Not all academics are bad writers but the exceptions are few and far between. Several recent articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education have attempted to explain why we can't write. There… Read More

The latest issue of the journal Science (Aug. 1, 2016) has an article on a recent paper by Aires et al. (2016) published in Developmental Cell. Here's the abstract of the paper ...Vertebrate… Read More

There are lots of things wrong with Mukherjee's best-selling book The Gene. I've listed a few things that I know about [What is a "gene" and how do genes work according to Siddhartha Mukherj… Read More

My friend and colleague, Alex Palazzo, alerted me to an interview of Bill Martin published in the July 11, 2016 issue of Current Biology [Bill Martin]. I loved all his answers—Bill Mar… Read More

There's an article about junk DNA in the latest issue of New Scientist (July 27, 2016) [You are junk: Why it’s not your genes that make you human]. I've already discussed the false mem… Read More

There's an article about junk DNA in the latest issue of New Scientist. The title is: You are junk: Why it’s not your genes that make you human. The author is Colin Barras, a science w… Read More

I wish people would stop referring to "THE" Theory of Evolution. What they really mean, of course, is "The Theory of Natural Selection"—part of modern evolutionary theory. There's no q… Read More

Here's an interesting article about the biggest problems in (American) science: The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists. Most of them apply to science in other cou… Read More

Today is the Fête Nationale in France known also as "le quatorze juillet" or Bastille Day.This is the day in 1789 when French citizens stormed and captured the Bastille—a Royalis… Read More

Praveen Sethupathy is a genetics professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. He explains why he is a Christian and why he is "more than his genes" in A… Read More

The editors of Science recognize that they have a problem. They aren't very transparent or trustworthy. This is true. These same editors have been guilty of publishing and promoting lots of… Read More

I recently posted some thoughts on the complexity of the scientific literature noting that many papers are simply too difficult to understand. This includes papers that are well within my ar… Read More

It's difficult to explain fundamental concepts of biology to the average person. That's why I'm so interested in Siddhartha Mukherjee's book "The Gene: an intimate history." It's a #1 bestse… Read More

Suzan Mazur has been making a name for herself by promoting the overthrow of modern evolutionary theory. She began with a lot of hype about the Alternberg 16 back in 2008 and continued with… Read More

TED-Ed is the educational arm of TED. Here's what TED says about itself and about TED-Ed ...TED believes passionately that ideas have the power to change attitudes, lives, and ultimately, th… Read More

A recent paper by Cordero et al. (2016) looked at the biological scientific literature in 1993, 2003, and 2013. They found that the average publishable unit (APU) almost doubled in twenty ye… Read More

Science addressed the problem of How to (seriously) read a scientific paper by asking a group of Ph.D. students, post-docs, and scientists how they read the scientific literature. None of th… Read More

I'm curious about whether Intelligent Design Creationists still think their prediction about junk DNA has been confirmed.Here's what Stephen Meyer wrote in Darwin's Doubt (p. 400). The nonco… Read More

I'm going to London next November to attend The Royal Society conference on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. This is where all t… Read More

If you knew the complete genome sequence of someone could you tell where they came from and their ethnic background (race)? The answer is confusing according to Siddhartha Mukherjee writing… Read More

I'm working on a review of "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It raises a huge number of issues about science writing and the conflict between producing a bestseller and educating the publi… Read More

Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of population genetics.Michael Lynch (2007)A recent editorial in the magazine New Scientist caught my eye. The title is "Long Live Evolut… Read More

My colleague, Ben Blencowe, just published a paper ...Sharma, E., Sterne-Weiler, T., O’Hanlon, D., and Blencowe, B.J. (2016) Global Mapping of Human RNA-RNA Interactions. Molecular Cel… Read More

I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. If you haven't listened to "Storm" then you are in for a treat because now you can listen AND watch. If you've heard it before, then hear i… Read More

I'm on sabbatical this term, working on a possible book whose working title is "What's in Your Genome: 90% of your genome is junk."Here's some of the most important books I've read (or re-re… Read More

We all know that the purpose of education should be to teach students how to think critically. We're not doing a very good job. Take biochemistry, for example. We spend a lot of time transfe… Read More

The Enclyopedia of Evolutionary Biology is a four volume set of articles by leading evolutionary biologists. An online version is available at ScienceDirect. Many universities will have free… Read More

Otangelo Grasso just posted another one of his screeds. This time it's on photosynthesis. All of his "essays' conform to the same pattern. He looks for some complex set of biochemical reacti… Read More

Monday, April 11, 2016My DNA ancestryI sent a DNA sample off to ancestry.com a few weeks ago and here are the results.Monday, November 30, 2015Celebrating Lucy Maud MontgomeryToday Google ce… Read More

Ancestry.com (ancestry.ca) has this neat feature where they combine all their family trees into a big "One World" tree. If you know your ancestors, you can access the "one world" tree and ch… Read More

There's a group of biologists who think that the current version of evolutionary theory is insufficient. They want to create an extended evolutionary synthesis that incorporates evo-devo, pl… Read More

By now, we all know that a "theory" in science is much more than idle speculation, a point that has been made repeatedly over the past century. With respect to evolution, the most famous ess… Read More

The Templeton Foundation will fund a group of researchers who promote something called "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" (EES). The grant is for $8 million (US). The project is headed by… Read More

I sent a DNA sample off to ancestry.com a few weeks ago and here are the results.Ancestry has a peculiar way of identifying haplotypes. When they say "Ireland," they mean Ireland and Scotlan… Read More

The December issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach has a review of two books on junk DNA. The reviewer is Georgi Marinov, a name that's familiar to Sandwalk readers. He is currently wor… Read More

The latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach contains a review of two books about evolution written by philosophers. The author of the review is Egbert Giles Leigh Jr. You can read… Read More

Nessa Carey's book about junk DNA is an embarrassment to the scientific community [Nessa Carey doesn't understand junk DNA] [The "Insulation Theory of Junk DNA"]. Today, while searching for… Read More

We've been having a discussion on another thread about ID proponents. Are some of them acting in good faith or are they all lying and deceiving their followers?I have similar problems about… Read More

Last night's debate between Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Meyer, and Denis Lamoureux was very entertaining. I finally got to meet Stephen Meyer in person. (My photographer wasn't very good at foc… Read More

The Mysterious World of the Human Genomeby Frank RyanWilliam Collins, an imprint of Harper Collins, London UK (2015)ISBN 978-0-00-754906-1This is just another "gosh, gee whiz" book on the am… Read More

I'm not a fan of TED talks. Comedian Will Stephen has figured them out and he gives a perfect example of everything that's wrong with a TED talk. Watch "How to sound smart in your TEDx Talk… Read More

I was reading up on non-coding RNAs and came across this recent paper.Bhartiya, D., and Scaria, V. (2016) Genomic variations in non-coding RNAs: Structure, function and regulation. Genomics… Read More

The University of Toronto publicity department is making a big deal of Rachel Harding. She's a post-doc in the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC). She works on Huntington's disease. Here's… Read More

The first drafts of the human genome sequence were published in 2001. There was still work to do on "finishing" the sequence but a lot of the International Human Genome Project (IHGP) team s… Read More

Postgenomics is a compendium of twelve scholarly articles by philosophers and sociologists who write about the implication of the human genome sequence and subsequent work on interpreting th… Read More

One of the biggest problems with the Intelligent Design Creationist movement is their attempt to corral all creationist under the same big tent. This leads to a situation where Young Earth C… Read More

Here's a video where Michael Denton describes his view of biology. The main point is that he cannot think of a way for evolution to produce the "hierarchy of nature." Therefore goddidit ther… Read More

Hosted by Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto (Toronto, Ontario, Canada): Religion and Society Series - God, Science and the Universe.Has a scientific explaination of the universe… Read More

Most of you are familiar with the long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) run by Richard Lenski. One of the cultures in that experiment evolved the ability to use citrate as a carbon source. N… Read More

Intelligent Design Creationists are promoting a structuralist view of evolution [What is structuralism?]. The idea is that the history of life as we know it was largely preordained by the in… Read More

Watch Paul Nelson combine his lack of knowledge of evolution and evolutionary theory with misinformation (i.e. lies) and a little bit of false developmental biology then stir the pot with a… Read More

A large statue of Charles Darwin was installed in the main foyer of the London's Natural History Museum in 1885—just a few years after Darwin's death. It was removed in 1927 and replac… Read More

Watch Paul Nelson combine his lack of knowledge of evolution and evolutionary theory with misinformation (i.e. lies) and a little bit of false developmental biology then stir the pot with a… Read More

The draft sequences of the human genome were published fifteen years ago. The International Human Genome Project (IGHP) published its draft sequence in Nature on Feb. 15, 2001 (Lander et al… Read More

Antonin Gregory Scalia (March 11, 1936 – February 13, 2016), justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, died a few days ago. This creates a crisis in American politics because… Read More

Who was Saint Valentine? Nobody really knows very much about the Saints Valentine (there were about a dozen of them). The whole idea of romantic Valentine's day seems to have been invented b… Read More

Readers of this blog will know that I'm a fan of Evolution by Accident. I don't think that the history of life can be explained in strict Darwinian terms (i.e. natural selection) and I think… Read More

This is another post about the stupidity of Intelligent Design Creationists. Stop reading if you don't need any more convincing.Today is Darwin Day. It's the anniversary of the birth of Char… Read More

Michael Denton and the Discovery Institute are promoting his new book, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. I haven't yet read the book. I ordered from Amazon.ca and I won't get it until Mar… Read More

The blog "Conceptual Revolutions in Science" only publishes "evidence-based, paradigm-shifting scientific news" according to their home page.The man behind the website is Adam B. Dorfman (@D… Read More

Some of you are aware of recent attacks on Richard Dawkins. This video by Brian Dalton (Mr. Deity)1 is directed at certain people who have led the attacks. Some of them are my friends but I'… Read More

All available evidence suggests that we are quite likely the only advanced life form in the Milky Way galaxy. Maybe our planet harbors the only life in the entire universe Read More

Matthew Cobb wasn't happy with the way Denis Alexander reviewed Jerry Coyne's book. Recall that Denis Alexander is a biochemist at Cambridge University (UK) and we had a little debate a week… Read More

Some of you may not be able to come to our little "dialogue" tomorrow night. Don't worry, you can watch it on YouTube: Is There a Conflict Between Science and Religion? Read More

Jerry Coyne discovered a Quiz on DNA. He calls is a so-so quiz on DNA. He says that one question is really, really, dumb. I disagree, I think there are several dumb questions.I tried it and… Read More

The Intelligent Design Creationists are promoting Michael Denton's new book Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. The new buzzword is "structuralism" and it's guaranteed to impress the creati… Read More

You are probably wondering why "Darwinism" persists after the creationists have thoroughly demonstrated that it is a failed theory. Lucky for you, the most intelligent and intellectual of al… Read More

It's fun to listen to the "ID the Future" podcasts. It shows us the very best of Intelligent Design Creationists. This time we get a twofer— David Berlinski and Michael Denton posing t… Read More

Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene 40 years ago and Matt Ridley notes the anniversary in a Nature article published today (Jan. 28, 2016): In retrospect: The selfish gene.I don't rem… Read More

Currently there are two distinct views on the origin of life. The majority of scientists think that life arose in a prebiotic soup of complex organic molecules. Most of them think this "warm… Read More

Some of you may not be able to come to our little "dialogue" tomorrow night. Don't worry, you can watch it on YouTube: Is There a Conflict Between Science and Religion? Read More

The answer is "no" according to Jerry Coyne and I agree with him [“Other ways of knowing”: Out of Africa].What about music, art, and literature? I agree with him on that as well… Read More

James McGrath is a professor of religion at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He is one of those "sophisticated theologians" who dismiss modern atheists because we haven't spe… Read More

Back in 2010, Richard Dawkins was answering questions on Reddit and one of the questions was "Out of all the evidence used to support the theory of evolution, what would you say is the stron… Read More

Confirmation bias is one of the major logical fallacies. When philosopher Chris DiCarlo and I were teaching a course on critical thinking we used to spend quite a bit of time on it because i… Read More

I'm reading Creation or Evolution: Do we have to choose? by Denis Alexander in preparation for our discussion next Friday at Wycliffe College on the University of Toronto downtown campus [Di… Read More

When We’re Sixty Four (Thousand) Read More

I was searching for information about Craig Venter and his position on junk DNA when I stumbled upon this post by Bryony Graham: Why we still don’t have personalised medicine, 15 years… Read More

The sequence of the human genome was announced on June 26, 2000 although the actual sequence wasn't published until a year later. There were two sequences. One was the product of the Interna… Read More

Judge Starling (Dan Graur) has alerted me to yet another young biologist who hasn't bothered to study the subject of genomes and junk DNA [An Ignorant Assistant Professor at @BrandeisU Expla… Read More

I criticized Nelson Lau for comments he made about the junk DNA debate [Brandeis professor demonstrates his ignorance about junk DNA].Here is his response,Dear Dr. Graur and Dr. Moran,Thanks… Read More

We know quite a lot about the origin of new genes (Carvunis et al., 2012; Kaessman, 2010; Long et al., 2003; Long et al., 2013; Näsvall et al., 2012); Neme and Tautz, 2013; Schlött… Read More

Massimo Pigliucci is an atheist who thinks that science and religion are compatible because they rule in different domains. He takes a very narrow view of "science"— one that excludes… Read More

This is Kristen Auclair of Christians Against Dinosaurs. It is mind-boggling Read More

I've just registered for the Royal Society meeting on New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives to be held on Nov. 7-9, 2016.I'm looking f… Read More

Joshua Kim posted an article on Inside Higher Education last month (Dec. 8, 2015). The article described his answers to some questions he was being asked in a interview [How Would You Answer… Read More

Watch two medical educators from my Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. They are being interviewed by Steve Paiken of The Agenda. They rightly deplore the traditional lecture… Read More

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Ewan Birney (Genomic's Big Talker of ENCODE notoriety) has a new post called In defence of model organisms.He brings up two points that are worth discussing.What is a model organism?There ar… Read More

Sandwalk readers have been discussing the way Intelligent Design Creationists have been calculating probabilities [see Intelligent Design Creationists are very confused about epigenetics and… Read More

I've been trying to figure out why Intelligent Design Creationists are so excited about epigenetics. They seem to think it's going to overthrow everything we know about evolution (= "Darwini… Read More

Vincent Torley read a post by Jerry Coyne where Jerry wondered if Intelligent Design Creationism was in trouble because the Discovery Institute has lost Bill Dembski and Casey Luskin [Is the… Read More

Casey Luskin is trying to help out a university student by describing some important ID contributions to science [No ID Research? Let's Help Out This Iowa State Student].One of those contrib… Read More

Casey Luskin is worried about university students. Apparently, they aren't getting enough correct information about intelligent design. Luskin uses the example of a student named Michael Hec… Read More

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is the main source of research funding for Canadian health researchers, including those doing basic research like most of the researchers in… Read More

Joe Hanson Ph.D. (Biology) of It's Okay To Be Smart is posting a series of videos on evolution. They're called The 12 Days of Evolution.The first one is "What Is Evolution Anyway?" You won't… Read More

A couple of years ago I posted an article on How Did the Zebra Get Its Stripes?. I pointed out that this wasn't a Rudyard Kipling story but that many of the explanations had strong ties to j… Read More

Although all types of creationists are anti-science to some degree,1 the Intelligent Design Creationists are unusual because they don't just ignore science, they try to use science to show t… Read More

Apparently there are some creationists who are slightly embarrassed that they don't understand evolution. First, there was Vincent Torley who made an attempt to understand population genetic… Read More

I know I've said this before, but I continue to be astonished at the ignorance of creationists. Those who oppose evolution most vehemently don't understand it in spite of the fact that they… Read More