Tag Archives: skeptically speaking

The latest episode of Skeptically Speaking is out, where you can listen to host Desiree Schell talk to WIRED writer David Dobbs about Naomi Wolf’s latest book, and to your truly about the disastrous media coverage of ENCODE. Listen online, grab it in podcast form, or find on one of the many radio stations that carry the show.

A big thanks to Desiree and producer K.O. Myers for having me on the show, and helping me sound less incoherent than I might have.

I’ve got two clarifications on some dates I tossed out during the interview:

I said ENCODE has been going for at least five years. I was thinking of the post-pilot phase, which began in 2007, after the pilot phase publications. ENCODE itself began in 2003.

I said people have been studying transposable elements for at least 30 years. I had in mind the 1980 papers on selfish DNA by Orgel and Crick and Doolittle and Sapienza. But of course don’t forget that Barbara McClintock discovered transposable elements in the 40′s and 50′s, and won her Nobel Prize on the subject almost 30 years ago.