Diverse perspectives on science and medicine
TOM WOLFE ON EVOLUTION AND DARWIN AND CHOMSKY Bango! The famed New Journalist Tom Wolfe’s takedown of Charles Darwin and evolution is apparently his usual over-the-top hoot. This I relay second-hand because I haven’t read
DANCING IN THE STREETS OVER NEARBY PLANET PROXIMA B It’s now perfectly respectable to talk about interstellar travel, says Cornell astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger. She’s coauthor of an unpublished paper speculating about how life could survive
TRAVELING WITH THE ZIKA VIRUS TO MIAMI AND RIO The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued its first-ever travel advisory in the United States. It says pregnant women (and women planning conception
BREAKING NEWS ON EPIGENETICS: AN UPDATE ON MUKHERJEE’S NEW YORKER PIECE As I wrote here at On Science Blogs in May, the excerpt from Siddhartha Mukherjee’s history of genetics The Gene that the New
A FEW WORDS ABOUT PLAGIARISM AND HOW TO AVOID IT Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky helpfully relayed scientific proof of the odds that particular words and phrases in aspiring First Lady Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican
IS HGP-WRITE RIGHT? So one plan is to link together chunks of synthetic DNA, making a researcher-created human genome that can control a cell in a lab dish. This, the 25 researchers advocating it in
ALZHEIMER’S IS AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE? There’s one particularly striking takeaway from the latest paper strengthening the hypothesis that Alzheimer’s disease might result from infection: The beta amyloid proteins long accused of being the chief villains,
The headlines called it “incredibly condescending” (Alexandra Petri, ComPost), “unrealistic” (Jia Tolentino, Jezebel), and “bonkers” (Olga Khazan and Julie Beck, The Atlantic.) The post from the aptly named Brandy Zadrozny at The Daily Beast) was
Last Friday, On Science Blogs was given over to the many “best of science” lists of 2015. This week’s post is about what bloggers foresee for 2016–and beyond. THE CANCER MOONSHOT: WELCOME TO 2016 Vice-President
WATERY MARS AGAIN Emily Lakdawalla thinks everybody should calm down about NASA’s much-trumpeted latest discovery of liquid water on Mars. The discovery, which is probably not flowing water but rather something more like damp sand,