Banner
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...

User picture.
picture for Hank Campbellpicture for Heidi Hendersonpicture for Bente Lilja Byepicture for Wes Sturdevantpicture for Ian Ramjohnpicture for Patrick Lockerby
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

... Read More »

 Blogroll
Midday Science Quote

Midday Science Quote

Jul 14 2009 | comment(s)

The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by people in other disciplines. They try to test our imagination in the following way. They say, "Here is a picture of some people in a situation. What do you imagine will happen next". When we say, "I can't imagine," they may think we have a weak imagination. They overlook the fact that whatever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything else we know; that the electric fields and the waves we talk about are not just some happy thoughts which we are free to make as we wish, but ideas which must be consistent with all the laws of physics we know. We can't allow ourselves to seriously imagine things which are obviously in contradiction to the known laws of nature.
Inside the Mind of a Climate Scientist

Inside the Mind of a Climate Scientist

Jul 13 2009 | comment(s)

A good video laying out how climate scientists think:
Life of a Blogging Researcher

Life of a Blogging Researcher

Jul 13 2009 | comment(s)

I can relate to what Isis is saying

When I first told a more senior colleague what I was up to, he told me, "Isis, I don't care if you are building model trains in your spare time and then blowing them up. Just keep the data coming." That is the metric by which we are judged. But, keeping the data coming can be tedious and sitting to hammer out a grant application, book chapter, or article can feel endless. I can throw out a blog post, by comparison, in a minimal amount of time and feel like i have accomplished something. And I have to you and to me, as long as I don't take my eye off the prize.
Lectures vs. JFGI

Lectures vs. JFGI

Jul 13 2009 | comment(s)

OK, I agree lectures aren't the best format, but Google and Wikipedia aren't a substitute:

Selfish Gene Confusion

Selfish Gene Confusion

Jul 10 2009 | comment(s)

In light of the popularity of this piece, here are some things to keep in mind about 'selfish' genes:

1. The basic issue is about the unit of selection - does natural selection choose allele, individuals, populations, or species? The answer, like most things in biology, is yes, as Douglas Futuyma puts it in his standard textbook on evolution (p. 354. 3rd edition):

If, then, our concept of levels of selection includes causality, natural selection can act at the level of the gene (as in meiotic drive), organism, and at least in principle, population and species.
Scientists rate higher than physicians, clergy, and lawyers

Scientists rate higher than physicians, clergy, and lawyers

Jul 10 2009 | comment(s)

OK, the lawyer thing is no surprise.  Check out this table from the recent Pew survey on science and the public that's been generating buzz on the blogs:



Savor the irony: in the US we fight bitter court battles over evolution, and yet scientists win out over clergy when it comes to who's got a better reputation with the public.