Unless I hear an objection, I think I will close down the anonymous comments feature. I don’t get many comments on the blog in any case, but I find it frustrating when people are not confident enough in their statements to sign them. I also find it is used as an excuse for bombast at the expense of reasonable discussion.

Your views? (Let me guess — most of the responses will be anonymous?)

Head over to The Loom and see Carl Zimmer’s New York Times article on Crunching the data for the tree of life. I quite like the “Google Earth” analogy, and I certainly look forward to the day that we can zoom in and out of phylogenetic trees. (There is one major difference, however: the form of the planet shown in Google Earth is based on direct photos, whereas every phylogeny is a hypothesis that must be tested).

Well, it looks like Evolgen has decided to shut down indefinitely. I kept Evolgen on my feed list the whole time (plenty of others have been dropped, only a few re-added), and I enjoyed reading it. However, I can sympathize with blogging becoming a lower priority. Honestly, my posts have gotten fewer and farther between since last semester.

[rant]
I also was quite disappointed with the lack of response by the blogosphere to the special issue of E:EO on eye evolution, which I really thought would be of interest. (I think perhaps very few people read Genomicron anymore, after a sporadic updating for a few months).
[/rant]

So, anyway, farewell Evolgen, and I don’t blame you for leaving when you felt the blog had run its course.

I am a member of the Nature Network, though my blog there, Pyrenaemata, has been dormant for some time. That’s largely because I have enough trouble posting (semi-)regularly on this blog and its counterpart at Scientific Blogging (Genomicron 2.0). In any case, there is a forum message at the Nature Network (though I saw it on Sandwalk) that asks a set of questions about blogging that I thought I would answer.

1. What is your blog about?
   My blog is about science, in particular evolution and genomes. Much of the content of my blog has been about non-coding DNA, and the various myths and misconceptions that this topic entails. I veer into politics infrequently, and I also post some attempts at humour now and then. Unlike several of my favourite blogs (and no doubt to the detriment of my visit count), I do not talk about religion although I do discuss anti-evolutionism.
2. What will you never write about?
   Never say never — but I made a conscious choice early on to focus on science.
3. Have you ever considered leaving science?
   Not seriously.
4. What would you do instead?
   I would probably write. About science.
5. What do you think science blogging will be like in 5 years?
   I think more professional researchers will join the blogosphere as this becomes socially acceptable. The stigma that poking one’s head out of the ivory tower is not what real scientists do is quickly being replaced by an acceptance that the medium can be useful. I think (ok, hope) that blogs will become a more common source of science news than press releases. That said, I hope there is never any move toward making blogs a venue for actual science, as I believe the peer review system (flawed though it is) is essential.
6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?
   Nothing extraordinary per se, though more than one interview I have conducted involved the reporter indicating that he/she had found my blog.
7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?
   Somewhat. Early on I had an argument with Nick Matzke in which I was a little more adamant than was called for. However, in the end it worked out and we stay in touch. I have also written some posts that I am proud of — the one on Remembrance Day, I have been told, was very moving.
8. When did you first learn about science blogging?
   My graduate student introduced me to blogs about two years ago. It took a while for me to be convinced to read them (“I’m too busy for that” was probably my mindset), but then I began to see the value for finding information in fields outside my own. Plus, some of them are rather fun. Later, I decided I would try setting up a blog to talk about my research and related work. Voila.
9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?
   I list my blog in my “service” contributions as I consider this an exercise in public outreach, and that seems to go over ok.
   

There are many beneficial aspects to reading and writing blogs about science. I have found that they are often much better than news feeds (which generally are uncritical repetitions of press releases) for learning about research in areas other than my own specialization. This also makes them very useful for teaching, as new examples that otherwise might be overlooked can be found and added to the course material. Case in point, Not Exactly Rocket Science (a blog you should be reading, btw) has a post about a new paper in today’s Cell in which yeast behave in a cooperative way if they possess a certain “green beard” gene (Smukalla et al. 2008; see also Brown and Buckling 2008). I introduced green beard genes to my upper year evolution course back when I discussed altruism, but it so happens that this afternoon I will be covering major transitions, including the evolution of multicellularity. This paper provides a great way to tie the earlier discussion about altruism to the concept of very basic cooperative cell behaviour, cell adhesion, etc. Plus, I enjoy telling the class “Here is a paper that came out this morning…”.

If you don’t read John Hawks‘s blog, you probably should. He regularly has interesting posts about human evolution, and he appears to be someone who is sincerely interested in research and education. You can imagine, therefore, that it would be puzzling to me that he so badly missed the point about a recent review of the video game Spore in Science magazine.

John’s basic points in the post appear to be:

1) The scientists who critiqued the scientific basis of the game are “whiners”.

2) Dude, it’s only a game.

3) He hasn’t played the game, but there is no reason to criticize it from a scientific viewpoint.

4) Science shmience, the review should have told us how fun it is instead.

Some context is perhaps necessary here. The game has been promoted as being about science, in particular evolutionary processes. You can check out part of the documentary that was produced by National Geographic here. SETI has endorsed it on their webpage. A representative from the developer was quoted in the article as noting “Since the game’s release we’ve received a lot of interest from various schools and universities around the world, so that’s a good sign that there’s a lot of interest in [the] academic/education community.” Dude, it’s not just a game.

Within this context, a scientific journal contacted several researchers to provide comments on the game from the perspective of the science. It would seem reasonable, therefore, that the comments we gave were about science. If you want to see a review of how entertaining or interesting from a gaming perspective it may be, Science is not the right publication.

John also dislikes some of our ideas about how the game could be made more realistic, if indeed the goal was to simulate biology. We suggested some things like having consequences for design choices, a cost for major physical updates (e.g., less than 100% refund for exchanging parts), and some limitation on how much you can change in any single upgrade. All of these features can be found in other games.

I am hoping to be back to blogging more regularly in November, but so far this semester has been very hectic. For now, why not head over to Genomicron 2.0 at Scientific Blogging and have a look at their new design? Looks great!

For the new stuff, see this summary.

Congrats to Hank and the other people there — well done.