May 15, 2008
Category: Peer Review
DrDrA at Blue Lab Coats just had a paper officially "rejected", with the following initial reaction:
Its ok, these things happen and its just a paper. I'm not really upset about it that much and will turn it over somewhere else.
Hey! Not so fast with the resignation! One thing I have learned over the years is to never take a paper "rejection" as a rejection until an editor tells you personally--not using automated boilerplate language--that she absolutely refuses to reconsider the paper.
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Posted by PhysioProf at 9:35 PM • 40 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cannabis
Representative John Conyers, Chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, sent a letter to the DEA inquiring about the "paramilitary style enforcement raids" conducted against medical marijuana distributors in California. In case anyone hasn't been following this story the state of California permits the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Since the federal government does not and the current Federal apparatuses' have chosen not to look the other way in respect of State's rights, there have been Federally motivated enforcement actions against people and businesses that are legally permitted by the State but not the Federal government.
Ed Brayton observes:
All of this can be blamed entirely on the Supreme Court, which issued one of the most indefensible rulings in its history in Gonzales v Raich. And yes, this one you can lay directly at the feet of the liberals on the court. Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer were all in the majority in ruling that the federal government has the authority to overrule state medical marijuana laws.
I ran across something specific related to this Conyers' letter that ties back to some previous comments I had about drug advocates trying to Trojan Horse recreational use under cover of medicinal use.
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Posted by DrugMonkey at 9:35 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 13, 2008
Category: General Politics • Racist Idiots
Kevin Beck points to this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Apparently some genius in Marietta is selling a shirt with the following logo out of his store and (gasp) some people find this just the teeensiest bit offensive.
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Posted by DrugMonkey at 6:25 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Conduct of Science • Drug Abuse Science • Drug Fatality • MDMA • Public Health • Tribe of Science
A recent post of Zuska's discusses the pejorative use of "anecdote" to dismiss personal accounts of gender bias. The generic argument will be well familiar to many scientists who are used to sneering at sources of insight that are limited to individual data points. I concur in many cases however I also value anecdotal observations much in the way that commenter Sanguinity identified a number of useful applications of the anecdote in science including the following:
- suggest a new direction for query/research.
...
In that last case, the anecdote is a potential source for a vast new amount of information, but only if you don't dismiss it out of hand as "just an anecdote."
This reminded me of a post I wrote previously on the value of anecdotal case reports describing MDMA-related fatality and medical emergency.
The singular of data is "anecdote".
We all know this hoary old scientific snark. Pure Pedantry ponders the utility of Case Reports following a discussion of same at The Scientist.
The Pure Pedantry Ponder identifies "rare neurological cases" as a primary validation for the Case Study, but the contribution goes way beyond this. Let's take YHN's favorite example, drug abuse science and MDMA in particular.
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Posted by DrugMonkey at 11:45 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 10, 2008
Category: Conduct of Science
I have some brilliant and enthusiastic friends in the science blogosphere who are putting substantial effort into building on-line venues where working scientists will create scholarly communities to engage in vibrant scientific discussion and commentary, as well as disseminate novel scientific information. As appealing as this may sound---and it does sound appealing in some respects---it is currently doomed to failure, at least in the case of the biomedical sciences.
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Posted by PhysioProf at 9:50 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 9, 2008
Category: Careerism • Grantsmanship • NIH • NIH Budgets and Economics
Abel Pharmboy pointed to a piece in The Scientist entitled "Losing Your Lab" which discusses the plight of the soft-money researcher who has run out of funding. Actually, the plight of one researcher in particular. The commentary is, however, getting interesting and I thought many of our readers might want to go play.
There are a couple things in the article however that seem a bit off-kilter to me.
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Posted by DrugMonkey at 10:15 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 8, 2008
Category: Alcohol • Drug Abuse Science • Drug Fatality • General Politics • Public Health
Members of San Diego State University are expressing an interesting attitude in the aftermath of the drug sweep which arrested 75 students of SDSU. According to the initial reporting it is clear that members of an organized drug marketing organization were targets.
One alleged dealer, Theta Chi member Kenneth Ciaccio, sent text messages to his "faithful customers" announcing that cocaine sales would be suspended over an upcoming weekend because he and his "associates" planned to be in Las Vegas, authorities said.
The same message posted "sale" prices on cocaine if transactions were completed before the dealers left San Diego.
It is equally clear that some individuals arrested were merely customers. Drug users, not dealers. Presumably this is why elements of SDSU are now questioning the appropriateness of calling in undercover federal agents on this case.
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Posted by DrugMonkey at 2:55 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 7, 2008
Category: Cannabis • Cocaine • Drug Fatality • MDMA • Opiates
Perennial Playboy Magazine Top-Ten Party School San Diego State University is in the news following the arrest of some of its students on allegations of illicit drug dealing and drug possession. The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting:
Federal agents and SDSU police culminated a yearlong investigation into drug dealing around campus yesterday, ...Ninety-six suspects, including 75 SDSU students, have been arrested on drug-related charges...The SDSU Police Department approached the DEA and county narcotics task-force officials for assistance in December, when it became clear that the trafficking was more widespread than it could handle.
Investigation seizures by the numbers (sidebar; SOURCE: SD County District Attorney's Office)
- 50: Pounds of marijuana
- 4: Pounds of cocaine
- 3: Semiautomatic handguns
- 1: Shotgun
- 48: Marijuana plants
- 350: Ecstasy pills
- 30: Vials of hash oil
- $60,000: Cash
Sadly, the investigation was sparked by a drug-overdose fatality, albeit of an anonymous undergraduate rather than someone as famous as Heath Ledger or Len Bias. There is also another drug-overdose fatality caught up in this story.
I want to talk about Jennifer Poliakoff and Kurt Baker today.
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Posted by DrugMonkey at 4:24 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category:
DrugMonkey posted yesterday about the "A2 bump" and other study section behaviors that are designed to create a "holding pattern" for grants that will ultimately almost-certainly be funded, but only as a subsequent resubmission. Although he alluded to the fact that this kind of behavior is greatly encouraged when funding is very tight, he didn't really explicitly lay out why. So here we go!
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Posted by PhysioProf at 2:05 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
