“ The stubborn inequalities in the Unites States are not the result of some people living in a physical environment. Their environment is built by social forces, and those forces last for centuries beca… Carl Zimmer
“ From Lankaster to Lorenz, scientists have gotten it wrong. Parasites are complex, highly adapted creatures that are at the heart of the story of life. If there hadn't been such high walls dividing sci… Carl Zimmer
“ It is true that humans have physical differences, and some of those differences are spread geographically across the plant. But clinging to old notions about race won't help us understand the nature o… Carl Zimmer
“ Reviewing the records of two million recruits, Feyrer and his colleagues also checked the natural iodine levels in their hometowns. Nationwide, the researchers found, the introduction of iodine raised… Carl Zimmer
“ For comparison, tap out a single grain of salt from a shaker. You could line up about ten skin cells along one side of it. You could line up about a hundred bacteria. Compared to viruses, however, bac… Carl Zimmer
“ Goddard died at age ninety. In their obituary, the Associated Press remembered him for two accomplishments: coining the word moron and discovering the Kallikaks. Carl Zimmer
“ After a few years of breeding a type of lily, Burbank found a single specimen that met his standards. A rabbit ate it. Carl Zimmer
“ Goddard’s staff kept careful records of the tests, which he analyzed back in Vineland. The results stunned him: A huge proportion of the immigrants tested as feebleminded. Goddard broke down the resul… Carl Zimmer
“ Based on the number of viruses she found in her samples, Proctor estimated that every liter of seawater contained up to one hundred billion viruses. Carl Zimmer
“ Tap out a single grain of salt from a shaker. You could line up about ten skin cells along one side of it. You could line up about a hundred bacteria. Compared to viruses, however, bacteria are giants… Carl Zimmer
“ Parasites make up the majority of species on Earth. According to one estimate, parasites may outnumber free-living species four to one. In other words, the study of life is, for the most part, parasit… Carl Zimmer
“ Eugenicists made a mess of traits like intelligence. They were obsessed with splitting people into two categories—healthy and feebleminded—and then they would cast the feebleminded as a class of vast… Carl Zimmer
“ The problem is not that dolphins are dumber than we thought, but that our anthropomorphism inevitably makes it hard to understand an intelligence other than our own. Carl Zimmer
“ The very word virus began as a contradiction. We inherited the word from the Roman Empire, where it meant, at once, the venom of a snake or the semen of a man. Creation and destruction in one word. Carl Zimmer
“ Traveling across Australia, Asia, and Africa, he searched for people with little contact with the West who he could examine. Porteus found that the so-called Bushmen of the Kalahari scored a mental ag… Carl Zimmer
“ It may be hard to imagine a world before antibiotics, but now we must imagine a world where antibiotics are not the only weapon we use against bacteria. And now, ninety years after Herelle first encou… Carl Zimmer
