I’ve just had a quick look at a paper on the likely role of genetic enhancers in the development of human thumbs. Not exactly rocket science has already done an excellent job of commenting on it, so this is really just a heads-up – go over there to read the whole thing. The paper reports on […]
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a follow-up on peppered moths
One of my readers has pointed out that the most excellent Panda’s Thumb had an article on peppered moths, a wee while ago now. It includes a link to a radio interview that is well-worth listening to. Pop over there & tune in.
Continue readingmedicine & individual genotype
ERV has just posted an interesting item on the interplay between medicine, genotype, and perceived racial differences. There’s a family of genes (CYP450) that produces the cytochrome enzymes involved in drug metabolism. Depending on an individual’s particular set of alleles, they may not be able to metabolise a given drug, or might metabolise at a […]
Continue readingcharles darwin – voyaging
A while back I sort of promised to post the talk I was going to give on Charles Darwin. Anyway, now I’ve done the talk (over in Tauranga; may well be repeating it in Hamilton in the fairly near future), & so here are the words. (Sort of. I tend to develop my presentations in […]
Continue readingthe peculiar platypus
The duckbilled platypus is such an odd-looking beast that, when the first specimen made it to Europe, it was widely regarded as a fraud. And you can’t exactly blame people for thinking that – they had never seen an animal anything like a platypus before. Now a study of the platypus genome, published earlier this […]
Continue readingpeppered moths – another ‘icon’?
You’ve probably heard about ‘peppered moths’ in class. They’re an example of the ability of natural selection to shape a population in a relatively quick time. But Jonathan Wells asks: Q: PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection — when biologists have known […]
Continue readinganother one of jonathan wells’ ‘icons’ of evolution
This one leads us into the concept of transitional fossils (the so-called ‘missing links’ whose apparent absence is dear to many creationists). Wells asks Q: ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds — even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed […]
Continue readingwells is peeved with haeckel’s embryos
Another misleading offering from Icons of Evolution: VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry — even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?
Continue readingwells’ third ‘icon’ – homology
The concept of homology is another of Jonathan Well’s ‘icons of evolution’ – ideas that he wrongly labels as ‘key’ to teaching evolution, and then describes as incorrect, misleading, or out-of-date. Let’s see what he has to say about homology – & why he’s wrong.
Continue readingthe cambrian ‘explosion’
Wells’ second ‘question’ centres on what’s often been called the Cambrian ‘explosion’ – the seemingly rapid appearance in the fossil record of a wide range of different organisms. (‘Rapid’ = over a period of 10-20 million years or so.)
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