More journalistic idiocy about evolution 9 Apr 20104 Oct 2017 This, from SBS World News, a usually relatively reliable public news service in Australia, on their report on the new hominid. I sent them this message: I have to criticise the moronic commentary in the World News tonight – No, the lack of transitional fossils hasn’t been a problem for evolutionary theory since the turn of the 20th century, well over a century ago No, there is no “missing link” – that relies upon a view of evolution that Darwin replaced I fear that your reporter or producer relied upon creationist websites. There are lots of people who study the history and theory of biology – couldn’t you have at least tried to find someone to tell you what to say? Evolution History Media Evolution
Evolution The boy chimp 31 Mar 2008 While we’re on the topic of animals that act like humans, consider this very sad, very famous case: Nim Chimpsky. Raised to be a human boy, when the funds ran out and Nim got to the age equivalent of a five year old boy, he was sent off to live… Read More
Evolution The cultural canoe 19 Feb 200818 Sep 2017 A new paper, unfortunately not yet available to nonsubscribers on PNAS‘s Early Edition, has done some remarkable work on the evolution of canoe designs, putting some meat onto cultural evolutionary models. Read More
Biology Arsenic and the life extraterrestrial 3 Dec 201022 Jun 2018 Paul Z. Myers, a little known biologist from Minnesota has published a lovely debunking of the hype surrounding the “second life” announcement from NASA. He should do more science-related posts. He’s really good at them. Here are some other excellent pieces: Bytesized Biology, Leaf Warbler, Greg Laden; Wired; and Ed… Read More
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” –Mark Twain