Reality is always more complicated than you think.
Profile
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.
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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...
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Posted on March 21, 2008 11:24 AM • 13 Comments •
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....
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Posted on March 10, 2008 10:52 AM • 12 Comments •
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...
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Posted on March 7, 2008 1:07 PM • 15 Comments •
The NYTimes published two articles about abortion in the last couple days. The first was a review by William Saletan of the book Embryo, A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen. The second was an...
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Posted on February 12, 2008 10:33 AM • 8 Comments •
The author of a controversial paper about the link between mercury and autism responds to her critics.
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Posted on January 7, 2008 3:03 PM • 4 Comments •
I wrote earlier today about mercury and autism, and how I thought a criticism of an earlier paper on statistical grounds was fair. Some of the commentors including Orac took me to task saying that the original analysis was indeed...
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Posted on November 29, 2007 7:29 PM • 2 Comments •
I was struck by this paper that came out in the Journal of Child Neurology, looking back at previous study of mercury levels in autistic children. DeSoto and Hitlan looked back at Ip et al. 2004, a case control study...
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Posted on November 29, 2007 10:37 AM • 8 Comments •
Revere has spoken out in support of Michael Siegel at The Rest of the Story. Dr. Siegel is a public health specialist that focuses on among other things the effects of second-hand smoke. Siegel took Action for Smoking and Health...
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Posted on November 19, 2007 12:14 PM • 9 Comments •
The SciAm blog has a great discussion on current research into the neuroscience of morals. Two cool observations. First, while people tend to agree with the calculus of utilitarian moral judgments, they tend to reject them. Would you kill one...
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Posted on August 7, 2007 10:06 AM • 10 Comments •
Johnathan Wolff publishing in the Guardian cites the case of Naomi Oreskes as to why the equal time idea of journalism doesn't work for science: I learned to shut my mouth on the topic after hearing a lecture from a...
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Posted on July 11, 2007 10:23 AM • 5 Comments •
The NYTimes has an interesting article on the increasing amount people are willing to pay for donor eggs: A survey published this month in the journal Fertility and Sterility, "What Is Happening to the Price of Eggs?" found that the...
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Posted on May 17, 2007 10:16 AM • 7 Comments •
Ronald Bailey at Reason reviews an interesting article in the American Journal of Bioethics by Martha Farah and Andrea Heberlein and the responses to it. Farah and Heberlein argue that while an innate system for the detection of personhood exists...
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Posted on April 27, 2007 10:43 AM • 6 Comments •
TCS published an interview with Freeman Dyson about his iconoclasm and his optimism about the future of science and humanity: Benny Peiser: One of your most influential lectures is re-published in your new book. I am talking about your Bernal...
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Posted on April 11, 2007 10:41 AM • 0 Comments •
Ghost authorship is the omission of the name of someone who contributed to a scientific paper from that paper's list of authors. Sometimes this can be because what the individual contributed is not considered critical to the creation of that...
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Posted on February 5, 2007 11:22 AM • 5 Comments •
Your gut reaction is probably that the question is irrelevant; what parent would choose for their child to have a genetic disease. That was my reaction. Apparently, however, some parents with genetic diseases that make them lead relatively normal lives...
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Posted on December 7, 2006 10:04 AM • 4 Comments •
On The Colbert Report last night, Stephen Colbert talked about an article about uterine transplants for The Word. Scientists now claim that there is nothing technically to prevent us from performing a womb transplant, even to the point that you...
Posted on November 15, 2006 11:09 AM • 1 Comments •
There is an election coming up. Hopefully this is not a shocking revelation for most people. Frankly, it seems like everyone not in a medically-induced coma for the past three months has spent every waking moment bloviating about it. The...
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Posted on November 1, 2006 12:17 PM • 3 Comments •
Some scientists have decided to form a 527 -- a political action committee that is not tax deductible under election law -- to combat what they feel is a rising anti-science sentiment: Several prominent scientists said yesterday that they had...
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Posted on October 4, 2006 2:42 PM • 4 Comments •
The entry that I posted on research challenging the idea that Hummers are worse for the environment than hybrids has sparked a great deal of contreversy and criticism. I cannot say that I find this entirely surprising. There have been...
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Posted on July 25, 2006 11:32 AM • 7 Comments •
Keith Burgess-Jackson questions in his TCS column whether we should listen to people like Noam Chomsky's opinions on politics -- a realm notably outside their stated occupational expertise. I must admit that I haven't read what Noam Chomsky's opinions are...
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Posted on June 26, 2006 11:41 AM • 1 Comments •
Janet has been discussing why scientists are reluctant to discuss ethics in science. One of her arguments is that scientists feel that the majority of ethical standards are being imposed from the outside rather than being adopted internally. So here...
Posted on June 26, 2006 9:58 AM • 1 Comments •
