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Feeble-mindedness Exerpts from "The Problem of Race Regeneration", 1911, Moffat, Yard & co., pg. 29-on. Ellis was one of Margaret Sanger's boyfriends. He was a member of the Eugenics Society (when Leonard Darwin was president) and so was she. Ellis wrote books on eugenics and sexology. Through promotion by eugenical societies, the "feeble-minded" movement went international. According to Samuel J. Holmes, as of around 1936 more than 20,000 eugenic sterilizations were performed in the USA and more than 56,000 in Germany. Havelock EllisIt is necessary to remember that feeble-mindedness is largely handed on by heredity. It was formerly supposed that...

Cilium Likened to GPSDec 27, 2008 — A story on Science Daily says that the primary cilium, a protrusion on most human cells that looks like an antenna, acts like a GPS system.  They “orient cells to move in the right direction and at the speed needed to heal wounds, much like a Global Positioning System helps ships navigate to their destinations.”     Not only that, says Soren T. Christensen (U of Copenhagen): “What we are dealing with is a physiological analogy to the GPS system with a coupled autopilot that coordinates air traffic or tankers on open sea.” ...

As the world faces an uncertain future, Britain's leading anthropologist toasts Darwin, born 200 years ago, for identifying adaptability as man's greatest asset Charles Darwin: His observations undermined the traditionally held view of 'stability of species' There is a strange object sitting on my desk as I write. It is a shiny sphere of fossilised, primeval slime. Known technically as stromatolites, this blue-green slime was the original ooze from which all life on this planet evolved. This painfully slow process began about 3,000 million years ago and has led, ultimately, to us, the extraordinary human species. Whenever my gaze happens...

This week’s feedback responds to a public policy statement on ‘creationism’ published in December 2008 by the Geological Society of Australia in their members’ newsletter, and made available on their website. The policy is couched in inclusive and learned language but when you look at the substance it turns out to be neither. The statement is discriminatory and anti-scientific, aimed at censoring beliefs that run contrary to the party line of the Society. This sort of behaviour is more in line with a dictatorship, and demonstrates how far the present leadership of the Society has departed from the ideals of...

For a species that went extinct more than 25,000 years ago, 2008 has been a hell of a year for Neanderthals. The ancient humans got their first complete mitochondrial genome sequence, their stone tools turned out every bit as efficient as ours, and we even heard them speak. Here are some of our favourite Neanderthal discoveries of 2008. Genome secrets revealedBig nose strikes againOur brainy cousinsMore DNA revelationsA voice from the pastMaking themselves prettyMaster tool makersThe butchers of Gibraltar

Steve Jones I find this very depressing. Do those teachers believe that they should also teach the possibility that water is H3O, that Bacon wrote Shakespeare and that babies are brought by storks? The logic is exactly the same: and there is just as little, or as much, scientific controversy about the idea of evolution as there is about those of physics and chemistry. Next year is, of course, Darwin Year – the 200th anniversary of his birth and 150th anniversary of publication On The Origin of Species). It is my profound hope (likely to be disappointed) that teachers and...

How real are you? Mary MidgleyHas science shown that people are, in some sense, an illusion? According to Mary Midgley, that is precisely what some scientists now preach. Focusing particularly on a claim made by Richard Dawkins, she explains why she believes these scientists are making a serious mistake.On being a semi-illusionAre you quite real? Are you (that is) at least as real as the parts that you are composed of - your cells, your genes, your molecules and electrons and quarks and the notions that are passing through your mind? Or are they more real than you? This may...

Tangled web of spider evolution The long Permarachne spinneret now known to be a tail (centre bottom) The species once described as the world's oldest spider is a more primitive version of the web-spinning modern spider, scientists have found. The parts of the Attercopus spider's described as spinnerets - the appendages that allow web-spinning - were not spinnerets after all. That means that the oldest "true" spider may have arrived 80m years later than previously thought. The results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and his colleagues first described Attercopus...

With the aid of a straightforward experiment, researchers have provided some clues to one of biology's most complex questions: how ancient organic molecules came together to form the basis of life. RNA, the single-stranded precursor to DNA, normally expands one nucleic base at a time, growing sequentially like a linked chain. The problem is that in the primordial world RNA molecules didn't have enzymes to catalyze this reaction, and while RNA growth can proceed naturally, the rate would be so slow the RNA could never get more than a few pieces long (for as nucleic bases attach to one end,...

More than a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons, according to a national poll of primary and secondary teachers. The Ipsos/Mori poll of 923 primary and secondary teachers found that 29% of science specialists agreed with the statement: "Alongside the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory, creationism should be TAUGHT in science lessons" Some 65% of science specialists disagreed with the statement. When asked if creationism should be "discussed" alongside evolution and the Big Bang 73% of science specialists agreed. That such a large minority of...

With the aid of a straightforward experiment, researchers have provided some clues to one of biology's most complex questions: how ancient organic molecules came together to form the basis of life.

Blacksburg, Va. – In 3.5 billion years, life on earth went from single microscopic cells to giant sequoias and blue whales. Scientists have now documented quantitatively that the increase in maximum size of organisms was not gradual, but happened in two distinct bursts "tied to the geological evolution of the planet," said Michal Kowalewski, professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech.

Now it has officially gone too far: Democrats, in their zeal to appear friendly to evangelical voters, have chosen celebrity preacher and best-selling author Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration. There was no doubt that Obama, like every president before him, would pick a Christian minister to perform this sacred duty. But Obama had thousands of clergy to choose from, and the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right...

Atheists consider themselves the supreme realists. They don’t believe in the “ghost in the machine” and ridicule those of us who believe that God exists and is the creator of the universe. But they do have a metaphysical problems relating to the origin of things. Does the universe have a beginning or an end? How did life begin? What was there in the beginning of things? The last question cannot be dismissed because the theory of evolution, which seeks to explain how we are what we are demands that there be a beginning. If life began an eternity ago, is...

University of Minnesota anthropology professor Kieran McNulty (along with colleague Karen Baab of Stony Brook University in New York) has made an important contribution toward solving one of the greatest paleoanthropological mysteries in recent history -- that fossilized skeletons resembling a mythical "hobbit" creature represent an entirely new species in humanity's evolutionary chain.

HIV is so deadly largely because it evolves so rapidly. With a single virus as the origin of an infection, most patients will quickly come to harbor thousands of different versions of HIV, all a little bit different and all competing with one another to most efficiently infect that person’s cells. Its rapid and unique evolution in every patient is what allows HIV to evade the body’s defenses and gives the virus great skill at developing resistance to a pantheon of antiviral drugs.“A huge amount of HIV diversity accumulates in the body of a patient with HIV, and it’s...

Expel the Creationists Dec 16, 2008 — Apparently Eugenie Scott of the NCSE is feeling no remorse from her appearance in Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, where she defended the actions of those who ruined careers, denied tenure, and deprived students and teachers of their academic freedom because they dared to question Darwin. Her latest piece in Scientific American is as adamant as ever: the creationists, ever morphing their tactics by a kind of sinister evolution, need to be eradicated. With co-author Glenn Branch, Eugenie Scott summarized the history of creationism and the court cases that have stymied...

The argument that God exists based on design figures nowhere in the Hebrew Bible There are some even in this sceptical age who still believe that God is an old man with a long beard. His name is Charles Darwin, patron saint of scientific atheists. Next year will be a double anniversary for followers of Darwin: the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species. We will no doubt hear it asserted that Darwin dealt a death blow to religious belief. That, it should be said, is quite untrue. What it dealt a...

Professors routinely give advice to students but usually while their charges are still in school. Arthur Landy, a distinguished professor of molecular and cell biology and biochemistry at Brown University, recently decided, however, that he had to remind a former premed student of his that “without evolution, modern biology, including medicine and biotechnology, wouldn’t make sense.” The sentiment was not original with Landy, of course. Thirty-six years ago geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, a major contributor to the foundations of modern evolutionary theory, famously told the readers of The American Biology Teacher that “nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light...

It’s not even Christmas or 2009 yet, but the cover stories on Darwin have started to hit newsstands. Latest to feature a whole issue to Darwin is Scientific American. Predictable themes are all there: Darwin was a genius, he was the greatest scientist in history, evolution is the keystone of all biology, and creationists are still trying to sneak their religion into biology classes. But also included are some weird topics like whether robots can be programmed to be evil. The editors gushed over Darwin in one short article entitled, “Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution” as if...