Not for lack of trying. From The Guardian: Men and women aren’t authors of themselves, as a character in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus remarks of its proud protagonist, but neither are they slaves of their genes. When Richard Dawkins describes human beings as “survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes”, his language is redolent of neoliberal capitalism as well as the scientist’s laboratory. To see people in this demeaning way is simply the flipside of the idealising talk of pure autonomy. If the former captures something of the bleak reality of the marketplace, the latter belongs to the heady rhetoric that helps to legitimate it. Some neuroscientists imagine they have dispatched the idea of freedom Read More ›

So The Scientist wonders: “It’s always difficult to claim absolutely a new lineage until you’ve done some biochemical tests,” said microbial ecologist Jack Gilbert of Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, who was not involved with the study, “but, genomics-wise, this thing appears to fit outside of our current understanding.” Genomic analyses place Kryptonia in the Bacteroidetes superphylum, whose members thrive in the gut and in marine environments. If confirmed, Kryptonia would be the first extreme thermophile found in this group. Kryptonia appears to have acquired this characteristic through horizontal gene transfer from Archaea.

For the same reasons as he once “believed in” Freudian psychiatry, according to Laszlo Bencze: Freudianism triumphed (for a while) not because of its scientific value but because of its language. Freud was a high grade intellectual fully immersed in the ancient classics and literarily sophisticated. He used the language of writers, artists, and critics in crafting psychoanalysis. When people read Freud they were exposed to unusual ideas in language that felt like an old shoe. An ex British schoolboy who had struggled with Latin and Greek felt masterful in encountering discussions of the Oedipus Complex. It flattered him to know that his literary wrestling matches had finally paid off in deep understanding. There never was anything truly demanding in Read More ›

Here: The new fossil is the only record of an adult female insect from the Mesozoic, an era that spanned roughly 180 million years. The Mesozoic era was the age of the reptiles and saw both the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, as well as the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. The female ensign scale insect is preserved in a piece of amber retrieved from a mine in northern Myanmar (Burma). The specimen was trapped while carrying around 60 eggs and her first freshly hatched nymphs. The eggs and nymphs are encased in a wax-coated egg sac on the abdomen. This primitive form of brood care protects young nymphs from wet and dry conditions and from natural enemies until Read More ›

U Chicago Darwin prof: Must be true: Yet while there’s no doubt that we’re changing the planet, the claim that we’re completely changing evolution on the planet does not follow. Let’s take those fish that are evolving to reproduce smaller and younger. This phenomenon has been documented in many species that we eat, but this is just a minuscule fraction of the 30,000 known species of fish. WHAT? Which third rate Darwin high school teacher knew this fact? When the authors examine our own species, the evidence is even less convincing. Recent increases in diagnoses of autism, allergies and obesity are certainly real, but they have no obvious connection with how we’re evolving. … No, but Darwinism is a cultural Read More ›

Against would-be US prez Ted Cruz (who was born in Canada, so that’ll be the next big thing): Here: Virtually all of modern biology and medicine has its basis in evolution. No serious scientist disputes that evolution is by far the best explanation for the species around us, and for a thousand other phenomena that scientists study every day. The debate about the fact of evolution is long over. As a scientist, I find it just embarrassing to have prominent U.S. politicians publicly deny evolution. Aw, get real for once: 1. Virtually all of modern biology has its basis in the cell theory of life and the germ theory of disease. Even a seven-year-old can understand this: The history of Read More ›