The Evil Monkey has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from a southeastern U.S. university. After a postdoctoral nightmare of Inquisitorial proportions, he is currently working in a laboratory and an adjunct assistant professor at a nearby state university.
Scicurious has a PhD in Physiology from a southern institution. She is a nerd, a geek, and also a dork. And yes, that really is her brain.
NotoriousLTP is an MD-PhD student in New York City. After finishing (hopefully soon) his PhD in behavioral neuroscience, he will re-enter the fun vortex that is medical education.
Disclaimer: The opinions on this blog do not represent any organization to which we may belong, or employers, or basically anybody but us. So there.
I'm putting this post under "education" because I define a new term at the end of it. Which, of course, qualifies it to be educational.
By now you've probably picked up on the Sexiest Female Scientist list being passed around by some atheist guy, so I won't bother to link to it and drive up the turd's traffic. I will, however, give my quick 2 cents on this particular brand of sexism.
Sheril and PZ already hit this topic, among many others, but I think Janet's take comes closest to my own position. She writes:
However, it's pretty assy to dismiss not just the intuitions but the actual experiences of a significant number of people who tell you (repeatedly), that they are harmed by X. To dismiss these experiences while saying, "No, give me an argument against X," is clueless at best.
Look, central to the project of being ethical is recognizing that it's not all about you. It is not enough to evaluate courses of action on the basis of first principles that seem plausible to you, or of actual experiences you have had -- how things impact others matters. That means that listening to what people are telling you about how X impacts them is a pretty crucial step -- one that ought to inform not just your thoughts but your actions.
There. That's it. That is the definition of male privilege. When you, as a man get to substitute your own version of reality for a woman's, you are exercising male privilege. As a practical example-- if you, as a man, decide that no, actually women aren't or shouldn't be offended by posting their pictures in a Top 15 Science Hottie post, and then dismiss the opinions of actual women including some of whom you posted about because "they should be flattered", you are exercising male privilege. You are also a dick.
With that in mind, I take credit for introducing my own term to the blogosphere.
labia puncher (n)- A man whose privileged status allows him to substitute his own opinion/interpretation on the appropriateness of a comment or situation directed at a woman, in lieu of actually considering said woman's opinion. The labia puncher differs from a mansplainer in that the mansplainer merely reiterates a position already taken by a woman and gets credit for it, while a labia puncher is just a cum-chugging cock gobbler who can't get a date for obvious reasons.
Sci has just tendered her letter of resignation to the Overlords at SEED. This was a very, very hard decision, and it hurts Sci more than she can say. Sci would like to let you know, though, that she hasn't given up blogging!!! She has merely moved back to her old digs. You can find her at Neurotic Physiology, her old place. Please do drop by and visit!
As for my reasons, well, I just want to say that it was not specifically Pepsico that made me feel like I couldn't continue here. There were a multitude of contributing factors, and Pepsico was just a last in a long line.
But don't worry, Sci will be around! I'll see you on the blogs, kids.
If you've been around the blog for the past day, I'm sure you've seen that there's been a new...blog...from PepsiCo. Sci's not sure what she thinks of it, but it's not positive. I know we had GE and Shell and stuff...but that felt different, somehow. Being as Sci has recently been looking in to a lot of food and reward related mechanisms and issues associated with things like binge eating, she is more than a bit uncomfortable. So she needs some time to think about it. Posting will resume when I've had my think.
In the meantime, thanks so much for the responses to my meme! Sci is thrilled to see all the people who read and why. She promises, no matter what, her blogging has by no means ended.
I tried to find a video of the Emperor's New Groove where Yzma gets turned into a cat and it's hilarious and adorable. But all I could find were fandubs, most of which were terrible. Why the heck do people make versions of this stuff and put it out there on the internet! It's a big "hey everyone, look at me and how I wasted my time!" Except less cool than that.
1) My voice sounds really funny. Seriously, it sounds NOTHING like I hear in my head. I'm going to have to change my intonation on everything now so I can sound normal to myself.
2) Canadians really DO say "about" like that and it's hilarious.
3) Christie is awesome. I mean, I knew this before, but really, she's great.
4) My crutch phrase is "I mean".
As a group, we also learned that we were all far too serious once the recording actually came on. When we do this again, there will be a two drink minimum. Also, it's really hard not to interrupt people when you can't SEE them. Hence, Sci has decided she wants to do a video podcast, using sockpuppets, because it would be both intentionally and probably unintentionally hilarious.
But anyway, here it is! I think we need to do another one, there's a lot to cover, anyone got any specific questions they want answered?
...The return of the bride of the who are you thread? The return of the son of the who are you thread? The bride of the son of the twice removed cousin of the thread...
Anyway, I saw this meme over at Drugmonkey, and again at Not Exactly Rocket Science, and decided it would be cool to see...who is watching me. Last year's results helped me a little bit in terms of how I write (they don't change what I write about, really, but knowing I had a lot of lay people in the audience gives me a little extra incentive to be as clear as possible), and so I thought it'd be cool to see what's changed and what has stayed the same. And also, I like the see who's staring at me. :)
SO NOW, ANSWER ME THESE QUESTIONS THREE:
1) Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments.
2) Tell someone else about this blog and in particular, try and choose someone who's not a scientist but who you think might be interested in the type of stuff found in this blog. Ever had family members or groups of friends who've been giving you strange, pitying looks when you try to wax scientific on them? Send 'em here and let's see what they say.
And 3) WHAT is YOUR QUEST!!!!?!?! Either right now or in life. Right now, Sci's quest involves a pursuit of her favorite candy. That's these:
(OM NOM NOM. These are the best mints evar. They are also ridiculously hard to find.)
Let it be known that Sci, like many a young, bright-eyed little scientist, tries to keep up on her reading. TRIES is the operative word, but every week Sci gets the Tables of Contents for all the major journals in her field (and all the major ones in her subdisciple) emailed straight to her for her perusal. She scans the title lists, searching for things that are cool in her field, cool to blog, or that might indicate a scoopage of her work (hey, it happens).
And it was in one of these perusals that I came across this article. And this article is on a subject that needs to be blogged. But this article also says a lot about the "selling" of a scientific paper to a high-ranking journal. Biological Psychiatry, the journal in which this paper was published, has a pretty decent impact factor (8.67), and in Sci's field, is considered to be a pretty hot publication venue.
But before I go into that, let's take a look at this paper:
Steiner et al. "Fluoxetine potentiates methylphenidate-induced gene regulation in addiction-related brain regions: Concerns for use of cognitive enhancers?" Biological Psychiatry, 2010.
Sci would like to start by noting that doing an image search for "cognitive enhancer" yields some surprisingly boring results. I was really hoping for something like this:
Sci was toddling around the internet recently (as is her wont), when she came across the work of Dr. Petra. If you're in to learning about sex, sex education, and everything else from a scientific point of view, Sci highly recommends Dr. Petra. This is a blogger who tells it like it is.
(Sci also just found out that Seed has a current article on humans as some very sexy beasts. Sci is suitably amused, and you should be too).
And it was an article from the awesome Dr. Petra which notified Sci of the current stuff going on with this drug called flibanserin, which has to be one of the WORST drug names. Sci keeps wanting to call it fibansin, or fibanserin, or flibansin. FLIBANSERIN?! Two syllables too many.
As you may know by now, the FDA rejected flibanserin for use in treatment of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). Sci thinks this was extremely justified, as the results of the studies on flibanserin, first off, haven't been PUBLISHED. This means they haven't been peer reviewed. And there might be some good reasons. Neuroskeptic gave some great coverage of this. So far it looks like:
1) The trials did not show a statistically significant difference for the co-primary endpoint, the eDiary sexual desire score.
2) The Applicant's request to use the FSFI [a questionnaire] desire items as the alternative instrument to evaluate the co-primary endpoint of sexual desire is not statistically justified and, in fact, was not supported by exploratory data from Study 511.77, which also failed to demonstrate a statistically significant treatment benefit on desire using the FSFI desire items.
3) The responder rates on the important efficacy endpoints for the flibanserin-treated subjects, intended to demonstrate the clinical meaningfulness, are only 3-15% greater than those in the placebo arm.
4) There were many significant medical and medication exclusion criteria for the efficacy trials, so it is not clear whether the safety and efficacy data from these trials are generalizable to the target population for the drug.
Um. Owie. So the whole thing was by questionnaire, which isn't necessarily bad, except the questionnaire wasn't itself proven to be any good. So then the results may not be any good. And the results they GOT suggest that even if the results WERE in fact an accurate representation, flibanserin doesn't work any better than placebo. And even if it DID, there were so many exclusion criteria that we have no idea if the women used in the questionnaire even represented the regular target population. Excellent smackdown, FDA.
But there's another deal here that Sci wishes to address, and that would be the issue of HSDD. Hold on to your hats.
You may not think of our flesh-eating diseased brethren as being the thoughtful types. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't.
As Sci mentioned, I'm gonna be holed up in the Costco for a while so I got time to think about it. They're the slow-moving-undead zombies, not those ultra-quick "infected" (I hate those creepy bastards). I rolled down those big steel doors, barricaded them with anything heavy I could find here, gathered up all the lighting supplies for when the power goes out, bandaged up that bite on my arm, and I've taken to making jerky out of all this meat I've got laying around the store. I even got chainsaws in case they break in. Not my weapon of choice by a long shot since all it does is attract more zombies, but they'll do. I should be able to last a while. Other survivors are knocking on the door. I can't let them in, I might put myself at risk. Maybe I'll toss them some supplies from the roof later. If they make it.
So while I slice up all this beef and prep it for low heat cookin', I'm thinking about these buggers. Are they just driven by a bunch of chemical reactions in their diseased brains?They got a rudimentary consciousness in there someplace, right? Or do they? People normally think of consciousness as the ability to self-evaluate, to reflect on one's own mental state. Consciousness is frequently referred to as an emergent phenomenon, or one that can't readily be predicted by knowing all the properties of its constituents. For example, we can't really predict "wetness" from knowing the properties of a water molecule.
Some philosophers suggest that mental processes supervene on physical processes. That is, you can't reductively just break down all the physical processes of the brain and get a true understanding of mentation. That being said, though, you can't have the mental process without the physical. At least that we know about or can explain.
Hmm I'm getting hungry and these granola bars aren't cutting it. Guess I don't have to wait for the meat to cook, I can just start eating it as I slice it. Hey, it ain't that gross! Whole cultures make a dining habit of eating raw beef. Ever heard of carpaccio, huh? Steak tartare? Kitfo? Mmm. Funny thing is, the more raw meat I eat the less that bite on my arm itches.
Some philosophers would say that it is possible to imagine a universe just like ours in every way, with all the same physical laws, except that this property of supervenience doesn't apply to mental phenomena. That is to say, there's another universe out there with an identical "you", down to every last molecule, doing exactly what you are doing right now. Like making jerky. Mmmm jerky.
God I wish those survivors would stop banging on the door. I can't think with all that racket!
The difference between You and 2nd you (called Ewe) is that Ewe doesn't have the ability to self-evaluate. Ewe is not aware, Ewe is just playing out the fucktillions of molecular interactions going on in Ewe's body. And since all the same physical laws apply to You and Ewe, You and Ewe will continue to live out the exact same life. The only difference is, Ewe isn't aware of any of it. Kind of like those ravenous, flesh-eating fuckers out there right now, hunting down the last of humanity and tearing us to pieces with their jagged little teeth.
I don't really buy into this as an explanation for how consciousness works, because in this case consciousness really can't impact thought processes at all. It is a passive, useless thing. Personally I prefer to think that evolution shaped our mental processes by shaping our physical processes, meaning that self-evaluation serves a useful role in our survival. If I get out of this mess, I'm gonna head to the library and read up some more......
Dammit, stop banging on the damn door!!!!!!! RRRRRRRRRRR.
So anyway... self-evaluation. Yeah. What was I saying? Shit. Can't think. Hungry. Arm itches.
Tried raw beef, pork, chicken, turkey. I'm craving some long pig, and Costco doesn't carry that. Really craving it.
The Evil Monkey has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from a southeastern U.S. university. After a postdoctoral nightmare of Inquisitorial proportions, he is currently working in a laboratory and an adjunct assistant professor at a nearby state university.
Scicurious has a PhD in Physiology from a southern institution. She is a nerd, a geek, and also a dork. And yes, that really is her brain.
NotoriousLTP is an MD-PhD student in New York City. After finishing (hopefully soon) his PhD in behavioral neuroscience, he will re-enter the fun vortex that is medical education.
