I’ll bet that got your attention! A little while ago I was running through a seminar with a colleague. It was an end-of-semester trip through various ‘oddities’ in the biological literature, including things like the amazing corkscrew penises of mallard ducks & the tendency of some tree shrews to use pitcher plants as potties. ‘Hmmm,’ […]
Continue readingMonth: November 2010
so who are these ‘scientists anonymous’?
A friend of mine, who happens to be a biology teacher, recedntly forwarded me an e-mail. Quite apart from the fact that the sender had sent it to what looks like every secondary school in the country & didn’t have the courtesy to bcc the mailing list, there are a number of issues around it […]
Continue readingstunning biological image #2
I teach a bit of botany, to our first-year students. I really enjoy the subject & hopefully some of that rubs off 🙂 Anyway, I’m always on the lookout for new images to use in my lectures, & tonight I came across this stunning photograph by Eckhard Völcker, who has very kindly given his permission for me […]
Continue readingAlgae & isopods – a unique symbiosis
When I set essays for my first-year students to write during the semester, I try to give them a scientific paper on each topic to start them off. This means that I need to do some extra bedtime reading as I need to select those papers carefully. Today’s post is based on one of those: […]
Continue readingastrology can help achieve pregnancy? um, really?
Over at Grant’s, a commenter on one of his posts noted that, in its ‘World News’ pages, the Dominion-Post included an article entitled: "Pioneering’ astrology analysis may help women get pregnant after IVF treatment has failed". The commenter said he’d nearly choked on his weetbix when he saw that, & I can sympathise. I’d like […]
Continue reading‘the uncertainty of it all – understanding the nature of science’
With the implementation of the 2007 NZ Curriculum comes the need for teachers to think about how best to help their students to develop an understanding of the nature of science. The Nature of Science is the overarching unifying strand. Through it, students learn what science is and how scientists work. They develop the skills, attitudes, and […]
Continue readingbats and exam questions
The third question in last year’s Schol Bio paper was about bats – specifically, the ecology, behaviour, and evolution of New Zealand’s only two extant native land mammals, the lesser short-tailed bat & the long-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata & Chalinolobus tuberculata respectively). The long-tailed bat is a relatively new immigrant, arriving from Australia ‘just’ a […]
Continue readingmount st helens as a model for the grand canyon? somehow i don’t think so
Recently our local paper ran an article on Mt St Helens, which hit the headlines with a violent eruption back in 1980. The words ‘big bang’ were mentioned in the title. This seems to have struck a chord with one reader…
Continue readinga little exercise in critical thinking
Grant‘s just sent me a piece that a recent Sciblog commenter posted on a US website. (Oh, all right, it was the Huffington Post. Not a place to go for good science coverage, but anyway…) I knew a New Zealand dairy farmer who told me that her 9-year-old daughter had been growing breasts and pubic […]
Continue readingseven signs of bogus science
Over at Sciblogs there’s a lengthy comments thread on vaccination, following an excellent post by Darcy on some myths about vaccines. I hesitate to call the thread a ‘debate’ because, frankly, it’s impossible to actually debate someone who practices what evolutionary biologists would call the ‘Gish gallop’ – firing off so many factoids that you […]
Continue reading