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Genetics and Democracy in the United Kingdom
Solving the democracy deficit through modern science With the impending union of male and female royalty breeders, there has been increasing tendency to cite Thomas Paine’s evergreen mockery: “the...
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Who needs math?
According to a study by sociologist Michael Handel, summarised here by Jordan Weissman, 75% of American workers never use any mathematics more complicated than fractions in their work. (It goes without...
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Genetics and Democracy in the United Kingdom
What is the attraction of monarchy? According to the BBC headline “Kate Middleton in labour as world waits”. Really? The world? What exactly are they holding off on? Doesn’t the world have important...
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The biggest genetics-investment opportunity ever!
I was just looking at this paper from 2012, that purports to discover the heritability of economic and political preferences by slightly shady statistical analysis of GWAS data. And then it hit me: We...
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Primary sex ratio, the short version
Five months after our article with Orzack et al. appeared in PNAS, showing that the primary sex ratio (the fraction of boys conceived) is close to 50%, contradicting centuries of supposition that it...
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Political DNA
As someone who actually works with DNA — or, at least, DNA data — I find the drift of the colloquial use of “DNA” disturbing. It’s impossible for me to avoid the resonances of biological determinism,...
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Schrödinger’s menu
I was just rereading Erwin Schrödinger’s pathbreaking 1944 lectures What is Life? which is often praised for its prescience — and influence — on the foundational principals of genetics in the second...
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Achieving transparency, or, Momus among the rotifers
At the recent Evolutionary Demography meeting in Miami there were two talks on the life history of rotifers. One of the speakers praised rotifers as a model organism for their generously choosing to...
View ArticleFinding the mitochondrial Na’ama
I was having a conversation recently about Biblical ancestry and the antediluvian generations, and it got me to thinking about how scientists sometimes like to use biblical references as...
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The mythical pre-history of plant-based meat
In reading Matthew Cobb‘s fascinating new book on the history of ethics and genetic engineering I came across this quote from Martin Apple, president of the world’s first transgenic plant research...
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