FAQ | Register Now | Sign In

Subscribe to the newsletter

[x]

Stay in touch with the scientific world!

Melville on Science vs. Creation Myth

From Melville's under-appreciated Mardi: On a quest for his missing love Yillah, an AWOL sailor...

Non-coding DNA Function... Surprising?

The existence of functional, non-protein-coding DNA is all too frequently portrayed as a great...

Yep, This Should Get You Fired

An Ohio 8th-grade creationist science teacher with a habit of branding crosses on his students'...

No, There Are No Alien Bar Codes In Our Genomes

Even for a physicist, this is bad: Larry Moran, in preparation for the appropriate dose of ridicule...

Michael White

Welcome to Adaptive Complexity, where I write about genomics, systems biology, evolution, and the connection between science and literature, government, and society.

I'm a biochemist

Morning Science Quote

May 29 2009 | comment(s)

Rarely does a scientific hypothesis - at least, not a useful or an interesting one - admit of a straightforward up-or-down, yes-or-no verdict. Valuable hypotheses survive the test of time in countless engagements with reality. The war against ignorance is a war of attrition.

- David Lindley, Boltzmann's Atom, p. ix

Scientists Take Us One Step Closer To A Talking Mouse

May 28 2009 | comment(s)

FOXP2 may be the gene that makes us human - or so the hype goes. Hyped or not, FOXP2 is rightly a focus of intense research, since it is a gene that clearly has a major effect on human speech. Mutations in FOXP2 are responsible for some rare but strange language disorders, such as the inability to learn grammatical skills or make the proper mouth/facial movements to properly articulate words.

Afternoon Science Quote

May 28 2009 | comment(s)

If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance 'God'.
- Jerry Coyne, Nature, Sep. 19, 1996

Creationism, Andrew Jackson, And The Battle Of New Orleans

May 28 2009 | comment(s)

"Somebody's got to stand up to experts," cried the creationist head of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy. McLeroy's lament is nothing new in American culture - we love to lionize the artless hero who conquers the world through clean living and common sense, and without resorting to elitist expertise. (Although some see the pendulum swinging the other way.)

Morning Science Quote

May 27 2009 | comment(s)

Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that physicists have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense.

The great thing about science is the uncertainty

May 27 2009 | comment(s)

Brian Greene on science as the ultimate adventure:

Science is about immersing ourselves in piercing uncertainty while struggling with the deepest of mysteries. It is the ultimate adventure. Against staggering odds, a species that has walked upright for only a few million years is trying to unravel puzzles that are billions of years in the making. How did the universe begin? How was life initiated? How did consciousness emerge? Einstein captured it best when he wrote, "the years of anxious searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express." That's what science is about.