Spilling My Guts

I need to be a more efficient blogger. I enjoy digesting and commenting on material, but there is so much it is getting backed up. To increase efficiency I am going to start providing more links with less comment. (You are welcome to comment on the links, of course.) I think this will free me up to digest actual science papers, or compose my thoughts on topics I am more interested in.

So here are some links I've been wanting to pass along.

Continue Reading

This discusses how the evolution of some water insects can be studied by resurrecting old eggs.

PZ Myers has a nice post on how evolution has made the development of certain flies more complex--no extra intelligent designing needed. Read this earlier post on the same topic as well.

At The Panda's Thumb they wonder why the germ theory of disease is not considered a religion by anybody. Meanwhile, PZ Myers brings attention to this crackpot.

Also at The Panda's Thumb is an explanation as to why intelligent design is not science. Even when the folks at the Discovery Institute propose a testable hypothesis, they seem unwilling to acknowledge data that contradicts it. This post lays out a couple of interesting examples.

The ever-interesting Carl Zimmer has two recent posts. First is a discussion of how the different between human and chimpanzee malaria may be connected to the difference in our brain size. Then there is a discussion of essentialism--our brain's tendency to catagorize things--and one of the latest examples of a blurring of lines in biology--this time by a virus.

At National Geographic there are belching cows, problems with CSI (forensics), and the earth's core spins faster than rest of the earth.

John Hawks highlights a new paper that suggests that tuberculosis has been around for a long time.

And finally (via The Panda's Thumb):

In their attempt to show how important and relevant they are to science, the Discovery Institute likes to brag about the 400 scientists that are skeptical about Darwinian evolution. Many of those 400 are not biologists, and the statement that these scientists sign on to says nothing about intelligent design, but those seem to be technicalities to the DI. Anyway, one of those skeptical scientists, Robert Davidson, has withdrawn his name. Apparently he was originally excited about the prospect of bringing science and religion together, but has become disillusioned with the way the DI trashes mainstream science. You can read the article in the Seattle Times.


Whew. My plate's not clean quite yet, but much better.

Continue reading...

"Darwin's Theory...is Wrong."

Could those actually be the words of a real biologist? Yes. Michael Shermer explains in Scientific American.

Continue reading...

Physiologic Basis for Placebo Effect

A new study shows that the placebo effect is not all psychological. ScienceNow reports:

Continue Reading

New research indicates that when people expect a treatment to numb their hurt, their brains release endorphins, the body's own opioid painkillers. Experts say the findings are the first to nail down the molecular basis of the placebo effect.

Scientists have long suspected that placebos tap into opioid circuitry within the brain. Chemical blockades of these circuits abolish the placebo effect, and placebos increase blood flow to areas of the brain rich in opioid receptors. To obtain direct evidence that opioid receptors mediate the placebo response, neuroscientist Jon-Kar Zubieta of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and colleagues used a radioactive tracer molecule that sticks to vacant opioid receptors.

First, the team induced a painful, sustained ache in 14 men by injecting a salt solution into their jaw muscles. The researchers then scanned the subjects' brains using positron emission tomography, which locates the radioactive tracer. During one scan, the researchers offered no relief from the pain. During another, they told the subjects they were administering an experimental drug thought to ease pain, but instead gave only saline. When subjects got the placebo, they experienced a decreased sensitivity to pain, and their brain scans revealed occupied opiate receptors, an indication that opioids had bound to them. "This is not just a psychological phenomenon," says Zubieta, whose team reports its findings 24 August in the Journal of Neuroscience. "It is a real chemical mechanism."

This may not explain all placebo effects, but it is interesting.

The news article provides this link at the FDA for further reading.

Continue reading...

Global Warming: Why Are You Skeptical?

Global warming is not one of my pet issues, although I am becoming more interested in it. Judging strictly from the few conversations I've had with other members of the Church about it, my sense is that Church members tend to disbelieve that humans are causing global warming--or even that the globe is warming at all. Perhaps this is an American phenomenon--maybe the European and/or Asian saints are different. If this skepticism is indeed widespread, I wonder what it is rooted in and I'm hoping you skeptics out there will tell me. I can think of a number of potential reasons:

Continue Reading

1. I have a skeptical attitude toward most of science.
2. It is an issue championed by Democrats, so it is most likely a lie.
3. My favorite conservative talk-radio host doesn't believe it, so I don't.
4. God would not allow humans to cause such problems.
5. God made the earth to be able to take whatever we do to it.
6. I have looked closely at the science and I am just not convinced.
7. Dealing with global warming would involve government regulation of private enterprise, which I oppose.
8. Global warming is a part of the [insert conspiracy here] to dominate [insert object here].
9. If it was a real problem, Pres. Hinckley would alert us to it. Since the Brethren haven't said anything, I'm not worried about it.

You skeptics can comment anonymously if you like--or make up a name so we don't have utter confusion with several different people going by "anonymous". Why are you skeptical about global warming? If we take action (eg. finding alternative energy) what do we lose if human-induced global warming turns out to be wrong?

(BTW, See my last post if you have not already.)

Continue reading...

Christian In-Fighting About Global Warming

Apprently there is some in-fighting occuring among Christians regarding global warming--something that I think will spread. This article (via Chris Mooney) reports:


Continue Reading

Focus on the Family is issuing a strong response to a Christianity Today article that criticizes the organization and others in the evangelical Christian community who remain skeptical about the theory of global warming.

A recent Christianity Today article by Andy Crouch titled "Environmental Wager" argues that Evangelicals need to warm up to the idea that human beings are changing the climate by emitting large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The article takes a specific jab at "groups like Focus on the Family" that claim significant disagreement exists among the scientific community over the validity of the theory when, the author contends, "There is in fact no serious disagreement among scientists that human beings are playing a major role in global warming."

...Earlier this year, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals and about 100 other evangelical leaders issued a statement declaring that global warming is real and the result of mankind's actions. And Crouch, in his article, cites the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "whose scientific working group was chaired for many years by the evangelical Christian Sir John Houghton," and which concluded in 2001 that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

Crouch noted that, according to Houghton, the panel's findings were vetted by more than 100 governments including the United States, and the evangelical science expert himself stated that "No assessments on any other scientific topic have been so thoroughly researched and reviewed."

However, Crouch's article argues that because the global warming theory is difficult to confirm experimentally, those vocal skeptics who question it tend to find a ready audience among evangelical Christians. He posits that this may relate to "another politically loaded issue," that is, the long history of antagonism between biblical faith and evolution.

Here a couple of links on global warming to check out, via RealClimate:

The 2001 IPCC report
The Discovery of Global Warming

Continue reading...

Uncovering Deception

The temperature of the conversation having been somewhat hot for the last couple of days, I'm providing some material to cool down with--an optical illusion. I think I can confidently predict that, unless you have seen this before, you will not believe it.

Here it is:

Continue Reading




You probably cannot believe it. It is impossible--it cannot be true. Well, scroll down and see what happens when I remove everything but the two squares.



You probably still think that I am deceiving you. I invite you to save the image (right-click) and open it in your favorite image software (even Paint, which comes with Windows, will work) and play with it yourself.

What really gets me is that even knowing the truth, I cannot see it correctly.

(The blog citation chain seems to end at Marginal Revolution.)

Continue reading...

Recent Material on Homosexuality

FAIR has a review of the recent Deseret Book offering, In Quiet Desperation: Understanding The Challenge Of Same-gender Attraction.

The Boston Globe has an article, What Makes People Gay?, that I think is worth a read.

IN THE COURSE OF REPORTING THIS STORY, I EXPERIENCED A good deal of whiplash. Just when I would become swayed by the evidence supporting one discreet theory, I would stumble onto new evidence casting some doubt on it. Ultimately, I accepted this as unavoidable terrain in the hunt for the basis of sexual orientation. This is, after all, a research field built on underfunded, idiosyncratic studies that are met with full-barreled responses from opposing and well-funded advocacy groups determined to make the results from the lab hew to the scripts they've honed for the talk-show circuit.

The article mentions two recent studies. I blogged about the one regarding pheromones here. A news summary about the one regarding fruit flies is here.

Continue reading...

Harry Potter and Mendelian Genetics

This week's Nature has a letter suggesting that Harry Potter be used to teach genetics.

Wizards or witches can be of any race, and may be the offspring of a wizard and a witch, the offspring of two muggles (’muggle-born’), or of mixed ancestry (’half-blood’).

This suggests that wizarding ability is inherited in a mendelian fashion, with the wizard allele (W) being recessive to the muggle allele (M). According to this hypothesis, all wizards and witches therefore have two copies of the wizard allele (WW). Harry’s friends Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom and his arch-enemy Draco Malfoy are ‘pure-blood’ wizards: WW with WW ancestors for generations back. Harry’s friend Hermione is a powerful muggle-born witch (WW with WM parents). Their classmate Seamus is a half-blood wizard, the son of a witch and a muggle (WW with one WW and one WM parent). Harry (WW with WW parents) is not considered a pure-blood, as his mother was muggle-born.

In order to try out html tables I was going to do some Punnett squares, but they weren't quite right, and I'm lazy. Do them yourself.

Continue reading...