The Week's Best: Evolution, healthcare reform, clever apes, and Cheever in his undies
Category: Public health
Evolution, healthcare reform, baboons, and Cheever in his underwear
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:01 AM • 0 Comments •
Neuron Culture
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
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I write articles 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, and am working on my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which expands on my recent December 2009 Atlantic article. In August 2010, I'll be moving to London for a year to work on the book. I'll also serve as a senior fellow at City University London's MA science journalism program.
You're encouraged to check out my third book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career; subscribe to Neuron Culture by email; see more of my work at my main website; or track Twitter feed, my Google Reader shared items, or my Tumblr log, which gets it all.
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- I've moved to Wired
- A food blog I can't digest
- Sullivan & Jefferson on blogospheric chaos and the press
- Ozzy! Ozzy! Ozzy! -- Neuron Culture's Top 5 in June
- Aglitter in the net: reading, writing, genes, and leaving your desk
- Tourette's, goalie timing, and downside & upsides
- An interview in which I'm on the wrong side of the table
- Paul Bloom: Pleasure is a by-product
- David Foster Wallace is, indeed, Smarter than You Think
- Best sit in a soft chair to read this
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Pharma:
Does depression have an upside? It's complicated.
Category: Genetics & genomics (incl behav genetics)
Despite all the complexity, it's that simple: Sometimes, for some people, depression ramps up constructive thinking; for other people (or at other times for the same people for whom depression sometimes brings insight), it smothers it. Did Virginia Woolf's bipolar depression bring her insight and creativity? Quite possibly. Yet in the end it drowned her.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:16 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Hits of the week past
Category: Genetics & genomics (incl behav genetics)
The week's best -- with new features!
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:14 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Why do antidepressants work only for the deeply depressed? A neuroskeptical look
Category: Medicine
Neuroskeptic takes a sharp look at how our expanding definition of depression paralleled our expanding use of antidepressants -- and perhaps led to antidepressant's poor performance in the less severely depressed. T
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:11 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Sell the drugs, they pay you. Criticize the drugs, they sue you.
Category: Culture of science
So a company, angry at being accused of trying to suppress information, responds by ... sueing the guy who released the information.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:13 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Top Five Posts at Neuron Culture in November
Category: Books
PTSD, orchid children, military suicides, coral isles, and adjuvants. That was a SLOW month at Neuron Culture.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:20 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Why is the swine flu vaccine so late? Who are you to ask such a question?
Category: Public health
I like industrial secrets as much as the next person. But it would seem that when tens of millions of doses of vaccine are weeks late, we might get something more specific than that one company was overoptimistic and another had trouble filling syringes.
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:43 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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)."
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:51 AM • 1 Comments •
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.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:27 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
To boost or not to boost, or how our H1N1 vaccines will leave millions naked
Category: Public health
The good news? The US's swine flu vaccines seem to work really well. The bad news? Because they use twice as much antigen as necessary, they leave about a quarter BILLION people elsewhere naked to the virus.
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:44 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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