Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Zana’s granddaughter
Does the London Times routinely publish crackpot pseudoscience with no fact checking at all? I’ve just read their latest piece on the notorious Bryan Sykes, Bigfoot Hunter, and it’s the kind of gullible tosh I’d expect from a Murdoch tabloid. It’s got one paragraph that mentions that other scientists doubt his findings, but otherwise it’s a fluff piece for Sykes’ new book about an ape-woman…which is not only inane, but distressingly racist.
There’s this obsessed Bigfoot prof at Oxford — no, he’s not a Bigfoot at Oxford, he’s a professor at Oxford who claims to study Bigfoot — who’s treated as a serious guy by the London Times. He just got shot down by the science editor, though, who rolled his eyes at Syke’s “evidence” and also got a revealing quote from him.
Larry Moran quotes this closing paragraph from an actual, published paper in a respectable journal. I don’t understand what it means. Can somebody explain why these terms are mashed together in this way?
We close this essay by postulating that there has been a pervasive influence of the gene centrism inherent in the Modern Synthesis in conjunction with the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology on biomedical thinking. We believe that this influence has now become counterproductive. Thus, it is critical for new ideas stemming from evolutionary biology highlighted in this special issue of The Journal of Physiology and elsewhere to more fully inform biomedical thinking about the complex relationship between DNA and phenotype. The time has come to stop chasing Mendel.
All my Canadian friends are chattering about James Lunney right now, a member of parliament who resigned from his party because people were making fun of his deeply held and cherished beliefs…like his views on evolution.
It’s an interesting discussion, focusing on the famous The Spandrels Of San Marco paper, but also talking generally about SJ Gould’s ego (it was big and ambitious), and how to properly do an evolutionary research program.
This video explaining why so many Americans are circumcised is funny…but it’s also accurate.
Posting it here is not an endorsement of Ben’s position, but he has reasonable arguments that I’m willing to give an airing.
PZ Myers
I imagine most readers of this blog are familiar with Jerry Coyne. If not, he’s a prominent biologist and atheist who maintains the blog Why Evolution is True. And apparently, he has taken to blocking commenters who disagree with him, even over substantive scientific issues.
First, some background: A conflict has been brewing over how to model the evolution of social behavior. At issue is a method called inclusive fitness theory, which emphasizes the role of genetic relatedness between interacting organisms. In 2011, Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita, and EO Wilson (hereafter, NTW) published an article arguing that inclusive fitness is a mathematically limited method, and that the role of relatedness has been overemphasized in the evolution of worker castes in social insects.
NTW’s article generated a strong response—most famously, a letter signed by 137 prominent researchers (also some talking bears). I happen to agree with Nowak, and have collaborated with him and Wilson on follow-up work. However, intelligent people can disagree on this issue, and I trust that science will sort it out.
I previously cited that extremely critical evaluation of evolutionary psychology by Jonathan Marks, but what I didn’t realize is that it was one part of a whole series of articles that were mostly favorable reviews of EP. Of course, the pro-EP articles were awful.
