Science and Culture Today | Page 1183 | Discovering Design in Nature

We often focus on individual issues: The latest headline on faith in science in public schools, the latest research paper on biological systems, or the latest book on evolutionary theory. We live in a world of fast-paced news and sound bites. How often do we step back and think about why these issues are in the news?

Forbes.com is reporting that Craig Venter’s “synthetic” bacterial chromosome contains a “genetic typo.” Molecular biology has ascribed a letter to each amino acid. Venter and his team imported DNA sequences into the chromosome–called watermarks–that coded for amino acids which ‘spelled out’ sentences in the chromosome. But they got one sentence wrong. As the article reports: The synthetic DNA also included a quote from physicist Richard Feynman, “What I cannot build, I cannot understand.” That prompted a note from Caltech, the school where Feyman taught for decades. They sent Venter a photo of the blackboard on which Feynman composed the quote -and it showed that he actually wrote, “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” “We agreed what was on Read More ›

An academic freedom bill passed out of the Tennessee House Education Committee today by a vote of 9-4. This follows after scientists and educators testified in support of the bill at a hearing 2 weeks ago. The bill states: Neither the state board of education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught. As discussed here, a lot of misinformation has been promoted Read More ›