The Chronicle of Higher Education “As Beef Cattle Become Behemoths, Who Are Animal Scientists Serving?” This is a scary story of corporate tainting of science.
A Minor Post, Ethics, Grants & Funding, Scientific FraudThe Chronicle of Higher Education “The story of Jewish origins, once the province of historians and religion scholars, is now being told by DNA” There are fascinating implications of the research described in this piece for Isreal’s “right of return” policy.
A Minor Post, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Genetics, Human EvolutionThe Chronicle of Higher Education “Evolution in the Classroom: Here We Go Again!” Classic and entire appropriate commentary on Richard Dawkins here!!
A Minor Post, Articles, Creationism, Evolution Education, ReligionThe Chronicle of Higher Education “The Unabomber’s Pen Pal” What I think is really interesting about Kaczynski’s critique is that he is fearlessly pointing out the problems with technology, challenging others to provide a counter-narrative. For the most part, there is no counter-narrative. You are either “with us or against us” when it comes to Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Articles, Belief, Cultural Evolution, EthicsBack in March, David Barash used his regular column in the Chronicle of Higher Education to unveil “The Truth about the Temple of Templeton“. Reacting to an increasingly-large funding stream coming out of the Templeton Foundation, Barash questions whether receiving money from this religiously-affiliated, pro-business group will lead to tainted science. Barash begins his critique by Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Evolution, Grants & Funding, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Nature, ReligionThe New York Times “With Teamwork, Humans Best Other Primates“
A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Human Uniqueness, Primates, Primatologyio9 “Could Humans Evolve into a Giant Hive Mind?” What I find fascinating about this nice journalistic piece is the biases in particular scientists that it exposes once it asks for uninformed speculation. Most prominently, Joan Strassman betrays her biases about relatedness (we have to be highly related to be a superorganism, period) and the Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Cooperation, Human Uniqueness, Prediction, Superorganisms, WebNature News “Lizard’s future hinges on voluntary measures” What is so annoying about this policy is that it ignores the fact that landowners could have been “volunteering” to not destroy habitat well before this species became endangered. Allowing “voluntary measures” to trump the mandates of the Endangered Species Act takes the teeth out of the Read More
A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Law, Public Policy, WebScience “Endophytic Insect-Parasitic Fungi Translocate Nitrogen Directly from Insects to Plants” What I find fascinating about this story is how a fungus that parasitizes one species can use that ability to form a mutualism with a plant host. I wonder whether there is a value-added feature of this parasitism: are the parasitized insects potential parasites Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Coevolution, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Mutualism, ParasitismScience “Legislating Sea Level Rise” Well, I guess if North Carolina says that nature only changes in a linear manner, it must be true! Thank goodness for brave legislators who are not going to let nature get non-linear on us! We evolutionary biologists have seen this play out before, but this must come as a Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Political Science, Public Policy, Sustainability