After a lot of the not-so-Respectful Insolence⢠of the last couple of weeks, I've been meaning to get back to living up to the name of the overall mega-blog, namely ScienceBlogs. Meeting up with my fellow SB'ers over the weekend in New York Fortunately, last week a topic just so happened to pop up related to my area of expertise, when a study in The Lancet was published evaluating the use of MRI in breast cancer. It happened to get a bit of press when it came out last month, some of it a bit breathless, as though this were a revolutionary observation. (To some extent it was unexpected, but…

Yes, I was there on Friday and Saturday, when more than half of the present complement of ScienceBloggers (a.k.a. "SB'ers" or "Sciblings") gathered in New York to meet, greet, and talk science, that is, between bouts of heavy drinking. (Fortunately, I was wise enough not to show up for the karaoke; if PZ's description is any indication, I wasn't nearly inebriated enough to enjoy it.) I didn't take nearly as many pictures as certain others there, one of whom bought a rather snazzy camera from a store on 42nd Street (something I would have cautioned him about, had I been there before Friday),…

The answer, apparently, is yes, but only for a very short time. I guess the whole exploding heads thing when people are exposed to vacuum (Outland) or just the very low atmospheric pressure on Mars (Total Recall) is a bit of an exaggeration.

Blog friend Abel over at Terra Sigillata pointed me to a story claiming that Oscar the Death Kitty, who became famous (or notorious) for his alleged ability to detect the impending death of residents of the nursing home at which he lives, so much so that some of the staff had even started calling family to tell them that time was short whenever the Grim Reaping Kitty curled up with their loved one, is no more: PROVIDENCE, RI - Oscar, the nursing home cat who could seemingly sense the impending death of patients, was found dead early yesterday. The cat gained recent notoriety when reports of…

For those of you who missed it, Steve Colbert explains what DNA is with Twisty the DNA Helix: DNA: It's what makes you you. I do have to admit, though, that it irritated me when Colbert referred to DNA as a "wonder protein" even though I'm sure it was part of the joke...

You know, the current crop of Presidential candidates has me bored to tears. None of them inspire, and the one that comes closest to maybe inspiring is too inexperienced and definitely not ready for prime time. Couple that with the fact that the election is nearly 15 months away but the campaign has been going on since at least January, and terminal ennui sets in. I'll probably want to shoot myself by the time Election Day 2008 rolls around. Fortunately, I found a little tidbit that demonstrates a method of picking our next President that would at least get my interest. Hey, it can hardly be…

I knew it. I knew it wouldn't be long before this happened. About three weeks ago, we had the Oscar the Death Cat, a.k.a. the kitty of doom. Given the discussions of animals and death and speculation that other animals might be able to "predict" impending death, you knew it was coming. Behold the Doggy of Death: His name is Scamp, and he lives at a nursing home in Ohio: Scamp, a Schnauzer, lives at The Pines nursing home in Ohio - where his owner, a staff member, claims he has been present for the death of virtually every patient for the past three years. That's around forty deaths, twice…

So, after nearly two weeks of torturing myself trying to put together an R01-level grant on short notice and make it actually competitive, I'm finally free. The grant has been submitted (amazingly, the online submission process went through without a hitch), and, sleep-deprived but still hopped up on the Sudafed that kept the mucus membranes in my nasal passages from exploding outward at a high velocity, scattering watery goo everywhere. Not a pretty sight when it happens, hence the Sudafed. Fortunately, the pollen has subsided to the level where I am only mildly miserable, allowing my…

Yes! As intelligent and powerful as he is, Orac has always lacked something, and that's mobility. He's always been more or less at the mercy of the humans with whom he travels when it comes to locomotion. In short, being a clear box of blinking lights, he has to be carried everywhere, sometimes in a rather undignified fashion: In this week's edition of the Skeptics' Circle, Bronze Dog gives Orac exactly what he needs: Yes, a giant robot! Controlling such awesome machinery directly, finally, Orac is unshackled from his dependence on irrational humans to take him where he wants to go!…

It's here, and it's on Google Video. I watched it last night, and it was a blistering attack on the irrationality that is so common in our society: Part I begins with Richard Dawkins sitting in on some sort of New Age chanting ceremony (the discomfited look on his face is priceless to watch), after which he goes to a New Age fair, and concludes with an attack on the crappy science that lead to the MMR vaccine scare over autism in the U.K. In between, Dawkins takes on astrology, dowsers, spiritualists, and mediums, no holds barred. Next Monday: Richard Dawkins versus alternative medicine.…

[Note: Part I is here.] I tell ya, I stay up all night putting the finishing touches on a grant, and what happens? Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism.com finds a real hum-dinger of stupidity published in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately (or fortunately, given the rampant stupidity that appears to be going on in this article), I do not have a subscription to the WSJ; however, a little Googling found the whole text here. I've written about this conflict before, and it's a recurring theme in the multiple posts that I've done regarding dichloroacetate (DCA), the small…

Remember a couple of months ago, when I discussed testimony at the Autism Omnibus trial that showed how Andrew Wakefield had failed to do the controls when running PCR that would have revealed that the results that he interpreted as the presence of the measles virus from a vaccine strain in the guts of autistic children was nothing more than a bunch of false positives due to widespread contamination of the laboratory with plasmid containing measles sequences? It turns out that it's not just autism pseudoscientists who forget to do the right controls when running PCR. Mike the Mad Biologist…

I'm guessing there will be a lot of--shall we say?--disagreement with this one. I'm always appropriately skeptical of IQ studies, including this one. However, if you actually believe this survey (and what physician wouldn't want to believe it?), apparently as a profession physicians have the highest IQ. Heh. I wonder where M.D./Ph.D.'s like yours truly would rank on the scale. I'm sure that there will be a horde of people telling me what's wrong with the survey and why its results are not valid, but please let me enjoy my little fantasy of intellectual superiority for at least a few minutes…

Yikes! In my grant writing frenzy the last few days, this could easily have been me: Jasmine Willis, 17, developed a fever and began hyperventilating after drinking seven double espressos while working at her family's sandwich shop. The student, of Stanley, County Durham, was taken to the University Hospital of North Durham, where doctors confirmed she had overdosed on caffeine. She has since made a full recovery and is now warning others about the dangers of excessive coffee drinking. Ms Willis, who had thought the coffees were single measures, said the effects were so severe that she began…

It arrived a little early, but it's here now, the latest, greatest edition of Tangled Bank is now posted over at Fish Feet. Go now and get caught up on the best science blogging of the past fortnight.

Via Pure Pedantry, I've become aware of a post that resonates over here, given the recent series of posts I did about a certain comic who, unable to dispute the science behind global warming or the health hazards of secondhand smoke in any serious way, has a penchant for labeling scientists who support such positions and think that indoor smoking should be banned as fascists (or Maoist), power hungry, bureaucrats who don't view people as individuals, geeks who got beat up on the dodgeball court and are now taking their revenge, or avid players of role-playing games such as Dungeons &…

It's that time of year again! Time for the one Center of the NIH dedicated to studying "remedies," regardless of how scientifically implausible or lacking in evidence to support them, the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) to put forth its budget request for FY 2008. What's the bill for government-funded studies of woo? $121,699,000. Depressing. Let's see what the possible justification is for sending $121 million on studying things such as homeopathy: Large numbers of American health care consumers are using CAM modalities in an effort to preempt disease and…

Since I'm still immersed in grant writing, to start the afternoon off, here's one that I saw a week ago but never got around to answering. It's a question from this week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Bronze Dog, over at (appropriately enough) The Bronze Blog, who asks: You've been captured by Daleks. You're their legendary foe who always comes up with some clever way of thwarting their plans for universal domination. They're equipped with a death ray, nigh-impenetrable armor, and a plunger that somehow works as a multitool. Why don't they just shoot you? I can answer that one! Although many…

I debated for a while about whether or not I wanted to comment on this one. The reason, of course, is that, to some extent, I've commented on a similar article before. Also, given the utter contempt that the blogger who posted this series holds me in and his delusion that I am somehow "obsessed" with him, I worried that commenting about this series, which he posted with some fanfare, might feed that delusion some more. In the end, though, because the series was by someone other than this particular blogger and because, as before, it was presented as a stinging indictment of our system of…

Science tattoos have been all the rage lately. Even though I'm a scientist, I'm also a surgeon; so naturally I was wondering if there was anything that I'd like to see too. There is. Over at Street Anatomy, there's a great collection of anatomy tattoos. Anyone who has any surgery-related tattoos, send a picture of them to me, and maybe I'll get in on the action by posting it. A tattoo of the abdominal contents on someone's abdomen would be really cool.