Tangled Bank #28 is up

The Tangled Bank is a weekly compendium of science (and medical writing) in the blogworld. This week's topic is "alternative remedies" and is being hosted by Chronicles of a Medical Madhouse.

And why is it called a "Tangled Bank" ? PZ Myers coined the phrase, as a reference to a famous quote by Darwin:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms.

For some of the best science writing and expository work on evolution on the web, visit PZ Myers' site Pharyngula. And although I like to rant about science journalists, I have to give credit where it is overdue: Chris Mooney is by a long shot one of the best science writers around, and has been covering many of the recent controversies in the world of scientific research (the false 'balance' in covering scientific disputes like global warming, the ID controversies, and others).