September 16, 2009
For a while that seemed to hold true. The biology seemed sound and all was very reassuring. Then, suddenly, in the 2007-2008 flu season the H1N1 seasonal influenza (not the swine flu H1N1) developed Tamiflu resistance and in a remarkably short time almost all of the H1N1 seasonal flu was resistant…
September 15, 2009
OK. Animals first, then everybody else.
(Other) Animals
Want Your Own Dinosaur? Place Your Bids
Jellyfish numbers rise My son and I saw this last year when we were at the EuroScience conference (highly recomennded) in Barcelona (ditto). The beaches had warnings of whole rafts of these.…
September 14, 2009
I regret I can't treat at more, um, length, the following weighty matters:
Size Matters; So Do Lies Nate Silver finds that Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, speaking of the 9/12 tea party rally in DC, " did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long."
Dr. Nobody…
September 14, 2009
In an intriguing essay in the Atlantic, Benjamin Cohen argues that the blogosphere, in which the top 50 blogs account for 42% of all blog traffic -- and 21 of those blogs are owned by outfits like the Times, ABC, AOL, and CNN -- is looking more and more like traditional media in its economic and…
September 12, 2009
via youtube.com
As Gooznews (h/t) put it, "This says it all."
My own rant will come later.
Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
September 11, 2009
The ever-valuable Neuroskeptic, channeling Stanley Kowalski ("I knew a girl once said she was the glamorous type. She said to me, 'I am the glamourous type.' I said, 'So what?'"), asks just WTH it means to show that brain scans of earthquake survivors show that "trauma alters brain function."
The…
September 11, 2009
Bora ponders the unnoticed death of the alpha male -- in wolves, anyway, if not in the human mind.
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2009/08/no_more_alpha_male.php
Posted via email from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
September 11, 2009
Frederic Curtiss, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy, told Reuters Health that data attached to documents by Word has allowed him to discover undisclosed contributors. In one case, for instance, a revised manuscript arrived at his office with four named authors, but when he…
September 11, 2009
According to the just released Education Next poll put out by the Hoover Institution, public assessment of schools has fallen to the lowest level recorded since Americans were first asked to grade schools in 1981. Just 18% of those surveyed gave schools a grade of an A or a B, down from 30%…
September 11, 2009
Henry could find the biscuit by sniffing the cups or knocking them over. But Hare does not plan to let him have it so easy. Instead, he simply points at the cup on the right. Henry looks at Hare's hand and follows the pointed finger. Kivell then releases the leash, and Henry walks over to the cup…
September 10, 2009
Oh lordy, this is not good: The Times reports that up to 11% of the articles in leading med journals were writtne at least partly by ghostwriters.
Via Gary Schwitzer at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/schwitz/healthnews/2009/09/who-you-gonna-c.html
Posted via email from David's posterous
September 10, 2009
photo: Philip Todeldano for the New York Times
Part of any real healthcare reform will be improving practices in hospitals, and -- as Obama's proposed commission on comparative effectiveness would do -- identifying what works and what doesn't. Knowing what works and why people get better or not…
September 10, 2009
This debate has become a test of whom we will trust. Are we going to trust the Republicans, with their predictions of dark disasters that will result from going along with a President they do not believe should be allowed even to speak to our schoolchildren?
Atul Gawande, on Obama's speech, via the…
September 9, 2009
For research she's doing about public attitudes on genetics and mental health, science writer Virginia Hughes is trying to get people to take a very short survey (I just took it; takes about 30 seconds) on that subject. Do mental health issues rise from genes, environment, or both? Would you get a…
September 8, 2009
Matt Taibbi tells us what he really thinks.
Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world :
via Rolling Stone, and well worth a read.
September 8, 2009
From my wanderings. We'll start with the happy stuff
Salmon return to Paris! (photo: Charles Bremner, deep in Paris)
Mind Hacks tours some really old brains.
Zuska speaks wisely of health care reform.
The Guardian serves up some glass viruses (smallpox is pictured above).
Neuroskeptic covers a…
September 7, 2009
Bloggingheads.tv just posted a conversation Greg Laden and I had about the second-biggest scientific controversy of Darwin's time, and of Darwin's life: the argument over how coral reefs form. The coral reef argument was fascinating in its own right, both scientifically and dramatically -- for here…
September 4, 2009
photo: U.S. Forest Service
Notables of the day:
John Hawks ponders the (bad) art of citing papers you've never read.
Clive Thompson ponders the new literacy spawned of engagement with many keyboards.
A poll on public education shows how much opinion depends on framing, context -- and who else…
September 3, 2009
The damage done resembles that found in bird flu as well as 'acute respiratory distress symptom,' reports Branswell - the latter being a condition that can rise from a number of causes, and which kills 30% of those who get it. (That is, get ARDS, not swine flu.)
Yet more signs that this is a…
September 2, 2009
You can't make this stuff up. As PharmaGossip (among others, including the Times) reportst, a drug company pays $2.3 billion in fines to settle charges of unprecedented seriousness about practices that directly put patients at risk, and that came out of a four-year federal investigation. And some…
September 2, 2009
On the radar of late:
Neuroskeptic ponders reports that antidepressant use in the U.S. has doubled in the last decade. As he notes, perhaps the most troubling thing finding in the study is that
the number of Americans using an antipsychotic as well as an antidepressant increased by a factor of…
September 2, 2009
I was pleased to see my book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral written up in a couple of venues recently. Over at The Primate Diaries, Eric Michael Johnson, who does on history and philosophy of science, looks at the "terrific argument" that the book follows…
September 1, 2009
After a rather intense two months of long-form work, I'm so far behind on blogging I don't know where to start. Forget the last two months and move on? Probably the best move. But beforehand, I want to note a few developments along major lines of interest. I'll start with PTSD.
Amid the stagnation…
August 31, 2009
If nothing else, this points out the need to clarify what "past 5 years" means in declaring history of possible conflicts of interest. 5 years before publication -- or research and writing? Presumably there's a difference, if we're specifyng a time frame anyway
August 19, 2009
Well here you go. An 11-year-old interviews Obama -- and if I may say so, does quite a bit better than some of his journalistic elders.
Here's the vid, and some apt commentary from Tapped:
Hey, remember Damon Weaver, the 11-year-old who interviewed Joe Biden back in September? Well, he finally…
August 11, 2009
Massive feature finished, should be in print this November ... but more on that later. By way of returning to blogdom, a few of the few notables I've had time to read lately:
Effect Measure, usually quite restrained about predictions, joins quite a few others in predicting the swine flu will hit…
August 2, 2009
I just finished reading Erica Goode's Times story on the suicides of four soldiers who served together in a small North Carolina-based Guard unit in Iraq from 2006 to spring 2007. This is a witheringly painful story. Goode, who has done quite a bit of science writing as well as substantial…
July 29, 2009
Pardon the long silence. A couple of posts fell to tech issues. And I'd love to blame the hiatus on a vacation.
But mostly I've been off-blog and, for social media purposes, offline, because I've been immersed in writing a long feature. It's a fun, meaty, juicy, really substantial story, one of…
July 13, 2009
Greg Laden, trying to toss a line between the "New Atheists" and 'Accommodationists" who are currently squabbling about a dust-up featuring PZ Myers v Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirshenbaum (who apparently rough Myers up a bit in their book Unscientific America), writes:
Now, I just want to make…
July 9, 2009
Both Mind Hacks and Jonah Lehrer took interesting note -- Jonah's the longer, and a pretty nice summary itself -- of the fascinating NY Times piece on ultramarathoner Diane Van Deren, who began running long distances after brain surgery removed much of her right temporal lobe. This gave her a great…
