Jonathan Eisen

Who do Nobel Laureates Endorse (guess …)

Not much more to say – just thought I would post a link to this posting from “A Vote for Science” by Michael Stebbins (A Vote For Science : 61 Nobel Laureates in Science Endorse Obama)

Strange Helicopter Sighting over Davis

Strange military style helicopter came very close to houses in Wildhorse this PM. Not sure what they were doing but they seemed to be searching for something and it came just after hearing some very loud car-like motors revving by.

Twisted Tree of Life Award #2: Science Friday on the Five Kingdoms

Well, I love Science Friday. I listen to podcasts of it now almost every day when I bike to work. It is a brilliant show, covering a wide range of science and science related topics in depth. Plus it is freely downloadable in a variety of formats. And they have a great website too. But every once in a while they get something a bit wrong. Yesterday, on my way home from a new introductory biology class we are teaching at Davis on “The Tree of Life” (which I will write more about later), I was listening to a Science Friday about Fungi (Science Friday Archives: The Fabulous Fungi). And unfortunately, in the introduction, Joe Palca started off with a pretty outdated discussion of the tree of life.

When you ask people to name the kingdoms, most people get the big ones, animals, plants, bacteria. Some people may even come up with the protists. But there is one more. Here’s a hint. Yeast are part of it. So are shitakes. Are you getting it? Well the answer is fungi.

Yes, they are in fact referring to the Whittaker “Five Kingdoms” tree of life, which is no longer in use. (I am placing an image here from my Evolution Textbook) where we talk in Chapter 5 about the history of various trees of life that have been used. The figures from our book are available for free at the book site)

Today we talk about the Three Domains (Bacteria, Archaea and Eukaryotes) and within each of those domains, they are many lineages (which are sometimes referred to as kingdoms). But the five kingdom concept is done and gone. The modern tree looks more like the following (which is an adaptation for our book of a tree by Baldauf).

Mind you, the show on Fungi is worth listening to (although they did miss the opportunity to use the tree of life to answer a question that came up on “Are fungi from outer space?” – the answer should have been – “No, fungi are deeply embedded within the tree of life on this planet, so if life came from elsewhere, it was at the beginning of the origin of life”).

Unfortunately, I could not call in to the show (as I have done before) to try and comment on these issues (since I was not listening live). So instead, I am giving Science Friday my Second “Twisted Tree of Life” Award for ignoring the new concepts of the tree of life that have been in play since Woese, Fox and others first laid the groundwork for the existence of the Archaea.

Sarah Palin’s Still Dangerous Views on Teaching Evolution

Well, Palin has clearly revised her public position on teaching evolution. In part of her interview with Katie Couric it was addressed (I got the transcript here. )

Couric: Do you believe evolution should be taught as an accepted scientific principle or one of several theories?

Palin: Oh, I think it should be taught as an accepted principle. And, you know, I say that also as the daughter of a school teacher, a science teacher, who has really instilled in me a respect for science. It should be taught in our schools. And I won’t ever deny that I see the hand of God in this beautiful creation that is Earth, especially coming from one of the most beautiful states in the Union and traveling around this country also in this last month. My goodness, just seeing, you know, the beautiful landscape of New Mexico recently. That was just breath taking and seeing the rolling hills in Virginia and all … the beauty that is this Earth, I see the hand of God in that. But that is not part of state policy or a local curriculum in a school district. Science should be taught in science class.

Sounds promising right? I mean, previously, she seemed to be wishy washy on the separation of science and religion and now she seems to be trying to do the right thing. But just when you might have thought the anti-science part of her was winning out, look at her response to the next question:

Couric: Should creationism be allowed to be taught anywhere in public schools?

Palin: Don’t have a problem at all with kids debating all sides of theories, all sides of ideas that they ever – kids do it today whether … it’s on paper, in a curriculum or not. Curriculums also are best left to the local school districts. Instead of Big Brother, federal government telling a district what they can and can’t teach, I would like to see more control taken over by our school boards, by our local schools, and then state government at the most. But federal government, you know, kind of get out of some of this curriculum and let the locals decide what is best for their students.

This basically follows the script of the Intelligent Design supporters who have been pushing for changes in the education curriculum by local school boards. And it is pretty dangerous in my mind. There should be separation of church and state. Period. At the federal level. At the state level. And at the local level. And this is clearly an attempt to circumvent that concept. So – Palin is ~~towing~~ toeing the ID line here pretty closely and who knows ~~who~~ what havoc she would wreak on science in this country if she were elected. McCain-Palin is starting to look more anti-science than Bush-Cheney, hard as that is for scientists to imagine.

See my earlier post on Palin and evolution here.

Congrats to Gary Andersen, Developer of the Phylochip, for Getting a WSJ Technology Award

The Phylochip, developed by Gary Andersen, of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and colleagues, has won a Wall Street Journal, Technology Innovation Award. For more see the Wall Street Journal here. Their phylochip is a microarray which can be used to rapidly survey rRNAs from different organisms and get a measure of the types and abundances of organisms present in a sample. It is similar in concept although different in design from a rRNA chip that was used by David Relman, Pat Brown, Chana Palmer and others . Not sure why the chip from Brown et al did not also win the award (it probably was not nominated, or something like that), but still, always good to see cool things in microbiology win awards like this.

Joe Derisi and Open Science featured on Voice of America

Well, I already gave him one of my awards, so what else could he do? Anyway, always good to see Open Science getting promoted and nice to see Voice of America running a story on Joe Derisi after his Heinz Award and featuring this openness (listen to an MP3 of the radio story here). And they even interviewed me because of my blog about him. Blogs and the “real” news merge closer and closer every day.

Humorous sciency signs #2: Squirrel liberation front

Here is another funny science related sign. I think this was from the Grand Canyon or somewhere near there, taken by my mother, many years ago.

Like I needed any more justification to not trust organisms bigger than a large protist.

Wanted – Evolutionary Genomicist at UCSB

Todd Oakley, of UCSB and more importantly, the Evolutionary Novelty Blog, forwarded this to me. UCSB is looking for an Asst. Prof. in Evolutionary Genomics. If only they had said “Phylogneomics” then I would have written a longer posting …

See here for more detail. Also see the ad on Oakley’s blog.

Science Faux Pas #4: Nature wishes their dog ate this advertisement

I know others have written about this already but I had to add this to my collection of Science Faux Pas because it is pretty good. Nature had a recent issue that was covering the US election. And look at the front and back cover … they claim it was an accident but hard to imagine given the posing/color matching. I note I first heard about this from Bora on FriendFeed. And now the Times Online has a whole story on it.