Welcome to Science Morsels! You probably don’t remember having subscribed to this newsletter. It’s been awhile. The newsletter will include interesting nuggets from recent science news that you should be aware of. Publication schedule will remain random until we have over 20 members. This seems like an achievable goal!
If you have been too busy trying to understand if you should worry about monkeypox…
A groundbreaking (and twitter-breaking) paper in Nature challenges the classic story about the connection between dairy-farming and lactose tolerance (lactase persistence). This is one of the best example we have of gene-culture coevolution. But is it a myth?
A nice write up in Science.
And the Nature paper itself.
Keep in mind that this is not the first time doubts are raised about this.
A lot more to be said about this story. More to come!
Nice societies finish last?
A new study challenges the idea that societies with strong social norms promoting good behavior (“prosocial norms”) enjoy more prosocial behavior.
It’s the opposite!
The authors suggest that the reason is that in strict societies a minor violation will be punished as severely as a major violation, so why not go for the more lucrative large violation? It’s not difficult to think of other explanations.
Read the full paper.
Key to social mobility found?
A lot of buzz around a paper from Raj Chetty and colleagues that shows, in the words of the NY Times headline writer, that the “Key to Reducing Poverty: More Friendships Between Rich and Poor”. This (headline) raised many objections.
The paper made use of data on 21 billion (!!!) friendships from Facebook.
Check out the Times article.
Or the Nature paper.
An excellent twitter thread analyzing the issues surrounding the causal connection implied by the NY Times headline.
We remain skeptical that reducing poverty is this simple.
But we ordered Ethan Bueno de Mesquita’s book.
Final Treats
For when you have some free time.
Watch how starfish embryos become living crystals [YT].
For biology nerds: a massive open access anthology on Phenotypic Plasticity & Evolution.