I’m going to borrow a line from Dame Anne Salmond, who says it better than I ever could. The Government’s decision to cut humanities and social science research from its major funding stream is both bad policy and scientifically illiterate. That’s from this excellent opinion piece by Dame Anne on newsroom, & I urge you […]
Continue readingTag: critical thinking
X-chromosome inactivation, mosaics – or, chimeras?
I’m running Schol Bio tuts again this year, & I like to start each session off with a question on some aspect of biology, just to start everyone thinking in that space. In the last session I presented two images (see below) and asked the students: what are possible genetic explanations for what you’re seeing […]
Continue readingwhat do you get when msm channels the daily mail?
You get rubbish. Tonight TV1 & Stuff both shared an “article” (which also featured in the Daily Mail) about what working from home will do to us in the future, including a 3D render of “Anna”, with clawed hands, hunched back, sunken eyes, & other horrors. It’s the result of a research study, they said. […]
Continue readinggarlic: the big stretch between in vitro & actual RCTs
Image from Pixabay, via photosforclass.com A couple of days ago TVNZ rather credulously carried a story under the headline that “garlic can help” cure flu or covid-19, seemingly based on this article in the Financial Review. Presumably with the added benefit of keeping vampires away. However… from the Financial Review piece That is, the TVNZ headline […]
Continue readingpermafrost, viruses, and silly zombie headlines
Permafrost is “any ground that remains completely frozen – 0°C or colder – for at least two years straight”, and as you’d expect is found at high altitudes or in polar regions. It acts like a deep-freezer – scientists have found mammoths buried in permafrost that were so well preserved that at least one field […]
Continue readingschol bio exam – a performance standard
This post is intended for students who are preparing for the 2023 Schol Bio exam, and discusses material covered in a tutorial meeting. One of the obvious questions is, what’s the examiner looking for? Like the NCEA subjects. Scholarship subjects all have assessment specifications. You’ll find the Biology one here. The written exam will comprise […]
Continue readingit’s not on to play one discipline off against another
The topic of an ad for a university not that far to the north of where I live popped up in casual conversation today. It was – IMHO – a pretty awful advert, with the implication that science doesn’t change so do an arts degree if you want to think differently. I mean, yuck. But […]
Continue readingnuremberg, & history
There’s a lot been said recently about the Nuremberg code. So what is it, and why is it popping up now? As described in this excellent NEJM article, the Code was developed over 80 years ago in August 1947, by judges involved in the “Doctors Trial” at Nuremberg. There were a total of 13 court trials […]
Continue readingwhat is the “magneto” protein, & why are references to a 2016 paper suddenly in my feed?
A few days back an article in The Guardian popped up in my newsfeed. It was quite old – published in 2016 – but it looked interesting, so I read it & also tracked down the original paper. The article & research paper describe work done to develop and test a potential tool for unpicking […]
Continue readingkary mullis, pcr, & covid tests
You’ve probably come across the name Kary Mullis recently, via social media. He’s best remembered for his invention (along with a team of other researchers) of the Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR for short (and for many biology students was probably immortalised in their memories via this earworm of an advertisement¹). This turned out to […]
Continue reading