A reader pointed me to this fascinating, if tragic, article about the rise of rare recessive diseases among a schismatic Mormon sect which dominates Colorado City. This group has been in the news since the their “prophet” was just arrested. The article points out that because of the inbred nature of the community, and its small size, one particular rare disease, Fumerase Deficiency, has now become rather common. I have talked about inbreeding before. Most of us know the problems that crop up intuitively from experience, rare traits begin to spread in an inbred population. But, what needs to be emphasized is the greater problem from long term customary inbreeding, as is common in much of the Muslim world (and now in the Muslim Diaspora in the West), and in isolated cases as above.

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Lubos Motl asked me to comment on this majestic post by a computational biologist at Stanford. This paragraph is worth quoting:

I will enumerate three main points, all of which represent both a challenge and an opportunity. The first will deal with a scientific challenge of a theoretical orientation, namely the lack of a theory for biology. The second with the sociological organization of biologists and biology departments at the leading research institutions. And the third will be part science, part sociology, having to do with the focus of current experimental methods and programs on biomedical research as opposed to basic biological research. The challenges are listed according to my own judgment of their importance.

Here it is an important quote from my exchange with theoretical evolutionary biologist David Haig in regards to theory & biology:

Question: Do you believe most biologists, even evolutionary biologists, appreciate formal theory?
Answer: Most biologists do not appreciate formal theory. Theory is more respected by evolutionary biologists as a group.

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I stand with the other science bloggers in encouraging everyone to do what they can to oust the Creationist on the Ohio School Board. More from Ed Brayton, Chad, John, Bora, Kevin and Tara. If you lose enough small battles the big war is lost.

In the 10 Questions for A.W.F. Edwards, a mathematical geneticist, he was asked:
Like Fisher you have worked in both statistics and genetics. How do you see the relationship between them, both in your own work and more generally?
Edwards responded in part:
Genetical statistics has changed fundamentally too: our problem was the paucity of data, especially for man, leading to an emphasis on elucidating correct principles of statistical inference. Modern practitioners have too much data and are engaged in a theory-free reduction of it under the neologism ‘bioinformatics’.

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I noticed some blogs were talking about a new Pew Political Typology, and I decided to take their survey to see where I fit in. It said I was an Upbeat, which seemed wrong to me as I’m not that partisan (I voted for Kerry though my registration is Republican). So I took the Political Compass test, and I got my usual result:
Economic Left/Right: 2.13 (I’m fiscally conservative)
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.38 (I’m socially liberal)
I’m a moderate libertarian who leans toward the slightly more liberal side. My political intensity has been decreasing over the years, and I’ve probably gotten a bit more liberal, so the non-trivially partisan “Upbeat” result took me by surprise. Anyone else have a weird result from the Pew Survey? The questions seemed a bit too black & white for me. Not a big deal, but people talk about it as if the categories are meaningful.

Below the fold, same breed, or not?

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To the right you see a habanero pepper, 100-350 K Scoville units (Jalapeno is 2.5-8 K). I can eat 2 habeneros in one sitting and enjoy it. And what does not kill you can cure cancer. Hot dog! On the other hand, if I want something which is a little less spicey and has a more tangy, aromatic flavor, I really enjoy green Thai peppers. I’m the spicey ScienceBlogger.

Look at this bitch. No, seriously, check it out, he has this long ass post on fossils and paleoanthropology. How the hell am I supposed blog about human evolution with some pride & self-respect if John Hawks has to cover every damn angle!!!. I know a little about fossils, words like stratigraphy don’t terrorize me, but I just don’t have all the details of every damn fossil at the Awash site or Sterkfontein in my head. Fossils make me want to tear my hair out, how the hell am I supposed to ascertain if the Hobbit is a new species or a pathology? Hawks on the other hand looks at pictures and comes up with the conclusion that they are “without a doubt” a pathology. I can look at hotcaptcha and say, “without a doubt, butt ugly,” but a bunch of bones???
1) Yes, you should make sure to read John Hawks
2) But tell him to stop giving it up for free, the town slut is making it hard for the whores to put bread on the table

Real Clear Politics has a column titled The Secular Right which reflects upon the Mac Donald vs. God affair. Interestingly, the author linked to my post where I followed the debate in The Corner. A few months ago my summary of John Derbyshire’s summary of Judith Rich Harris’ work was linked from her site. Ultimately, I think this should be a clue to NRO that they need to invest in a more robust and user friendly content management system: their archiving blows.

Check out the tour (taxonomy?) of the ScienceBlogs over at 3.14. There are promises of summaries of each SB (I assume I’ll be the handsome ScienceBlogger!).

As a child it seemed that everyone preferred Lion Voltron to Car Voltron. I was a contrarian and asserted that I preferred Car Voltron, and yet in my heart of hearts I knew Lion Voltron was the true bomb. Is there an evolutionary psychological reason why Lion Voltron would be more popular than Car Voltron? I mean, there are lions on national flags, but cars? Lions play a role in mythology, and C.S. Lewis even selected a lion as a Christ analogue. Could it be cognitively lions give us more “free information” and inferential power? Could it be that Lion Voltron simply fit into a more relatable mental slot than Car Voltron? After all, Lion Voltron was set on a quasi-medieval planet. Quasi in that there was a monarch, witch and a castle, but they also had lasers and space ships. In contrast, Car Voltron (vehicle Voltron) was “lost in space,” and so the whole creation of a humanoid mega-bot seemed a little canned.
Addendum: Typing Voltron into google images just brings back Lion Voltron. You have to type Vehicle Voltron to find any of the other morph, and even then the iamges aren’t very good. Just goes to show, Lion Voltron does roar, even today.

Last week I pointed you to 10 questions for Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and hinted that there is another 10 Qs for another student of R.A. Fisher. Well, that time has come, today David B. posted his 10 questions for A.W.F. Edwards. I want to follow up last week’s theme in regards to population substructure, because A.W.F. Edwards has been the most prominent recent expositer of why phylogeny, clustering of populations, is still possible though we are a genetically young and homogenous species. We asked A.W.F. Edwards on his motivations for writing Lewontin’s Fallacy, and I think you’ll find the answer interesting (below the fold). I also believe that the this 10 questions is special because Dr. Edwards responded with multiple “mini-essays,” he even attempted a new elucidation of the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection.

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Recently, myself, RPM, afarensis, Robert Skipper, John Wilkins and John Hawks made about 10 assertions about evolution of about 10 words or less (some participants fudged, no worries, I’m not Tony Soprano). We all went in different directions, but issues that cropped up several times
* The relationship between selection and evolution, and its particular elucidation
* Mutation is not always deleterious
* Common descent of species
* Species concepts
* The fact that humans are still evolving
I haven’t done a rigorous comparison, so your thoughts are welcome.

This is the man….

OK, so I finally read Coming to Life by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Unfortunately, I am having a hard time finding something original to say. To recap, Janet, Shellee, Bora (hey, check out Bora’s link, books_coming_to_life_by_christ.php!), RPM, The Poreless One and PZ hit this book hard. The reviews are damn thorough, and you have a wide disciplinary perspective, from neuroscience to developmental biology to evolutionary genetics to physiology to biochemistry, and over into philosophy. How’s that for multidimensional?
So where does that leave me? Since I am so late already I figured I would post something, and when a brilliant thought pops into my head I can riff off of it in a follow up entry. But right now I’ll offer some quick impressions. I think this paragraph from PZ captures my own thoughts pretty well:

It wasn’t what I expected at all, but I think readers here will be appreciative: it’s a primer in developmental biology, written for the layperson! Especially given a few of the responses to my last article, where the jargon seems to have lost some people, this is going to be an invaluable resource.

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