The other day one of my friends sent me a link to this discussion of a recently published paper. (‘Published’ in the sense that it’s available through archiv, which I gather means it hasn’t been through peer review.) The actual paper is available here. Basically, the authors claim that life has increased in complexity – […]
Continue readingCategory: scholarship biology
are humans still evolving (a repeat visit)
What follows is a piece I wrote (quite a while ago now) for students planning on sitting Scholarship Biology. It was intended to start them thinking 🙂 I’ve just been asked to contribute to a panel discussion on RNZ around this subject, so thought it might be timely to re-post this article (I think time […]
Continue readingan interesting take on mousetrap evolution
One of the catchphrases of Intelligent Design creationism is ‘irreducible complexity’ – the idea that in some complex biological systems, it’s impossible to remove any one part without causing the whole system to fail. Supposedly this means that such systems could not have evolved but must be the product of a ‘designer’. The term – […]
Continue readingletting a good story get in the way of a few facts?
Today in the Herald I learned that eye colour can reflect personality. Apparently [r]esearchers from the University of Queensland and the University of NSW analysed the eye colour of 336 Australians – most with a northern European background. They answered a series of questionnaires measuring aspects of their personality like agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. The […]
Continue readingsharks don’t get cancer?
It turns out that if you thought that foetal lamb cells as a treatment for autism (& a range of other disorders & illnesses) was the pinnacle (or should that be ‘the depths’?) of silliness, you’d be wrong. Dr Huertgen has competition. It was previously believed that sheep were the best donor animals because of their […]
Continue readingfoetal lamb cells for autism? baaaah!
Orac posts a fair bit on various quack ‘treatments’ – some, like the use of so-called Miracle Mineral Solution (aka industrial bleach) for just about anything that ails you – are quite dreadful in their potential to do harm. (MMS’s latest outing was as a ‘treatment’ for autism – used as an enema!) One recent […]
Continue readingbeauty in simplicity – a guide to basic critical thinking
Via my colleague Daniel Laughlin comes this link to what he describes as "a simple & elegant description of critical thinking." It’s a visual description, not a whole bunch of words, & strikes me as being a Really Useful Resource for classroom discussion around critical thinking & the nature of science. Enjoy 🙂
Continue readingif evolution is true, why are there still apes
We’ve just come back from a few glorious days in New Plymouth (arriving home before the change in weather). Had a great time tramping, walking the coastal walkway, eating yummy food – all those nice things you do, holidaying with friends. And as some of the party were driving from Paritutu to meet the rest […]
Continue readingparasite goes bananas before s*x
That got your attention, didn’t it? It certainly got mine when I was scanning the Science alert news page a wee while ago. The parasite in question is Plasmodium, the single-celled organism that causes malaria. (I’ve written about Plasmodium before as it has a rather interesting evolutionary history.) And the research in question was published […]
Continue readingmarathon man, part II (another replay)
Since I (re)posted the first part of this story last week, I figure I’d better complete the tale today 🙂 Hopefully things will settle down a bit at work now the semester’s under way, & I can get back into some ‘proper’ writing! Possession of an Achilles tendon is only one of the things that […]
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