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Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

From Melville's under-appreciated Mardi: On a quest for his missing love Yillah, an AWOL sailor...

Non-coding DNA Function... Surprising?

The existence of functional, non-protein-coding DNA is all too frequently portrayed as a great...

Yep, This Should Get You Fired

An Ohio 8th-grade creationist science teacher with a habit of branding crosses on his students'...

No, There Are No Alien Bar Codes In Our Genomes

Even for a physicist, this is bad: Larry Moran, in preparation for the appropriate dose of ridicule...

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Michael WhiteRSS Feed of this column.

Welcome to Adaptive Complexity, where I write about genomics, systems biology, evolution, and the connection between science and literature, government, and society.

I'm a biochemist

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Another Scary Hockey Stick Graph

Another Scary Hockey Stick Graph

Aug 14 2009 | comment(s)

Some people might be encouraged by all of the science being done. I find it depressing. Since I started grad school (back in 2000), the number of papers in my current field (cell cycle) has doubled:



Figure 1 from Renear and Palmer, Science 325:828-832 (2009)

Morning Science Quote

Morning Science Quote

Aug 14 2009 | comment(s)

Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon--provided we observe nature as a child does, without prejudices and preconceptions, but with that clear and candid vision which adults lose and scientists must strive to regain.

- Peter Medawar, Pluto's Republic, p. 99






Blogs That Eat Newspapers For Lunch

Blogs That Eat Newspapers For Lunch

Aug 14 2009 | comment(s)

Michael Massing at The NY Review of Books weighs in on the future of news organizations in the era of blogs:
Morning Science Quote

Morning Science Quote

Aug 13 2009 | comment(s)

If the labours of men of Science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we  habitually receive, the Poet will sleep then no more than at present, but he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of Science, not only in those general indirect  effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the Science itself.
The Evolution Of Death-Defying Garter Snakes

The Evolution Of Death-Defying Garter Snakes

Aug 13 2009 | comment(s)

Garter snakes like to eat newts. Newts don't like to be eaten, and to deter snakes from eating them, they have evolved a seriously lethal neurotoxin. This toxin, called tetrodotoxin (TTX), is chemically similar to that found in pufferfish, and a few milligrams is enough to take out a hefty adult human.

But some garter snakes really like newts, and instead of searching for other prey, several species of garter snakes have managed develop resistance to newt neurotoxins.
Systems Biology: Asking The Wrong Questions

Systems Biology: Asking The Wrong Questions

Jul 23 2009 | comment(s)

Talk to any molecular biologist, and you'll find that most of them feel that there is something that we're missing when we analyze complex biological systems. These systems are often too difficult to reason about verbally in any sort of detailed or rigorous way. So we build mathematical models, sometimes going to great effort to perform very precise measurements so that we can properly parameterize our models.