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Neuron Culture

David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.

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dobbspic I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years. Oliver Sacks found Reef Madness "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant." Check it out.

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Brains and minds:

Senator Asks Pentagon To Review Antidepressants

Category: Brains and minds

This is a good example of how reflexive diagnoses, as PTSD has become for any combat veteran (and sometimes even prospective combat veterans -- i.e., troops preparing to deploy), can do harm. They can lead you to ignore other possible causes of the symptoms on display.

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Raymond Tallis trashtalks some "Neurotrash"

Category: Culture of science

Ray Tallis takes to those who paint all things neuro.

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I'm not vulnerable, just especially plastic. Risk genes, environment, and evolution, in the Atlantic

Category: Brains and minds

This is a transformative, even startling view of human frailty and strength. For more than a decade, proponents of the vulnerability hypothesis have argued that certain gene variants underlie some of humankind's most grievous problems: despair, alienation, cruelties both petty and epic. The orchid hypothesis accepts that proposition. But it adds, tantalizingly, that these same troublesome genes play a critical role in our species' astounding success.

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Still hope for writers everywhere: Robots take over sports desk - but need writer to write lede.

Category: Brains and minds

A robot writes a sports story -- but misses the lede. Still working on the forest/trees thing

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The importance of stupidity in scientific research (and in writing), by Randy Burgess

Category: Brains and minds

"Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time." This goes for writing too.

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Neuron Culture's Top Ten from September

Category: Brains and minds

That post reported the news (via FiercePharma) that Pfizer had tucked away in its financial disclosure forms a $2.3 billion charge to end the federal investigation into allegations of off-label promotions of its Cox-2 painkillers, including Bextra. ... Because my post was was one of the few things already on the interwebz before Justice held its news conference, the Google rush shot it toward the top of the search results.

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Crushed that pitch: Announcer goes yard with pre-game homer prediction

Category: Brains and minds

Mariners announcer Mike Blowers, asked before the game for his prediction of the game, predicted a rookie player would hit a homer into the second deck in left-center in his second at-bat on a 3-1 fastball. Man did it.

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On the reading table lately

Category: Brains and minds

Ricks -- who earlier wrote Fiasco , a devastating indictment of the run-up to the war, makes three things quite clear: The surge was not about more soldiers, but soldiers doing different things -- protecting the populace rather than hunting the enemy. ... First-rate history of science here, and a fascinating look at Harry Harlow, a monkey researcher whose powerful but sometimes disturbing experiments in the middle decades of last century helped replace a cold behavioralist view of infancy and childhood with the theories of attachment and bonding that still rule today.

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Dipstick: religious brains, more school, more meds, states rights, and dancing with the unwilling. Plus Ardi, free

This implies that religious beliefs and behavior emerged not as sui generis evolutionary adaptations, but as an extension (some would say "by product") of social cognition and behavior. May be something to that, Razib says — but it would be nice "get in on the game of normal human variation in religious orientation (as opposed to studies of mystical brain states which seem focused on outliers)."

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Morning dip: Obama on fascistic healthcare, Razib on religion, & other notables

Category: Brains and minds

As Obama explains, world leaders are puzzled that healthcare gets painted with a Hitler moustache. and other news.

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