by Greg Mayer There have been a number of interesting comments by readers on my post on the recent paper on the radiation of placental mammals by Maureen O’Leary and colleagues. I want to respond briefly to a few of them here. Biogeography. Does this paper imply that the origin and geographic distribution of the […]
by Greg Mayer (Updates below.) A new study just published in Science by Maureen O’Leary and colleagues examines the phylogeny of 40 fossil and 46 extant mammals based on a very large data set of morphological and molecular characters (the latter only from the living taxa). The study has gotten a fair amount of attention […]
Well, Time Magazine has tried to do science an honor by nominating a particle, the Higgs boson, for “Person of the Year” (there are other candidates and the winner will be announced in April). As Michael Moyer writes on the Scientific American “Observations” website, every sentence in the nomination has at least one error. Here’s […]
I have it on reliable authority that Steve Pinker’s next book will be on modern grammar and usage: a Pinkerian update of Strunk and White’s famous The Elements of Style (a book I wore out with frequent use, but learn from the lecture below is flawed). And Steve’s already giving talks about this book to […]
I don’t often tell readers about articles that they simply have to read, but this pair qualifies. Together they’re not terribly short (about 7000 words in toto), but I like to think that my readers have decent attention spans—and the interest in science and politics that makes this Scientific American essay, “Antiscience beliefs jeopardize U.S. […]
I was frankly surprised to see the pages of Nature occupied by an extremely lame and pointless attempt to not only accommodate science and religion, but assert that religion is in some ways better. The short essay, which at least by citation seems to have appeared in the print issue of the journal, is called […]
UPDATE: Malcolm Gladwell has been nice enough to come here and defend his methods in a comment. As always, be polite if you want to respond to that comment. ___________ Over at his eponymous website, writer and corporate consultant Eric Garland takes up an issue which has started to bother me lately: “science-lite” books that […]
I’m particularly peeved about the Guardian‘s latest report on the group-selection debate, one fueled by a Nature paper by Nowak, Tarnita, and (E. O.) Wilson, and by Wilson’s new book, The Social Conquest of Earth, that was very critically reviewed by Richard Dawkins in Prospect. If you’re a regular here, you’ll know that the debate […]
The HuffPo Science section can’t seem to keep its mitts off religion. Why on earth do they keep dragging God into that section? The latest theistic incursion is a “slide show” called “Science and religion quotes: what the world’s greatest scientists say about God.“ There are 21 quotes, each accompanied by a photo of the […]
As I predicted, the new “science” section of HuffPo has turned out to be almost a tabloid-like selection of puff pieces and soft science. I’m disappointed but not surprised. Here’s a screenshot of its latest headlines (click to enlarge): Note Christopher Lane’s piece at the left: it’s about agnosticism, Hitchens, and Dawkins, and has virtually […]
