No-one has ever been able to replicate Gregor Mendel's observations of pea plants.

They're a little "too perfect", lacking even random statistical noise that would have been expected from small sample sizes.

Was it scientific fraud?

https://twitter.com/DNA_RNA_Uni/status/1681593254557503488

Famed population geneticist RA Fisher published this paper in 1936 taking Mendel to task for either concealing, cherry-picking, or omitting parts of his study of pea genetics.

There are three points of contention:
digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstre…

Bear with me: this will be a longish thread.

I want to talk about the Map-Territory Relation in #science & why it matters to many topics in public perception of science.

It's what I think of when people insist that 'science says there are only two genders'.

Maybe you've seen this work by René Magritte, called "The Treachery of Images". The text translates: "this is not a pipe".

It's not. It's an IMAGE of a pipe. It only resembles an actual pipe in one very specific way, from a particular angle, in 2-D.

But the most interesting story about Benjamin Franklin I've run across is the giant pit filled with human bones that was recently (1997) found in his basement.

Really.

A giant pit of human bones. The remains of at least 28 bodies. In his basement. Cut up with a saw.

https://twitter.com/c0nc0rdance/status/1656121420789710848

Ben Franklin lived at 36 Craven Street in London (now the 'Benjamin Franklin House & Museum').

Workers doing renovations found the bones in a buried pit in the basement, remains including those of infants.

I'm down the rabbit hole on Ben Franklin.

He had an acknowledged illegitimate son, William, who was the last British governor of New Jersey & chief Loyalist, running pro-British military operations from his base in New York.

He died in exile. But HE had an illegitimate son... William Temple Franklin was William's illegitimate son, born while William was in law school, London.

"Temple" accompanied his GRANDFATHER Benjamin & acted as his secretary, worked on Treaty of Paris where France recognized USA.

Brief return to US, then rest of life in France.

Hogan's Heroes ran 1965-1971:
A campy spy comedy set in a POW camp in Nazi Germany, which feels like a very weird choice.

In poor taste, honestly.

Learning about the actors has given me a new perspective:

First, every major German character was played by a Jewish actor. Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink) was born in Cologne, Germany in 1920, moved to LA in 1933 with famous composer father Otto.

He did the show on the stipulation that Klink was never the hero in any episode.
He served in the US Army, stationed at Pearl Harbor in WWII.

My hypothesis:
Humans invented hats because we were envious of the marvelous headgear in the animal world.

Let's talk about antlers, horns, ossicones & pronghorns. #Antlers are shed & regrown every year, composed of bone that begins at a pedicle, base structure that remains after shedding. Antlers are extensions of the the skull.

Mechanism of growth similar to bone HEALING: cartilaginous tissue gives rise to bone coated in skin "velvet".

This 1852 painting by William Firth depicts the moment in 1717 when English poet Alexander Pope declares his undying love to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and her response is a fit of laughter (brutal!).

Both characters are worth knowing in a little more depth. Alexander Pope is best remembered for 18th century essays & poetry: "Rape of the Lock", Illiad & Odyssey translations. He coined phrases: "damn with faint praise" and "to err is human".

Spinal form of tuberculosis made him a hunchback, at full height he stood 4 ft 6 in (1.4 m).

Let's talk about Point Roberts, WA: the tiny American peninsula on Vancouver Island that can only be reached by driving 25 miles through Canada and clearing two international border crossings. It's < 5 sq miles, home to ~1,000 residents.

It's a very AMERICAN story. Originally Coastal Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw) lands, post-1812, the British & Americans co-occupied a land they called "Oregon Country" (US) or "Columbia District" (UK).

US Pres. James Polk was elected on a campaign of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight".

What does that mean?

J.B.S Haldane: "The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose."

Let's talk about the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum:
It can 'feed' on sunlight; gives birth to live, pregnant clone-babies & needs to be bacterially infected to survive. 1. Let's start with the weirdest fact first: these little bugs seem to be capable of feeding directly on sunlight, like the plants on which they feed.

They're nearly unique in the animal world in the ability to make a carotenoid photopigment.

You've no doubt heard that the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed in a fire & with it, centuries of knowledge, learning & prose.

But that's not the actual story. The TRUE story of the destruction of the Great #Library of Alexandria has more to teach us than the #myth. First, the Library itself: commissioned ~280 BCE by Cleopatra's ancestor, Ptolemy I Soter, general to Alexander the Great.

The Library was part of a complex of buildings, the Mouseion, dedicated to the Muses, in the city center/royal quarter.

What do cabbage, kale, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens & kohlrabi have in common?

If you said "they're the same species of plant, selected for different qualities", you're correct!

Let's talk about the chameleon of the vegetable world, the #Brassica! They're all Brassica oleracea, derived from the wild cabbage, which is itself part of the wild mustard FAMILY.

Brussel sprouts are cultivars selected for unopened lateral lead buds, broccoli & cauliflower for the unopened flowers, kale for leaves, kohlrabi for enlarged stem.

Almost all women of Ancient Rome dyed their hair, some to henna red, to blonde with guano or ash & vinegar, but the most bizarre was a fermented paste of leeches & vinegar for a black hair dye.

All prostitutes were REQUIRED to be blonde (at all times) under Roman law. Men were a little less likely to dye their hair, considering it a sign of vanity, but a fashion in the Imperial age was to dust one's hair with gold dust.

https://twitter.com/chapps/status/1375259564694630402?s=20

Touching this bird will result in numbness & tingling in extremities.

Prolonged contact or ingestion can result in paralysis or death.

Let's talk about the #birds that can kill you with a touch. This is the hooded pitohui, 'Pitohui dichrous' & it contains in its tissues & feathers the neurotoxin homobatrachotoxin.

The same toxin is found in species of poison dart frogs & they likely acquire the toxin from the same source: Choresine beetles.

I hate engaging in this kind of Internet drama, but there's a principle that's important to medical & science communication:

In the late 1980's, there was a switch in HIV/AIDS education replacing:
"gay men" with
"men who have sex with men" (MSM).

Why? Aren't they the same? One focused on identity & the other on behavior.

Not every man who had sex with men considered themselves gay. The medical advice for "gay men" created an imprecision & potentially an identity barrier that feeds confusion.

So medical comms focused on the BEHAVIOR alone.

What does an old CRT monitor have in common with a WWII battleship?

To get to the answer we have to talk about the importance of electromagnetism in WWII naval strategy. During WWI, the combined German, British & American navies placed more than 200,000 mines to strategically block shipping, narrow sea lanes to concentrate naval force, and blockade seaports.

Most were cheap "contact mines" & minesweeping was slow & dangerous.

Thomas Jefferson kept a flock of 40 sheep on the front lawn of the White House, among them a polycerate (4 horned) Shetland ram that attacked pedestrians who tried to cross the square.

After it killed a little boy, they moved it back to Monticello.

yup: KILLER POTUS RAM Image of the White House circa 1796 below, to show "President's Square" was surrounded by a low fence.

You can read the full account here, but there's not a lot of detail beyond personal correspondence. The little boy who was killed is not identified.
https://t.co/oLjVU4mGV8monticello.org/research-educa…

There's a horrifying truth behind (possibly) every story you've ever read about a cat & mouse/rat being 'best friends'.

The truth is that there's a pretty good chance that their 'friendship' is due to a brain parasite: Toxoplasma gondii.

Sorry. Let's talk about it. Cats (felids, generally) are the only 'definitive hosts' of Toxoplasma gondii, a single-celled obligate parasitic protozoan.

But there are a number of secondary hosts that can help the disease spread:
sheep, goats, canids, birds, mice, rats... and humans.

Gynandromorphy (showing male & female characteristics) can arise from mitotic events in early embryogenesis that distribute male & female sex chromosomes unevenly.

This is 'bilateral' gynandromorphy (2 halves), which must have occurred in the very earliest stages of development.

https://twitter.com/JeffreyMWard/status/1309806077140250626

Birds use a ZW sex determination system (not XY), with males as homogametic ZZ, females as heterogametic ZW.

This means the ovum/egg, and not the sperm, determine the sex of offspring.

Here's a bilateral gynandromorph, showing the scattered variation in embryonic cell fates.

In the cold waters of the Pacific coast of the US & Canada are forests of giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera.

Under optimal conditions, they can grow as much as 2 feet (0.6 m) per day, to heights of 175 ft.

Let's talk about the weirdness of giant #kelp & how it can help us. First, giant kelp isn't a plant. Nor is it animal or fungus: it's a protist, the odd category that includes a wide variety of unicellular & multicellular organisms.

As a protist, it follows different rules from plants: no roots, the whole organism is photosynthetic.

There's a scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home where Scotty trades future knowledge of "transparent aluminum" to an engineer in exchange for enough of the stuff to make a whale tank in a Klingon warship.

So can "transparent aluminum" exist? Mostly NO, but just a little YES. The trick here is that metallic aluminum will never be transparent due to its electronic structure.

But aluminum ceramics (which contain aluminum COMPOUNDS) that are transparent to visible light were well known even in 1986 & could be used for the application described.

It's possible to sail from the UK to New Zealand along a very nearly straight line without intercepting any landmasses.

Can you see how? Marked sensitive so you can think about it.
This is the solution: