- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Dismantling A Troublesome Inheritance, part III: has natural selection created differences between racial groups?
- And at The Molecular Ecologist: Further thoughts on peer review.
- Not a great week. A series of not unrelated reminders of how poorly scientific workplaces can treat women: from Richard Feynman’s lechery to harassment during field work to the actual cover of Science.
- Now that’s a lizard of a different color. A lizard can change color for camouflage because it can (kinda) see with its skin.
- #MinnesotaSmug How my home state is steadily cutting its carbon emissions.
- Are you ready? Next week is moth week.
- Being wrong != being ignorant. The recent study that shows many people who deny evolution understand it pretty well anyway.
- The Facebook feed of evil. Digging into the demography, and the online likes and dislikes of white supremacists.
- And, appropriately, we’re freaking out. The World Health Organization recommends prophylactic antiretrovirals for all gay men.
Stuff online, vampire barnacles edition
- This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! No, some human populations aren’t more genetically prone to violence than others.
- Take note, Runkeeper. A crowd-sourced algorithm to find the scenic route between point A and point B.
- Pretty much. Evolutionary psychology as frat-boy science.
- It takes two to bareback. The case of a college wrestler points up the many problems with criminalizing HIV transmission.
- In Australia. Solar power is on track to out-compete coal.
- You don’t buy a cake for an abortion. Or, why women’s reproductive rights are losing in the culture wars while gay marriage wins.
- So. Much. Stupid. A Harvard psychology professor makes the dumbest statement possible about scientific replication.
- Worst zit ever? A barnacle that leaches its nutrients from the flesh of sharks.
- So good. The best teachable moments in the now Emmy-nominated reboot of Cosmos.
Chris Smith takes on that Troublesome book
Although some studies have found genetic variants in the MAO-A promoter region that are more common in some ethnic groups than in others (Sabol et al. 1998; Widom & Brzustowicz 2006; Reti et al. 2011) it is likely that these genetic variants are not –on their own– associated with violent or impulsive behavior (Caspi et al. 2002; Widom & Brzustowicz 2006). Instead, genetic variation in the MAO-A promoter seems to make some children less able to recover from abuse and childhood trauma, and therefore more likely to act out later in life (Caspi et al. 2002; Widom & Brzustowicz 2006). Simply carrying the ‘low expression’ allele in the MAO-A promoter does not have any effect at all on impulsivity or aggression.
Chris co-teaches a class on exactly the topics covered in A Troublesome Inheritance, so I highly recommend you read the whole thing, and follow the series to its conclusion.
Stuff online, what’s in your library? edition
- This week, at The Molecular Ecologist: #Evol2014 in tweets, and how “Markov chain” methods estimate tricky probability distributions.
- And, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: The first post in an in-depth series on the evolutionary claims in A Troublesome Inheritance.
- By nineteenth-century standards, anyway. Charles Darwin, anti-racist.
- Please. Here are some ideas that scientists would like you to stop repeating.
- And not all universities pay the same. How much universities pay for scientific journal subscriptions.
- Because no one should put up with it. Some possible responses to crazy sexist shit.
- Under existing law against gender bias. LGBT employees may already enjoy legal protections in the U.S.
- Ugh. Male professors are less likely to hire women than female profs—and especially if they’re highly successful male professors.
- Cities stink. And that can confuse pollinating moths.
My #Evol2014 talk on population genomic “scans” for local adaptation
This year at the Evolution meetings, for the very first time, the conference organizers offered presenters the option of having our talks filmed by graduate student volunteers. Naturally, I had to try this out—and the result isn’t half bad!
If only I’d pointed myself at the microphone more consistently. And said “umm” about three times less frequently. And maybe worn a nicer shirt …
My review of A Troublesome Inheritance for the Los Angeles Review of Books
I’ve written (another) review of Nicholas Wade’s “science of race” book A Troublesome Inheritance, this time for the Los Angeles Review of Books. If you’ve read the my previous review for The Molecular Ecologist, you won’t find much new here, but the LARB piece is pitched at a less technical audience, and takes a somewhat different point of entry:
CHARLES DARWIN is more usually cited for his scientific discoveries than his moral insights. In the closing pages of his travelogue The Voyage of the Beagle however, he condemns the practice of slavery — which he observed firsthand in the colonized New World — in blistering, heartfelt terms worthy of an Old Testament prophet
…
In this testimony against the great social sin of his age, Darwin makes an observation that should unsettle us even here and now: “if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
I’m extremely pleased for the chance to contribute to a great literary magazine, and I’m also quite happy to see that LARB went with my suggested, punny headline: “Cluster-struck.”
Science online, warped factors edition
- Unscientific adaptationist claptrap of the week. No, the human skull didn’t evolve to be punched.
- Write it down, maybe. Your semi-regular reminder that humans are animals, too.
- Good news! A new pesticide derived from spider venom might be safe for bees.
- By cheating. Apparently a chatbot kinda, sorta passed the Turing test.
- It’s genes! It’s environment! It’s genes and environment.
- Pour one out for Growly. How we decided to use pepper spray for protection against bears
- Yeah, it’s not going to be good. Randall Munroe puts projected global warming in perspective.
- Looks oddly familiar. NASA’s long-shot warp-drive team unveils a mocked-up faster-than-light spacecraft.
Science online, may the odds be ever in your favor edition
- More on Wade’s folly. His pathetic response to critics; there are no primary colors of humanity; we should look beyond culture and genetics to politics; Wade conflates science with fantasy; and laugh so you don’t cry.
- Well, maybe. Are hurricanes with feminine names deadlier than hurricanes with masculine names?
- Ow. The scientific value of viral face-plant pratfall videos.
- A good start, anyway. The EPA unveils a new plan to cut carbon emissions.
- Your dose of hope/despair for the week. A new study aims to predict academic promotion from publication records. Well, kinda.
- Um, thanks? Icthyologists honor the Indiana University sports teams in naming a blind fish with a neck anus.
- Endless forms, &c. Here is a wasp with a zinc-tipped “drill bit” on its ovipositor.
- Perspective check. How humans are collateral damage in microbial arms races.
Science online, sweetening the stats edition
- This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Why evolutionary biologists should be excited about the pot genome.
- And at The Molecular Ecologist: Molecular Ecology‘s top reviewers for 2014 and my review of A Troublesome Inheritance.
- Because why wouldn’t you? Figuring out how many habitable planets you can have in the same solar system.
- I take my landfills black, thanks. You can test for groundwater contamination from a landfill by looking for artificial sweeteners.
- Hmm. A lot of Americans who tell pollsters they don’t “believe” in evolution understand how it works anyway.
- There’s a Methods section for that. No, you shouldn’t have to ask scientists to explain their methods before you try to replicate their results.
- Because of course? The brains of gay men who are parents look like straight mothers and straight fathers in a functional MRI scan.
- Sneaky! This fish glows in a color that it’s predators can’t see.
- I’m choosing to believe that I did, anyway. Did humans evolve bigger brains at the expense of muscle power?
The Molecular Ecologist: I read A Troublesome Inheritance so you don’t have to
Over at The Molecular Ecologist I’ve done an in-depth review of the population genetics data cited by Nicholas Wade in his book A Troublesome Inheritance, which argues that social, cultural, and economic differences between human populations are all in our genes. Digging into the book’s endnotes, it didn’t take me long to find discrepancies between Wade’s description of basic population genetic results and the actual, um, results.
First and foremost, Wade claims that when population geneticists apply a class of statistical methods called clustering algorithms to datasets containing hundreds or thousands of genetic markers, they objectively identify five geographic groups that he calls “continental races”—differentiating African, European/Middle Eastern/South Asian, East Asian, Oceanian, and American people. What he does not make particularly clear is that while clustering methods do group genetic samples without direct instructions, the algorithms do not decide how many clusters there are. The geneticists using them do.
To make me feel somewhat better for having paid actual money to read this book, go read my whole review.