climate change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) Published online before print July 23, 2012. [doi: 10.1073/pnas.1210506109]
There are two recent events indicating that change is afoot in America. First, there's the recent poll suggesting that a majority of Americans (54%) could now vote for an atheist candidate who was running for President [Niose: Atheists making political inroads].
Then there's another poll showing that 19% of Americans are now nonreligious ("nones") [“Nones” climb to 19%]. The "nones" are not necessarily atheists or agnostics but it's safe to say that many of them are.
Why are these results significant? They're significant because back in 1958 only 18% of American said they could vote for an atheist and that number didn't change much until the 21st century. Also, the "nones" made up only 6% of the populations in 1990 rising to 15% in 2008.
So, what has happened in the past decade to turn people away from religion and make atheism more respectable?
I can think of two possibilities ...
- The accommodationist approach that has been dominant for several decades has finally started to bear fruit.
- The rise of "militant atheists" in the past decade has forced large numbers of Americans into realizing that atheism and non-belief are respectable options.
Which explanation do you think is likely?
[Hat Tip: RichardDawkins.net]
It's the dog days (dies caniculares) of summer and Sirius is hard at work.
I'm going to let you off easy today. Identify the four molecules whose structures are shown on the right and name the two enzymes that catalyze the reactions. For extra accolades, tell us why those two enzymes are important in evolution and why the blogosphere is currently talking about these kinds of enzymes.
Post your answer as a comment. I'll hold off releasing any comments for 24 hours. The first one with the correct answer wins. I will only post mostly correct answers to avoid embarrassment. The winner will be treated to a free lunch with a very famous person, or me.
There could be two winners. If the first correct answer isn't from an undergraduate student then I'll select a second winner from those undergraduates who post the correct answer. You will need to identify yourself as an undergraduate in order to win. (Put "undergraduate" at the bottom of your comment.)
Some past winners are from distant lands so their chances of taking up my offer of a free lunch are slim. (That's why I can afford to do this!)
In order to win you must post your correct name. Anonymous and pseudoanonymous commenters can't win the free lunch.
Winners will have to contact me by email to arrange a lunch date.
Comments are invisible for 24 hours.
Winners
Nov. 2009: Jason Oakley, Alex Ling
Oct. 17: Bill Chaney, Roger Fan
Oct. 24: DK
Oct. 31: Joseph C. Somody
Nov. 7: Jason Oakley
Nov. 15: Thomas Ferraro, Vipulan Vigneswaran
Nov. 21: Vipulan Vigneswaran (honorary mention to Raul A. Félix de Sousa)
Nov. 28: Philip Rodger
Dec. 5: 凌嘉誠 (Alex Ling)
Dec. 12: Bill Chaney
Dec. 19: Joseph C. Somody
Jan. 9: Dima Klenchin
Jan. 23: David Schuller
Jan. 30: Peter Monaghan
Feb. 7: Thomas Ferraro, Charles Motraghi
Feb. 13: Joseph C. Somody
March 5: Albi Celaj
March 12: Bill Chaney, Raul A. Félix de Sousa
March 19: no winner
March 26: John Runnels, Raul A. Félix de Sousa
April 2: Sean Ridout
April 9: no winner
April 16: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
April 23: Dima Klenchin, Deena Allan
April 30: Sean Ridout
May 7: Matt McFarlane
May 14: no winner
May 21: no winner
May 29: Mike Hamilton, Dmitri Tchigvintsev
June 4: Bill Chaney, Matt McFarlane
June 18: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
June 25: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
July 2: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
July 16: Sean Ridout, William Grecia
I hate it when this happens. I read a book review in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Book Review. If the review is accurate, the book is one of those books that I would probably hurl into the fireplace ... if I had a fireplace.
In order to be fair I have to buy the book (it's not available in Canada) but meanwhile I need to vent about it's probable content.
The book is The New Religious Intolerance by Martha C. Nussbaum and the review is by Damon Linker [Church, Temple, Mosque].
Here's the opening paragraphs of the review...
Mitt Romney’s stump speech during the Republican primaries was filled with appeals to his party’s conservative base, but none consistently inspired more heartfelt cheers than his promise to “stop the days of apologizing for success at home and never again apologize for America abroad.” The statement speaks to the widely held suspicion on the right that liberals in general, and Barack Obama in particular, prefer other forms of democracy (especially those that prevail in Europe) to the American way of life.
Martha C. Nussbaum’s new book could serve as Exhibit A in liberalism’s defense against this charge. The author of 17 previous books on a wide range of topics — from classical Greek philosophy and tragic drama to modern law, literature and ethics — Nussbaum is one of America’s leading liberal thinkers. In “The New Religious Intolerance,” she turns her attention to the rise of antireligious — and specifically anti-Muslim — zealotry since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Though she writes in her opening chapter that intolerance disfigures “all Western societies,” it quickly becomes clear that there have been far fewer incidents of bigotry in the United States than in Europe — because of America’s vastly superior approach to guaranteeing the rights of religious minorities. When it comes to freedom to worship, at least, Nussbaum is an unabashed proponent of American exceptionalism.
The essence of her thesis is that: (1) several European countries have laws prohibiting Muslim women from wearing the burqa in public, (2) The Swiss government bans the building of minarets outside mosques, and (3) The Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, didn't like Muslims. The United States hasn't done any of these things. That's because Americans are much more tolerant of other religious beliefs than Europeans.
There are important ways in which the United States protects religious minorities ...
The core of the book explores three preconditions of securing religious liberty for minorities — and in all of them the United States does a much better job than Europe. First, a nation must commit itself to protecting the greatest possible freedom of conscience that is compatible with public order and safety — a principle that the United States codifies in the First Amendment’s disestablishment of religion and guarantee of religious free exercise....
The second precondition of religious liberty is an impartial and consistent civic culture. On this measure, Europe fares especially badly, as Nussbaum demonstrates by methodically exposing the double standards and bias at play in the arguments for banning the burqa.
Finally, there is the need for “sympathetic imagination” on the part of citizens. Here the United States has long taken the lead, cultivating respect for religious differences since the 17th century, when Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, the “first colony (anywhere in the world, it seems) in which genuine religious liberty obtained for all.” Nussbaum is particularly impressed with Williams’s respectful treatment of the Narragansett Indians, whose language and culture he struggled to understand at a time when most of the colonists thought of them as beasts or devils.
Wow! It's news to me that the United States is a paragon of religious tolerance but perhaps that's just my anti-American bias. (For the record, Roger Williams was English, not American, and most of the other colonies were somewhat less tolerant.1)
I tend to think of the USA as a place where religious groups want to restrict women's freedom of choice, infringe on the rights of gays and lesbians, oppose non-Christians (and suspected non-Christians) who run for office, rail against euthanasia, and ban the teaching of evolution.
I was under the impression that there are many states where being an non-fundamentalist Christian would be very uncomfortable. Many of these same states insist that the United States is a Christian nation and there are dozens of political leaders who imply that non-Christians are not real Americans. A majority of citizens see nothing wrong with posting the ten commandments in courtrooms, schools, and legislatures. They don't see anything wrong with reciting the Lord's prayer in schools or putting "In God We Trust" on their money (beginning in 1957).
I seem to recall a recent incident where five representatives of the United States House of Representatives expressed points of view that could be interpreted as possibly anti-Muslim [Michele Bachmann finds plenty of friends back home].
These all seem like pretty intolerant viewpoints to me. Am I wrong?
Apparently, Martha C. Nussbaum is a smart woman. Apparently that's why she says,
As Nussbaum notes, the American and European developments differ in important ways. Above all, she writes, nothing in the United States “even remotely approaches the nationwide and regional bans on Islamic dress in Europe, or the nationwide Swiss minaret referendum” — let alone an anti-Islamic massacre.
I guess I'll have to read the book to see if this is what she really thinks. I hate it when that happens.
1. New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony, was noted for religious tolerance. The French colonies in Canada (somewhat tolerant) were on very good terms with many native tribes. The Narragansett Indians were eventually converted to Christianity but not until many of them had been killed or shipped off to slavery in the Caribbean.
I've been following the latest kerfluffle on the fusion of two chromosome into one during human evolution. I understand the superficial dispute involving Carl Zimmer. He had the audacity to ask for evidence to back up a claim being made by the IDiots on their Facebook page and they responded by going nuclear [The Mystery of the Missing Chromosomes, Continued: An Update From Your Preening Blogger].
Typical.
Let's step back a bit and ask why the IDiots are so upset. Carl Zimmer posted a really nice summary of the evidence that two smallish chimp chromosomes fused to produce human chromosome 2 [The Mystery of the Missing Chromosome]. That evidence is based on an analysis of the chimp, human, and gorilla genomes and it allows scientists to reconstruct the events that led up to the fusion. All of the DNA sequence around the fusion point are consistent with what we might expect, especially the presence of defective telomeres (sequences at the ends of chromosomes).
Why are the IDiots so bothered by this evidence? It's not as if it's new—the essential evidence has been around for decades. There must be something else going on that causes the IDiots to circle the wagons at this time.
It think it's all about their latest book Science & Human Origins by Ann Gauger, Douglas Axe, and Casey Luskin.1 The book is published by the Discovery Institute Press. In that book, two of the authors (Gauger and Luskin), apparently argue that science cannot rule out a recent origin of humans descended from Adam and Eve. The chromosome fusion data threatens that bizarre claim and perhaps that's why they are reacting so strongly.
I think I understand this. The IDiots have made bold claims about some of their recent books (e.g. Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design , The Myth of Junk DNA) but those books have been met by yawning indifference from the general public and devastating criticism from real scientists. Two of the authors on this latest book (Gauger and Axe) have substantial scientific credentials so the Discovery Institute must have expected that the book would stand up to criticism by other scientists.
Instead, a "mere" graduate student (Paul McBride) has dimantled the book chapter by chapter [Science & Human Origins: Review] and a "mere" science writer, Carl Zimmer, has challenged the integrity of two "scientists" (and a lawyer). No wonder they're upset. All of their wonderful books are scientific embarrassments.
On what grounds do the IDiots want to deny the chromosomal evidence that humans and chimps share a common ancestor? Carl Zimmer supplies a partial answer when he quotes one of the chief IDiot defenders, David Klinhoffer, who says ...
The evidence from chromosomal fusion, for one, is strikingly ambiguous. In the Darwinian presentation, the fact that humans possess 23 chromosome pairs and great apes 24 clearly points to an event in which human chromosome 2 formed from a fusion, leaving in its wake the telltale sign of telomeric DNA — normally appearing as a protective cap at the end of the chromosome — in the middle where it doesn’t belong. Ergo, common descent.
But Casey [Luskin, of the Discovery Institute and co-author of the book] explains, there’s a lot wrong with this inference. Even if there was such an event and humans once had 24 chromosome pairs, it doesn’t at all follow that this happened in some prehuman past. Nothing stands in the way of picturing a human population bottleneck accomplishing the spread of a fused chromosome 2 from part of an early human community to all of it.
But the idea of such an event having occurred at all is itself far from sure. The telomeric DNA parked in the middle of chromosome 2 is not a unique phenomenon. Other mammals have it too, across their own genomes. Even if it were unique, there’s much less of it than you would expect from the amalgamation of two telomeres. Finally, it appears in a “degenerate,” “highly diverged” form that should not be the case if the joining happened in the recent past, circa 6 million years ago, as the Darwinian interpretation holds.
That's it? The fusion event could have happened relatively recently in human evolution so it's no big deal? And if you don't buy that, then maybe it didn't happen at all because the junction sequence isn't exactly what a typical IDiot might expect if evolution were true?
(Carl asked for the evidence that that the junction sequence isn't what one might expect and that's what caused the latest problem.)
That's why you see people like Cornelius Hunter desperately looking for another way out [Carl Zimmer Doubles Down on Chromosome Two Lies and Misdemeanors] and why the people at Uncommon Descent have picked up on a non-scientific way to defend Intelligent Design Creationism [Why no one can confute Darwinism and, consequently, no one should believe it].
My question for Intelligent Design Creationists is, "why all the fuss?" What is there about the figure at the top of the page that really upsets you? Aren't most of you supporters of common descent in some form or another? Are all of you really going to defend the idea that humans have no evolutionary history with the other apes?
1. I haven't read the book. It's on order but it still hasn't been released in Canada (see Amazon.ca).
Carl Zimmer had the audacity to post something about the fusion of two ancestral chromosomes in primitive apes. The data is unequivocal. It shows why humans have one less chromosome than modern chimps [The Mystery of the Missing Chromosome (With A Special Guest Appearance from Facebook Creationists)].
Observations like this lend strong support to the idea that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. This doesn't sit well with the IDiots because they are in the midst of hyping their latest book, Science & Human Origins where they try to counter the overwhelming evidence that humans evolved.
So, what did they do? David Klinghoffer challenged Carl Zimmer to pop on over to Evolution News & Views (sic) and debate one of the authors. Carl refused, as would any sane person since that creationist blog is edited by IDiots and no comments are allowed. It would be embarrassing to have one's name on an article at Evolution News & Views [The Mystery of the Missing Chromosomes, Continued: An Update From Your Preening Blogger].
Here's what Carl said,
I thought the question I asked was pretty simple. I wasn’t asking to hold a Lincoln-Douglas debate. I just asked what the evidence was for one of the claims made by the creationists.
Now it seems that in order to get that answer, I can either buy a book–which apparently is based on no peer-reviewed research of the authors, but just cherry-picked quotes from a ten-year old paper–or I can donate my time to write several thousands words for free for a creationist web site.
Making this offer even richer is Klinghoffer’s ground rules about focusing “strictly on the ideas, not on the personalities.” Klinghoffer himself has used Evolution News & Views to call people pathetic, a worthless bully, cowards, illiterate, and “a tyranny of the unemployed” (referring to Wikipedia editors). In one piece he wrote for Evolution New and Views, Klinhoffer mocked a post by a science blogger as “preening and self-congratulatory.”
That blogger happened to be me.
I will answer Mr. Klinghoffer publicly: no thanks. I never asked for a debate, and your arbitrary decrees, such as a mysterious thousand-word cutoff (my blog post on the chromosomes alone clocked in at over 2,000 words) make it even less appealing. I am particularly opposed to web sites that do not allow readers to comment. That’s how I ended up on Facebook in the first place–because the Discovery Institute’s web sites do not permit commenting. You, on the other hand, are more than welcome to leave a comment on my blog. My comment policy is very lax: I only throw out commenters who curse uncontrollably, hawk their own wares, or can’t stay on topic after repeated warnings. We have a thriving, fascinating discussion here, one from which I regularly learn new things from my readers. You might too.
David Klinghoffer, being David Klinghoffer, responded with a blog posting on Evolution News & Views: We Called Out Darwinist Critic Carl Zimmer, and He Folded.
"Reasoning with a Lynch Mob"
This reminded me of an incident that took place last November. You might remember that I spent a great deal of time and effort reviewing Jonathan Wells' book, The Myth of Junk DNA (see The Myth of Junk DNA by Jonathan Wells). I invited Wells to discuss and debate the issue of junk DNA and my extensive criticism of his book.
Wells declined [Jonathan Wells Sends His Regrets]. Here's what he said ...
Oh, one last thing: “paulmc” referred to an online review of my book by University of Toronto professor Larry Moran—a review that “paulmc” called both extensive and thorough. Well, saturation bombing is extensive and thorough, too. Although “paulmc” admitted to not having read more than the Preface to The Myth of Junk DNA, I have read Mr. Moran’s review, which is so driven by confused thinking and malicious misrepresentations of my work—not to mention personal insults—that addressing it would be like trying to reason with a lynch mob.
Sort of makes you wonder, doesn't it? Do you think the IDiots really are interested in debating science or is it only on their own terms, on their own blog, with no comments, and moderated by their own kind?
Some enzymes catalyze reactions at extremely fast rates that are only limited by the rate of diffusion of substrate molecules into the active site of the enzyme (diffusion-controlled rate). Some of these enzymes are covered in all the standard biochemistry textbooks; examples are canbonic anhydrase (CAN), triose phosphate ismerase (TIM), and superoxide dismutase (SOD). Superoxide dismutase (right) actually catalyzes reactions at a rate that's faster than the diffusion-controlled limit [Superoxide Dismutase Is a Really Fast Enzyme].
These enzymes are often referred to as "perfect" enzymes but that's a very misleading term because it implies that all other enzyme are less than perfect.
Most enzyme don't need to act any faster than they do. They are quite happy catalyzing reactions at rates that are far below their theoretical optimum [Better Biochemistry: The Perfect Enzyme]. As long as it's good enough there's no selective pressure to get better.
There are three different ways for bacterial to exchange information: conjugation, transduction, and transformation. Do any of these count as sex?
It depends on your definition. Rosie Redfield and I had a discussion about this when we were together in Ottawa. I think some species of bacteria do engage in sex because all three mechanisms can result in gene exchange between different individual bacteria. I think that transformation and conjugation may have arisen, in part, as a way of repairing damaged DNA and escaping the effects of Muller's Rachet.
Rosie thinks that sex, by definition, means mixis—the shuffling of alleles due to sex as in eukaryotes. Here's how she explains it in a recent post on her blog [Claims that Bacteria Do Have Sex].
This work addresses a very important question with big/deep/fundamental importance to the colossal problem of the origin of meiotic sex in eukaryotes. The question is 'Do bacteria have any processes that evolved because of selection for recombination of chromosomal alleles?' We think this selection is the reason for the success of meiotic sexual reproduction in eukaryotes, but compelling evidence for this has been elusive. Bacteria have four well-studied processes that do generate homologous recombination; three that transfer DNA between cells and one that carries out homologous recombination. But almost every aspect of these processes has been shown to cause recombination as an unselected side effect of processes selected for other functions.
I don't think sex evolved in eukaryotes in order to promote mixis so this argument doesn't resonate with me.
Read Rosie's post if only to discover why she thinks transformation evolved. She's thinking of applying for a grant to study this problem so I'm sure she would appreciate your feedback.
[Image Credit: Rosie Redfield]
Much to my embarrassment, the University of Toronto is promoting online courses, or MOOCs [Online courses for anyone, anywhere]. These courses seem to be for information only—you can't get a university credit for them.
I'm not opposed to offering free "courses" for people who don't have easy access to a university campus. In fact, I think it's a good thing. But let's make sure we distinguish between public lectures and serious education. In my opinion, if the quality of an online course is equal to the quality of a course given on campus then all that says is that the campus-based course is lousy. We should not refer to these online examples as "university courses." They should be labelled as "public lectures."
I'll have more to say about this later but today I want to return to an issue I raised before. Is it true that the "best" universities also do the best teaching? I have suggested that the answer to this question is probabyy "no" [On the Quality of Online Courses] [Is Canada Lagging Behind in Online Education?].
The University of Toronto is the largest university in North America (70,000 students) and one of the top 20 universities in the world1 [The World University Rankings 2011-2012]. It ranks near the top among the group of very large public universities [World University Rankings].
The University of Toronto is a public university. A large percentage of its operating budget comes directly from the provincial government. In that sense, it is comparable to many of the large state schools in the United States. When we're judging ourselves,2 we use a list of nine American state schools of comparable size and quality.
Tuition costs have been in the news in Canada recently since there have been vocal student protests in Quebec over government plans to raise tuition costs in Quebec schools. The combination of tuition and fees will increase from $2,890 per year to $4,700 per year over a five year phase-in period.
What is the average cost of tuition plus fees at the University of Toronto and how does this compare with similar American schools? President David Naylor gives us the answer on his website where he discusses the problem of student debt in Canada and the United States [Student Debt Redux].
If you're an American, consider sending your children to a Canadian university. You'll save a lot of money and there's an added bonus—we get to show them what a real "socialist" country looks like. 
Note: One of the signs in the protest says, "Marx is dead, God is dead, and I don't feel so good."
1. There are many problems with these ranking but the bottom line is that the University of Toronto is a pretty good university as judged by outsiders.
2. Which we do obsessively every few months.
Healthy skepticism is an important part of science. One of the biggest differences between scientists and intelligent design creationists, for example, is that the creationists are rarely skeptical of anything they read in the scientific literature. If it appears to support their agenda, then it goes right onto the blogs without any discussion of whether it might be true or not.
Scientists, on the other hand, are often very skeptical of work that appears in the scientific literature. They treat most papers as tentative results that need to be confirmed. The most obvious flawed papers will be refuted by further work, as in the recent arsenic in DNA paper or earlier work on cold fusion. Usually, flawed papers will just be ignored and they will die a quiet death.
Rosie Redfield has published a (deliberately) provocative article on teaching genetics in the 21st century (Redfield, 2012). I disagree strongly with her premises and her conclusions but the issues are complex—too complex for a single posting.
Let's start by looking at one aspect of her proposal.
Rosie thinks that a 21st century course on genetics should focus on information that students can use later on. Here's how she would begin her new course ...
Box 4 gives a suggested syllabus for a 21st century genetics course. It begins with a human focus, introducing personal genomics and our natural genetic variation. Students then learn about the underlying molecular explanations—how differences in DNA sequences arise and evolve, and how they cause differences in phenotype—followed by how genetic differences are inherited and recombined.
Many prominent scientists get it right when they say that evolution is purposeless and unguided. The same is true for plate tectonics, supernovas, radioactive decay, and the weather.
If you have a problem with this, read Jerry Coyne at What’s the problem with unguided evolution? and take it up with him. I'm tired of trying to convince theists and accommodationists of something that's as plain as the nose on your face.
Not to beat a dead horse (I think it’s still alive), but I vehemently oppose those evolutionists and accommodationists who won’t affirm that evolution is unguided and purposeless (in the sense of not being directed by a higher intelligence or teleological force). For to the best of our knowledge evolution, like all natural processes, is purposeless and unguided. After all, scientists have no problem saying that the melting of glaciers, the movement of tectonic plates, or the decay of atoms are processes that are unguided and purposeless.
Some beating of dead horses may be ethical, when here and there they display unexpected twitches that look like life.
Emile Zucherkandl and Linus Pauling (1965)
Most of you missed the exciting Evolution Ottawa 2012 meeting earlier this month but, cheer up, you have another chance to visit Ottawa form Novermber 30 to December 2, 2012.
The meeting is called Eschaton 2012 where "eschaton" refers to the end of the world. That's because, as you all know by now, the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. The Mayans said so and so do a lot of modern kooks.
Here's an outline of the meeting.
The conference opens with a Friday night plenary session on the historical relationship between humans and our apocalypses. Saturday morning and afternoon, we have parallel tracks: 1) Talks and panels on skepticism/science/science communication (including a live recording of Ottawa Skeptics' podcast, The Reality Check) and 2) "The Immaculate Convention" - talks and panels on religion from an academic and sociological perspective. Saturday evening there will be a reception with food and drink in the early evening at the Canadian Museum of Nature (around the corner from the hotel), after which there will be a talk by PZ Myers, followed by a meet-and-greet social, with snacks, cash bar, and access to some of the galleries and exhibits. On Sunday the parallel tracks include panels and workshops on ethics, gender identity, parenting, and other exciting topics to be announced.
Here's the latest list of speakers. (I changed the order somewhat from the one on the website.)
I'm planning to talk about the accommodationist wars and why science and religion are incompatible. Hopefully, Genie Scott will represent the accommodationist position as promoted by NCSE.
Chris DiCarlo and I are teaching a course at the University of Toronto next Fall on scientific controversies and misconceptions (including evolution vs creationism). Maybe we can have a workshop on Sunday to discuss science literacy?
PZ Myers approves of this plan to cast a vote for Jesus [An excellent suggestion for the Bible-believing Christians].
Isn't there a problem? Who's going to produce a valid birth certificate?
This is a very important molecule. It's found in (almost?) all living species where it serves a very important function. What is the common name of this molecule and what role does it play in metabolism?
Post your answer as a comment. I'll hold off releasing any comments for 24 hours. The first one with the correct answer wins. I will only post mostly correct answers to avoid embarrassment. The winner will be treated to a free lunch with a very famous person, or me.
There could be two winners. If the first correct answer isn't from an undergraduate student then I'll select a second winner from those undergraduates who post the correct answer. You will need to identify yourself as an undergraduate in order to win. (Put "undergraduate" at the bottom of your comment.)
Some past winners are from distant lands so their chances of taking up my offer of a free lunch are slim. (That's why I can afford to do this!)
In order to win you must post your correct name. Anonymous and pseudoanonymous commenters can't win the free lunch.
Winners will have to contact me by email to arrange a lunch date.
Comments are invisible for 24 hours. Comments are now open.
UPDATE: The molecule is S adenosylmethionine (SAM). It is the major methyl donor in biochemical reactions. Today's winners are Sean Ridout and William Grecia.
Winners
Nov. 2009: Jason Oakley, Alex Ling
Oct. 17: Bill Chaney, Roger Fan
Oct. 24: DK
Oct. 31: Joseph C. Somody
Nov. 7: Jason Oakley
Nov. 15: Thomas Ferraro, Vipulan Vigneswaran
Nov. 21: Vipulan Vigneswaran (honorary mention to Raul A. Félix de Sousa)
Nov. 28: Philip Rodger
Dec. 5: 凌嘉誠 (Alex Ling)
Dec. 12: Bill Chaney
Dec. 19: Joseph C. Somody
Jan. 9: Dima Klenchin
Jan. 23: David Schuller
Jan. 30: Peter Monaghan
Feb. 7: Thomas Ferraro, Charles Motraghi
Feb. 13: Joseph C. Somody
March 5: Albi Celaj
March 12: Bill Chaney, Raul A. Félix de Sousa
March 19: no winner
March 26: John Runnels, Raul A. Félix de Sousa
April 2: Sean Ridout
April 9: no winner
April 16: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
April 23: Dima Klenchin, Deena Allan
April 30: Sean Ridout
May 7: Matt McFarlane
May 14: no winner
May 21: no winner
May 29: Mike Hamilton, Dmitri Tchigvintsev
June 4: Bill Chaney, Matt McFarlane
June 18: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
June 25: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
July 2: Raul A. Félix de Sousa
July 16: Sean Ridout, William Grecia
We live in an era where almost 50% of the citizens in some Western European countries don't believe in God and a solid majority of those in Japan and Vietnam are nonbelievers [Top 50 Countries With Highest Proportion of Atheists / Agnostics].
According to some polls, about 30% of Canadians don't believe in God [Religion in Canada] and in the USA the number of nonbelievers is about 12% of the population {Atheists in America].
A recent survey by The PEW Forum on Religion & Public Life looked at the religious belief of Americans as adults and how they were raised as children. There were 1387 people who self-identified as atheists but only 131 of these were raised as atheists. Thus, 90% of the atheists were raised in a religious household but later on abandoned their belief in God(s).
That's pretty remarkable in a society that's as religious are the USA. It's not surprising that there are so many first generation atheists because a generation ago the number of atheists in the USA was less than 1% of the population.
On the other hand, there were 432 respondents who said they were raised as atheists. Only 131 of these respondents are still atheists so that means that the retention rate for atheism is only 30% and that makes it the worst "religion" at retaining childhood beliefs. The figure and the data are from Mark M. Gray who blogs at Nineteen Sixty-four. He writes ...
What these findings reflect is that in the U.S. Atheists are for the most part "made" as adults after being raised in another faith. It appears to be much more challenging to raise one's child as an Atheist and have them maintain this identity in their life. Of those raised as Atheists, 30% are now affiliated with a Protestant denomination, 10% are Catholic, 2% are Jewish, 1% are Mormon, and 1% are Pagan.
This is perceived as good news by the IDiots who were happy to pass along the information on Uncommon Descent: Why do atheists have such a low retention rate?.
Some of us are tempted to wonder whether they just grow tired of the society of Darwin’s tenure bores and the atheist troll in the mailroom. Or of the uproar around the Skepchick. Re that latter individual, at some point, surely a normal dude must wonder, what is in this for me, long term?
He might be better off with a cute, decent girl who offers free coffee and cake in the parish hall, not sexy pics. But to meet her, he has to sober up, shave, shower, and go to church … so …
So, … maybe it’s just the facts of life that catch up with some of them?
I think there's a better explanation. As we all know, many evangelicals are proud of advertising that they were raised as atheists but were "born again" as teenagers or adults. Perhaps they "misremember" certain aspects of their religious upbringing and "forget" that their parents believed in God? If a few hundred of them declared, incorrectly, that they were raised as atheists then the real retention rate would be much higher.
In any case, religion is in trouble everywhere, including the United States. In many countries, there are millions of second and third generation atheists who will never believe in imaginary supernatural beings. Those who are making a big deal of this apparent retention rate among Americans are a lot like the passengers who concentrated on rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic was sinking.
Jeffry Shallit of Recursivity is in London, England where he recently took a train from Victoria Station to Bromley South, then a bus to Downe, and a rather dangerous walk up a narrow hedge-lined road to Down House [Larry Moran Would Approve ].
He joins a distinguished list of people whose visit to the Sandwalk has been recorded here.
Larry Moran
PZ Myers
John Wilkins
Ryan Gregory
The God Delusion
Cody
John Hawks
Michael Barton
Seanna Watson
Steve Watson
Michael Richards
Jeffrey Shallit
Chris DiCarlo
Bill Farrell and Louis C
Cody
The first atomic bomb was detonated on this day in 1945 [Trinity]. The second detonation of an atomic bomb took place over Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945.
So far, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only examples of a nuclear device being used in war. We've managed to avoid dropping atomic bombs on each other for 67 years. If you think about it, that's a pretty remarkable achievement.
Lots of people don't understand what we mean by a secular society. If you're one of them, watch this video by QualiaSoup. He uses a very good example—the saying of prayers at city council meetings.
Most of you have been to business and/or organization meetings of various sorts. You don't normally start those meetings with a Christian prayer in spite of the fact that you might be making some very big decisions. At the recent evolution conference in Ottawa, for example, there were five society meetings of boards of directors and (I'm told) not one of them began with a prayer!
People believe in many different gods. Evey person on the planet thinks that the vast majority are false gods that do not exist. Some of us think that applies to all gods. You have no right to promote the existence of some gods over others at public meetings in a secular society, especially a multicultural society like those that exist in most modern, industrialized nations.
Whether or not you believe in god(s), the only reasonable approach in a modern society is the secular one where religions is a private matter, not a public one.
A link to this video was sent to Katie Mahoney, city councillor for Ward 8 (my ward) in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
Hat Tip: Friendly Atheist
It was only a few months ago that lawyer Casey Luskin presented us with The Top Three Flaws in Evolutionary Theory. Now he's back with the top ten problems with Darwinian evolution. Here they are, read 'em and weep.
- Lack of a viable mechanism for producing high levels of complex and specified information.
- The failure of the fossil record to provide support for Darwinian evolution.
- The failure of molecular biology to provide evidence for a grand "tree of life."
- Natural selection is an extremely inefficient method of spreading traits in populations unless a trait has an extremely high selection coefficient.
- The problem that convergent evolution appears rampant -- at both the genetic and morphological levels, even though under Darwinian theory this is highly unlikely.
- The failure of chemistry to explain the origin of the genetic code.
- The failure of developmental biology to explain why vertebrate embryos diverge from the beginning of development.
- The failure of neo-Darwinian evolution to explain the biogeographical distribution of many species.
- A long history of inaccurate predictions inspired by neo-Darwinism regarding vestigial organs or so-called "junk" DNA.
- Humans show many behavioral and cognitive traits and abilities that offer no apparent survival advantage (e.g. music, art, religion, ability to ponder the nature of the universe).
I started to work on the top 1000 problems with Intelligent Design Creationism but then I realized that it was a waste of time. There are only two essential problems with Intelligent Design Creationism: (1) There's no evidence for supernatural design in nature, and (2) There's no evidence for a supernatural designer.
Many proteins bind to double-stranded DNA and most of them bind specifically to a particular target site. The lac repressor, for example, binds to a specific DNA site that blocks transcription of the genes required for lactose uptake and utilization. The lac repressor protein is a dimer of two identical subunits and each one binds a short segment with the core sequence ATTGT.1
If you look closely at the structure shown above, you can see how parts of the protein lie in the grove of double-stranded DNA where they can detect the sequence by "reading" the chemical groups on the edges of the base pairs. It's important to realize that DNA binding proteins interact with the DNA double helix and not with unwound DNA where the individual bases are exposed.
How does a DNA binding protein like lac repressor find its specific site in the genome? The most obvious explanation is that the protein binds non-specifically to any piece of DNA and checks to see if it's a specific binding site. If it is, the protein binds very tightly and doesn't fall off. If it isn't, the interaction is much weaker and the protein falls off quickly so it can check out another potential site.
The Faculty of Medicine at my university runs a Youth Summer Program (Medicine) for high school students. There are four one-week modules: Human Physiology, Molecular Biology & Genetics, Pharmacology & Toxicology, and Microbiology. The final module is two weeks of working in a research lab.
One of the modules that takes place in my building is the analysis of forensic evidence at a mock crime scene [The Science Behind CSI]. Here's the description from the website.
From stem cell research to criminal convictions, the science of molecular biology and genetics is at the centre of many of today’s most contentious issues. In this module, students learn about DNA fingerprinting, forensic investigations, and genetic transformation through a variety of hands-on laboratory activities and lectures from world-class speakers. Highlighting the program is the mock crime scene investigation where students collect and analyze crime scene evidence. After students have collected the appropriate evidence, they move into the laboratory to perform their analysis and, assuming they have collected the correct pieces of evidence, solve the case.
I can understand why students might find this appealing but there's a problem. One of my goals is to teach students, including high school students, about the wonder and excitement of science as a method of knowing. I would like students to appreciate the knowledge for it's own sake. I would like them to be excited when they learn how life operates at the molecular level (i.e molecular biology & genetics).
One of the major impediments to this goal is the widespread belief that science is just a tool and the main objective is not knowledge for its own sake but applications of science. According to this view, you only learn about molecular biology and genetics because it will somehow cure cancer, detect genetic diseases, and solve crimes.
I think it's wrong to reinforce this belief when we have a chance to educate a select group of high school students. I would much prefer to teach them about molecular evolution, how genes are expressed, and how we solve the structure of proteins.
This isn't going to happen in a program with such a heavy emphasis on medicine and medical applications but, in the long run, science will lose out when these bright students enter medical schools or forensic programs instead of pure science programs.
What's the appropriate balance between catching and holding the attention of students by having them solve a "crime" and trying to teach them the value of scientific discovery for its own sake?
Ms. Sandwalk sent me the link to this video. She knows that I love this sort of thing. It makes me happy.
