Another entry in the "I didn't know about this blog, but I am glad I do now" files: Evolutionary Novelties by Todd Oakley from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Go, read it. Before we start bugging him to blog here instead. :)

I have said in the past that I will not be participating in the "Bloggers for Peer-reviewed Research Reporting", which seems to have morphed into "Research Blogging".

"If you think you understand [evolution], you don't know nearly enough about it."

So begins the superb article by Michael LePage in the April 19 issue of New Scientist, a magzine for which I am quickly developing considerable respect (and, admittedly, in which I have done two brief interviews).

LePage does not pull any punches, which is incredibly refreshing. Consider these choice excerpts:

It will soon be 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, arguably the most important book ever written.

Readers of the old Genomicron will probably recall my post entitled "How much good can one blog post do?", in which I talked about my father and step mother's plan to move to Livingstone, Zambia. Well, they are there as we speak, staying until July to take care of things like their new farm, visas, and arrangements with the resorts where their non-profit foundation will hold its musical theatre shows. If all works out, they will be moving indefinitely in January.

I have just set up a profile on SciLink. It looks interesting, "Facebook for scientists" as John Dennehy called it. However, like John, I was only able to add a subset of my papers.  Check it out if you're a sciency type.

Those of you who have been reading Genomicron for some time will have seen most of these already, but it seems worthwhile reviewing them here at the new blog. The game is simple: identify what is wrong with these figures which have been published in science magazines or scientific journals.

(To view larger images, right-click and select "view image" in Firefox -- you're on your own in other browsers).

 

1) The infamous "dog's ass plot":

 

2) More non-coding sequences: