Carl Zimmer's Blog, page 122

Happy Holidays: There’s A Seeker Born Every Minute!

What a week–I’m going to get this monkey off my back and enjoy a beautiful Memorial Day. As my holiday gift to all Loom readers everwhere, let me leave you with the sort of science show they just don’t make any more.

May 25 Is Darwinius Day, The Most Important Day IN 47 MILLION YEARS!

A friend passed on this ad that aired for “The Link,” the show about Darwinius on May 25. Take a look.

Yep. That’s right. May 25 will be more important than 9/11. Than Pearl Harbor. Than every date in human history. Pre-human, too.

Let this be the starting point from now on for all discussions of science hype.

Update: A commenter asked if this was a spoof. It’s not. This is a real ad for the show.

Comments Are Up Again

Please resume the conversation.

Comments Are Down

Somethings awry. I’ve sent out a cry for help. I’ll let you know when comments work again.

Science Held Hostage, Updated

Just a quick note–I’ve updated my post on the Darwinius affair. The journal where the paper was published has responded to my enquiries. They say the authors of the paper were responsible for the secrecy over the paper.

Darwinius: Named at Last!

In a remarkable feat of commenter-blogger synergy, the Loom has helped give Darwinius its name back.

As I posted yesterday, some commenters on the Loom pointed out that, amidst all the hullaballoo over the unveiling of this primate fossil (oh, don’t get me started), it looked as if the scientists who wrote the paper failed to follow the rules for naming a new species. The people who make the rules (the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature) require paper copies of a scientific paper

Science Held Hostage

Sometimes big movie production companies decide that they’d be better off not showing a movie in advance to the critics. They know that the reviews would probably do more harm than good. Looking back on the the Darwinius affair, I’m starting to wonder if the unveiling of this fossil was stage-managed in the same way.

I only started looking into the story after observing all the bizarre publicity around it. And as I’ve probed this strange media event, I’ve gotten some interesting information from

Does Darwinius Exist, Revisited: The Official Word Is…Not Yet.

Yesterday I blogged about how Darwinius, the famous fossil primate that will change everything, may not actually have a published named yet. The trouble is that the official rules seem to indicate that a paper in an electronic journal is not enough. Paper is required. A spirited discussion among scientists blossomed in the comment thread, which has morphed into a conversation about Science 2.0.

To get an official comment, I contacted the organization that oversees the naming of new species, the I

Killer Flu, The Game (And A Cool One At That)

I’ve just discovered an online game called Killer Flu, presented by the UK Clinical Virology Network. I’ve been fairly leery of video games that try to present science in the past, because they either skimp on the science or skimp on the game. Killer Flu seems, on first inspection, to get fairly close to the happy medium.

You have to get a flu outbreak going in three months by infecting as many people as you can. There are lots of challenges, such as tough immune systems, and special tricks, suc

Does Darwinius Exist?

Darwinius has achieved the ultimate triumph of pop-culture consciousness, having become for the moment the background image on the main Google search page. But some of the commenters in my post yesterday on the head-slapping hype around this fossil pointed out something I thought deserving of its own post: Darwinius may not actually exist.

By this I mean that the name Darwinius may not be valid officially published. I first became aware of this from Nature editor Henry Gee’s twitterings. The pro