PhDP

I'm also looking for a good intro to modern physics. It's certainly not as interesting as theoretical evolutionary biology but it's still a fascinating area of science I saw; Introduction to the Basic Concepts of Modern Physics: Special Relativity, Quantum and Statistical Physics, somebody knows if it's a good intro ?

Most M.Sc/Ph.D students are working as reasearch assistant/teacher's assistant. After you get your Ph.D., if you want to teach/do research at an university, then yes the salary is quite good, above 100k pretty much anywhere in North America. And although it's a lot of work, few people can enjoy as much freedom in their job as uni. teachers...

Is it me, or most of the time when the expression "political correctness" is used in a debate, it's simply a fallacious argument to discredit an idea with minimal effort ? In short, it's a straw man. Not that "political correctness" doesn't exist, but it's not, in itself, an argument. It's just amazing to see how far people are ready to go just to avoid a debate of substance.

Yes, but the thing is; phylogenetic trees are hard to built, you have to be careful about the number of species and the number of traits. For only 20 species, there's ~8 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 possible rooted trees.

Pseudogenes are predicted by the neutral theory and as far as I know, making predictions is not pseudoscience; it's something that "real" scientists do. "Completely useless" ? Nobody said "junk DNA" was completely useless (or if they did, they shouldn't), you're trying to change to definition. "Junk DNA" is noncoding or coding unnecessary products. As a gene, a pseudogene is functionless, but some believe the C value (size of the genome) has some adaptive value, so in a way, even if a gene is junk, it could have a function as "filler". In short, "junk DNA" doesn't means it's useless in every sense of the word. I want to emphasize this; pseudogene are predicted by the neutral theory and the theoretical argument, in itself, is very solid (mostly because it's very simple). If the selective value of a gene wanders too close to zero, it'll eventually be hit by a mutation that will destroy the function of the gene, making it "junk", i.e.: nonsense mutations. In the case of true junk, it happens after a duplication event. So the concept of junk DNA relies on a limited numbers of things; - Mutations can destroy genes (even creationists agree on that). - Duplication (in the case of "true junk"). - Neutral theory; neutral, or even slightly deleterious mutations will reach fixation, also it explains why the pseudogene remains in the genome. Which one of those poses a problem for you ? I really can't imagine how you could refuse the existence of pseudogene if you accept theses three concepts (unless you believe the earth sis 6000 years old or some other similar things...). We found many of these genes, the most interesting are copies of known gene (functional in other organisms) with defects (sometime they are not even translated). You want me to find you one with a reference ? I'm sure I can easily find many interesting things abotu GULOP or some other pseudogene.

It does suggest an affinity, but it's not enough. Phylogenetics trees are built with many characters, not a single one.

James F. Crow, then But I'm probably wrong about this. The fact is, evolution is a complicated subject, many evolutionary biologists have done a lot, for example Joseph Felsenstein, Michael Lynch or Masatoshi Nei, but we won't be able to really evaluate their contribution until a few years. Also, there's a lot of evolutionary scientists. Science is increasingly about groups, cooperation and subsubsubspecialization, making these kind of question very hard to answer.

Evolutionary biology is too vast; Fisher, Haldane, Wright, Morgan, Hamilton, Williams, Lewontin, Price, Maynard Smith, Kimura, Crow, Wilson, Felsenstein, Lynch, Nei, they all made very important contributions, it's really hard to say which one had the greatest influence. If I had to choose, I would say either Fisher or Wright the first part of the century, and either Kimura or Hamilton for the second part of the century. But for Fisher... it's complicated, on one hand, his contribution is impressive, on the other hand, his understanding of evolution was often primitive. Also, most of his work was not really about discovering new things but about making a true science out of Darwin's work.

He probably meant "quantitative genetics".

James F. Crow, not only because of his works, but also because of his influence on many of the greatest thinkers in evolutionary biology. Niles Eldredge made some interesting contributions, but again, he's mostly known because of Gould and some books he wrote for the laypeople, you can't compare him to a giant like Crow. There's a sharp distinction between science and science popularization.

"Politically correct" & "Common sense" = the point of both expressions is that you don't need any kind of evidences.

Not free, but it's quite cheap compared to the U.S. system. Their system saves more lifes, and it's cheaper. On the other hand, it does infuriate the apostles of the free market, it might even go against "common sense" (which is always better than facts). And of course, if you think the U.S. should have a lower infant mortality rates than some little country with a tenth of their GDP/capita, it's only because you're "politically correct".

Bizarre... Ron Paul ? Impossible !

First, you made two claims without any backup; * Junk DNA was never pushed by real scientists. Which is really absurd, Susumu Ohno and Motoo Kimura are among the greatest thinker in genetics and evolutionary biology, respectively. If you had read a thing about molecular evolution you would know most evolutionary molecular biologist believe that a great deal of DNA is noncoding, and probably all of them believes that at least some part of DNA is noncoding. I don't know how you can define "real scientists" to exclude them all. As a reference, just look at any book by W.-H. Li on molecular evolution. * That was more the domain of those I like to refer to as "Religious Atheists" and pseudo-scientists trying to conjure up evidence for evolution. I would really like to see how you can back this up, it looks similar to the conspiracy theories invoked by creationists. Do you have any evidence of "religious atheists pseudoscientists" trying to conjure up evidences for evolution by promoting "junk DNA" ? Now getting back at "junk DNA". Just to be clear; nobody likes the expression "Junk DNA", and nobody really knows what it means. It was coined by Susumu Ohno, he thought that duplication would often lead to the inactivation of one copy; pseudogenes, fossils in the DNA. Other pseudogenes are caused by other factors, like neutral mutations. The term is also used for all noncoding DNA, and something for coding DNA which has no function for the organism. Honestly, I'm not sure why you say the claim that some DNA is "junk" is "pseudoscience", it seems to be for some religious reasons. I'm not going to list the proofs that at least some part of "junk DNA" is really junk, it would be easier for you to tell me what kind of proofs you're disputing. Mathematical proofs ? Empirical proofs ?

About r/K selection. It's derived from this equation; [math] \frac{dx}{dt} = rx\left(1-\frac{x}{K}\right) [/math] With x being population size, K the carrying capacity and r the intrinsic rate of growth. It's really one of the most fundamental equation in ecology. However, the r/K selection theory is deeply flawed for a simple reason; r generally correlates with K, they are not opposed (an interesting explanation is provided by the metabolic theory of ecology). It's probably why you won't find much about this theory in modern books on life history evolution. Density-dependence/independence is a major issue in evolutionary ecology, but the approach now is very different. About the advantages of being small. I'm going to give you another equation, but this time I won't explain it, haha ! I just hope you'll want to investigate it; [math] \frac{\partial \Psi}{\partial t} = M \frac{\partial\Psi}{\partial p_0} + \frac{V}{2}\frac{\partial^2\Psi}{\partial p_0^2} [/math] This beauty is the Kolmogorov backward equation, it combines the different forces of evolution (mutations, drift, selection, ...). It can be used to find the probability of fixation of alleles in different contexts. By looking at the behavior of the solution with large and small population, you'll see that small populations are very vulnerable, deleterious mutations can easily reach fixation. This is bad. Population size is strongly related (negatively) with body size, so yes, being small is a great thing. Some scientists (i.e.:Michael Lynch) believe the genome of eukaryotes is messy in part because of that, we're large creatures with small population size. In short, small population = bad for at least two reasons; #1, they are often affected by inbreeding. #2 drift is too powerfull, it will kill diversity very fast and deleterious mutations will reach fixation.

creato; Science is done by publishing in serious, peer-reviewed journals.

I'm also skeptical about Hawking's influence, although it depends what is meant by "most influencial". In terms of modern physics popularization, perhaps, but in terms of inlfuence within the scientific community, I highly doupt it. It's like saying Dawkins had an influence in evolutionary biology, it's true, but mostly over the laypeople.

Edward Witten, perhaps...

It's a young house centipede.

Of course, some biologists will never need maths (outside statistics) in their career, just like many will never used the knowledge they acquired in physiology or in some other courses. The difference is; mathematics is now everywhere in biology, and it takes more time to build a real understanding of mathematics than it takes to understand a few concepts of physiology. It's in part because mathematics is hierarchical in nature, you have to understand A to understand B, then to get to C... According to Sarah Otto, more than 1/3 of all articles in ecology & evolution involve some sort of mathematical models (excluding statistics), most of time differential equations. But even if they wanted to understand these models, most biologists could not. I think it slows down our science because, even if we have very good theories, experimentalists won't use them. There's many example; pop. models in microbiology are understudied, the ratio- v. prey-dependent debate is unresolved because, even though it's a central debate in theoretical population ecology, few empirical tests were made, et cetera... Obviously, if experimentalists can't understand the models, they can't participate in the debates. Another problem is that we get many faulty models. I just sent a "Letter to the Editor" to a journal of ecology, they published a model with a construction flaw. The error wasn't very hard to spot, in reality, my proof was made with only basic algebra. The same model was used in 2 other journals ("PNAS" & "Science"), nobody saw the mistake ? Why ? Because they're not used to this kind of thinking (and to be fair, the model looked fine at first sight). I think every biologist should have enough knowledge in mathematics to understand the basic systems of differential equations used in ecology, the models in population genetics, the optimization models used pretty much everywhere.. It could easily be done with 1-3 courses, and with a little more effort to integrate these models in the basic courses. I'm a theoretician, I have to do maths on a daily basis, most biologists don't. I don't want to turn biologists into theoretical biologists or biomathematicians, I'm happy to cooperate with individual with different skills. I would only like to see a more balanced approach to mathematics in biology. Mathematics is a great tool to unify, in my opinion, we miss many great opportunities because, in many situations, mathematical models are not even considered. They should go in biochemistry (lots of simple calculations, but very little maths). The truth is, even if some students think they can get away with it, mathematical models are increasingly common in biology. Perhaps that's the problem; they try to cover too much. I might be wrong, but I read a couple of immunology articles, and while many mathematical/theoretical models have been developed in the last 20 years (mostly for cancer dynamics, virus dynamics, virulence, antigenic variation...), I never saw a single one of them in a standard article of immunology. Be careful, "biophysics" is not the application of physics to biology. It should be, but in reality when you hear "biophysics" it generally means "the applications of physics to biochemistry".

I you're being sarcastic. Very few scientists like the expression "Junk DNA", but it's a fact that a certain portion of the genome is functionless. But if by "real scientists" you mean "young earth creationists", then I agree, otherwise its nonsense.

I think our training is not as good because; #1; Some courses are too easy. If you take a look at the textbooks used in; "intro. to microbiology", “ecology”, courses related to a particular group or organism… they are so simple; they could easily be used in high school. A few concepts, some things to remember, et voilà ! Of course, it depends of the teacher, still… #2; Biologists are notoriously inept with numbers. I don't like statistics, it's boring, still, it's very important for biologists. In fact, statistics was in great part built for biology. Yet, most universities have only one (very easy) mandatory course in statistics. It's not enough. And what about mathematics! How many ecologists can understand the theoretical works of Peter Abrams or Stephen Hubbell ? Getting some info on an ecosystem, or about the structure of the genome of some drosophilids, it's not enough. We have to use these information to improve our theories. It can rarely be done without some maths. #3; I think one of the weaknesses of biology comes from our need to get a huge amount of information. Given the complexity of our subject, it's normal, however it has a serious drawback. Many students have been able to get a Ph.D. mostly by collecting data, which can often be made even with a mediocre understanding of biology.

Some engineers and physicists have made real contributions to biology. Maynard Smith and Thomas L. Vincent (both made important contributions to evolutionary game theory) were trained in engineering. Many theoricians from the Santa Fe Institute are physicists... In fact I think their training is much better than what we get in biology.

What about a Book & Article review section ? I don't know if it would work, but I would find it interesting

Evolution, micro or macro, is about selection, drift and mutation (+ many other small mechanisms). We work a lot with the genome, simply because we can see what happened millions of years ago. The Molecular Clock, which can be very accurate, would never work if macroevolution was a myth, but it does. Sarich predicted divergence time of humans and apes was 4-5 mya. At the time, anthropologists thought he was crazy, they thought the divergence happened between 10 and 30 mya. But new fossils were discovered and the prediction made by Sarich was confirmed.