If I were a woman accused of claiming my daughter’s child was my own, and I knew such accusations were false, I’d use science to prove myself right.

Everything.

As we approach November, I anticipate a tidal wave of blog posts on polls. Reading the polling data improperly is hazardous to your health. The disconnect between the polling and the 2004 election results nearly resulted in my death. Avoid my mistakes.
1. Remember that polls are always of a population that may or may not [...]

No one really argues about the validity of natural selection. Only the most hardened of young Earth creationists contest that organisms with more adaptive traits will preferentially survive and reproduce. The Intelligent Design crowd tends to wave this off as a trivial truth. Of course, they say, better traits are selected for. They instead claim [...]

I know that as a scientist, I am expected to loathe all imperial measurements–inches, cups, quarts, gallons and Fahrenheit. Whining about the United States’ failure to embrace the metric system? Default behavior for dim bulbs seeking to seem sophisticated.
You know what? I don’t like metric measurements for many daily tasks. Why? Factors!
The metric system is [...]

(Salim Virji)
Who doesn’t love the platypus? This is a creature bizarre enough to make marsupials feel better about themselves. The platypus, lactates (mammal!) and lays eggs (reptile!), grows fur (mammal!) and venom (reptile!).
This might be the single most interesting creature, from an evolutionary point of view, on the planet. About 315 million years ago, Amniotes–a [...]

Ready? Prepared to have your mind blown?
(cartoon via xkcd)
Ideas are tested by experiment. That’s all there is to science. This is the only bar an idea must be taller than to take the ride of science as a legitimate hypothesis.
An untestable, unknowable, incomprehensible supernatural force is required for the existence of living things–the central idea [...]

(Image from Takahashi et al., Induction of Pluripotent Cell form Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors, Cell (2007), doi:10.1016/j.cell.2007.11.019)
Ok. Now I believe.
Two groups working independently–Dr. Yamanaka’s lab in Japan and Dr. Thomson’s Lab in Wisconsin–have converted human cells into embryonic stem cell-like cells. This tremendous accomplishment is on par with the initial creation of human [...]

Seattle hosts one of the two major NIH-funded human embryonic stem cell research centers in the United States. This federally funded grant–ten million dollars spread over five years–is supplemented with private donations from the community.
What’s being done with the money: A course to train young scientists, training grant to fund them and community outreach [...]

I’ve just returned from a week long trip to Germany (Düsseldorf and Dresden) for scientific meetings on stem cell research and regenerative medicine–the land of cheerful public artwork, amazing cab drivers and tear-inducing-good mass transit. How many hybrids did I see? Zero
Some thoughts:
I.
Human embryonic stem cell research in Germany is under tight restrictions. It is [...]