The true story of the Archaean genetic expansion - The Panda's Thumb

I've been giving talks at scientific meetings on educational outreach &mdash; I've been telling the attendees that they ought to start blogs or in other ways make more of an effort to educate the public. I mentioned one successful result the other day, but we need more. I give multiple reasons for scientists to do this. One is just general goodness: we need to educate a scientifically illiterate public. Of course, like all altruism, this isn't <a href="http://www.cheapbeatsbydre-sales.com/diddybeatsâ„¢-high-performance-inear-headphones-with-controltalkâ„¢-universal-noise-isolating-inear-white-p-290.html"><strong>cheapÂ*beatsÂ*byÂ*dre</strong></a> really recommended out of simple kindness, but because the public ultimately holds the pursestrings, and science needs their understanding and support. Another reason, though, is personal. Scientific results get mangled in press <a href="http://www.cheapbeatsbydre-sales.com/beatsâ„¢-by-dr-dreâ„¢-studio-red-sox-highdefinition-headphones-from-monster®-p-273.html"><strong>beatsÂ*byÂ*drÂ*dre</strong></a> releases and news accounts, so having the ability to directly correct misconceptions about your work ought to be powerfully attractive. Even worse, though, I tell them that creationists are actively distorting their work. This goes beyond simple ignorance and incomprehension into the malign world of actively lying about the science, and it happens more often than most people realize. I have another painful example of deviousness of creationists. There's a paper I've been meaning to write up for a little while, a Nature paper by David and Alm that reveals an ancient period of rapid gene expansion in the Archaean, approximately <a href="http://www.office2010-discount.com/ms-outlook-2010-p-5724.html"><strong>Discount office2010 Outlet</strong></a> 3 billion years ago. Last night I thought I'd just take a quick look to see if anybody had already written it up, so I googled "Archaean genetic expansion," and there it was: a couple of references to the paper itself, a news summary, <a href="http://www.436100.info/view.php?id=96787"><strong>timberland boots uk | Louis Vuitton Luggage Sets</strong></a> one nice science summary, and&hellip;two creationist distortions of the paper, right there on the first page of google results. I told you! This happens all the time: if there's a paper in one of the big journals that discusses more evidence for evolution, there is a creationist hack somewhere who'll quickly write it up and lie about it. It's a heck of a lot easier to summarize a paper if you don't understand it, you see, so they've got an edge on us.