Reading Time: 10 minutes When my Grade 5 class went through Ontario’s reproductive health curriculum in the mid-1990s, the boys and girls were separated, and received remarkably different lessons. Along with the basics of our changing bodies, I and the girls were shown how to use condoms through a banana demonstration, and told how important protection would be when […]
Biology
Posted inBiology
A biologist explains why ‘heartbeat laws’ are nonsensical
Reading Time: 5 minutes The proliferation of anti-abortion ‘heartbeat laws’ cynically conflate the spontaneous pulsing of cardiac cells with the beating of a heart, and the beating of a heart with the presence of a soul. Such magical thinking belongs nowhere near the laws of a secular democracy.
Posted inDeep Dive
Why we need to decolonize our thinking on archaeology
Reading Time: 13 minutes In a world of significant scientific illiteracy, it’s easy to point fingers at “the other side”. Religious extremists, and the politicians who leverage them for power, are a serious problem. But what habits have we formed, and what narrative structures exist in our media, that only make things worse? Today I interrogate my own weaknesses, […]
Posted inScience
Can we make science journalism better for everyday readers?
Reading Time: 8 minutes Every person with an active interest in the natural world has their personal bugbear when it comes to the way journalists write about science. Maybe it’s neuroscience. Maybe it’s a common engineering problem. For me, it’s evolution. I cannot stand the way that most mainstream media reports on evolution for the everyday reader. And since […]
Posted inScience
Scientific horoscope for Sun March 6th – Sat March 12
Reading Time: 3 minutes The scientific horoscope this week will show you where the future of computers is headed, how to reduce plastic usage, and the latest news on climate change from the UN. Pisces Health will be on your mind, Pisces. You may feel fishy. Want some smart advice? Don’t get caught in the ever-growing net of pseudoscientific […]
Posted inBiology, Education, Science
Tutors in a Pennsylvania public school district are teaching Creationism
Reading Time: 3 minutes A church ministry has found a new way to indoctrinate public school students, and the Pennridge School District in Pennsylvania is giving them the platform to pull it off. If you visit the district’s website, there’s a page that includes community resources for parents and students. As I write this, there are flyers for adult […]
Posted inBiology
Saving Haeckel: Why “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” isn’t so wrong
Reading Time: 4 minutes Haeckel’s theory about embryos was wrong. This long-understood fact, which never was part of evolution’s foundation, is a popular complaint from Creationists.
Posted inPsychology
Semantic paraphasia: The things we can’t help
Reading Time: 5 minutes I often mis-say specific words. I know the word I want and I’m thinking of the right thing at the time, but the wrong word consistently pops out. It turns out there’s a term for this situation: semantic paraphasia. Today, Lord Snow Presides over our brains — and the stuff we literally can’t help sometimes.
Posted inBiology
Organic material found in T-Rex fossils: Evidence of young earth?
Reading Time: 4 minutes T-rex soft tissue has been found inside dinosaur fossils that are tens of millions of years old. How do biologists respond to this embarrassing finding?
Posted inBiology
New DNA study tells us that we’re barely human at all
Reading Time: 4 minutes Today, Lord Snow Presides over the many, many facets of our humanity — and the messy DNA that makes us so.