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Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Science Mutating: The Results

Posted by Jonathan Golob on Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 3:40 PM

I asked you to help me with an experiment.

Here are the results:

(A full-sized version of the figure can be found on DearScience.org )

Ultimately, I decided to not filter out all of the noise comments (including my own) that weren't attempts to copy the original. Almost all of these clustered together in the green block.

The attempts that riffed off the original—like Fnarf's and Urgutha Forka's—clustered together as well in the blue blocks.

My original paragraph was slotted in as comment zero, located in the dendrogram as the left-most leaf in the red block. All of the legitimate attempts to copy the paragraph ended up clustered together in the red block.

A few cool mutations emerged. My original:

CCR is short for chemokine receptor. Chemokines and chemokine receptors allow the cells in your immune system to speak to one another; their epic fight against invaders is like a game of Marco Polo. CCR5 is the chemokine receptor found on macrophages—the gobbling-up cells at the front line of your immune system.

Luckier's Comment #10:

CCR is short for chemokine receptor. Chemokines and chemokine receptors allow the cells in your immune system to speak to one another; their epic fight against invaders is like a game of Marco Polo. CCR5 is a the chemokine receptor found on macrphages—the gobbling-up cells at the front line of your immune system.

Like most mutations during the copying of DNA, the differences in the copies didn't really change the meaning, just a few little details of how it was written or punctuated.

See any others?

Comments (12) RSS

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I would actually attend an hourlong presentation about this experiment, even though I didn't try to correctly type the original paragraph. If booze was available, I would pay extra.

Posted by Uncle Vinny on December 2, 2008 at 4:22 PM

I find that I really want to understand the diagram... are there 1000 responses? what is the numeric down the left side related to?
doest eh one blue line across the top at 1000 mean something so vastly different from yours? like 'F-Off"?

Posted by Womyn2me on December 2, 2008 at 4:57 PM

how do i fit into this with my backwards reply?

Posted by Bellevue Ave on December 2, 2008 at 6:08 PM

I wish you had been one of my teachers in school.

Posted by Nay on December 2, 2008 at 6:12 PM

Hey, I got mentioned in a blog entry! How cool. Hmmm... Ok, I'm over it now.

Posted by Urgutha Forka on December 2, 2008 at 6:36 PM

I can't read what the x axis says (was this the number of respondents). And I am not sure what the numbers on the left mean (since Fnarf's, and I am assuming, my own responses are in blue, I am guessing it's not based on how correct the copy is).

Posted by elswinger on December 2, 2008 at 9:55 PM

The take-home message: We are extremely lucky that our DNA has better replication enzymes than those employed by Slog commenters.

Posted by josh on December 2, 2008 at 11:15 PM

You don't think the difference between "macrophages" and "macrphages" is significant? That's the difference between a functioning protein and a dud!

Posted by idaho on December 3, 2008 at 12:05 AM

This is really fucking cool, by the way.

Posted by idaho on December 3, 2008 at 12:06 AM

@3 Your reply is number 34 and is incorrectly(?) clustered with the original message. I'm thinking it has to be wrong, but everything I know about dendrograms I learned by reading a Wikipedia page.

For the people wondering about the axes, the comment numbers are on the x-axis, so the y-axis must be a measure related to the comments' sameness (as determined by a Python library function).

Posted by My Name Somewhere on December 3, 2008 at 12:09 AM

what program did you use to make this dendrogram, jonathan?

Posted by anotha jonathan on December 3, 2008 at 10:51 AM

@11: I have the full python code on dearscience.org. Mostly sci-py.

@10 has it right as far as interpreting the figure.

And I think his reverse paragraph clustered properly. It *is* a copy of the original.

Posted by Jonathan Golob on December 3, 2008 at 11:36 AM