Stone soup; or, extracting protein fragments from T. rex bones

Science magazine has an article today on extracting and sequencing proteins from T. rex bones, and I’m already getting email from people wondering whether this is believable, whether it challenges the stated age of dinosaurs, whether this means we can soon reconstruct dinosaurs from preserved genetic information, and even a few creationists claiming this is proof of a young earth. Short answers: it looks like meticulous and entirely credible work to me, these fossil bones are really 68 million years old, and it represents a special case with limits to how far it can be expanded, so scratch “reassemble dinosaur from fragments” off your to-do list.

[Read more…]

George W Bush wins an award!

He should be so proud — he has taken first place in the 2007 Jefferson Muzzle Awards. These are awards given for “egregious or ridiculous affronts to free expression in the previous year”, and little Georgie won it for:

For its unprecedented efforts of discouraging, changing, and sometimes censoring the reports and studies of government scientists in order to make them more supportive of political policies, a 2007 Jefferson Muzzle goes to… the Bush Administration.

It’s a well deserved honor. The description goes on to list several specific instances of Bush administration manipulation of scientific assessment, particularly in areas of climate and environment where scientific conclusions conflict with Republican bidness ties.

Turning science into a party

Lucky Cambridge: a whole bunch of organizations, including Harvard, MIT, and the Cambridge public schools and libraries are collaborating to put on the Cambridge Science Festival—9 days of science activities around the town. That is exactly the kind of broadly supported activity in the service of science education that can make a difference in public perception. It’s an excellent idea…now if only more communities had that kind of concentration of scientific organizations to make that kind of sustained activity possible.

(via Science Made Cool)

Believing and understanding

Larry Moran criticizes a dramatic Youtube video that purports to show how evolution works. He asks if we think this helps or hurts the cause of evolution education. Speaking as an evo-devo guy (forgive me, Larry), I’d also say it hurts. Without understanding the mechanisms of morphological change underlying the simulation, it’s useless. It doesn’t explain anything about the roots of the variation it’s demonstrating or the principles of the propagation of genetic change through a population — funny faces shift generation after generation, with no explanation given. It asserts change without showing how. That is not science.

This is also where I have problems with the Nisbet/Mooney thesis. I presume this kind of simplified, cartoony presentation is what they think we need more of, and that scientists ought to just swallow their pride arrogance and go along with the “framing”…but there’s a point where simplification and flash become the antithesis of good science. I don’t want people to believe in evolution, I want them to understand it.

Would the cartoon help them believe? Maybe.

Does it help them understand? No.

If you want to grasp the goals of scientists (and, tellingly, the goals of atheists), you have to understand that distinction between believing and understanding.

Wells on Hox structure: making the same mistakes over and over again

Jonathan Wells apparently felt the sting of my rebuttal of his assertions about Hox gene structure, because he has now repeated his erroneous interpretations at Dembski’s creationist site. His strategy is to once again erect a straw man version of biologist’s claims about genetic structure, show that biologists have refuted his dummy, and claim victory. The only real question here is whether he actually believes his historical revisions of what we’ve known about Hox genes, in which case he is merely ignorant, or whether he is knowingly painting a false picture, in which case he is a malicious fraud.

[Read more…]

What if the right role for science is to shatter the frame?

i-89c6bc933e52057cf77c7485797cd296-blog_against_theocracy.gif

Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney have a short policy paper in Science that criticizes scientists for how they communicate to the public. Mooney says that “many scientists don’t really know what they’re up against when suddenly thrust into the media spotlight and interactions with politicians” — I agree completely. We are not trained to be glib and glossy, and we simply do not come across as well as we could. We’re also not really that interested, generally speaking, in the kind of presentation that plays well in 3 minutes on a news broadcast. It’s more than a cosmetological failure, though; as Nisbet says, “scientists, without misrepresenting scientific information, must learn to shape or ‘frame’ contentious issues in a way that make them personally relevant to diverse segments of the public, while taking advantage of the media platforms that reach these audiences.” I can go along with that, too.

[Read more…]

Future science media star

On The Infidel Guy, Abby of ERV goes up against a ranting crackpot, Leonard Horowitz, who thinks AIDS is the product of a secret conspiracy. She handles herself very well. It’s painful to listen to—Horowitz is a master of the bellowing Gumby style of discourse, and he believes in some very looney things. He’s also smart enough, though, that he knows some of his stuff is going to go over as immensely kooky to an informed audience, and he gets evasive at several points.

Some highlights occur when he’s called “Mr Horowitz”, and he goes on an indignant tirade about his credentials. Another is when he ducks and dodges on the issue of evolution, and tries to claim that the “brand new science of genetics and electrogenetics” (electrogenetics?) is going to require major changes of our understanding of evolution. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get into his really fun stuff:

Among the world’s foremost authorities on the subject of bioterrorism, vaccination risks, and public health, Dr. Horowitz’s expert diagnosis here dovetails perfectly with Bible prophecies. Pay special attention to his disclosures regarding the infamous “Mark of the Beast.” Dr. Horowitz reveals sacred Bible codes that give expanded meaning to the infamous “666” prophecy (Rev: 13:18) while implicating widely trusted vaccinations, medical biochips, politicians, and institutions that have advanced some of the most horrific population-controlling ploys ever conceived. Anthrax, smallpox, and vaccinations are all part of the same deadly swindle.

Kudos to Abby for being able to deal with such a fraud and kook, and being far smarter than Horowitz, but Reggie Finley needs to get better guests than a quack like that.

Wells’ flagrantly false commentary on Hox complex structure

This evening, I am watching an episode of that marvelous and profane Western, Deadwood, as I type this; it is a most excellently compensatory distraction, allowing me to sublimate my urge to express myself in uncompromisingly vulgar terms on Pharyngula. This is an essential coping mechanism.

I have been reading Jonathan Wells again.

If you’re familiar with Wells and with Deadwood, you know what I mean. You’ll just have to imagine that I am Al Swearingen, the brutal bar-owner who uses obscenities as if they were lyric poetry, while Wells is E.B. Farnum, the unctuous rodent who earns the contempt of every man who meets him. That imagination will have to hold you, because I’m going to restrain myself a bit; I’m afraid Wells would earn every earthy sobriquet I could imagine, but I’ll confine myself to the facts. They’re enough. The man completely misrepresents the results of a paper and a whole discipline, and does it baldly on the web, as if he doesn’t care that his dishonesty and ignorance leave a greasy, reeking trail behind him.

Let’s start with Wells’ own words.

[Read more…]