Category Archives: Miscellaneous

The Coyne paradox.

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From everything I have heard, Jerry Coyne’s new book Why Evolution is True is very good. I haven’t read it yet (it is on my list), but I am willing to assume that the reviews have been reliable and that he makes a superb case for the fact of evolutionary descent.

What I don’t understand is the consistent contradictions that seem to come up whenever I encounter his writings. For example…

  • He co-authors a very useful book on Speciation and is considered an expert on the topic. But the book includes almost nothing about punctuated equilibria (i.e., one of the major issues with regard to patterns of speciation in the fossil record), and he even misconstrues it as saltationist.

The idea of macromutational hopeful monsters, or “saltations,” had a prominent resurrection in 1980 when Stephen Jay Gould, as part of his and Niles Eldredge’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed that macromutations could explain the “jumps” in the fossil record. After getting a severe drubbing from geneticists, Eldredge and Gould retreated in 1993, claiming that they never suggested the idea of saltations. [See rebuttals here and here]

Until now, however, the prize horse in our stable of examples has been the evolution of ‘industrial melanism’ in the peppered moth, Biston betularia, presented by most teachers and textbooks as the paradigm of natural selection and evolution occurring within a human lifetime. The re-examination of this tale is the centrepiece of Michael Majerus’s book, Melanism: Evolution in Action. Depressingly, Majerus shows that this classic example is in bad shape, and, while not yet ready for the glue factory, needs serious attention. [See Majerus’s paper in E:EO about this]

  • He is a vocal critic of creationists, but he also defends the use of their favourite term “Darwinism”. Biologists rarely use it anyway (because, as I and many others feel, it is misleading both historically and scientifically), so this can only provide benefit to anti-evolutionists. He also doesn’t seem to grasp that it’s not that eliminating the term would cause creationists to vanish, it’s that they would no longer have the (let’s face it, effective) tool for persuading non-scientists that evolution is an ideology based on one man’s teaching.

Facebook groups.

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I tend to use Facebook only occasionally, but the existence of more and more evolution-related groups there has me thinking about logging in more frequently. Here are just a few. If you use Facebook, maybe stop in and see if any are of interest to you.

Science as art.

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Sometimes while doing science, one is struck by something in the same way that one is affected by beautiful art.

Not that these are the most amazing images ever (they weren’t meant to be artistic, just routine work), but I enjoyed them. They’re from a project on rotifers by one of my undergraduate thesis students. They’re both of Adineta vaga: the first is of the whole animal (the pink spots are the DNA), the second is the musculature on a confocal laser microscope. (Photos by K. Ashforth).

Bonus:

Here are some pictures I took several years ago. A is an ovariole from the ovary of a vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and B is the same from a flea (Ctenocephalides felis). The huge circles are nurse cells, which are very highly endopolyploid.

Mister Doctor Prof.

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I don’t get too concerned about things such as titles, but I have noticed that this year a more substantial number of students has been sending emails addressed to “Mr. Gregory”. I don’t know if the students this year are unaware that most professors hold a Ph.D. and therefore are “Dr.” and not “Mr.” (or “Ms.” as the case may be), but this seems to be much more common lately. Has anyone else noticed this?

I know this can get a bit confusing, so let me try to explain it, at least as the terms are used in North America.

The title “Doctor” and the abbreviated prefix “Dr.” come from the Latin for “teacher”, and are traditionally bestowed on those who have earned the highest academic degree attainable. The suffix Ph.D. is an abbreviation for Philosophiæ Doctor (L. “Teacher of philosophy”), with “philosophy” from the Greek for “love or pursuit of wisdom”. The Ph.D. is awarded in most academic disciplines, including science. Medical professionals may also hold the title “Doctor” even though they may do little or no teaching, with common degrees being M.D. (Medicinae Doctor, or Doctor of Medicine), D.V.M. (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine), D.D.S. (Doctor of Dental Surgery), and so on.

As a noun rather than a prefix, “Doctor” is usually reserved for medical doctors (“I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV”). Usually, the person teaching your course at a major university is a “Professor” and not a “Doctor” (noun) (“Are you really a mad scientist, professor?”). He or she does, however, use the prefix “Dr.”. Get it?

To make it more complex and Monty Python-ish, the prefix “Prof.” is not used by all professors. “Professor” (noun) is the position, but there are also ranks. In North America, these would be “Assistant Professor”, “Associate Professor”, and “Professor” (or “Full Professor”). In many cases, only full professors use the prefix “Prof.” in situations outside the university. I don’t use “Prof. Gregory” in non-university settings because I am not a full professor. However, I am a professor, not a doctor, although I use Dr. Gregory instead of Prof. Gregory. Right.

Perhaps that’s all too complicated to bother about. Here is the short version: When addressing a professor*, just go with “Dear Dr. So-and-so” unless he or she asks you to call him or her something different.

(*To clarify, this post is mostly for students)

Junk from Thomson Scientific.

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I like Web of Science a great deal. Nearly every paper published in at least the last 20 years is listed, and there are several extremely helpful tools like links to papers cited in and by any given article, total citation numbers, and citation alerts sent via email. It’s incredible.

I dislike scientific junk mail a great deal. It comes in two varieties, as with regular junk mail: electronic and snail. Jonathan Eisen has registered his frustration about the growing flood of solicitations, most of which, as I also have noted, are completely useless. It’s irritating.

Thomson Scientific is behind Web of Science — and, evidently, a lot of the junk mail.

I reprint here an email that went around this morning on the EvolDir, from Steve Jordan of Bucknell University:

Dear Colleagues,

A few years ago I began to receive many email and paper mail advertisements at my work addresses from companies selling scientific products. Most of these messages were of no interest to me, and their numbers have increased to the point of becoming a nuisance.

It turns out that Thomson Scientific (the Web of Science and Science Citation Index people) may be behind this flood of spam and junk mail that many of us receive. Thomson offers a product called “Scientific Direct” that harvests author contact information from the papers that we publish and sells it to marketers.

Here is a description from their website:

The Process is Simple. First, you consult with one of our list selection experts to create highly focused profiles. These profiles are then run against the multidisciplinary Thomson Scientific database. The resulting names are sent to you in the form of postal addresses or e-mail addresses, chosen carefully from the more than 500,000 international authors who have published papers in the top scientific, peer-reviewed journals.

I was disappointed to read this. I have never provided my contact information in a scientific paper with the goal of it being used to send me spam or thousands of pages of worthless and wasteful paper catalogues.

If you wish to contact Thomson about this practice, I suggest beginning here:

http://scientific.thomson.com/press/mediacontacts/

or here: customsales@thomson.com

Please let me know if you get a reply.