Author Archives: Michael Eisen

Junk DNA Bad, Junk Gene Good

By Michael Eisen | Published: November 10, 2008

A few weeks ago Carl Zimmer wrote a nice post at The Loom taking science writers to task for leaping at every chance to grab ahold of the “Wow! Junk DNA is not junk after all!” news hook. He correctly pointed out that we’ve known for years that non-coding DNA has lots of function, and […]

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Barack Obama – Scientist

By Michael Eisen | Published: November 5, 2008

Was up working all night, and, as I should have been focusing on my grant, I instead kept trying to figure out just what it was that I was feeling about Obama’s victory. The historical nature of the election brought tears to my eyes – how could it not. And I am already planning a […]

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November 4, 2008

By Michael Eisen | Published: November 4, 2008
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Genome Technology: Open access on the rise

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 31, 2008

The November issue of Genome Technology has an article “Ready or Not, Here Comes Open Access” by Meredith Salisbury on the ascendancy of open access. I haven’t read it yet (grant due next week) but the cover has what I think is the first picture of the three PLoS founders together: It’s a nice picure […]

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Palin was not talking about Drosophila

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 26, 2008

Now that I’ve had a chance to look at the blog reactions to the Palin fruit fly idiocy, I’m amazed at how rapidly everyone assumed she was talking about Drosophila. This is because most of the world – including virtually all Drosophila researchers – mistakenly believe that “fruit fly” is the proper common name for […]

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Sarah Palin disses MY fruit fly

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 26, 2008

As I’m sure many of you have now heard, Sarah Palin delivered her first official “policy speech” in which she pressed for Congress to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). To enable Congress to fund this without increasing spending, she returned to McCain-Palin’s favorite enemy – the earmark. And, following recent M-P […]

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What do you think Fox fears most?

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 16, 2008

President Obama or a Tampa-Philadelphia World Series

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Was Jesus Haploid or Diploid?

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 14, 2008

A study published last week in the Journal of Fish Biology confirmed that an earlier report of parthanogenesis in sharks was not a fluke. Chapman DD et al. (2008). Parthenogenesis in a large-bodied requiem shark, the blacktip Carcharhinus limbatus. J. Fish Biol. 73(6):1473-1477. (No link – I only link to open access articles). This is […]

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Happy Birthday PLoS Biology

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 13, 2008

Five years ago today Public Library of Science (PLoS) published the first issue of our first journal – PLoS Biology. It was the first step in our plan to liberate the scientific and medical literature from the needless restrictions on access and use imposed by the subscription based journals. Our goal, as expressed in the […]

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Where Would Jesus Publish?

By Michael Eisen | Published: October 9, 2008

What I do with my spare time. (T-shirts available soon).

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