A creationist group is throwing down 27 million dollars to build a ‘creation museum‘ in Kentucky. What a weird concept. Personally, I’m not quite sure what to make of it or even how to verbalize the crazyness of an idea that I think it is, if you have an opinion–do comment. I do think that they could probably find a better way to spend 27 million though.

The article is linked from Discover magazine.

As my sisters would say in their very best Brian Fellows voice, “Thats crazy!”

So a friend of mine sent me a link to this video figuring I would get a kick out of it…

He was right Thanks for the laugh, Timmy.

While this video is a spoof, the experiments that the video is based on are not. In 1948 a zoologist by the name of HM Peters was studying webspinning in spiders and was trying to figure out how to get the spiders to build their webs during the day and not in the wee hours of the night. Dr. Peter Witt, a pharmacologist, suggested he try amphetamines. While the amphetamines didn’t alter the time of day the spiders were building their webs the drug did alter the structure of the web.

“Then Witt tried mescaline, strychnine, caffeine, and others. Low-dosed caffeinated spiders produced a smaller but wider web with a normal spiral but radii at oversized angles. At higher doses, like with the other drugs, web regularity got distorted. Only with low doses of the hallucinogen LSD-25 did the spiders spin webs of greater regularity.” (R. Foelix, Biology of Spiders)

Dr. Peter Witt has also written a book on spider communication

Science can be really fun sometimes

Nature, one of the most prestigious journals for scientists to publish their work in, is starting something a bit bizarre.

Normally, when you want to publish the results of your research, you submit a paper to an appropriate journal. The editor solicits a couple people in your field to review your paper, and based on their recommendations the editor decides whether to accept or reject your paper for publication in their journal.

Nature has started a new feature for authors/reviewers, an online “Peer Review Trial“. When you submit your manuscript to Nature, they will post it online as a sort of blog. Anyone can access the manuscript and read it. If you are a reader who happens to be affiliated with the field/topic that the paper is written under, than you may also do a sort of mini-review in the form of a comment. Supposedly only people who work in that given field of the manuscript topic can comment on the paper. None of these papers are in press or have been accepted for publication. Then, after a given amount of time, the editors will close the commenting board, review the comments, and use those comments in further consideration for publication of that manuscript.

I haven’t quite made up my mind yet on how I feel about this. On the one hand, there is the potential to get a wide range of reviews from several/many people world-wide (typically, you only get 2, maybe 3 reviewers to look at your manuscript when you submit papers the normal way). On the other hand, there is no anonymity, people can be very biased in science based on reputation and that can and does affect the outcome of reviews.

I don’t know, what do you think?