Links for February 2, 2015 (updated)

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Stephen Mallon via viralforest.com


Your bloggers' picks from the past week.
  • The trailer is out for the Merchants of Doubt documentary, based on the book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway; it reveals how a small contingent of conservative industry-backed scientists have contributed to deliberately misleading the public on environmental and health issues, like the reality of climate change and the risks associated with tobacco.
  • Mounting evidence for the biological interactions between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
  • Before net neutrality, there was the revolt against radio.
  • Eric Lander: "The remarkable thing about the scientific enterprise is that we try to reproduce things, and we worry about it." Sometimes, anyway. The Washington Post checks on where we're at on reproducibility these days.
  • Do you love watching videos of cross-species animal friendships on YouTube? (Examples: here, here, and here). Scientists do too! Evolutionary biologists are studying what drives affectionate interspecies interactions, while psychologists weigh in on why humans find unlikely animal pairings so endearing.
  • From the upcoming Histories of the Future Conference at Princeton (February 6-7, 2015), check out this excellent series of essays from a group of #histsci [ed: and #histtech and #histmed] heavyweights. 
  • Stephen Mallon's photographs of New York City subway cars being dumped into the Atlantic to form frameworks for coral reefs.
  • The new Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is maintaining the lively and outspoken Internet presence he established as an academic. Go read the remarkable blog he wrote as consultant for Valve Software, on the economics of game-worlds like Team Fortress 2 and digital economies in general.
  • Ethnographer Ben Wurgaft on cultured meat.

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