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Cross-CheckGene-Whiz Science Strikes Again! N.Y. Times Hypes "Infidelity Gene"
The New York Times "Sunday Review" section has anointed Richard Friedman its go-to guy for touting behavioral genetics--or "gene-whiz science," as I prefer to call it. In March, Friedman, professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, proclaimed that researchers had discovered a "feel-good gene," which "makes some people inherently less anxious, and more able to forget fearful and unpleasant experiences." As I pointed out on this blog , Friedman's claim—like virtually all reported linkages of complex human traits and disorders to specific genes (see Further Reading )--is based on flimsy, contradictory evidence. […]Keep reading »
Extinction CountdownMemorializing the Wake Island Rail: An Extinction Caused by War
There’s not much to the tiny Pacific atoll known as Wake. Located roughly half-way between Guam and Hawaii, Wake is a loose u-shaped grouping of an island, three smaller islets and a sand flat, all situated around a beautiful blue lagoon. There’s not much there; in fact, there can’t be. […]Keep reading »
MIND Illusion ChasersIllusions in the Formerly Blind
Are illusions (the phenomena where subjective perception differs from objective reality) the exception or the rule in everyday vision? Do they represent visual processing errors or provide us with an evolutionary advantage? Are such misperceptions innate or something we learn? […]Keep reading »
Roots of UnityProof, Pudding, and Pi: Math Books that Will Make You Hungry
This spring delivered not one but two books containing both mathematics and recipes to my doorstep. The first, How to Bake Pi by Eugenia Cheng , is “an edible exploration of the mathematics of mathematics,” category theory. […]Keep reading »
Cocktail Party PhysicsPhysics Week in Review: May 23, 2015
Physicists Carved 'Logrithmic Spirals' Into Steel with Laser Vortexes. "I think this is a significant experimental step to elaborate the beauty of photons that follow a series of twisted patterns in space," MIT nanoplasmonics expert Nicholas Fang told Physics World . The Large Hadron Collider broke its own record again in 13-trillion-electronvolt test collisions, producing the first images of those collisions. […]Keep reading »
SA Dark Star DiariesFinding "Fringes": New Event Horizon Telescope Detections Start Trickling In
The technique that the astronomers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) use to observe black holes is called Very Long Baseline Interferometry , or VLBI, but it might as well be called Extremely Delayed Gratification Astronomy: it can take weeks or months after an observing run to find out whether the telescope array actually saw anything. […]Keep reading »
Cocktail Party PhysicsScience Writer Throwdown: Fear and Loathing of Physics
Breaking news: Physics has a serious image problem. Okay, that's not really news to anyone engaged in the Sisyphean task of physics-related education and outreach to the general public. But it seems the problem has spread to the science writing community. […]Keep reading »
Extinction CountdownGenetic Secrets of Brazil's Rarest Tree Revealed
For most species, an adult population of just 21 sparsely scattered individuals could be a pretty good indication of impending extinction. For one critically endangered tree, however, the future doesn’t look quite as bad as you might expect. […]Keep reading »
Plugged InShould the British Expand Heathrow Airport?
Air pollution from aviation in the U.K. leads to about 110 premature deaths across the country each year. An estimated 28% of these early deaths occur in people living within 20 miles of Heathrow. In turn, the British are facing a challenging question – just how should they manage growing demand for air travel? […]Keep reading »SA Anecdotes from the Archive
American Heavy Metal: "Dreadnought" Battleships, 1915
Reported in Scientific American , This Week in World War I: May 22, 1915 Naval technology progressed by leaps and bounds in the years before World War I. The British Royal Navy’s battleship HMS Dreadnought set a design standard in 1906: large, heavily armored, turbine-driven, with a main battery of large-caliber guns all the same size. […]Keep reading »
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