purepedantry
Posts by this author
January 1, 2009
Nobel laureates on the board bring in the bacon when it is time to capitalize a firm:
WHAT is a Nobel prize really worth? The market values it at $34m, according to a new NBER paper by Matthew Higgins, Paula Stephan and Jerry Thursby. They studied the biotech industry during the 1990s. The industry…
December 31, 2008
PhRMA -- the association of pharmaceutical companies -- has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on drug paraphernalia given to doctors:
Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies -- Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs…
December 29, 2008
My suspicion is that many of you went home for the holidays, and my suspicion is that many of you were not entirely honest with your relatives while you were there. While it is not my intention to encourage this behavior -- I, of course, am totally honest all of the time ;) -- you are not alone.…
December 29, 2008
Ha! I knew it. The quiet animals get more play than the loud obnoxious ones:
During bison mating season, the quietest bulls score the most mates and sire the most offspring while studs with the loudest bellows see the least action, according to a surprising new study by researchers at University…
December 29, 2008
People are doing biology in their kitchen now, or in rented labs with cheaper equipment:
In Cambridge, Mass., a group called DIYbio is setting up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a used freezer, scored for free off Craigslist, that drops to 80…
December 26, 2008
Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science has an excellent piece on using chess to explain the differences between men and women in the hard sciences. Turns out, participation not biology is key:
Every serious player has an objective rating - the Elo rating - that measures their skill based on their…
December 26, 2008
A economist at Yale, Robert Shiller, compiled an index of housing prices since 1890 in an attempt to determine what caused the housing bubble (click to enlarge):
The figure is from here. (Hat-tip: Cafe Hayek)
I post this figure because I think it dispels a couple of delusions I hear people…
December 26, 2008
Barry Gewen from the NYTimes Paper Cuts blog on the reimergence of John Kenneth Galbraith:
Friedman has no good explanation for "too big to fail," but it's at the heart of Galbraith's 1967 best seller, "The New Industrial State." Galbraith's basic argument is that there is an inevitability to…
December 18, 2008
I doubt it...but more on that in a second.
There is a fascinating argument going over at Edge.org about whether science can save the economy. The authors suggest that the scientific techniques being applied to the natural sciences should be applied to establish a new consensus about how the…
December 17, 2008
Not to indulge in too much schadenfreude, but some of these are pretty funny. Foreign Policy compiled the 10 most astonishing wrong predictions for 2008:
"There is a real possibility of creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniature black holes, strangelets and deSitter space…
December 17, 2008
Here is a cool idea. Researchers in Britain have come up with injectable bone:
"Injectable bone is the first delivery system for stem cells and growth factors that forms a material with the strength of a bone," said Robin Quirk, a pharmacist and co-founder of RegenTec -- the University of…
December 17, 2008
I have been meaning to talk about this story, but I have been busy.
A study in Nature looked for genes linked with "common" obesity (more on that in a moment), and it was one of the first to link genes to the disease. Turns out several are genes expressed in the brain:
A genetic study of more than…
December 16, 2008
I really love coming to visit you, Grandpa.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales are using sarcasm to determine whether patients have frontotemporal dementia (FTD), otherwise known as Pick's disease:
Researchers at the University of New South Wales found that patients under the age of…
December 16, 2008
Mark this on the list of "things to expect in 2009." Craig Venter and his team expect to create the world's first artificially synthesized organism:
One likely announcement, which may happen any day of the year, is of the world's first artificial living creature. The announcer will almost…
December 11, 2008
I caught this article on ScienceDaily about the work of Professor Bart Hoebel at Princeton who has been attempting to show that sugar is an addictive substance like a drug. He presents data at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology meeting to suggest that sugar fulfills the criterion for…
December 9, 2008
If you are like me, you are pretty disgusted with the idea of bailing out the Detroit Big 3. In reference to that disgust, I was struck by this post at Think Markets channeling one of my favorite economists -- Frederic Bastiat.
Bastiat wrote an essay called "What is Seen and What is Not Seen"…
December 9, 2008
I was sorry to read over at Megan McArdle's blog over at the Atlantic yesterday that she has Hashimoto's thyroiditis and as a consequence has to give up being a vegan. (Her diet was high in soy for protein, and there is some evidence that soy interferes with thyroid function. More on this in a…
December 5, 2008
Nicholas Wade (a friend of mine's Dad actually) was on the Colbert Report talking about cloning wooly mammoths. Colbert asks the obvious question: why don't we just staple shag carpeting to an elephant?
*/
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nicholas Wade
Colbert at…
December 5, 2008
Patient H.M. just died:
In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories.
For the…
December 4, 2008
CNN is shutting down their science-and-technology unit. Not that it was much of a unit considering there was only one reporter:
CNN has decided to shutter its science and technology unit -- a move that will result in the loss of seven jobs including veteran space correspondent Miles O'Brien.
The…
December 2, 2008
Some doctors are considering dropping vaccinations because some are vaccinating at a loss from insurance reimbursement.
About one in 10 doctors who vaccinate privately insured children are considering dropping that service largely because they are losing money when they do it, according to a new…
December 1, 2008
For acupuncture to work, you don't actually have to put in the needles:
The acupuncture study of 215 patients who were undergoing radiation treatment in the abdomen or pelvic region chose by lot one of these two acupuncture types.
109 received traditional acupuncture, with needles penetrating the…
December 1, 2008
Drug companies are not publishing all the trial data that they submit to the FDA, and those trials that are published are more likely to show positive results.
Rising et al. compared all the New Drug Applications (NDAs) (the vehicle for initiating a new clinical trial) given to the FDA in 2001…
November 28, 2008
The economy is rough for everybody. The super-rich are cutting back on their mistress subsidies:
According to a new survey by Prince & Assoc., more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances. Still, only 12% of the…
November 28, 2008
Check out this crazy video of a rare "elbowed" giant squid recorded from a Shell Oil remote operated vehicle in the Gulf of Mexico.
November 27, 2008
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
I was reading the Web this morning, and this story reminded me of a Thanksgiving a couple years ago.
The news story is about how Thanksgiving dinner can cause flareups of gout. Gout -- if you don't know -- is an inflammatory joint disease caused by the deposition of…
November 23, 2008
Over at the NYTimes Well blog they have a really good summary of studies about vitamins and improvements to health.
Everyone needs vitamins, which are critical for the body. But for most people, the micronutrients we get from foods usually are adequate to prevent vitamin deficiency, which is rare…
November 10, 2008
I agreed (reluctantly) with the need to bailout banks because they constitute a special case in the financial system -- the overall health of banks is linked to the overall health of the economy. I am not against bailouts per se, but the devil is in the details. There are a lot of ways that they…
November 5, 2008
Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, has a great article in Scientific American about the limits of interpreting fMRI scanning studies -- particularly how they are presented in the media. The biggest point is that the brain is not a collection of modules isolated from one another; rather,…
November 4, 2008
I always get in arguments with mathematically-inclined people about whether to vote or not. The mathematically-inclined point out very reasonably that the chances of your vote being decisive are perishingly slim.
(These mathematics are explained clearly in this PBS video by economist Gordon…