Much to chew on about many meats

Mark A Jobling [pictured here] of the University of Leicester writes about the genetic underpinnings of exotic meats. His essay, called “Flogging a dead horse“, appears in the journal Investigative Genetics [2013, 4:5]: People eat mules, as well as donkeys and horses, and in meat contamination testing, mule meat would appear to be horsemeat, because of the […]

“The more we learn, the less we understand”

“The more we learn, the less we understand,” says geneticist Steve Jones about genes and genetics, in this Lost Lecture: David Dobbs pursues this theme in the essay “Weighing The Promises Of Big Genomics“, in Buzzfeed: …“Many genes of small effect” became a sort of tepid curse. I myself prefer the stronger, more memorable phrase “Many Assorted […]

The omnibus mixed-up paternity/genetics/academics adventure of T. Lippert

The Faculty Lounge blog has a long (but riveting!) account of the very strange story of Tom Lippert. One of its many aspects echoes of the story of Cecil Jacobson (Dr. Jacobson was awarded the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in biology for devising a simple, single-handed method of quality control. [REFERENCE: “The Babymaker : Fertility Fraud and the Fall […]

Improbable Research