Alison Campbell
topical 1080 - BioBlog
Nov 14, 2009 •
A couple of years ago now, we held a Cafe Scientifique with the topic 1080 - friend or foe? Topical then (it drew a large crowd, wtih people from both sides of the debate) & just as topical now. On the...
ten questions about intelligent design - BioBlog
Nov 13, 2009 •
A while ago now I wrote about the '10 questions to ask your biology teacher', promoted by Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute. It seems that - in the US anyway - creationists cdesign proponentsists have moved on: the list...
florence nightingale was a statistician - BioBlog
Nov 12, 2009 •
Just a quick post as I'm away on a panel meeting & my brain is tired - but here's something else from my file of 'things I didn't know': Florence Nightingale was a statistician.Now, I heard all about Florence Nightingale...
lumping, splitting, and the morphological species concept - BioBlog
Nov 11, 2009 •
A couple of weeks ago Marcus Wilson & I were down in Taranaki to run a Scholarship preparation day. During one of my sessions the biology students & I were discussing the concept of 'species'. Most of you are probably familiar...
a question of isolation - BioBlog
Nov 10, 2009 •
I spent a lot of last weekend marking exam papers from my first-year bio students. Most of them chose one of my essay questions (it's a team-taught paper & they had a choice of 3 essays in my section), &...
dinosaur footprints in new zealand - BioBlog
Nov 08, 2009 •
On the news last night we watched fascinating footage of dinosaur footprints, found at a location in somewhere near Nelson, in the South Island. (A secret location - if their whereabouts should become widely known, you can bet there'd be...
viral evolution – ‘evolution before our eyes’ - BioBlog
Nov 06, 2009 •
A quick post (I'm hoping to write something more substantial on a new paper, but at the moment I've got student appointments all day & I'm writing this in the gaps between two of them): this link is to a video...
fluoride reloaded - BioBlog
Nov 05, 2009 •
From the Letters to the Editor (we should, apparently, be concerned that most people don't know the form of fluoride in our drinking water...)...
turning kids on to science: the spectrum revisited - BioBlog
Nov 03, 2009 •
The following quote comes from an article about science clubs in the UK, aimed at 12 & 13-year olds & intended to stimulate interest in science:"The ultimate aim is to enthuse young people about learning again...We want the clubs to...
the importance of evolution for modern medicine - BioBlog
Nov 03, 2009 •
I've just started reading Richard Dawkins' latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, & I'm thoroughly enjoying it. (At this point I should confess to a small heresy - in the past I haven't always enjoyed his books. Not that they're...