Just grand -Donald Williamson published more crap on larval "evolution" - this time in one of the #OMICS journals

Well this is great.  Just great.  Donald Williamson has a new paper "The Origins of Chordate Larvae" published in Cell and Developmental Biology - a spammy journal from the OMICS publishing group.  Don't know who Williamson is?  Well consider yourself lucky.  For more on him and his horrendous history of publishing crap see:

• Another paper on “symbiotic speciation” by Donald Williamson is retracted ...
• A flying what? Symbiosis retracts paper claiming ... - Retraction Watch
• D'oh! Top Science Journal Retractions of 2011: Scientific American
• RETRACTED ARTICLE: Larval genome transfer: hybridogenesis in ...
• Surprise! Sometimes Science Gets It Wrong. | The Mary Sue

And many many more.  Short summary - he has a theory regarding larval forms of organisms having a separate evolutionary history from adult forms.  He has no evidence for this.  And he keeps finding new ways to publish his theory.  Uggh.  I guess this serves as a reminder to everyone out there - crap does get published.  It is too bad.  But it does happen and will continue to.  We need to call out the crap as much as possible so that as few people as possible out there end up getting deceived.  So this is my contribution to that notion.  Google search engines pay attention. Donald Williamson really publishes some horrible stuff.

Jack Gilbert @gilbertjacka clarifies comments at #AAASMtg re: opening windows, cleanliness & microbes

Just got this to post from my college colleague Jack Gilbert in regard to some comments he made to the press at the AAAS Meeting a few days ago.  He sent this in part in response to some news stories that came out of the press conference we had at the meeting (e.g., see Florence Nightingale approach 'could help fight infection in ..., Open hospital windows to stem spread of infections, says ... and others).  And I encouraged him to consider whether or not he needed to clarify some of his comments - and here is his response.

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A confession, lesson and retraction
By Jack A. Gilbert

At the AAAS 2012 annual meeting on Friday, I was involved in a press conference to announce the initial results and ideology for the Earth Microbiome Project (http://www.earthmicrobiome.org). Following the press conference we went to another room, where we were openly discussing these concepts with the reporters. Several reporters asked me to comment on the potential impact of this research in the medical sphere. At which point I started to discuss some excellent research by Jessica Green (http://biology.uoregon.edu/people/green) regarding her recent evidence that improved ventilation in hospital wards reduced the airborne abundance of organisms that were related to pathogens. I showed these reporters the paper
(http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2011211a.html) and asked them to discuss this with Jessica Green.

Retraction - I was buzzing off about bees before my time

Recently I wrote a post about the recent study on bees associated with colony collapse disorder. After receiving a well thought out email from one of the authors on the study I have decided to retract my blog and apologize to the authors of the bee study. I rushed out my blog without really considering the evidence and the data very carefully and accept that I screwed this one up big time. The study is much more complex and comprehensive that I led people to believe. In part this was due to lack of detail in the actual manuscript but alas most of the fault lies with me - in not trying to contact the authors for more detail before mouthing off.

So I am giving myself a new award - the genomic jerk award. Hopefully there will be no more recipients.