Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.
March 31, 2008
Category: Gender
Go read this post at Language Log. It is about race as a confound in interpreting psychological differences between the sexes: On the other hand, the samples used in sex-differences research are often quite small, and are not in general...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:25 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Haha, a funny
From NPR this morning: Students at the University of Texas at San Antonio were determined to uphold standards at their school. They wrote an honor code that discouraged both cheating and plagiarizing. But they weren't going to waste a lot...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:14 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Sex
Farris et al. have a paper coming out in Psychological Science about how men tend to misperceive sexual interest in women. I get the sense that this is a big problem for many women. Any woman who has spent more...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:53 PM • 18 Comments •
March 27, 2008
Category: Haha, a funny
The Biggest Toy Theory of Scientific endeavor: Science is not driven by curiosity or the desire for fame. Rather it is driven by the desire to accumulate bigger and more complex scientific gadgets. By this standard, particle physicists are gods...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:02 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Science politics
Last night, I saw Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) speak. (I joined this speakers club called the Oxonian Society -- which despite its name is not restricted to Oxford alumni. Why? What can I say. I was bored, and it is...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:47 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Politics
Scientists and Engineers for America is hold a workshop on May 10th to train scientists to run for public office. The workshop features Congressman and former physicist Vern Ehlers. Here is the registration page. It isn't open yet, but if...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:22 PM • 2 Comments •
March 26, 2008
Category: Other People's Work
Megan McArdle posts about the psychology that causes parents to associate their child illnesses with vaccines, but she also reminds us what we can look forward to if parents fail to vaccinate their children: * Leg braces and iron lungs...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:33 PM • 3 Comments •
March 25, 2008
Category: Healthcare
You be the judge. Over at Justice Talking, Russell Roberts from Cafe Hayek debates Dr. Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program. The mp3 is here. Hat-tip: Cafe Hayek...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:50 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Science Life
Anne Casselman at Inkling has this hysterical article on scientists/physicians with beards. Here's a bit on why some public health experts want doctors to lose the beard: Fast forward to 1967, when three scientists from the Industrial Health and Safety...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:44 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Art
Virginia Postrel has this fascinating piece in the Atlantic about why hospitals should be designed to be more attractive -- not just the drab taupe to which we have become accustomed: Thank God for intravenous Benadryl, which knocks me out...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:30 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Economics
Tyler Cowen of the blog Marginal Revolution writes in the NYTimes about how prices carry important information and how you need trading to establish the value of securities: To understand the depths of the current crisis, let's go back to...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:19 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Other People's Work
For some reason, Eurekalert has a more than the average number of interesting press releases today. Take these with a grain of salt -- press releases are usually nonsense -- but still very interesting. People who wear glasses are not...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:11 PM • 0 Comments •
March 24, 2008
Category: Science politics
(How do I know that it is a bad idea to say anything about this. Oh well. Here goes.) ScienceBlogs regulars will know that last week there was a tiny incident involving a prescreening of the movie Expelled! -- a...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:52 AM • 5 Comments •
March 21, 2008
Category: Ethics
I have been thinking a lot lately about the problem of expertise. By the problem of expertise, I mean how people who know better should relate to those who don't. Whether you are a physician or a physicist, this issue...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:24 AM • 13 Comments •
Category: Religion
...this has got to be in the top ten at least. I haven't been following this much, but Ben Stein is coming out with a movie called Expelled. The movie purports to challenge Darwinism's monopoly of classroom instruction -- which...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:04 AM • 1 Comments •
March 20, 2008
Category: Alcohol
I refuse to accept the results of this study: After years of argument over the roles of factors like genius, sex and dumb luck, a new study shows that something entirely unexpected and considerably sudsier may be at play in...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:33 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Transplant Sales
Drew Carey has a video on reason.tv about the possibility of a market for donor kidneys. He interviews recent kidney donor Virginia Postrel. I think Postrel has it just right: If the 1984 law criminalizing organ sales were simply repealed,...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:21 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Neurological disease
CNN has a story about a Navy neurologist who tried using mirrors to help soldiers from Iraq with phantom pain. Phantom pain is pain in amputees that is perceived to originate in the amputated limb. What causes it is not...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:41 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: Mental Health
Mind Hacks discusses an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry that argues that the DSM-IV -- the diagnostic manual that psychiatrists use to diagnose mental disorders -- should include internet addiction. Vaughan is quite legitimately skeptical: Rather curiously, the...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:40 AM • 2 Comments •
March 19, 2008
Category: Embryonic Stem Cells
I was struck by this story on NPR about so-called "stem cell tourists." Stem cell tourists are parents taking their children to China for injections of stem cells in hopes of curing a wide variety of diseases. I want to...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:59 AM • 12 Comments •
March 17, 2008
Category: Carnivals
Encephalon has a particularly good crop of brainy goodness this issue, so let's get started. Mind Hacks looks at a fascinating case of a man with unstoppable hiccups because he has Parkinson's disease. Neuroscientifically Challenged looks at the possibility of...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:46 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Economics
(This is sort of a round-up of comment on the economics news. I don't have much to say about it yet.) It would appear that the economy has just gone from bad to really bad, although if you wanted to...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:02 PM • 3 Comments •
March 14, 2008
Category: Math
It's pi day. (You know...3/14...stay with me on this...) In honor of pi day, here are the first million digits of pi. (Not reproduced here because I don't want our tech guy to put a hit out on me.)...
Posted by Jake Young at 5:42 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Biology
I wish I could do this: Scientists exposed 4-day-old sand dollar larvae to fish mucus, a sign that danger is close. They found that the larvae created clones of themselves within 24 hours. "It's the first time we've seen anything...
Posted by Jake Young at 5:39 PM • 0 Comments •
March 13, 2008
Category: Other People's Work
Paul Krugman on an economic theory of trade for interstellar trade (Hat-tip: Slashdot): This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest rates on goods in transit be...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:13 PM • 1 Comments •
March 12, 2008
Category: Libertarian politics
Things I did not visualize reading this morning. 1) David Mamet wrote a piece in the Village Voice -- of all places -- disavowing his faith in government. Money quote: For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:36 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Herbal remedies and other Hooey
A Christmas present, maybe? Maybe not. A "neurotheology" researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the "God Helmet" lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it's much more...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:52 AM • 3 Comments •
March 11, 2008
Category: Funding
Well, that's good: Medical scientists just starting at universities have been, more and more often, left empty-handed when the federal government awards grants. So on Monday the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to medical research, announced a...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:33 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Sleep
The association between sleep and memory performance has been relatively well-documented. Studies in animals and humans have shown memory deficits in both declarative and procedural memory associated with sleep deprivation. (The subject is slightly complicated because whether sleep deprivation affects...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:30 PM • 3 Comments •
March 10, 2008
Category: Carnivals
I am hosting Encephalon next week on Monday (March 17th). If you would like to submit a neuroscience-related post to this carnival, email it to encephalon [dot] host {at} gmail [dot] com. I will be writing it on Sunday night,...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:26 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Ethics
MarkH, SciBling at denialism blog and fellow MD-PhD student, takes issue with my post about a move to ban "poaching" of doctors from African countries. I can't say I am entirely surprised, since I knew that post would be controversial....
Posted by Jake Young at 10:52 AM • 12 Comments •
March 7, 2008
Category: Ethics
Unbelievable. Unbelievable is simply the only word that can describe this article in the Lancet. Citing problems with retention of doctors in under-treated populations in Africa, Mills et al. argue that direct recruitment of doctors by groups in the West...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:07 PM • 15 Comments •
March 5, 2008
Category: Science politics
Over at Crooked Timber, John Quiggin has launched a broadside at NYTimes Science Blogger John Tierney (also here) over what he (Quiggin) considers politicization of science: One of the big problems with talking about what Chris Mooney has called The...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:04 PM • 34 Comments •
Category: Drugs
And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2) Moses was high when...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:45 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Haha, a funny
I got this flier from the American Academy of Neurology in the mail, and it cracked me up....
Posted by Jake Young at 1:28 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Environment
How do you track the relative contributions of a plant species in an ecosystem? When you are talking about thousands of square miles of land area this can be an incredibly daunting task, but it is very important because it...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:34 PM • 0 Comments •
March 4, 2008
Category: Evolution
Don't believe in evolution? Just look to the weeds in the sidewalk: Like other members of its family, Crepis sancta produces two types of seeds. Heavy seeds fall into the grass below the plant, whereas lighter seeds with feathery tails...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:46 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Art
The NYTimes has a slide show of "migraine" art provided by Oliver Sacks from his book Migraine. They attempt to illustrate what a migraine aura looks like. Neat. I would put one up on my wall if I didn't feel...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:29 AM • 5 Comments •
March 3, 2008
Category: Politics
I nearly aerosolized Diet Pepsi all over my computer screen when I read this: It a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that "there's strong evidence" that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:56 PM • 10 Comments •
1) Two of my favorite bloggers -- Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle and Steve Higgins of OmniBrain -- have teamed up to form at group blog called Of Two Minds. Adjust your links accordingly. 2) Encephalon 40 is up at Mind...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:05 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Gender
Conventional wisdom + bigger microphone = excellent journalism! High fives all-around for Charlotte Allen who repackages conventional wisdom about sex differences to a degree rarely attained by print journalists. My favorite part: Depressing as it is, several of the supposed...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:22 AM • 11 Comments •
Category: Haha, a funny
I don't know if you have seen these, but Florida Orange Juice started a new ad campaign featuring commercials with the voice of Tom Selleck. (Magnum PI does like his orange juice.) Anyway, the commercials show a beaker into which...
Posted by Jake Young at 10:23 AM • 2 Comments •
