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We Want Seafood and We Want Hope

We like tension. It makes for good stories. But it has been recognized that the fair and balanced approach to science news (and otherwise) can be detrimental. As Al Gore pointed out in An Inconvenient Truth, climate scientists, as represented by their peer-reviewed literature, hold a consensus view on the carbon crisis while the media continues to report skepticism. Last week, an article was published in Science on Rebuilding Global Fisheries. The paper worked to reconcile views of marine ecologist Boris Worm and fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn (which Cornelia Dean at the New York Times…

Science, Racism and Political Correctness

Two weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think-tank) released a position paper based largely on the academic research of one Jason Richwine. The conclusion (roughly paraphrased): Hispanic people have lower IQ's than white people, so an overly permissive immigration policy will drag down the US economy. Ethically, this conclusion is a deep affront to my liberal* sensibilities. The idea of basing our public policy on racism and bigotry is abhorrent. Politically, this is dangerous territory. This is especially true after the 2012 election, when republican politicians were making…

Allergies 101: Part the Third

I know this post has been a long time coming. In the first part of this series, I told you that allergies are the result of an immune response against an external, but normally not harmful substance. In part 2, I told you that allergies are the result of a specific type of immune response called "Th2," which leads to the production of IgE antibodies, and that this immune response is thought to have evolved to combat infections caused by worms. But what makes your immune system think it's supposed to be battling a worm? The short answer to the questions is: we don't know. For other types of…

Petition to Increase Funding for Scientific Research

To do science, we need government funding. However you feel about the free market, there just isn't a way for the free market to work on basic research. It's too risky, with not enough profitability. The things I discover in lab next week will never make me rich, and I'm not aware of many Nobel winners that did their work in private industry. We need the government to pay for what we do. And we don't cost that much. Take a look at this chart and see if you can find how much we spend on scientific discovery. Go ahead, I'll wait. Still looking? Might want to try full screen. There are a lot of…

Activities report

Last year, I was awarded an NSF graduate research fellowship. This fellowship pays my tuition and stipend for 3 years, so that my boss doesn't have to. This is a great help to our lab, though I don't really get much in the way of direct benefit* (other than a great line on my CV). Anyway, every year, we are required to submit an "activities report" that says what we've been doing with the money, which in the end is your money (if you pay taxes in the US that is). It's supposed to be written for a general audience, and since you all are paying for me to do the science that I love, I figured…

Weight loss and macrophages

Macrophages are really good at gobbling stuff up. It's all right there in the name - they are big (macro) eaters (phage). I study them in the context of the immune system - one of the things they do really well is eat up bacteria and other pathogens that have found their way into your tissues. As a front line sentinel, they also are capable of kick-starting inflammation and recruiting the rest of the cells necessary to clear an infection. But that's not all, there's more. Weight loss and lipolysis promote a dynamic immune response in murine adipose tissue Here we characterized the response of…

So, this is goodbye

This is a little unexpected, I'm sure. I sat down last week, on my three-year blog-anniversary, to put together my banner and start the updating that I've been talking about for a month, but I couldn't do it. I wanted the creative juices to flow, to get excited about blogging again, but instead I hit the same stagnant block that I've been running into for months. The ideas are here, collected on a sheet of graph paper that I keep by my desk, so it isn't really the content that is lacking. Rather, I'm missing the will to do it. And so, I sit, staring at my ideas without the will to bring them…

Speaking of Sarah Palin...

I love it when other people say exactly what I’m thinking, but in better words. Take Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin for instance: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing--the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party--are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women--and to many men too--who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. (via the LA Times) That’s right. Good for them. ’Bout freaking time. Of course, Steinem goes on to describe many…

How to get a PhD in synthetic biology

I don't get nearly as many emails asking for advice as I'm sure the lovely and talented Dr. Isis does, and I'm not sure if my advice can compare in quality and sassiness to hers, but I want to address the questions I get most often--how do you get into synthetic biology if your background is in something else, and how do you get into a PhD in synthetic biology? While there are an increasing number of labs that work primarily on synthetic biology and schools with undergraduate iGEM teams, there are still very few (if any?) graduate programs that will write "Synthetic Biology" on your diploma,…

Washington Post really screws up on Animal Testing

The Post really screwed this one up, not so much because they took a side on an issue in news piece (this is close to an opinion piece), but because it gets so much wrong and doesn't even address the rest of the story. Issue 1: Science will save them! I've been over this before, here and here, but we'll do it again. The Post makes it seem as if we have all this technological advances that can make tests more applicable to humans. Okay, here's how you would make an in vitro system similar to a human: take cell that you want to look at, surround it with other cell types it interacts with from…

Guest post: what happens when a personal genomics company goes bankrupt (part 3)

In this final post of their three-part series, lawyers Daniel Vorhaus and Lawrence Moore of the superb blog Genomics Law Report analyse the legal repercussions of a personal genomics company going bankrupt. In part one of the series Vorhaus and Moore analysed the privacy policies of two representative personal genomics companies, while part two was a detailed examination of the complex legal issues surrounding the treatment of customer genetic data in the event of company bankruptcy. In this final installment, Vorhaus and Moore bring it all together to explain the implications for personal…

Interview With John Edwards at A Blog Around the Clock

Over at A Blog Around the Clock, Bora has posted an interview he conducted by email with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on science and science-related issues. The fact that John Edwards participated is a good indication that the 2008 candidates (at least the Democratic ones) are taking scientists, bloggers, and even science bloggers seriously. Props to Edwards for playing ball, and a big "well done" to Bora for arranging this. Bora asked Edwards eight questions on some of the more important and timely science-related issues facing America, including global warming, health…

Rep. Ron Paul in Iowa, Fighting a "Police State"

Photo source. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), according to the latest news, may earn the top pick, or second, in the Iowa caucus today for the Republican nomination for President. His numerous public speeches are well covered, but I was curious about his academic work - after all, Rep. Paul holds a B.S. in Biology and an M.D. I came across an article he published in 2003 in the highly respected Project Muse from the Johns Hopkins University Press, titled "Trading Freedom for Security: Drifting toward a Police State." Rep. Paul devotes fully twenty pages to explain how America is rapidly approaching…

President Obama's Moment, Bachmann Sideways

Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama focused attention on preparing the United States to thrive against global competition. President Obama's 2011 State of the Union speech was broad, thematic and optimistic as expected. Each listener comes to such a speech with their own perspective and background. As a scientist, I was particularly encouraged to hear a theme of the importance of education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to drive innovation, a call for more respect for teachers as "nation builders" and, perhaps most poignant - the President's…

Do we need a kitemark for good science reporting?

As part of my job I occasionally get emails from young people (well, younger than me) who want to know this or that about science communication.  I don't know why they ask me, I feel I know about as much about the subject as they do, but that's the way it is.  (They also ask for career advice, which I'm even less qualified to answer.) So this guy has an essay he's writing, on the role of the science journalist in the 21st century, and his opening question stops me dead: Why do you think it's important to have good public communicators of science? The more I thought about it, the more I…

Kathy Sykes on science and the media: quit bitching

Kathy Sykes, Professor of Sciences and Society at Bristol University has written a provocative article in the latest New Scientist entitled "Science in the media: Put up or shut up" The star of Rough Science argues that while science communication often leaves a lot to be desired, scientists themselves need to be less rabid in their attacks on the media: Does ranting do any good? In some cases it does, especially if science is being carelessly mangled or deliberately distorted. But in many cases communicators are passionate about science and are simply trying to communicate it as clearly as…

Silver Spoon Hyenas?

A fascinating new paper just came out in Nature Communications and I intend to blog it in the usual manner, but I thought I'd try something new first. Check it out: The Research Question ...According to life history theory, mothers should invest in their offspring if this enhances offspring survival and fitness, and if the fitness benefit to mothers from increased offspring fitness exceeds the cost of their investment. Whether the maternal environment influences the fitness and reproductive value of sons is unknown in most mammals because male mammals usually disperse and, thus, few studies…

“I'm not a scientist, but…”

Jonathan Chait makes an interesting observation. Asked by reporters yesterday if he accepts the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global warming, John Boehner demurred on the curious but increasingly familiar grounds that he is not a scientist. “Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change,” the House Speaker said. Boehner immediately turned the question to the killing of jobs that would result from any proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which he asserts with unwavering certainty. (On this question, Boehner is not held back by…

The Week of Science Challenge

Do you consider yourself a Science Blogger? You could be a hard blogging scientist, science journalist, student of science, or just a member of the general public with an interest in the scientific process. If you identify with any of these, I've got a challenge for you. It boils down to this: One week of science blogging and only science blogging. At least one post a day of pure science content. No blogging about anti-science -- no creationism, no anti-vaccination, no global warming denialists. Just Science from February 5 through February 11. More information can be found here or…

Empty Rhetoric: "Intellectual Property Is Property!"

One of my pet peeves is when, in an attempt to help convey to others the seriousness of respecting copyrights, patents, and trademarks, somebody says, "Intellectual property is property!" This is often followed by an emotional appeal that just as you would hesitate before breaking into somebody's house and stealing their TV, you should also hesitate before passing on a digital file. Often, people then respond, "but if I take the TV, you don't have it any more. If I copy a digital file, you still have the digital file!" I have very rarely, if ever, seen a considered counter to that response…

How the brain tells time (without a wrist watch that is)

A team of researchers from UCLA has created a model of how the brain could potentially tell time and has also tested a part of the model on human subjects. "If you toss a pebble into a lake," he explained, "the ripples of water produced by the pebble's impact act like a signature of the pebble's entry time. The farther the ripples travel the more time has passed. "We propose that a similar process takes place in the brain that allows it to track time," he added. "Every time the brain processes a sensory event, such as a sound or flash of light, it triggers a cascade of reactions between brain…

Boxing Day Prayer

While making a statement about science, is it necessary ... in your opinion ... to always make a connected positive and supportive statement about religion, in order that the scientist not offend anyone who might be listening? I'd love to hear opinions on this. (There is some discussion on this at PZ Myers blog) In the mean time, I offer a prayer, for Boxing Day. [repost from gregladen.com] Boxing day is the day after we celebrate the birth of the Christian God on Earth, and Boxing Day itself is the day we contemplate the meaning of, well, boxes, and where in, on or near those boxes we…

Vote or Die: Piecing together a few thoughts about today's election ...

... mostly other people's thoughts. Why other people's thoughts? Because at this point, other than casting my own vote, there is nothing I can do to change an inevitably bad day for society, civilization, democracy, rational thought, and sanity. I can hope that the day will not be as bad as it will, and there is indeed some evidence that this is possible. 5 Reasons Democrats Could Beat the Polls and Hold the House A scenario like this one is possible tomorrow -- not particularly likely, but possible -- just as a 77-seat Republican gain is possible. It's probably a somewhat greater…

The Ruse-Dennett feud

You may have heard that Michael Ruse has been caught out of school, sharing a private spat between himself and Daniel Dennett with the William Dembski. This isn't too terribly surprising—Ruse's reputation has been spiralling downwards rather rapidly, what with all his sucking up to the Intelligent Design crowd in recent years, and I'm half-expecting any day now to hear that he's become a creationist. In his waning years he'll be able to replace the legitimate respect of scientists, which he's been working hard to flush down the sewer, with the fawning and lucrative love of creationists. I've…

Finally, an issue that gets fundamentalist Christians to support biotechnology

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, now thinks that high-tech, fetal research is OK — if it leads to a cure for homosexuality. If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin. Note that this is not your old-school, naive eugenics he is proposing; developing a prenatal test for…

Thanks, Jenny McCarthy

The other day, I sarcastically "thanked" Andrew Wakefield for his role in making sure that measles is again endemic in the U.K. At the same time I wondered whether in 5 to 10 years I'd be similarly "thanking" Jenny McCarthy for her role in doing the same thing here in the United States. It looks as though I won't have to wait five years: At least 127 people in 15 states have come down with the measles, the biggest outbreak in the United States in more than 10 years, Reuters reported. Cases started springing up in May, when more than 70 people in a dozen states became ill. According to federal…

Beware and get ready, my U.K. readers, part 2: David Kirby to speak at the Houses of Parliament in London on June 4?

My British readers, say it ain't so! Hot on the heels of learning that, bankrolled by antivaccinationists, David Kirby is planning a trip to the U.K. in early June, I find out something even more disturbing. A reader forwarded this press release to me: From: "Clifford G. Miller" May 23, 2008 -- CONTACT: David Kirby - dkirby@nyc.rr.com BESTSELLING AMERICAN AUTHOR DAVID KIRBY TO SPEAK AT HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT Briefing by Journalist Who Covers Vaccine-Autism Debate is Sponsored By Lord Robin Granville Hodgson, Baron Hodgson of Shropshire U.S. Journalist David Kirby, author of the award winning…

Mid-week death crud open thread

I just can't shake it. Try as I might to get rid of it, it just continues to grip my body like a tick that just won't let go. I'm talking about the death crud, which I had thought originally to be a nasty cold but is now looking more and more like the flu. It descended upon me Friday night/Saturday morning and intensified over the last couple of days to the point where I did something both yesterday and today that I almost never do: Cancel afternoon meetings and come home early. In fact, I did it two days in a row--unprecedented. Naturally, a sane person might ask why I even went into work at…

A science section for the Huffington Post? More like a pseudoscience section!

Sadly, the death crud continues apace, although at a low enough level that I feel I can eke out a brief post, mainly because it relates to what I've been saying all along about a group blog that I tend to dislike. Both Shifting Baselines and DrugMonkey have pointed out that Huffington Post blogger David Sloan Wilson has asked if it should have a science section. As part of the article, he offers the "only" argument why not: The only argument against creating a "Science" section, as far as I can see, is that it would be B-O-R-I-N-G. Sure we should know about science, and we should also eat our…

NESTA, Open Innovation, Creative Commons

Lately I've been spending a fair amount of time talking to the folks at NESTA in the UK. There's a lot of interest in how the kinds of legal and technical infrastructures we're building at Creative Commons might work at scale in the UK, and yesterday NESTA hosted me and James Boyle (founder of Creative Commons, and a guiding force in our science work from the very beginning) at an event labeled Open Innovation and Intellectual Property, jointly hosted by the Wellcome Trust and Creative Commons. It was an interesting day. It was one of the few times I've had the scope of topic to cover all the…

Happy Open Access Day...

So today is Open Access Day. (If you don't know what Open Access is, get thee to Peter Suber's blog for background). I've spent a lot of the past week in and around OA meetings. I went to the Bethesda 2 meeting on Friday at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where a lot of the people who started the movement were gathered to talk about the next five years. I'm sitting in a meeting of scientists in NYC right now trying to figure out how principles of OA, expanded to include the idea of open for data, databases, biological materials, and more, can transform the way rare diseases get explored and…

Jet Lag

I started Speakeasy Science in late January on my author website. I'd finished my book on the invention of modern forensic toxicology in 1920s New York City - The Poisoner's Handbook - but I'd developed an addiction to writing about chemistry and culture. It was my first heady experience of working solely for myself. I've been a staff journalist at five newspapers, a freelance writer for a list of newspapers, magazines and websites, and a book author. I've worked with brilliant editors and indifferent ones, publishers who were generous, publishers who were penny counters. My blog, right down…

On NSF data plans

Word on the street is that the NSF is planning to ask all grant applicants to submit data-management plans, possibly (though not certainly) starting this fall. Fellow SciBlings the Reveres believe this heralds a new era of open data. I'm not so sanguine, at least not yet. Open data may be the eventual goal; I certainly hope it is. At this juncture, though, the NSF would be stupid to issue a blanket demand for it, and I rather suspect the NSF is not stupid. Part of the problem, of course, is that many disciplinary cultures are simply not ready for even the idea of open data. If the NSF were to…

Sustainability: the institutional fiefdom

Some interesting ferment happening in repository-land, notably this discussion of various types and scales of repositories and how successful they can expect to be given the structural conditions in which they are embedded. I don't blog repositories per se any more, so I'm not going to address the paper in detail (though I do think it contains serious oversights). What I'm curious about in the Trogool context is the case of institutionally-hosted services aimed not specifically at the institution, but at a particular discipline. arXiv. ARTFL. PERSEUS. DRYAD. There's any number of these. One…

Hungry Pups

It requires a lot of energy to fast. If I go more than a few hours without eating, I get cranky, a little shaky, and I feel like crawling up into a ball and going to sleep forever. Ok, that was a little bit of an exaggeration, but I can't imagine fasting like a subantarctic fur seal pup, like the one pictured above with it's mother. This study says fur seal pups have to (repeatedly!) go very long periods without eating because the mother seal is rarely around. By very long periods of fasting, I mean anywhere between 4-6 days in most fur seal species. Can you imagine? Mother seals will come…

Your Inner Bonobo

Vanessa Woods joins us from Your Inner Bonobo at Psychology Today. Vanessa is an award-winning journalist and author who studies the cognitive development of chimpanzees and bonobos at sanctuaries in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Join Vanessa and other leading scientists in All Creatures Great and Smart, a World Science Festival program that challenges long-held assumptions about the differences between 'animal' and 'human.' Who is the smartest of them all? You have to admit, as a species, we're pretty spectacular. Our phones can navigate our cars through unknown…

Time for a little TED

I know, I know--you're tired of looking at my toast. I'm sorry. What can I say? I just started a new job at MarketWatch - yes, Dow Jones' MarketWatch - the electronic financial broadsheet many predict will soon be owned and operated by the man Americans love to hate almost as much as W. and his henchmen: Rupert Murdoch. I can't say I'm proud that my checks may soon be signed by the man responsible for keeping Bill O'Reilly in bread and butter. But, in my defense, when I accepted the job, it really looked like the Bancroft's were going to tell the media tyrant to buzz off. Now - well - not so…

Semen: "It's better than cats."

I know I'm dating myself by referencing an SNL bit circa 1986, but I couldn't resist. Those of you who've read Microscopic Mind Control know that toxoplasma, the bacteria people pick up from house cats, is purported to make women more "outgoing and warmhearted." Well, according to New York State University Psychologist Gordon Gallup, semen is an even more powerful organic anti-depressant. In 2002, Gallup conducted a study that suggested that women who regularly engage in unprotected sex (both vaginal and oral) are happier than their conscientious counterparts. (Semen Acts as Anti-depressant…

Valentine's Day statistical love poems

Elissa Brown sends these in. They're actually pretty good, with a quite reasonable Ogden-Nash-style rhythm and a certain amount of statistical content. It's good to know that the kids today are learning useful skills in their graduate programs. You are perfect; I'd make no substitutions You remind me of my favorite distributions With a shape and a scale that I find reliable You're as comforting as a two parameter Weibull When I ask you a question and hope you answer truly You speak as clearly as a draw from a Bernoulli Your love of adventure is most influential Just like the constant hazard…

Coethnicity

My colleague Macartan Humphreys recently came out with book, Coethnicity (with James Habyarimana, Daniel Posner, and Jeremy Weinstein, addresses the question of why public services and civic cooperation tend to be worse in areas with more ethnic variation. To put it another way: people in homogeneous areas work well together, whereas in areas of ethnic diversity, there's a lot less cooperation. From one perspective, this one falls into the "duh" category. Of course, we cooperate with people who are more like us! But it's not so simple. Macartan and his colleagues discuss and discard a…

Channel 7 doesn't pluck the pigeons, they just lead them to slaughter

(This piece appears today at Science-Based Medicine and is re-posted here today because I like it and I'm lazy. --PalMD) A couple of years ago, a number of us raised concerns about an "investigative reporter" at a Detroit television station.  At the time I noted that investigative reporters serve an important role in a democracy, but that they can also do great harm, as when Channel 7's Steve Wilson parroted the talking points of the anti-vaccine movement.  Wilson has since been canned but apparently, not much has changed.  While performing my evening ablutions, I stumbled upon the latest…

Vaccines, food allergies, and good questions

I love it when friends read my blog. Maybe it's simple vanity, but I love being able to talk to people about what I'm writing. Readers who ask good questions (especially friends, because I trust their motives) help me reevaluate my message and my facts. So an old friend sent me an email this weekend after reading a post, and it's a question deserving of careful examination. It goes to the mixed messages physicians give to patients even when we don't mean to. I was anxious about vaccines and meted them out a little bit more slowly than is typical (only one or two at a time - just took…

Damned lies and idiots

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is reportedly a doctor, although according to her website, she no longer practices medicine in any recognizable way. Perhaps that's why she utters completely idiotic statements such as this one pointed out to me by Brother Orac: Study these numbers. We've had SARS, Bird flu and Swine flu. On average, approx. 190 children/year die from the flu. Considering there are about 62M kids under the 14 years of age in the US, this is NOT "statistically signficant" and should not even make the radar screen. See how they manipulate parents into vaccinations? Next year, PLEASE do not…

Put a fork in it?

A recent piece of mine caused a bit of a "blogwar", if you will. It lead to a "rebuttal" on Dr. Bremner's blog, and an additional response from Dr. David Gorski. The discussion has been interesting (no, not Doug's incoherent response, but the comments and emails of others). One letter in particular helps sum up the ideologic rift between science-based medicine and "everything else". The following was written by a physician: I would ask Drs Gorski and Lipson if an iconoclast like Dr Bremner might be serving a valuable role as gadfly to an entrenched failing status quo in bio-medicine who…

Placebo is not what you think it is

If I read one more crappy article about placebos, something's gotta give, and it's gonna be my head or my desk. Wired magazine has a new article entitled, "Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why." Frequent readers of skeptical and medical blogs will spot the first problem: the insanely nonsensical claim that "placebos are getting better". This not only "begs the question," but actually betrays a fundamental misapprehension of the concept. I've written several times about the nature and ethical implications of placebos, but it's time for a serious…

What is "health care"?

In his latest comment, Philip H has accelerated my reluctant discussion of health care reform. In fact, it was Philip who bullied me into writing about this topic in the first place. I've been avoiding wading into this mess, but being on the front line, it's in my face every day. What he says in his latest comment is this: [T]he idealogical leap PalMD is asking for is a good one, but it misses the mark. The leap we need to make is that healthcare is not a good, like Cheerios, or cars, or flatscreen tv's, that exists in anything like a free marketplace. Commenter Donna B. makes a tangent…

Obama terrorizes Notre Dame

So, President Obama is getting an honorary degree and giving a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, and some folks aren't too happy about that. Why? The stated reasons is his support of limited abortion rights. Let's examine why this stance is hypocritical and nonsensical, then examine the real reasons for the protests. Beliefs of a speaker Notre Dame has a reputation as a good university, and I'm quite certain that classes on campus include ideas not part of official Catholic belief. I'm willing to bet that not every student, professor, and employee hold to every letter…

On the road again...time for a comment policy

At the time this post is scheduled to appear, I should be somewhere over the Midwest on my way to California to attend a surgical meeting for a few days. Don't worry, though, Orac-philes, I haven't left you in the lurch, without that Respectful Insolence that I like to dish out and that you (well, most of you anyway) like to read. There are posts already written and scheduled to appear tomorrow while I'm learning about the latest in surgical oncology. Also, meetings usually provide pretty good blog fodder, which means I'll probably come up with something for Friday too. After that, I'll play…

Oops, he did it again

Just yesterday, I commented about an article that analyzed President Bush's penchant for using rather artless straw man fallacies when answering his critics. By an almost amazing coincidence, that very day he was busily engaged in doing more of the same in a press conference. For example, when asked about the terrorist surveillance program in which he used not one but two straw men argument in the same response: I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, if…

More on the new Doctor Who

Based on some comments on my previous post complaining that the first episode of the new Doctor Who was a bit uneven and the stories not so great, I thought I'd mention my overview of the season. I have one thing to say: Patience. I agree that the first couple of episodes were uneven and realize that I have the benefit of hindsight. I also understand that it's also a bit hard at first for longtime Who fans to get used to the new format of one hour episodes with self-contained stories (although there are some two-part stories scattered throughout the season). Remember that it always takes at…