Now on ScienceBlogs: Oxytocin: Starting with the basics
Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC getting a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. He holds a BS and MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. If a volcano were to erupt Pompei-style in Central Park, his body would be preserved in a scoliotic posture over his lab desk. Archeaologists would later conclude that he spent most of his day training rats to perform tricks, until he went blind building electrical equipment by hand using a dissecting microscope. But, still, he died happy...because science is cool.
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.
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. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments I currently attend or attended in the past.
Category: Religion
A cat hit by a motorcycle in Port Harcourt, Nigeria allegedly turned into a middle-aged woman. Good thing there were lots of people around to kill a second cat-person and beat the accident survivor into a confession of witchcraft. What...
Posted by Kara Contreary at 9:26 AM • 4 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 NotoriousLTP at 9:04 AM • 1 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 NotoriousLTP at 9:52 AM • 5 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 NotoriousLTP at 1:45 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Atheism
Writing in the City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple criticizes the equivalence of religion with the immoral and atheism with the moral: Lying not far beneath the surface of all the neo-atheist books is the kind of historiography that many of us...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 1:45 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: Atheism
Last week, I posted a long argument for why I believe pairing science and atheism is a poor strategic choice for scientists. The response to that article has I think been largely positive, but I do want to address the...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 10:21 AM • 29 Comments •
Category: Science politics
In 1922, John Dewey, pragmatist philosopher and champion of Progressive education, wrote an article in The New Republic entitled "The American Intellectual Frontier." The subject was William Jennings Bryan's attack on evolution that would later culminate in the Scopes...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 3:34 PM • 69 Comments •
Category: Religion
As an American living in Europe, I am at times accutely aware of the differing levels of religiosity between my country of origin and my current residence. But an article from this past weekend's edition of the Wall Street Journal...
Posted by Kara Contreary at 9:11 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Religion
The latest issue of Science magazine (May 18) has several reviews devoted to the coming of age of behavioral neuroscience. However, one by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg caught my eye. The review is entitled "Childhood Origins of Adult...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 11:07 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Religion
Daniel Lazare, writing in the Nation, has an interesting article about differences of opinion even among atheists: This is the problem, more or less, confronting today's reinvigorated atheist movement. For a long time, religion had been doing quite nicely as...
Posted by NotoriousLTP at 11:19 AM • 5 Comments •
