We’re all for open and objective discussions of scientific theories, right? Who wouldn’t be? If your kids are taking physics in high school, you want them to read critiques of gravity, right? After all, shouldn’t they know that there are some serious weaknesses in the theory of gravity? Right? For instance, the theory of gravity says that gravity makes things fall down. But planets don’t fall into the sun. They go around it. So which is it–down or around? Clearly the theory of gravity is deficient. Right?

Wrong, of course. You don’t teach critical thinking with patent nonsense.

Continue reading “Missing The Wrist” →

Earlier this year I wrote in the New York Times about the remarkable minds of hyenas. The evolution of their brains appears to have followed the same pattern ours have: an increasingly social life drives the expansion of some parts of their brains. This research is the work of Kay Holekamp, a zoologist at Michigan State University who has spent many years observing hyenas in East Africa. And now, continuing a trend that should strike fear into the heart of any science writer, another of my subjects has started a blog of her own. Notes from Kenya chronicles the adventures of Holekamp and her colleagues in their new field season watching spotted hyenas. (The picture above is from a recent spat they had with a lion.) Check it out.

Continue reading “Hyena blogging, live from the Serengeti” →

In case you haven’t seen Wordle, which totals up the words in a piece of text…here’s a picture of my book Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life. A pretty good likeness, I think. I like the way humans are overshadowed by the microbes–as in life. (Hat tip: Oliver Morton.) 

Originally published July 13, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.

Writing about the brain is one of the Black-Diamond challenges of science writing. We all think we know what’s going in our heads, and yet the cells and neurotransmitters and signal patterns don’t fit comfortably into our everyday metaphors. Linguist Mark Liberman at Language Log regularly writes devastating posts about how lousy a job journalists sometimes do writing about neuroscience news–especially when the research touches on our pat assumptions and stereotypes. (See, women really do think differently.)

Continue reading “Now Is The Time…” →

That’s what I told Moira Gunn, host of the radio show Tech Nation, in a recent conversation about my book Microcosm. Listen here. I hope you find it infectious. 

Originally published July 11, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.