This is the second of several excerpts from my book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral. This is from Chapter Two. Series explained below; go here for context on this repub experiment. 2. Rumble at Glen Roy from Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral © David Dobbs, all…
Monthly Archives: May 2011
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“The Center of Gravity Has Shifted.” Carl Zimmer on the Arsenic Paper
by David Dobbs •
In a wonderful post at Slate, Carl Zimmer describes the one wonderful thing about the whole #arseniclife paper published last November, and has identified what will probably be its lasting contribution: The reaction to that paper both catalyzed and revealed the power of more open peer review — a fast, post-publication peer review by the wider…
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I’ll Be on NPR Saturday, Looking After My Dunbar Number
by David Dobbs •
Culture of Science, Uncategorized
Science Publishes “Arsenic is Life” Critiques. Game On.
by David Dobbs •
Alert readers will remember the scuffle that broke out last summer December over the “arsenic-is-life” paper by Felisa Wolfe-Simon and colleagues that claimed to have found that a bacterium from Mono Lake had been coaxed into substituting arsenic for phosphorous in its DNA. Many, including me, criticized both the paper and its presentation: the paper…
Culture of Science, Uncategorized
Reef Madness 1: Louis Agassiz, Creationist Magpie
by David Dobbs •
Below is the first in a series of self-standing excerpts from my book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral (Pantheon, 2005), that, in an experimental act of re-publishing, I will run a dozen or so of these over the next several weeks, partially serializing the book. Each post will stand on…
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Those Who Waited Get Impatient Too: or how new journo tools can get you out of old school
by David Dobbs •
A couple weeks ago, Ed Yong published a talk by RadioLab’s Robert Krulwich that went viral in journalism and science-writing circles, for good reason. Speaking to graduating journalism students at UC Berkeley, Krulwich, who does some fine blogging of his own, expressed his pleasure and wonder at how blogs, twitter, and other newish tools allow…
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The Old is the New New. So Paleoblog, Will You?
by David Dobbs •
A recent twitter exchange between Tim Carmody, Alexis Madrigal, Alison Arieff, and Brendan Koerner drew my attention to this nice Snarkmarket post from Carmody on digging up material from offline, which Carmody calls paleoblogging: Two weeks ago I praised Harper’s Scott Horton, who in addition to tiptop legal/political commentary regularly serves up poignant and relevant chunks…
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Vertigo City: A Climb WAY Up the Radio Tower
by David Dobbs •
A worker climbs a really skinny radio tower the height of the Sears Tower. Free climbs the last part. Vertigo city. See Also: A skier falls
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Jonathan Eisen Frees (Almost All) His Father’s Papers
by David Dobbs •
In a touching post at his blog, The Tree of Life, evo biologist and microbug master Jonathan Eisen reports that he has substantially completed the mission I described last week in my article Free Science, One Paper at a Time: finding and re-publishing his deceased father’s papers. Yesterday marked a major achievement in my goal…
Brains and Behavior, Uncategorized
What is Mental Illness? A Peek Through the Murk
by David Dobbs •
This guest post — a book review of Richard J. McNally’s What is Mental Illness — is by Jason Goldman, a University of Southern California graduate student in developmental psychology who blogs on behavior and psychology at The Thoughtful Animal. Goldman is also the psychology and neuroscience editor at ResearchBlogging.org and edited the science-writing anthology Open Lab 2010. When most…
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