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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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...
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Posted on March 27, 2008 12:47 PM • 7 Comments •
(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...
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Posted on March 24, 2008 10:52 AM • 5 Comments •
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...
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Posted on March 5, 2008 11:04 PM • 34 Comments •
Important Announcement #1: ScienceDebate2008 is actually going to happen. Here is the press release: ScienceDebate2008.com, the citizens initiative calling for a presidential debate on science and technology policy, today announced that it has formally invited the presidential candidates to a...
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Posted on February 12, 2008 12:45 PM • 0 Comments •
I was distressed to read this at Wired because usually I feel like they are more on top of things. This is by Thomas Hayden: Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science can't really embrace it. Science describes the...
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Posted on January 30, 2008 9:18 AM • 6 Comments •
Scientific issues are becoming more and more a staple of American life, which means that they should be becoming more and more included in the questions we ask our Presidential candidates. We want to know what they think about health...
Posted on December 10, 2007 3:02 PM • 0 Comments •
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...
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Posted on September 17, 2007 10:21 AM • 29 Comments •
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...
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Posted on September 12, 2007 3:34 PM • 69 Comments •
Fellow ScienceBlogger Tara Smith has a required reading article in PLoS Medicine on HIV denialists: Since the ideas proposed by deniers do not meet rigorous scientific standards, they cannot hope to compete against the mainstream theories. They cannot raise the...
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Posted on August 27, 2007 6:34 AM • 1 Comments •
A UK charity called Sense About Science is taking on celebrities who misrepresent scientific reality: MELINDA MESSENGER, TV PRESENTER "Why should I allow my body or my children to be filled with man-made chemicals, when I don't know what the...
Posted on January 3, 2007 1:54 PM • 0 Comments •
I have tried to show that the gender gap in the sciences is not the result of cognitive differences, but that begs the question about what else to which it can be attributed. It could be that it is the...
Posted on November 16, 2006 10:49 AM • 0 Comments •
Shelley Batts has this to say about the poor funding situation of late: At the Society for Neuroscience meeting last month, there was a special symposium regarding the current NIH funding situation that was supposed to be given by the...
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Posted on November 9, 2006 10:59 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 •
The famous skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis nicknamed Lucy is going on a field trip: After 4 years of an on-again, off-again courtship, Ethiopian officials have promised the hand--and partial skeleton--of the famous fossil Lucy to museum officials in Houston,...
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Posted on October 30, 2006 8:28 AM • 1 Comments •
New Scientist is reporting on a movement among some scientists to replace the word "cloning" with "somatic cell nuclear transfer": Don't say cloning, say somatic cell nuclear transfer. That at least is the view of biologists who want the term...
Posted on October 24, 2006 10:53 AM • 3 Comments •
The Scientist has an excellent article attempting to fairly evaluate the Bush record on science: What may be adding to the perception that the Bush administration is harder on science than ever before is that in recent years, biology has...
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Posted on October 20, 2006 10:02 AM • 3 Comments •
On September 30 the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act -- an act intended to criminalize the intimidation of scientists involved in animal research -- passed the Senate by unanimous consent. I wrote in support of this bill earlier this month. This...
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Posted on October 5, 2006 9:40 AM • 2 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 trial for 6 medics in Tripoli who are being tried for infecting children with AIDS (and from what can be gathered were falsely accused) has been postoned til the end of October: The retrial of six foreign medics facing...
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Posted on September 22, 2006 11:15 AM • 0 Comments •
This is absolutely unacceptable. 6 medical workers are on trial in Libya under the accusation of infecting children with HIV, and if convicted they could be executed. While expert testimony and scientific evidence was presented at the trial, this evidence...
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Posted on September 20, 2006 11:29 PM • 1 Comments •
There is an excellent discussion on Prometheus about whether it is OK to distort the means of science to justify certain ends. Money quote: This is of course an issue much broader than climate change, and at its core is...
Posted on August 29, 2006 9:50 AM • 0 Comments •
Them's, as they say, fighting words. The National Journal has a cover story on the Politicization of Science by Paul Starobin, and there is simply no way in the concievable Universe that this is not going to cause a ruckus....
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Posted on July 31, 2006 2:26 AM • 2 Comments •
