Heritability: a handy guide to what it means, what it doesn’t mean, and that giant meta-analysis of twin studies by Jonathan M. Kaplan in Scientia Salon.  This is very important information for anyone interested in how to interpret heritability studies.

If we are all cultural Darwinians what’s the fuss about? by  Alberto Acerbi.

Admixture, cultural and biological by Razib Khan.

Watching and wondering: what we can learn from Fredrik Barth by Ståle Wig at Savage Minds.

Dr. Mary-Claire King at the World Science Festival via The Moth. Where she “battles through a series of heartbreaking and unbelievable events to secure the grant that enables her discovery of the inherited breast cancer gene.”

The when and who of social learning and conformist transmission by Michael Muthukrishnaa,  Thomas J.H. Morgan, Joseph Henrich  in Evolution and Human Behavior. [ungated preprint]

Four political camps in the big data world by Cathy O’Neil at mathbabe.

John Bohannon’s chocolate-and-weight-loss hoax study actually understates the problems with standard p-value scientific practice by Andrew Gelman.

Was it right to fool millions of people into thinking chocolate helps you lose weight? Simon Oxenham at Neurobonkers discusses the ethics.

Why Pret A Manger gives away so much free food to customers by Roberto A. Ferdman in the Washington Post.  Will this sort of less formal institution catch on?

Will computers redefine the roots of math? by Kevin Hartnett in Quanta Magazine.

On academia:

How to respond to reviewers by Andrew Hendry at the Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics blog.

Writing a response to reviewer comments by  Meghan Duffy at the Dynamic Ecology blog.

Fun (in that internet sort of way):

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Standardized Testing.  Good stuff (though his quips about the use of statistical methods developed for breeding cattle struck me as about as scientifically illiterate as Sarah Palin’s denouncing biological research on fruit flies.)