Science online: Glorious Fifth edition

2013.06.24 - Wildflower IV Photo by jby.
  • Again. In which bad science in the service of sexism gets its comeuppance.
  • There is a whole blog about corvids. And they know how to pull tails.
  • Guys, there are taste receptors on your balls. And also on a lot of other parts of your body, apparently.
  • “Wait … these lionfish are overweight?” The invasion of lionfish is so bad that the fish are obese.
  • Leprosy is, evolutionarily, mighty stable. What was discovered by sequencing bacterial DNA from the bones of 14th-century lepers.
  • Mendel v. Fisher. Why scientists screw up, and why the solution is more science.
  • The dot’s barely even blue. Earth, photographed in extreme not-close-up.
  • ““To do science is to search for repeated patterns, not simply to accumulate facts …” Reading Robert MacArthur’s Geographical Ecology.
  • New bird species discovered! In the suburbs of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
  • Like burning down the forest and replanting it to kill off some weeds, but still. Bone marrow transplants appear to have eliminated HIV infections in two more patients.
  • This’ll come in handy. Teaching evolution through the lens of infectious disease.
  • Sure, the paper’s retracted … but who’s got the movie rights? The story of a retracted Nature paper involves break-ins, tampering with experimental material, and hidden cameras.