03-May-2009, 18:31
The latest 15 editions of New Scientist, unopened since their stupid Darwin Was Wrong marketing hype.
They’re backing up like turds in a poorly maintained sewer. Ever since New Scientist published its stupid and irresponsible Darwin Was Wrong story in the midst of the Darwin bicentenary celebrations, this particular long-term subscriber just hasn’t felt like reading the damn rag. And, as with a sewage back-up, I’m not at all sure what to do about it.
Darwin was wrong, you see, because species aren’t really related to each other in a tree-like structure.
Meanwhile, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which has been amassing genetic sequences for three decades, recently published the largest phylogenetic tree ever constructed.
Yes, that’s right, a tree.
Do you think someone should tell the poor dupes that they’ve got it all wrong?
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See also:
23-Jan-2009, 00:00
I think so too!
*sigh*
The latest edition of New Scientist (my butler reads it) contains a very interesting, albeit irritating article entitled Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life, which asserts that, what with horizontal gene transfer and hybridisation and all that malarkey, life’s genealogy should not be represented, as Darwin said, by a tree, but rather by a convoluted web.
I say bollocks to that.
Yes, the history of life on Earth is indeed far more complex than even Darwin could have imagined. Life really isn’t that simple. It never is. Newton’s Laws of Motion are a wonderfully elegant set of equations that explain the motions of the heavens. They also, to Einstein’s great regret, happen to be flawed. But they were still good enough to get us to the sodding moon. Rutherford’s model of the atom is, we now realise, wrong, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to explain to young would-be scientists than fuzzy blobs which don’t seem to be able to make up their minds whether to be waves or particles. Such horrors are best held in reserve for unleashing on unsuspecting undergraduates. (I write from bitter personal experience.)
Darwin’s tree of life is still a pretty good approximation of the genealogy of species—whatever that word means in this hopelessly complex genetic age. It’s a useful metaphor that even young children can understand. It makes a great T-shirt and a damn fine fridge magnet.
Hands off our tree! Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
09-Dec-2007, 00:00
I appreciate we are supposed to find this amusing, but I find it rather disturbing:
Sunday Times: DNA pioneer James Watson is blacker than he thought
James Watson, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans are less intelligent than whites, has been found to have 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European.
An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%.
Yes, very funny, let’s all laugh at James Watson’s silly, racist views (again). But I think this news report could be misconstrued in a number of ways:
- some people might (bizarrely) interpret the report as supporting the view that Africans are less intelligent than Europeans: silly, old James Watson has more black genes than most Europeans—which explains why he is so silly;
- some people might interpret it as implying that the genetic contribution to human intelligence is measurable, and separable from the environmental contribution;
- some might interpret it as implying that there are ‘black’ (African) genes and ‘white’ (European) genes—almost as if we didn’t all originate in Africa;
- some might interpret it as implying that ‘race’ is a meaningful, genetic concept.
In fact, the report says and implies none of these things. But people need to be incredibly careful when reporting this sort of story—in the same way that James Watson should have been a lot more careful when he was expressing his outdated views.
See also: Books: The Mismeasure of Man
19-Sep-2007, 00:00
They’re at it again. Sociobiologists are looking for evolutionary explanations for phenomena that don’t seem to need them:
New Scientist: Caring grandmas explain evolutionary role of menopause
The menopause may be an ordeal for women experiencing a ‘hot flash’, but new research suggests it had a good evolutionary cause — freeing women to be good grandmothers.
To be fair, the article does argue that the human menopause requires a special evolutionary explanation because, in other mammals, female reproduction simply stops because of ageing, at a variety of ages. But in humans the shutdown is deliberate and early. And it is genetically controlled, meaning the genes responsible were selected by evolution.
I’m not sure how authorative this genetically controlled argument is. Personally, I had assumed that the human menopause was simply one of those age-related phenomena that is never selected against in old age because it happens after the people concerned have lived long enough to have children and pass on their genes. This still seems like the simplest explanation to me—although I freely admit I could be wrong.
But where do you draw the line? If sociobiologists feel the need to find an evolutionarily advantageous role for the menopause, why not also concoct them for Alzheimer’s Disease, diabetes, baldness and wrinkles? All of these are age-related phenomena with a genetic component.
In fact, it might be kind of fun, in a totally pointless way.
01-Jul-2007, 00:00
Reuters: Scientists fly into raptures over flightless Fred
The remains of a dodo found in a cave beneath bamboo and tea plantations in Mauritius offer the best chance yet to learn about the extinct flightless bird, a scientist said on Friday.
The discovery was made earlier this month in the Mauritian highlands but the location was kept secret until the recovery of the skeleton, nicknamed “Fred”, was completed on Friday. Four men guarded the site overnight.
Julian Hume, a paleontologist at Britain’s Natural History Museum, told Reuters the remains were likely to yield excellent DNA and other vital clues, because they were found intact, in isolation, and in a cave.
I wonder if Nunatak knows any more about this.
30-Apr-2007, 00:00
New Scientist: New hope for Galapagos’ ‘Lonesome George’
The rarest living creature – a giant tortoise thought to be the last of his kind – may not be alone after all, say geneticists. The revelation gives new hope to “Lonesome George” as conservationists consider a proposal to get him to breed in captivity…
[Jeff] Powell [of Yale University] and colleagues analysed the DNA of 27 tortoises from Wolf Volcano on Isabela. One of these appears to be a cross between a Pinta male and an Isabela female, they discovered. Unfortunately, it is also male. But its mere existence raises the intriguing possibility there might be a female carrying Pinta genes that would make a suitable match for Lonesome George.
I fear this is a false hope, but it is fascinating how modern genetic techniques can reveal complex species relationships like this.
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