Greetings--Happy February! I hope that you, unlike me, aren't greeting the new month with a rather unpleasant, unexpected snowstorm. If you need a little distraction between the roof-raking and snow-shoveling, here are a couple items:
Last October, I wrote a column for the New York Times about the first ancient human genome recovered from Africa. Last week, however, I discovered that the scientists had made a small oversight in their analysis that led to a big problem in their conclusions.
I asked my editor what to do. Should we add a correction to my column? An update note?
Instead, my editor made the right call: just write a new column.
So I did. It was fun to follow up on the evolution of science, rather than just providing a snapshot of a single new paper.
For my new Science Happens video for Stat, I paid a visit to a lab where scientists observe thousands of little worms grow old and note the moment each of them die. No one has ever carried out such a precise observation of so many lifespans at once, and the experience has led these researchers to a pretty cosmic perspective on why we live as long as we do.
Added bonuses: cameos by Woody Allen and Monty Python. Watch it here.
This week!-->February 11: "Is There A Future for In-Depth Science Journalism?" MIT Communication Forum Details here.
June 23-25: International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Plenary Lecture. Durham North Carolina. Here's the meeting site.
July 31: I'll be giving the keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in Savannah
You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, and Google+. And there's always carlzimmer.com.
Best wishes, Carl
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