I’ve posted about this before, but apparently it’s a thing in systematics - the radial cladogram. Not only are they really cool, but the more I look at them, the more I realize they are a really excellent way to illustrate the relationships between species.
Hey, it’s time to collect some more recent stuff about dead ancestors.
While not technically human, the long-awaited Ardipithecus ramidus has been released to the world (yes this happened a while ago - I’m slow). Science has free online access to lots of articles on it. There’s also a pretty good initial take at Pharyngula.
A. ramidus has been the subject of some controversy for a while, since the discoverers of the fossils held them away from scrutiny for 15 years before publishing. It turns out (if you believe the story, and there’s no reason not to) that the fossils were in such a poor condition that it took them 15 years just to get all the little bits of bone out of the rock and piece them together.
Moving on, Ad Hominin has a number of interesting posts (none of which are terribly recent, I’ll admit):
A little human with very big feet is about Homo floresiensis. Seems the idea that they are pathological Homo sapiens doesn’t hold water these days. Still not sure where they came from, but researchers are inching closer.
Finger points to new human is about a finger bone found in Siberia. Mitochondrial DNA analysis indicates it’s an unknown species of human that lived in the area of 40,000 years ago. So if you’re keeping score, that means we had four different species of human alive at the same time (Neandertal, Floresiensis, us, and the new guy).
The incredible shrinking human brain - very not new, but I didn’t now that human brains have been getting smaller.
Okay, I’ve been busy. Lots of things I want to post about but they’re taking a long time to write up, so for now, here’s a tidbit from PLoS ONE:
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data 2009 How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5738. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005738
The study found that around 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying data while around 30% admitted to less serious misconduct.
There are lots of problems with studies like this - lots of confounding factors in self-reporting - that the author acknowledges, but it might be a conservative estimate.
The study doesn’t get into what percentage of studies have some misconduct associated with them (as opposed to how many researches have done it at least once) nor how it might effect the research, but it’s still a problem. I should point out that no one has ever said scientists don’t succumb to this sort of behavior - just that the peer-review system is supposed to catch it. Peer review doesn’t seem to be quite as effective as one would hope (but it’s better than a free-for-all).
The paper also mentions the “Muhammed Ali Effect”, of which I had never heard. It describes the tendency of people to think they are more honest - but not more intelligent - than others. And it’s been the subject of numerous academic papers in various discplines. I had no idea Ali’s reach was so great…
There’s been a lot of chatter in anti-quakery circles lately. A lot of it has been backlash against the Huffington Post for recent posts by anti-vaccination folks and general alt-med mongers. And more recently, against Oprah Winfrey for signing a deal with Jenny McCarthy. Most of this has been in the sub-culture of skeptic bloggers. The Huffington Post did notably run an article in opposition to (it’s own) anti-science posts of late. And now Salon has poked it’s head in with an article about Oprah’s general affinity for alternative medicine weirdness.
This morass prompts me to make a few observations about the alt-med culture in general and anti-vaccination in particular. Firstly, as I’ve mentioned, alternative medicine and anti-vaccination seem to be phenomena of the political left. That’s one reason it fascinates me. It pains me to see my side succumb to a lack of reason (our general affinity for reason is what I like about my side).
I have been a follower of the creationism/evolution thing for some time now. The loose community of skeptics on the nets that fight those battles share time with fights against other forms of nuttery as well. HIV/AIDS denialism, vaccine/autism quackery, UFOlogy, paranormal nonsense, and others.
I have managed to remain relatively unaware of the details of these. I mean, who has time to devote to learning about more than one completely head-whacking morass of ignorance? Well, I can no longer resist the pull of whackjob trainwrecks.
There are some things about President Obama’s track record so far (vast as it is) that concern me: legal stances on state secrets and habeus corpus, questionable handling of the economic situation, and possibly accountability for torture (I haven’t made up my mind on that one yet).
But one man can’t be all things to all people, and there is one area where Obama has been reminding me of why I was so excited about him in the first place: science.
Ben Goldacre has released a chapter that was originally missing from his book Bad Science. It’s about Matthias Rath, AIDS “dissident”. It’s well worth a read. I have not read Dr. Goldacre’s book (I hope to at some point), but I do read his blog regularly and it is always worth a read, as well. A brief taste:
The United Nations has condemned Rath’s adverts as “wrong and misleading”. “This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence,” said Eric Goemaere, head of Médecins sans Frontières SA, a man who pioneered anti-retroviral therapy in South Africa. Rath sued him.
The whole thing is below the fold.
A recent paper on miRNA got me thinking about when I started to get interested in the micro mechanisms of biology. Specifically, it reminded me of a fundamental misunderstanding that I had about biology that, when corrected, suddenly allowed things to make a lot more sense. It’s one of the cooler (and maddeningly illogical) aspects of molecular biology. I think that understanding it will help clear up a lot of people’s confusion about how genes and evolution work.
Salon has an interesting piece today on PBS and crackpot science. I’ve always seen my PBS station as the best television resource for science (by far). Programs have their ups and downs (see this post about Nova) but some stations are apparently far more wackadoo.
It’s time to talk about the basics: big honkin’ fossils of things long dead. Much of the discussion of evolution revolves around the very small: genes, cells, and the like. One loses sight of the larger effects of selection over time. That would be the changes in species. That’s were transitional forms come in.
There are two terms that get used: “transitional” and “intermediate”. They tend to get used interchangeably, though there is a difference. That difference isn’t really important here, so I will just plow ahead.
Aside from the fact that transitional forms are manifest in cool organisms that are weird blends of dinosaur/bird, ungulate/whale, and ape/human, they are also helpful in illustrating a couple of key points about evolution.