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...and see *if* they work.

In terms of medical science, that means double-blind placebo controlled studies.

Sadly, our tests of these pseudo-scientific medical practices has shown them to come up short:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/sham_acupuncture_is_better_than_true_acu.php

But I don't know that that is necessarily true. How does being able to hand-optimizing ASM help you do anything but optimize certain types of algorithms for a particular CPU and memory architecture? Does it make you better at finding the right software abstraction to tackle a business problem? Does it make your code less likely to have errors? More secure?

Except in the few cases, attempting to optimize ASM is best left to the compile. This is one case where a little knowledge can cause more harm than no knowledge.

What do you mean 19 genes - there are only 16.

Ron Paul you say? Let's see...
Racism which his sycophants are trying to whitewash: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ron-paul-signed-off-on-racist-newsletters-sources-say/2012/01/20/gIQAvblFVQ_story.html -- check.
Being a dominionist with a hidden religious agenda: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/is_ron_paul_a_dominionist.php -- check.
Looking for a return to the gold standard, which is what made the great depression worse: Hamilton, J.D. "The Role of the International Gold Standard in Propagating the Great Depression," Contemporary Policy Issues, April 1988 -- check.
Yep, that's the guy!

The GOP candidates, except for Ron Paul, seem to think that laws should be made based on religious views.

On the contrary, he thinks that there should be no separation between church and state, and rather that laws should be based on Christian religious views. Ron Paul is pro-life because of his religious views. And, rather than thinking the government shouldn't be involved in private medical decisions, he thinks it should be criminal, and investigated and punished.

Ron Paul also doesn't believe in evolution.

Spider using a feature of gate to build its web around

Please see:
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/01/two_incontrovertible_things_an.php?utm_source=combinedfeed&utm_medium=rss
and
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/01/27/remarkable-editorial-bias-on-climate-science-at-the-wall-street-journal/
and
http://blog.ucsusa.org/dismal-science-at-the-wall-street-journal

I'm sure the inferior primates who do not comprehend physics, mathematics, statistics, climatology, oceanography, geology, chemistry, or any of the other topics known to those of us who qualify as homo sapiens will once again display their profound ignorance by declaring that anthropocentric global warming is false. These are the same gibbering baboons that support "creation science" and "holistic medicine" and other idiocy. It's a sad testament to the aggregate stupidity of our society that any of these are given more attention than summary dismissal.

The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/01/two_incontrovertible_things_an.php

I understand the motivation behind many people around here being Ron Paul supporters, but trying to sycophantically whitewash the Ron Paul of the past as demonstrated by his newsletters, http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/12/how-did-we-get-here-or-why-do-20-year-old-newsletters-matter-so-damn-much/ , or to take attention away from his religious agenda http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/10/is_ron_paul_a_dominionist.php is intellectually dishonest at best.

Think of the financial industry, for example...

So you own 0 mutual funds I guess. The experts say the US dollar will be around for a long time, but they've been wrong before, so I'm sure you have all your savings in guns and canned food.

It's not just this industry. You can see similar things happen all the time. Food, with partially hydrogenated oils. In medicine you see a lot of treatments that are accepted one day, and then later they decide they are doing a lot of harm. Leaded gasoline was once lauded for it's ability to improve gas mileage by increasing the octane rating of fuels.
So you've never taken any medicine or gone to the doctor I presume.

My point is, it can happen everywhere, and experts are as susceptible to it as anybody.

You do make a rational point in that sometimes experts are wrong. But usually, they're more right than non-experts. And if you don't have the time or resources for giant wold wide studies over decades, then why would you trust your evaluation over the scientists? Really, even if you did have the resources, we as people don't have decades to make a decision. The data is in, the scientists agree. Of course we'll continue to measure and evaluate, but we need to at least do some simple steps to curb this. And what happens if the scientists are wrong? OMG we'll have cleaned up the planet a little, and have technology that makes us less dependent on fossil fuels, what a nightmare. Wait, that is a nightmare for oil companies.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php

The "greater male variability" hypothesis has been falsified. The first link provides a current analysis of data from around the world, while the second is an older study in which a former supporter of that hypothesis also determines that it does not stand up empirically.

[1] Kane, J and Mertz, J. "Debunking Myths About Gender and Mathematics Performance." Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 2012.
[2] Feingold, A. "Gender differences in variability in intellectual abilities: A cross-cultural perspective." Sex Roles. 1994.

The fallacy of your argument is this: you equate the leaders of the argument of both sides, and give them equal footing.

Leading those who accept the scientific evidence are... the scientists. Yes, the people who train for their lives, who thrive on evidence, logic and the scientific method. To be sure, some are corrupt, but if you argue the majority of them are, then you are effectively arguing against the entire profession. You sure you want to go there?

Leading the other side are those who profit from denial, and those who just don't want to change their way of life, or have religious beliefs about the matter.

These groups are not equally qualified to talk about the matter. And to paint the entire climatologist community as high priests is to equate their science with religion, which is in and of itself a fallacy. An effective one, but a fallacy nevertheless.

So, do you doubt the veracity of the poll (did you read the articles to find out who preformed it?) or do you doubt the ability of the news agencies cited to convey the information?

Here's another source, this one with a breakdown of the results in graph form:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php

Here's the original paper:

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

See, this is the problem with this debate.

Your "side" never publishes facts, just conjecture that will support your view [1]. Yet, your "side" is always claiming to be scientific in approach, and claiming that those who accept the evidence at hand it is happening are somehow the ones who are faith based in their outlook.

However, here's a more in depth picture. That 97%: it's climatologists. The other article was incorrect, as the general scientific community at large is only 90%.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php

[1] Conflating weather with climate doesn't count.

Adding hydrogen to nickel to make copper is a reaction that is so ridiculously unfeasible it doesn't even happen in any star we've ever observed. Not even a supernova can do what Rossi claims he can do in a lab. The entire enterprise is made of lies and bullshit.

While I won't deny that some of Card's books I read a long time ago were good (and he has the awards to prove it), if you're particular about whom you support, be aware that he is a rabid opponent of gay marriage and has written things such as "Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down"

Now, I'm aware a lot of people only care about the book they're reading and not the person who wrote it, and that's fine. But if you like to consider just who'll be getting money from your purchase, you might find this good to know.

There's some progress on that, though still probably some years out from having something available.

Possible, merely theoretical solutions that have no basis in what would happen:
* Confiscate Cameras: http://www.infowars.com/cops-confiscate-cameras-at-ohio-congressmans-town-hall/
* Delete data: http://www.pixiq.com/article/chicago-police-delete-journalism-professors-video-footage
* Destroy phone/camera: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/06/miami_police_destroy_cell_phon.php
* Use of a live streaming/storage to avoid confiscation/destruction? There's tech for that:
** http://inventorspot.com/articles/spy_technology_how_disable_a_cell_phone_15035
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_jammer
* Wiretapping laws: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/05/1954216/Leave-a-Message-Go-To-Jail?from=twitter
* Camera blocking devices:
** http://www.gizmag.com/norte-photoblocker-club-beer-cooler/20820/
** Unable to find it, but I'm sure I remember Kipkay having a video showing how to make glasses that would blind any camera sensitive to infrared.

Some of this, such as the wiretapping cellphone case, has been overturned. I believe. This is just off the top of my head. I'm sure there is more for real cynics with time to list.

Steve Jobs effectively hasten his own death by believing he can think him self out of cancer.

In this specific case, it probably didn't do any difference, but he didn't do himself any favours by delaying.

Hopefully this helps you understand where the idea of 'dark matter' came from. (Hint: arses don't seem to be an element.)

Yeah, except at least some of the bloggers are oncologists and researchers. Try this one for instance - an oncologist debunks the Burzynski propaganda movie

Nice try though.

You should check out the movie on Netflix

Sure, if you want to see lots of handwaving and a conspiracy theory.

You, tperkov, should check out the debunking of the movie by a real doctor

The scientific consensus on climate change is no myth. It's a simple fact. You won't find a single respected scientific institution which does not accept the AGW theory. Only idiots and hacks ignore the facts and reject it because they find it to be incompatible with their fascist beliefs.

As for that nonsensical article you are linking to, it's just another example of creationists, I mean climate denialists, doing quote-mining and lying because the truth doesn't support their (your) ideology. Three articles debunking that quote by liar and hack Lawrence Solomon:

Mike Hulme sets Lawrence Solomon and Marc Morano straight

The climate consensus: How to take a quote out of context

Thanks for proving how extremely dishonest and disgusting denialists are. You should be ashamed of yourself for actively lying and doing quote-mining to try and fool others.

Fast and loose with the evidence and you quote THAT crap? Fuck me.

Lets see, how many citations do ya want?

This...

Scientists from other universities have been threatened as well. One scientist told The Canberra Times, ''If you want to find me, it's impossible unless you make an appointment, sign in with some form of photo identification, and are personally escorted to my door That's directly as a result of threats made against me.''

One researcher told the paper of an instance where her photo appeared in an article promoting a community tree-planting day -- she then received threats of sexual assault and violence against her children. Another scientist received death threats and was advised by police to install a ''panic button'' in his office.

or this, where the fucking threat is on video?
    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/07/another_day_another_death_thre_1.php

Anger against scientists involved in the climate debate is reaching dangerous levels and it's only a matter of time before one is murdered, says leading German physicist Hans Schellnhuber. ...

While he was opening a recent climate conference in Melbourne, a man in the front row waved a noose at him. "I was confronted with a death threat when I gave my public lecture," Professor Schellnhuber said.

"Somebody got to his feet and showed me a rope with a noose.

"He showed me this hangman's rope and he said: 'Mr Schellnhuber, welcome to Australia'.

http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-12-death-threats-for-australian-climate-scientists

A quick search reveals much more evidence than one denialist blog.

Are you really as inane as you come across with such rubbish?

Show me any death threats made by those who believe the science agaist those that dont,

Try and cite something vaugely credible.....

It's called a Loaded Labour Cost. Back the last time I had to deal with this (back in the 90's), the LLC for a staff member, regardless of salary ended up being around $150k/year. That's how much it cost the _employer_ to have you in a seat, pretty much regardless of your salary.

So, the federal government can either pay that themselves and have a full time employee on their staff, or they can pay that plus a markup and have a contractor they can get rid of whenever they want.

The contractor is typically better if only for the ease of downsizing.

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/12/another_bad_metric_error_wages.php
http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/10624/calculating-loaded-labor-cost-for-roi

Life finds a way. What I find really amusing is that we humans have convinced ourselves that we need to take care of our environment for the sake of other animals that live among us. In reality, we should be worrying about our own survival. You see, since we lack basic survival skills, we have developed large brains to create a buffer from harsh environments, thus slowing our own evolution (micro and macro). It's not the end of the world if we destroy our environment. Life will find away....without us. tl;dr? This comic sums it all up: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2011/06/what_mother_nature_thinks_of_u/sweetnature.jpeg

How long do we have to put up with the notion of "Dark Matter"? Whenever I research this, I come back to the "galactic rotation problem" as the most solid evidence.

There are actually multiple lines of evidence for dark matter. That Other Astronomy Blog, which has a long rant^w article about dark matter about once a week, says that galactic rotation is actually the one observation where MOND (modification of Newtonian dynamics) can actually beat dark matter in predictive accuracy. But it doesn't help in the least for the other observations that tell us that there is dark matter out there.

You, and a bunch of other /.ers, are in urgent need of reading this.

There's a reason why uber-smart people have decided that they really needed this "dark matter" stuff.

You may enjoy reading The evolution of the past tense - how verbs change over time by Ed Yong.

Do you use a cannon or a howitzer for that projection? You're repeating a Randian fantasy that's been debunked more times than the idea that Clinton was responsible for Waco and Ruby Ridge. It's a fable put together to seem reasonable to people ignorant of history, like the yarn that DDT bans killed millions because the pesticide kept malaria-carrying mosquitos in check. Except the yarn is total bullshit, because 1) DDT was never banned for mosquito control, but agricultural use which 2) bred DDT-resistant mosquitos.

But back to the Great Depression, and the canard that trade laws made the depression worse. So go ahead and grab a DeLorean, go back in time and pass the biggest, baddest free trade law you want. Just who was going to buy goods and materials to bring jobs to 15 million unemployed Americans?

Can't be done. Whereas massive Kenysian stimulus not only can be done, but was proven to work with the New Deal - which put 4 million Americans back to work in 4 months through direct hiring programs - and World War II. High marginal tax rates. Direct hire. It works.

Randian voodoo economics? Not only has it never worked, it's only resulted in skyrocketing income disparity and misery for the poor and working class.

The main discovery according to Abbie Smith http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2011/10/black_death_not_initiated_by_a.php is what DNA this did not contain. There was some speculation that there might be some plasmid (a small circular strand of DNA which bacteria can share with each other or sometimes pick up from the environment) that was making the plague more deadly. This result shows that that wasn't the case. The Black Plague was deadly due to lack of antibiotics, lack of sanitation, and lack of resistance. This means we don't need to be that worried about some sort of super-strain of plague coming back to bite us. It also helps underscore how much basic hygiene and sanitation help in reducing disease.

Some other, rather more reliable indications that this guy may indeed be full of crap:

Brian Switek's commentary on the story on his Laelaps palaeontology blog

P. Z. Myers' view of the story on his Pharyngula blog

Discussion of the story on an archive of geologists' conversations on Twitter

The professor's own profile page, which shows he has quite a history of making far-reaching claims.

I don't understand how you can misrepresent a logic statement that badly, but let's try again:

1) Include the data, but raise the error bars.
2) Don't include the data.

Those are the only two options compatible with proper science. That is not what was done, however. Just as with the other cases I brought up, _some_ data that fit the preconceived conclusions was included. That's a big no no in statistics - and Mann has already been shown before to not understand statistics.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2010/08/mcshane-and-wyner-2010.pdf

(Please note: The above paper _assumes_ Mann's proxies to be valid - it only tasks him on the subject of statistics)

Since you have no record of how fast ice shelves may have vanished in the past due to natural warming, it seems suspect to claim that this certainly proves the current rate of dissipation is due to unnatural warming...

Says who? At the very least, someone seems to have the idea that these particular ice masses have been around for thousands of years.

Yes there is warming, but it appears our activities are unrelated.

But then what would he know? He's only the chair of a climatology department...

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/murray_salby_and_conservation.php

No, he's not a reputiible surgeon, he had his license to practice medicine taken away because his insane treatments were killing people.

See the following link for some real facts:

  http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/08/a_fungus_among_us_in_oncology.php

And I have no idea what you're talking about wrt Dr Warburg's cancer research. PH balance has notging to do with it. "the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar." -- Dr. Otto H. Warburg in Lecture

There are actually several dozen ways of defining "species" currently in use. It's a more complicated issue than most people realize.

Here's the reason why we don't have perfect memory:http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/12/hell_is_a_perfect_memory.php. Perfect memory is great when your job is to tell stories about events, but for every other situation, it's complete overkill with significant downsides. Your bio teacher was right, and he was right when it comes to perfect memory: perfect memory is a hindrance in the vast majority of situations you encounter in life. Do you want to perfectly remember every broken bone? Every disappointment? Every failure? Every disaster that has struck around you?

No. On the contrary, you want to be able to forget a lot of things, so that you can move on and try again.

The original cost estimate was $5.1 billion, and included the first five elements only. The 2013 launch date was never settled upon, and the optimistic estimate associated with the $5.1 billion figure was 2014. When the cost went up to $6.5 billion and the launch date got pushed to 2015, that was really NASA's fault. I don't want you to come away with the impression that NASA is blameless in this; there really was budget mismanagement. This happened last year.

How did it happen? As my source tells it,

During 2010 the project held its next major review: the Critical Design Review. By this time the 2014 launch date had started to appear not credible. Therefore, Senator B. Mikulski, chair of the appropriation subcommittee responsible for NASA, called for an independent review of the project in the Summer 2010. The Independent Comprehensive Review Panel found that the project had not been properly managed, primarily due to the lack of near term reserves which for a project of this complexity are needed to make sure that things stay on track when issues are discovered.

In other words, the mismanagement was primarily not keeping enough cash-on-hand to deal with unexpected issues when they came up. This resulted in a new figure of $6.5 billion and a new launch date of 2015.

BUT!

This is important. The Independent Comprehensive Review Panel, when it came up with the $6.5 billion / 2015 figure, said that it was contingent. Upon what?

The ICRP conclusion was that the earliest JWST could be launched was late 2015 for a total cost of $6.5B of which $250M extra had to be provided in each of 2011 and 2012. They stated clearly that this was the earliest and cheapest way to launch JWST and any delay would result in a more expensive mission.

The 1B figure seems to be a gross underbid, according to other sources which

If you meant your "no, that's bullshit" to be taken as regarding the interpretation of the emails rather than the fact it happened (as I took it), you could have specified. You could have also given a counter-argument, perhaps taken from the following: http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/11/the_hacked_climate_science_ema.php or maybe http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/ . Do I need to do all your work for you?

Starts with a Bang is an astrophysics professor's coverage of dark matter and what we know about it (including why we believe it makes up most of the matter in the universe.)

But I have seen some of what passes for climate modeling and it is pathetic. And it has NEVER produced a testable result. There are ZERO predictions made by a 'reputable' climate scientist from 10 or twenty years ago that matched reality 10 or twenty years later.

Based on your posting history you are a troll, but I'll feed the troll lest someone thinks you have a point.
Here is a post vetted and endorsed by the climate scientists at realclimate.org:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/models-are-unproven.php

It is fairly apparent at this juncture in time that there is a genetic component to autism. But we just don't know yet.

It is also apparent that there is an environmental factor at work. There are many cases of identical twins where only one of them have autism.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/autism_and_the_search_for_simp.php - This is a pretty good rundown of what we know on the genetic side so far.

Apologies for throwing a link at you without having fully read it*, but here is something that may help.

* This looks like something I won't have time to read at the moment.

In other words, before the collision, gravity, stars, and gas all lined up. After the collision, the gas (which is where most of the normal matter is) doesn't line up with the stars. But gravity does. This only works if there's some extra type of matter that doesn't smash together and collide like normal matter (i.e., protons, neutrons, and electrons) does.

This is because it is the simplest theory which fits available data.

But it doesn't fit the data

Well, I am a physicist (doing my PHD, although not in astrophysics), and I can tell you that it certainly looks like the simplest theory that fits the data. I highly recommend Ethan's blog, who explains this very well, particularly http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/03/good_ideas_bad_ideas_mond_and.php and
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/09/dark_matter_part_i_how_much_ma.php. Notice, also, that theory predicts that the percentage of darks matter and energy changed during the history of our universe.

Of course, the theory is not complete, and there should be further experimental confirmation, but it looks pretty good for now.

This kind of thinking is all too common in Physics. A classic example is the double-slit experiment. Every textbook states a formula for the spacing of the interference fringes that disregards a bunch of things, handwaving them away as "unimportant". A math-geek friend of mine in my physics class was upset by this lack of rigor, walked up to the whiteboard, and demonstrated that the simplifications can result in errors as large as ten percent or more in real-world scenarios!

Imagine someone basing a new theory of light based on the difference between observed interference fringe spacing and the simplified theory. That would be stupid, wouldn't it? Why is it then acceptable for gravity?

Well, I work in optics, and I have no clue what you are talking about here... Is it because the usual derivation uses tan(alpha) ~ sin(alpha) ~ alpha? Or because it disregards the polarization of light? I can assure you that both of those approximations are very good "in most cases". But that doesn't mean you can't use the correct formulas, if needed. More likely, your teacher was oversimplifying the problem to get accross the most important concepts without his students being drowned by little details.

But much, much more importantly, physicists know that arriving to the simplest model that explains all your experimental data is very important, because it lets you understand what's going on, instead of just making blind calculations. I can assure you that this is not an easy skill to learn, specially for math-loving students who are irritated by approximations (I know this from first-hand experience!).

This is because it is the simplest theory which fits available data.

But it doesn't fit the data

Well, I am a physicist (doing my PHD, although not in astrophysics), and I can tell you that it certainly looks like the simplest theory that fits the data. I highly recommend Ethan's blog, who explains this very well, particularly http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/03/good_ideas_bad_ideas_mond_and.php and
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/09/dark_matter_part_i_how_much_ma.php. Notice, also, that theory predicts that the percentage of darks matter and energy changed during the history of our universe.

Of course, the theory is not complete, and there should be further experimental confirmation, but it looks pretty good for now.

This kind of thinking is all too common in Physics. A classic example is the double-slit experiment. Every textbook states a formula for the spacing of the interference fringes that disregards a bunch of things, handwaving them away as "unimportant". A math-geek friend of mine in my physics class was upset by this lack of rigor, walked up to the whiteboard, and demonstrated that the simplifications can result in errors as large as ten percent or more in real-world scenarios!

Imagine someone basing a new theory of light based on the difference between observed interference fringe spacing and the simplified theory. That would be stupid, wouldn't it? Why is it then acceptable for gravity?

Well, I work in optics, and I have no clue what you are talking about here... Is it because the usual derivation uses tan(alpha) ~ sin(alpha) ~ alpha? Or because it disregards the polarization of light? I can assure you that both of those approximations are very good "in most cases". But that doesn't mean you can't use the correct formulas, if needed. More likely, your teacher was oversimplifying the problem to get accross the most important concepts without his students being drowned by little details.

But much, much more importantly, physicists know that arriving to the simplest model that explains all your experimental data is very important, because it lets you understand what's going on, instead of just making blind calculations. I can assure you that this is not an easy skill to learn, specially for math-loving students who are irritated by approximations (I know this from first-hand experience!).

How can you possibly not know about the Bullet Cluster? That is pretty much blatant evidence that there appears to be something there which is both dark and massive. Wouldn't a theory of dark matter be appropriate when presented with such evidence? (and, by the way, structures like the Bullet Cluster were predicted by the theory of dark matter - people said "well if it doesn't interact electromagnetically, we should be able to see places where normal matter got pushed but dark matter didn't, like when two clusters collide" - so they set out to look for something like that, and lo and behold they found it!)

And that's not even going in to the other things that dark matter predicts and nothing else does, like the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Or you could just read Starts with a Bang, Ethan Siegel is a lot better at explaining this stuff than Slashdot is.

"I'd like a bit of better evidence, please, before I swallow something like that."

1) Rotational curves of galaxies.
2) Gravitational lensing - it's too strong for the amount of baryonic matter present.
3) Bullet cluster ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_cluster ).
4) Small galaxies - the smaller the galaxy the more dark-matter-dominated it is.

The first one can be somewhat explained by MOND. But MOND can't really explain gravitational lensing (duh, it's Modified _Newtonian_ mechanics) and it is totally busted by 3) and 4). Vacuum polarization is MOND-like in this regard and probably can't explain them as well.

Actually, the relationship between the amount of dark matter and normal matter in small galaxies is quite interesting. Unlike rotational curves and lensing it has an explanation that has nothing to do with gravitational properties of dark matter. Small galaxies have fairly shallow gravitational wells, so normal matter can be blown away by stellar winds and supernovae explosions. And since dark matter does not interact [much] with the normal matter, it tends to stay. Here's a nice overview: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/08/the_smallest_mini-galaxy_in_th.php

Our cells carry loads of genetic material picked up pretty much everywhere.

They're called Endogenous Retroviruses.

Abbie is never gonna forgive me.

The precautionary principle