I was talking with a friend of mine who is an economist about science, and the great productivity in modern societies which allows for the perpetuation of narrow specialties in scholarship. I repeated to him my own hunch that if all scientists who were alive today disappeared and the next generation of aspiring scholars had only books and other instructional materials to go on, science would simply disappear as an enterprise. The point I was trying to get across is that scientific ideas are contingent upon a particular cultural framework. That is, science is a culture. And that culture is embodied in living human beings.

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Over at my other blog Herrick posts a response to 10 questions for Gregory Clark. Clark is an economic historian whose most recent book Farwell to Alms is making a splash. I read the book recently, but because I’m not well versed in economics I’ve held off saying much. I will add that Clark’s point that the typical humans of 1800 were poorer and less well off than those of 10,000 BCE is an important insight, and it is born out by decades of analysis of remains which show that farmers are on average underfed and nutrient deprived vis-a-vis hunter-gatherers.

As I have several times discussed the height of the Dutch (and other peoples) I was interested to come across a reference to this article. Unfortunately I don’t at present have access to the full article (without paying $30), but the abstract says:

In the late-Middle Ages and at the onset of the early modern period, the Dutch population was taller than in the first half of the 19th century. This inference is partially based on skeletal evidence, mainly collected by the Dutch physical anthropologist George Maat and his co-workers. A spectacular increase in Dutch heights began in the second half of the 19th century and accelerated in the second half of the 20th century. At the end of the 20th century, the Dutch became tallest in the world.

John Hawks follows up the monkey hybridization story, providing some important ecological context:

[T]he primary difference between the two species is cold tolerance: A. pigra can and does live at higher altitudes than A. palliata, ranging high enough that it must tolerate freezing temperatures
…
Larger monkeys with larger, more complex molars, differences in throat anatomy, and greater cold tolerance, in contrast to a smaller, more cosmopolitan species, with the opportunity for gene flow during interglacials. They sound like Neanderhowlers.

The Economist has a long piece about the impact that ubiquitous genetic testing will have on health insurance, especially in the United States. This part is crucial:

…If that is the consequence, then other ways of paying will have to be devised. Carol McCall of Humana, a big American health-care provider, thinks a move toward some sort of compulsory, universal coverage is inevitable, even in America. That need not necessarily mean a scheme financed mainly out of taxation, of the sort found in most other rich countries. However, social outrage over a rising class of uninsurables may make the government an insurer of last resort-particularly, as Dr Cecchetti observes, when some rich and powerful people discover that they, too, are not immune from the genetic lottery. He reckons testing will lead to individuals receiving a health score akin to today’s personal credit score. Those whose files come on screen to the accompaniment of flashing red lights will not find it easy to obtain cover for much less than the cost of paying for their treatment themselves.

Actually I think the key here is family. Just as surveys have found that having a friend or family member who is gay tends to change how one perceives attitudes toward gay rights, my own hunch is that genetic predispositions found among the circle of family and friends will tend have more of an impact than we might think. The distribution of mutational load being what it is it seems likely that uninsurables will be found across all classes and socioeconomic clusters, as opposed to the current population of uninsured which is disproportionately young, poor or marginalized in some way.

It seems that a coalition of non-Open Access journals, Partnership in Research Integrity in Science & Medicine, is out to take down journals like PLOS. I know people have to put bread on the table, but really there isn’t an open-ended guarantee that you can milk your business model forever. In any case, Blog Around the Clock has links to many comments around the web in regards to this issue.

Just wanted put a note here that I have two posts, here and here about a new incarnation of the “redheads are going to go extinct” meme. The current culprit is National Geographic Magazine. The only reason that I know about this is that there was a spike of traffic from message boards on my other blog attempting to debunk the story using some stuff I’d posted earlier.

I tend to assume that all people of taste and intelligence (e.g. readers of Gene Expression) will regularly check out John Derbyshire’s site, but in case they don’t, here is his brilliant review of a book by Robert Spencer.

Check out this new interview with Steven Pinker. It ostensibly focuses on his new book, The Stuff of Thought, though it covers a lot of ground. My own feeling is that the interviewer should have let the focus be more on Pinker than his own pet theories, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there.

Check out this new interview with Steven Pinker. It ostensibly focuses on his new book, The Stuff of Thought, though it covers a lot of ground. My own feeling is that the interviewer should have let the focus be more on Pinker than his own pet theories, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there.