In my evolution course, I note that "Darwin spent 20 years working out his ideas and gathering evidence" before releasing On the Origin of Species in 1859. I don't say he "delayed" publication purposely, though in many cases this long period from idea to outcome has been attributed to fear of the reaction from the clergy, colleagues, society at large, his wife, etc.  On this issue, a few bloggers have pointed to a recent essay by John van Wyhe (2007), in which it is argued that there was no delay based on fear, only a protracted writing period. Other historians do not necessarily agree, though the blogs I saw did not mention this. As Odling-Smee (2007) says,

...several Darwin scholars are not convinced.

My Dear Sir,-- The accompanying papers, which we have the honour of communicating to the Linnean Society, and which all relate to the same subject, viz. the Laws which affect the Production of Varieties, Races, and Species, contain the results of the investigations of two indefatigable naturalists, Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. Alfred Wallace.

I had a series of posts on Ye Olde Genomicron about what people actually said regarding "junk DNA" and non-function in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. I have been meaning to repackage this material for a revised and more synthetic series here, but I haven't gotten around to that as yet. For the moment, here are some quotes I came across while reading a few sources for a paper I am writing.

Remember, a significant number of creationists, science writers, and molecular biologists want us to believe that non-coding DNA was totally ignored after the term "junk DNA" was published in 1972, that the authors of the "junk DNA" and "selfish DNA" papers denied any possible functions for non-coding elements, and, in the case of creationists, that "Darwinism" is to blame for this oversight.  The latter of these is nonsensical as the very ideas of "junk DNA" and "selfish DNA" were postulated as antidotes to excessive adaptationist expectations based on too strong a focus on Darwinian natural selection at the organism level.

Scientific wordsmith Carl Zimmer, most recently the author of the widely touted book Microcosm, has left Scienceblogs (the blog network by Seed Magazine) and taken up a new post as blogger and columnist with Discover Magazine. His new blog is located at The Loom.  Congratulations to Carl.  I think this is a much better fit.

 

The current edition of Tangled Bank, the blog carnival about evolution, is now up at Wheat-dogg's World. It includes a mention of Jill Smith's bat genome talk at Evolution 2008. I bet she didn't expect this much reporting!