Human Genome “Infinitely More Complex” Than Expected
April 5, 2010
Ten years after the Human Genome Project was completed, now we know: biology is “orders of magnitude” more complicated than scientists expected.
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Snakes Alive! An Evolutionary Tale
April 3, 2010
Blind snakes that look like worms: they rule the world. They’re everywhere. Where did they come from? “Blindsnakes are not very pretty, are rarely noticed, and are often mistaken for earthworms,” admits Blair Hedges, professor of biology at Penn State University. “Nonetheless, they tell a very interesting evolutionary story.” So reported Science Daily. National Geographic […]
Tree of Life or of Evil Knowledge?
April 1, 2010
Evolutionary trees are now widely available in a web database. Scientists can upload and download huge amounts of information on evolutionary relationships of plants, animals and protists. But is this a case of scientific progress, or of mass deception? You can go to TreeBase.org and find a treasure trove of phylogenetic information. The […]
Biomimetics: Science for Now
March 27, 2010
Do you want science that makes a difference in our lives? Look at real plants and animals with real solutions to practical problems. That’s where researchers are making amazing discoveries with practical spinoffs. Shellfish materials: Strong, lightweight structures are coming, thanks to the imitation of oysters and shellfish. PhysOrg reported that researchers at the University […]
Can Morality Be Darwinized?
March 25, 2010
There’s a cottage industry within the Darwin empire that tries to explain morality in terms of natural selection. Hardly a week passes without some new paper trying to explain why humans reward moral behavior and punish immoral behavior. Some try to do it by finding morality in animals, as if to portray a continuity in […]
Archaeologist Employs Design Detection with Little Evidence
March 24, 2010
There are hundreds of large stone spheres in Costa Rica, some up to 8 feet in diameter weighing 16 tons. There are no written records or tribal traditions about them. John Hoopes, an anthropologist at the University of Kansas, has been studying these spheres for a long time. According to PhysOrg, he’s had to dispel […]
Everything You Know About Evolution Is Wrong (Again)
March 21, 2010
There’s a genre of science news stories characterized by pointing out things Darwin got wrong. It’s not creationists that do this – these are secular reporters and evolutionary biologists. They seem to try to one-up Darwin by proposing new theories that do evolution better. They usually don’t go far enough to jettison Darwin completely, but […]
Synthetic Evolution Is it Really Intelligent Design?
March 18, 2010
Some Cambridge scientists engineered a four-character genetic code and made some proteins with it. They guided the process at every step, but claim that they “evolved” this code. Is that a fair use of language? This strange admixture of concepts is found in today’s issue of Nature.1 The confusion began right in the title: “Encoding […]
Fruit Flies: From Darwin to Design
March 13, 2010
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an icon of evolution. Since the 1930s these poor little bugs have been mutated endlessly and watched for signs of Darwinian change. So far, though, only useless mutants, unable to survive in the wild, have been produced. Recently, scientists seem more enamored with their design. Two recent articles had […]
Whos In Control: Your Brain or You?
March 12, 2010
Do you have a self that controls your brain, or is thought a secretion of the brain, as Darwin claimed? Do you use your brain, or does your brain operate you? Who is in charge? These are deep philosophical questions with a long history, that some people prefer to avoid, as in the common joke: […]
Divining Violent gods as Natural Cosmic Creators
March 10, 2010
Ancient stargazers imagined the violent actions of gods in the heavens giving rise to the stars, earth and man. Today’s secular astronomers engage in a similar kind of lore. While not naming their gods after mythical heroes, they describe them as forces of nature whose violent clashes give rise to order and design. Sometimes they […]
What Good Is Natural Selection without Progress?
March 8, 2010
Three papers recently claim to have seen natural selection. None of them, however, identified a functional advantage that would have tied changes to novel benefits that could improve a species. Yeast: “New Type of Genetic Variation Could Strengthen Natural Selection,” trumpeted a headline in Science Daily. It was about a study of two varieties of […]
Life Crams Stuff on the Long Road
March 7, 2010
This quote from UC Berkeley wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: In the long evolutionary road from bacteria to humans, a major milestone occurred some 1.5 billion years ago when microbes started building closets for all their stuff, storing DNA inside a nucleus, for example, or cramming all the energy machinery inside mitochondria. Any […]
Dinosaur Evolution Is Relative
March 5, 2010
The science news media are all reporting that the “oldest known dinosaur relative” has been found. The artist reconstructions of Asilisaurus kongwe, found in middle Triassic layers in Tanzania, make the creature look quite dinosaurian; at least it was dog-sized and walked on thick legs under its body like its famous brethren did. Its early […]
Atheism in a Test Tube
March 4, 2010
Conflicting views on atheism by scientists show that deducing the intellectual status of atheism is not an exact science. Are such questions even approachable by the scientific method? What conclusions could be drawn? National Geographic reported Kanazawa’s theory that liberals and atheists are smarter (02/27/2010) without much criticism. Reporter Maggie Koerth-Baker only said […]