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David Dobbs

Author and journalist David Dobbs writes on science, medicine, nature, education, and culture for the New York Times Magazine, Slate, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. He is also the author of three books (see below), most recently Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral.

Posts by this author

May 27, 2010
At Biophemera, Jessica Palmer takes a look at Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny. Actually a couple look to me a bit like cans.  Like most junk science that just won't die, the polygraph stays with us. Even Aldrich Ames could see the polygraph was junk. NB, those who don't shy from no-lie fMRI…
May 27, 2010
I know where you're going, but you don't understand. Teachers are just different. via nytimes.com Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
May 26, 2010
Selling a work fiction is difficult; publishing in Nature is a long-shot; yet somehow writer and genomeboy Misha Angrist managed to publish fiction in Nature. The only way I was ever going to get a first-author publication in Nature [Angrist explains] was if I just made it all up. So thatâs what…
May 26, 2010
David Sloan Wilson, an atheist himself, has a few things to relate to 'angry atheists' like Richard Dawkins. I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist. One of the things that infuriates me about the newest crop of angry atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, is their denial…
May 26, 2010
  Two or three years ago, Emory neurologist Helen Mayberg, whose experiments using deep-brain stimulation for depression I check in on now and then, told me that Karl Deisseroth's work using light to fiddle with brain circuits had huge potential both as a replacement for DBS and for much else.…
May 20, 2010
via Alexis Madrigal's Tumblr. Go now. Take the journey. You will also find Herzog reading Curious George and Madeleine.
May 20, 2010
  Phineas Gage enjoys an unfortunate fame in neuroscience circles: After a 5-foot iron tamping rod blew through his head one September afternoon in 1848, the once amiable and capable railroad foreman became a uncouth ne-er-do-well â and Exhibit A in how particular brain areas tended to specialize…
May 18, 2010
Ravens via PDPhoto Ravens show that consoling one another is also for the birds, Yet another finding that other species have qualities previously thought uniquely human. Our greatest distinction is that we're highly social. Yet in that we've got a lot of company.   Human brains excel at…
May 14, 2010
 A Times story this morning reports that, according to both documents and scientists in the US Minerals Management Service (MMS), the MMS routinely silenced safety and environmental warnings from staff in order to grant permits for even huge, high-risk drilling permits, including the BP rig that…
May 12, 2010
Traveling. But here's what I'm reading during train, plane, and bus rides -- and over meals:   Gravity-defying ramps take illusion prize. This contest always produces fascinating stuff. This time, the ball rolls up. Video here.  Vaughan Bell ponders cortisol, dopamine, neuroplasticity, and…
May 11, 2010
I've been deemed a pusher, and that's a good thing. The accuser is Colin Schultz, a busy, curious, and inquisitive young journalist who awarded a story of mine his first annual prize for "push" science journalism. First of all let me say I'm pleased, mainly because the story, " A…
May 5, 2010
Would you believe this brain? Every few months, sometimes more often, someone tries to ramrod fMRI lie detection into the courtrooms. Each time, it gets a little closer. Wired Science carries the latest alarming story: A Brooklyn attorney hopes to break new ground this week when he offers a brain…
May 3, 2010
Newscom/Zuma, via TPM Brains, genes, and taxes won the month. How does Williams syndrome prevent racism? It's subtle Ed Yong, Mo Costandi, Scientific American, and others have covered nicely a new paper finding that people with WIlliams syndrome (a condition I've been interested in since writing…
April 30, 2010
from The Everett Collection, via Vanity Fair Notables I didn't get to. Blog posts, MSM stories, and tweets living together. Fron the genomics front NOVA | Ghost in Your Genes | PBS streams some of the Skip Gates program I mentioned in my post last week on the Genomes, Environments, and Traits…
April 29, 2010
I had the pleasure of attending the Genomes, Environment, and Traits conference on Tuesday. Was wonderful and strange, with many inspiring, exciting, and/or entertaining moments -- and a few things a bit worrisome.    The twitter feed from the event tracks the talks and agenda pretty thoroughly; it…
April 19, 2010
A few calendar notes: I've got a three-day run starting next Sunday in which I'll be talking to authors and journalists about book proposals; NY science writers about the future of social media; and to genomic geeks about genes and temperament. If you've questions you'd like raised at any of these…
April 16, 2010
The Columbia Journalismi review speaks plainly about Apple's insistence on editorial control of its iPad apps: Look, let's face it. The iPad is the most exciting opportunity for the media in many years. But if the press is ceding gatekeeper status, even if it's only nominally, over its speech, then…
April 13, 2010
Ed Yong, Mo Costandi, Scientific American, and others have covered nicely a new paper finding that people with WIlliams syndrome (a condition I've been interested in since writing a long feature about it for the Times Magazine a few years back) show little or no racial bias. But I wanted to add one…
April 8, 2010
The Tax Foundation recrently ranked the states according to their tax load, with low taxes generating high rankings. My home state of Vermont did not fare well. Enter my friend David Goodman (Davidgoodman.net) who has written several books with his famous radio-host sister, Amy, and whose…
April 1, 2010
After I wrote in my Atlantic article about getting my serotonin transporter gene assayed (which revealed that I carry that gene's apparently more plastic short-short form), I started getting a lot of email â several a week â from readers asking how to have their SERT gene tested. This led to an…
April 1, 2010
from "Would dew believe it: The stunning pictures of sleeping insects covered in water droplets," at the Daily Mail Given the day, we find both foolishness and meat. Fun stuff first: Science, Nature Team Up on New Journal - ScienceNOW Does the WTF1 gene trigger the inferior supra-credulus? @…
April 1, 2010
What grabbed people at Neuron Culture this month? Hands-down winner: Does depression have an upside? It's complicated, which looked at the uproar raised by Jonah Lehrer's NY Times Magazine story on "Depression's Upside." Depression and evolution: two very complex dynamics there. Much rich ground…
March 31, 2010
Greg Hickok thinks so. http://talkingbrains.blogspot.com/2010/03/mirror-neurons-unfalsifiable-theory.html (via Instapaper) Posted via email from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
March 31, 2010
Double helix, courtesy NIH/National Genome Research Institute It's the 10th anniverary of the coding of the human genome. Snuck up on me -- but not on Nature or Reuters. Both of these outfits â two of the best science/med reporting teams out there â published big, beautiful, multipart packages…
March 29, 2010
Early homind skulls, from A Kansan's Guide to Science (seriously) A couple weeks ago, the Guardian ran an article in which Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore described "how the human got bigger by accident and not through evolution." Though I didn't get to it at the time, I thought that an odd…
March 26, 2010
from a different Daily Dish -- 365 petri dishes, by Klari Reis House of Wisdom, the splendid new blog on Arabic science from Mohammed Yahia, editor of Nature Middle East describes an effort to map the Red Sea's coral reefs with satellite, aerial, adn ship-based technologies. Nice project and a…
March 24, 2010
How new, then, is bloggery? Should we think of it as a by-product of the modern means of communication and a sign of a time when newspapers seem doomed to obsolescence? It makes the most of technical innovationsâthe possibility of constant contact with virtual communities by means of web sites…
March 23, 2010
Daniel McArthur and Daniel Vorhaus have a beef: Earlier this month, the Sunday Times published an op-ed piece by Camilla Long critiquing the practice and business of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing ("When DNA means do not ask"). It is Long's right, of course, to express her opinions,…
March 23, 2010
RT @AlexConnor At UK space launch. There is an astronaut, a load of well-badged kids, a couple of lords and a soldier wearing gold rope. Sent from Echofon - http://echofon.com/ David Dobbs Typos courtesy of thumbs and iPhone Posted via email from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker