Recently in Evolution Category

From the SSE website:¹

The Stephen Jay Gould Prize is awarded annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize individuals whose sustained and exemplary efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science and its importance in biology, education, and everyday life in the spirit of Stephen Jay Gould.

The winner of the 2009 Stephen Jay Gould Prize is Eugenie C. Scott. Dr. Scott has devoted her life to advancing public understanding of evolution. As the executive director of the National Center for Science Education she has been in the forefront of battles to ensure that public education clearly distinguishes science from non-science and that the principles of evolution are taught in all biology courses. She has served on the boards of many organizations, such as the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, and as a consultant to organizations from the National Academy of Sciences to WGBH/NOVA to the Mississippi Department of Education. In these efforts, she has been an important leader in the public sphere, molding and focusing the efforts of scientists, educators, lay people, religious groups, skeptics, agnostics, believers, scholars, and ordinary citizens through firm but gentle guidance.

Dr. Scott is a gifted communicator and public intellectual. She is a frequent guest on radio and television shows, and an eloquent spokeswoman for science. Her writings have illuminated the process of science to thousands, and her books have exposed the efforts of many groups in our society to hobble and undermine the teaching of science to our younger generation. The organization she helped create far transcends the considerable reach of her own voice, vastly amplifying her impact on public understanding. For these many reasons, it is extremely appropriate that Dr. Scott be the first recipient of the Gould Prize.

The National Center for Science Education has also posted a series of four videos on YouTube in which Genie talks about creationism, the nature of science, and the fallacy of irreducible complexity. Check them out.

The winner of the Stick Science contest sponsored by Florida Citizens for Science The winning cartoon was submitted by Richard Korzekwa from Los Alamos, NM. Click on the image for a larger version.

But I guess I have. I just discovered that E-Books Directory lists me as the author of Population Genetics (published by the University of Connecticut in 2008). The "book" in question is a set of course notes for my graduate course in population genetics. I released the notes under a Creative Commons license precisely to allow others to re-use them, and I'm delighted to find a link to them from an e-book directory. That may help more people to find them.

That's the title of Tim Beardsley's editorial in BioScience this month. Go read the whole thing. It's well worth your time, and it's short. Just to give you a taste of what you have to look forward to, here's my favorite paragraph:

[Evolution] is a breathtaking story: a process relying on random mutations for its raw material spurred the emergence of creatures who debate legal and ethical codes and care about their future. The evolutionary tale reveals us as constrained in crucial ways by our animal heritage, but also individually unique and uniquely able to envisage possibilities and make collaborative plans in a changing world. Good ideas, as well as advantageous genes, tend to spread. Teachers might find that these evolutionary insights, as well as the practical benefits stemming from natural selection, are an energizing counter to the misapprehensions of students who arrive in class believing that Darwinism promotes only immorality.

I've written before about creationism in Texas and why it's important that the new science standards teach them (students) science. I've also pointed out that

The overwhelming body of scientific evidence depends on and supports evolutionary theory, including virtually all of 20^th and 21^st century biology and all of geology and geophysics. No one has produced evidence inconsistent with the idea that all living things are descended from a single common ancestor. That's what "a well-trained, scientifically literate student" will learn. That's what a "focus on the empirical evidence and the scientific interpretations of that evidence" will provide.

And I've mentioned that the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) now has a YouTube channel. Well, NCSE continues to champion the cause of rigorous science education. Click through fro the latest.

The National Center for Science Education ¹ now has a YouTube channel. Here's how NCSE describes what you'll find there:

Here you'll find reports from the evolution/creationism wars--footage of contentious testimony, landmark and illuminating speeches, conference coverage, excerpts from television appearances, and presentations. In the future, look for classroom videos, tutorials for teachers, videos contributed by NCSE members, and much more.

For example, you can see Genie Scott's testimony in front of the Texas Board of Education (sample below).²

The Charles Darwin Foundation has compiled a checklist of all marine and terrestrial species known from the Galapagos Islands. You'll find six species of Geospiza, four of Sula, fifteen of Geochelone (including Geochelone darwini), and five of Darwinothamnus among many others. If you don't recognize those genera (and even if you do), head on over to the Darwin Foundation site and have a look.

You'll find the checklist at http://darwinfoundation.org/en/checklists/.

From Nature News:

The main Turkish government agency responsible for funding science has provoked outrage by apparently censoring a magazine article on the life and work of Charles Darwin.

The article was stripped from the March issue of the widely read popular-science magazine Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology) just before it went to press. The magazine, which is published by Turkey's research funding and science management organization, TÜBİTAK, also switched a planned cover picture of Darwin for an illustration relating to global warming.

Not surprisingly many Turkish scientists are outraged. "[A] group of university professors plan to read a letter of protest inside TÜBİTAK's headquarters on 11 March," Apparently TÜBİTAK's vice-president, engineer Ömer Cebeci, ordered the changes. As a result, "[t]he Üniversite Konseyleri Derneği (Association of University Councils), an academic society that represents young researchers, has called for Cebeci's resignation."

On February 12th we celebrated Darwin's 200th birthday. On November 24th we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of his publication of On the Origin of Species. To celebrate the day, a Facebook group has formed, and it's seeking a million members by November 24th. Here's a link where you can learn more.

And here are the membership statistics so far:

• Thursday, Jan 29.............400 members
• Thursday, Feb 12......200,000 members
• Sunday, Mar 1..........238,000 members

A few of you may know that I put together a series of simple simulations to illustrate principles of population genetics. I wrote the code a long time ago (in 1999 or 2000, as I recall), and I wrote it in Java, since it was the only language I could use to easily embed them in a web interface at the time.¹ I've been meaning to convert them to Javascript for some time, because there are a couple that don't seem to work properly on Macs and I haven't been able to figure out why.

Well, it turns out I don't have to bother. Our friends at Panda's Thumb are already doing it. Not only will the Javascript versions be more portable and likely to work with any modern browser than mine, but the interface is a lot slicker and more flexible. Head on over and check them out. I think you'll find them very useful.