Top all-time · #1582
Jerry Coyne
Personal blog · whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.comscience
Jerry Coyne writes Why Evolution Is True, a personal blog at whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com about science. Since 2009, 48 different Hacker News readers have linked it 196 times, most often “The longest cell in the history of life”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Most-linked posts?
- /2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-02-06
- /2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-species/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-06-15
- The longest cell in the history of life2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-05-29
What Hacker News says?
General reply to express thanks for and respond to the several replies my first comment here received. First of all, I wrote in the original reply, "his warnings should be taken seriously," so I am by no means disagreeing with the quoted CDC expert about his general policy recommendations. Indeed, I am on record here on HN[1] saying that I'd like to see the United States follow the lead of the EU immediately in bann…
Comment linking /2011/02/21/natural-selection-and-evolution-material-blind-mindless-and-purposeless/
on “Dr. Arjun Srinivasan: We’ve Reached “The End of Antibiotics, Period””Submitted A most bizarre and mysterious cocoon as a story · 174 points
HN discussionJerry Coyne had written a nice blogpost that discusses the exaggerated media response and the actual academic novelty of this discovery and its description. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/a-new-sp... Tl;dr: the fossils possess intriguing anatomical features that appear to be (or more probably closely related to) a transition point between Australopithecus and Homo. Any inference of behaviour or…
Comment linking /2015/09/10/a-new-species-of-hominin-hits-the-news-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-mean/
on “New human-like species discovered”Submitted The longest cell in the history of life as a story · 95 points
HN discussionI have a copy of Strunk and White, but I like other advice on writing much better. The new book by Steven Pinker that is promised in Jerry Coyne's post about Pinker's project http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/steve-pin... is a book that I expect to be especially helpful for Hacker News participants. The book isn't finished yet, but Pinker's lecture on how to write http://video.mit.edu/watch/communic…
Comment linking /2012/11/16/steve-pinker-on-how-to-write-science/
on “What one book could give me a new, useful superpower?”Submitted A new organ discovered in baleen whales as a story · 68 points
HN discussionYou're welcome to suggest measures I should undertake to be more effective at getting to the truth in these matters. Here's what I'm doing so far: - Reading a wide variety of scientific sources across the spectrum of thought on these matters: Dr Bruce Lipton - pioneering stem cell biologist, now author and speaker; Rudy Tanzi - Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and researcher behind some of the bigges…
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on “Regular meditation may be more beneficial than vacation”Submitted Darwin right: variations in useless organs unchecked by natural selection as a story · 64 points
HN discussionHow do you know the parents don't psss on information chemically or genetically? There's studies in humans suggesting trauma can alter the genome (see https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/holocaus... for a skpetically-minded overview of the paper), and it's not like we know genetics backwards and forwards. I'm wary of assuming other species should have to follow a recognizable parallel to human develo…
Comment linking /2015/08/24/holocaust-trauma-is-it-epigenetically-inherited/
on “Just how smart is an octopus?”Submitted The last perambulation of an ancient arthropod as a story · 54 points
HN discussionThe genetic code isn't quite as universal as you might think. Here's an interesting article on the peculiarities of encoding in the mitochrondial genome, and what it tells us about evolution. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/guest-po...
Comment linking /2014/09/28/guest-post-why-the-genetic-code-is-not-universal/
on “What If Life Did Not Originate on Earth?”Submitted A New Phylogeny of the Mammals as a story · 46 points
HN discussion> Actually here is a fairly convincing (in my opinion) response which covers this and more: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-w... This is exactly the post that the posted article is responding to, which they link to literally in the opening sentence.
Comment linking /2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/
on “A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty”Submitted Birds may be paedomorphic dinosaurs as a story · 45 points
HN discussionThis is Jason Hickel's rebuttal to Steven Pinker's response [0] to Hickel's letter in the Guardian [1]. Pinker advocates that the quality of life for people is, on average, getting better worldwide. Hickel's responses are a little subtle but here's my interpretation: 1. Hickel argues that Pinker's $1.7/day poverty line is too low to be used effectively as a standard of poverty and proposed a $7.4/day rate 2. Excludi…
Comment linking /2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/
on “A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty”Submitted TEDx talks discredited: Sheldrake speaks, argues that speed of light is dropping as a story · 44 points
HN discussionHickels rebuttal in the letter is that GDP cannot be used to gauge poverty which he claims has only been measured directly by the UN since 1981. But if you look around the world today, GDP/head is a remarkaby strong indicator of the level of poverty in a country. Nevermind that all the other quality of life stats: life expectency, child morality, average working hours, literacy, education levels, food affordability…
Comment linking /2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/
on “A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty”Submitted New paper claims that evolution has stopped in a bacterial species. Is it true? as a story · 24 points
HN discussionThere is nowadays a great deal of censorship from the left in America. For example, shutting down of talks like https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/richard-...
Comment linking /2017/07/21/richard-dawkins-deplatformed-at-a-book-talk-berkeley-for-abusive-speech-about-islam-on-twitter/
on “China's New Wave of Internet Censorship: Name Verification for Online Commenting”Submitted What caused the Cambrian explosion? as a story · 23 points
HN discussionA website post, "Saint Chesterton?" commenting on recent discussion of proposals for canonization of G.K. Chesterton (declaring him to be a saint): http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/saint-che...
Comment linking /2013/10/04/saint-chesterton/
on “G.K. Chesterton: The fallacy of success (1909)”Submitted The TSA screws up again: makes mother fill up empty bottles of breast milk as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThank you for asking a follow-up question asking for more information. In general, most biologists are convinced that there is no need for "group selection" processes to explain any biological phenomenon, as individual selection alongside kin selection seem to do the job of explaining phenomena observed so far in evolution.[1] [1] http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-demis... http://whyevolutionist…
Comment linking /2013/02/27/another-case-of-individual-selection-trumping-group-selection/
on “What Is Aging? Most Scientists Still Get It Wrong”Submitted A mimic eats its model as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI thought the same, but they already discussed that in the comments [1] as the first serious contender, only to ultimately dismiss it as something else entirely. [1] http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/a-most-bi...
Comment linking /2013/08/29/a-most-bizarre-and-mysterious-cocoon/
on “A most bizarre and mysterious cocoon ”Submitted Oxford University bans free speech magazine as “offensive” as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSome mussels have evolved a similar feature : they are able to make part of them look like a fish even if they are blind : http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/amazing-m... Probably those spiders are the result of a similar evolutionary process.
Comment linking /2011/03/02/amazing-mimics-the-mussel-lampsilis/
on “Spider That Builds Its Own Spider Decoys Discovered”Submitted Turtle origins as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI guess I will have to be the first here to join issue directly with the thesis statement of this interesting article: "The lesson is that Mother Nature know best. Or alternately, TANSTAAFL: 'there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.' Trade-offs are endemic in evolutionary biology. Often, if you use a drug or surgery to optimize something, you will discover penalties elsewhere. . . . "In 'The Wisdom of Nature: An E…
Comment linking /2012/06/28/i-and-others-comment-on-steve-pinkers-discussion-of-group-selection/
on “Algernon's Law”Submitted R.I.P. Rosalyn Yalow as a story · 5 points
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