What Dolly Wrought: Retro Report Looks at Cloning

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Last month I blogged about Retro Report, a new outfit that produces deeply researched videos that bring history up to date. I found today’s report especially interesting, as it explores some of the same material I wrote about inmy piece for National Geographic about de-extinction in April. The Retro Report team looks at the sensation caused back in 1997 by Dolly, the cloned sheep. All of the scare-mongering about armies of zombie clones has blotted out people’s understanding of cloning’s actual history, its disappointments, and its big impacts today.

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Pointing At the Minds of Elephants: My Column This Week For the New York Times

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Earlier this year, I wrote about a simple way to probe the mind of a dog: point to something and see if the dog understands your intent. Dogs generally do, and that’s remarkable. Many species, including our closest ape relatives, do a bad job of interpreting a pointed hand.This week in my “Matter” column for the New York Times, I look at a new study that suggests we add another species to the elite list of animals that understand pointing: elephants. Do elephants learn the meaning of pointing from humans? Or do these social behemoths use their trunks to point things out to each other?

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Elephants Get the Point of Pointing, Study Shows

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The New York Times, October 10, 2013

Link

We point to things without giving much thought to what a sophisticated act it really is. By simply extending a finger, we can let other people know we want to draw their attention to an object, and indicate which object it is.

As sophisticated as pointing may be, however, babies usually learn to do it by their first birthday. “If you don’t get that they’re drawing your attention to an object, they’ll get cross,” said Richard W. Byrne, a biologist at the University of St Andrews.

When scientists test other species, they find that pointing is a rare gift in the animal kingdom. Even our closest relatives, like chimpanzees, don’t seem to get the point of pointing.

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Evolution in Color: From Peppered Moths to Walking Sticks

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The color of an animal can determine whether it lives or dies. If it’s easily spotted by predators, it may well become a meal. Hidden nicely against its background, an animal can escape its enemies for another day.

The particular colors on an animals are determined partly by the genes its gets from its parents. That means that genes that hide animals can spread thanks to natural selection, leading to the evolution of exquisite camouflage. But that’s not to say that the animal kingdom has settled on a perfect, fixed palette. You can find mismatched individuals. Over the course of generations, a whole population can flicker between mismatched and well-matched.

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When Science Goes Wrong And Ways to Fix It: Video of My Lecture At Vanderbilt

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of delivering the Flexner Discovery Lecture at Vanderbilt to a packed room. My talk was entitled, “When Science Goes Wrong and Ways To Fix It.” I talked about some of the struggles the science community is facing with poorly replicated research and misconduct, and how we science journalists can make things worse by seizing on research to make huge claims. The video (complete with slides) is now online. Check it out.

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