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Sex toys and human subjects at Duke University.

At Terra Sigillata, Abel notes that the Director of Duke University's Catholic Center is butting in to researchers' attempts to recruit participants for their research. As it happens, that research involves human sexuality and attitudes toward sex toys. Here's how Abel lays it out: Father Joe Vetter, director of Duke University's Catholic Center, is protesting trial participant accrual for a study being conducted on campus directed by Dr Dan Ariely, the James B Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Fuqua School of Business (story and video). ... Ariely and his postdoctoral fellow, Dr…

If you enter a dialogue, do you risk being co-opted?

On my earlier post, "Dialogue, not debate", commenter dave c-h posed some interesting questions: Is there an ethical point at which engagement is functionally equivalent to assent? In other words, is there a point at which dialogue should be replaced by active resistance? If so, how do you tell where that point is? I think many activists fear that dialogue is a tactic of those who support the status quo to co-opt them into a process that is unlikely to lead to any real change because the power is unevenly divided. What the commenter says about the activists' fears sounds about right to me…

Rebecca Watson, Barbara Drescher and the Elevator Guy

Rebecca Watson did the right thing when she spoke about McGrew's response too her (Watson's) response to the Elevator Guy, and Barbara Drescher's response to all of that is amazing. If you don't know what I'm talking about here, it might be best to move on. Otherwise, here's my two cents (and there are exactly two) about this Matryoshka Moment. You may recall this post about "Naming Names at the CFI Student Leadership Conference" by Rebecca Watson. Here's the story in a nutshell. First, some guy known as "The Elevator Guy" hit, rather lamely it seems, on Rebecca in a way that one could…

In which I indulge my rock critic wannabe side, part 1

It should come as no surprise that I'm a bit of a rock critic wannabe and have been for a long time. Indeed, very early on in my blogging, I did a "top ten" list for the best music of 2004. As far back as high school, I wrote a couple of music reviews that, in retrospect, weren't very good. Fast forward over 25 years later, and what makes me think I could do better now? Nothing, really, but it's my blog and I feel like indulging my rock critic fantasies today. Besides, if I totally suck at it, you know that tomorrow I'll just go back to doing what I do best--until the next time the critic…

Scientology and psychiatry: Even the Hitler Zombie wouldn't touch this one

When I learned of this, I had been highly tempted trot out everybody's favorite undead Führer for a little fun with the Church of Scientology's latest antics. Indeed, when you find out what I'm about to discuss, you'll see why it was a candidate for the loving chomp of his rotting jaws. Heck, I even started to do the whole Hitler zombie schtick that regular readers all know and some even love (or at least tolerate--well, most of you, anyway). As I typed away, though, I was having more and more trouble. My conscience was feeling more and more troubled. After all, I've lovingly crafted…

Is Blood Ever Blue? Science Teachers Want to Know!

There is an updated version of this post here: "Is Blood Ever Blue, Science Teachers Want To Know!" According to one of the leading experts on the human circulatory system, blood flowing through veins is blue. I'm not going to mention any names. All I'll say is this: A person I know visited a major research center last year and saw a demonstration of organ removal and some other experimental stuff. A person also visiting asked the famous high-level researcher doing this work if blood was ever blue. What he said was not recorded in detail, but it was very much like this statement I found…

Let Oprah know that Kim Tinkham is dying of cancer

I'm still perturbed about yesterday. I'm still perturbed that a cancer quack was able to convince a woman who had everything to live for that he could cure her of her breast cancer without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation. I'm still perturbed at this particular cancer quack's attitude, where he tried to claim that he didn't know the woman who is dying, Kim Tinkham, and imply that her cancer recurred because didn't follow his regimen carefully enough, that she had stopped living the quack's "alkaline diet." I thought of my mother-in-law, who died in 2009 of metastatic breast cancer, and…

Orac gets comments: Dr. Jay tries the "pharma shill" gambit on him yet again

Dr. Jay is back. You remember Dr. Jay (namely Dr. Jay "I'm not anti-vaccine but I give vaccines only 'reluctantly' and am convinced that they cause autism" Gordon), pediatrician to Evan, Jenny McCarthy's son and frequent apologist for the antivaccine movement in the media. Specifically, he was most unhappy over my posts about Dr. Bob "too many too soon" Sears and about a child who died of Hib. If you peruse the comments in those two posts, you will see him once again disparaging science, touting his own personal clinical experience over the science failing to find a link between vaccines and…

Fumento, in a field of rakes

After accidentally proving that he was using a sock on Wikipedia, Fumento is back for more. I think that putting a "(sic)" after misspellings is rather petty, but since Fumento does it when he quotes others, I've yielded to temptation and sicced all over his many spelling mistakes. Fumento begins: There are lots of reasons people blog. One may be that nobody else would ever publish their material. Some of these people nevertheless fill a valuable nitch (sic) that just doesn't appeal to outside publications; others are simply inept. The latter describes Tim Lambert and his Deltoid blogsite.…

Chopra's baaaaack

Apparently my handy-dandy Only Response You'll Ever Need To Choprawoo, written in response to the last volley of Choprawoo to hit the blogosphere, hit a nerve. Chopra sycophant and blog comment spammer extraordinaire "ChopraFan" was none too pleased with it. Good. I have to wonder if "ChopraFan" is either Chopra himself or whether he or she just works for Chopra, scanning the blogosphere for negative reactions to Chopra's woo that can be spammed with plugs for the latest installment of still more Choprawoo. Whatever the case, he/she/it led me to The God Delusion? Part 7 (also found here).…

Austria's President admits that Austria welcomed the Nazis

For the first time ever, a head of state of Austria has admitted that a large proportion of Austrian citizens openly welcomed the Nazis when Hitler annexed Austria: The president of Austria has become the country's first head of state to admit that a large number of its citizens welcomed Adolf Hitler with open arms when the dictator annexed the country. Heinz Fischer said that a "not inconsiderable portion of the population" greeted the Anschluss or annexation in 1938 with "euphoria", despite knowing that "Hitler meant war". In addition many had celebrated Hitler's initial military successes…

Lott and Research Integrity

Otis Dudley Duncan and Tim Lambert The discussions on so many blogs on the Lott case have been invaluable not only in turning up new evidence but also in illustrating the wide variety of reactions to the evidence. One thing that strikes a professional researcher is that many who have commented do not look at such cases in the way that researchers are trained to do. What this case is about is the professional work of a a social scientist, and the question is whether that work meets the ethical standards of scientific inquiry and reporting. And commentators are not at liberty to define…

Terminal Freeze, by Lincoln Child

Originally posted by Brian Switek On April 6, 2009, at 8:10 AM One of the unwritten rules of creating a good horror yarn is that the location your story takes place in has to be as frightening as your monster. The setting almost has to act an an extension of the bloodthirsty antagonist; a place that can more easily be seen as its lair than a place of human habitation. In Lincoln Child's latest novel Terminal Freeze that place is Fear Base, a rotting military facility shivering the the shadow of Fear Glacier, and it is stalked by something utterly horrifying. Readers of The Relic, another…

Do sports fans really make a difference?

A sports magazine writer asked me about the different techniques one could use to distract an athlete... here's what I said: About a year ago another graduate student and I were planning on doing some research in my lab to determine what the best way of distracting a free throw shooter was. We have a pretty cool motion tracking system that would allow us to track arm and ball position as well as project distractions onto a wall - either real world video or computer generated distractions. But this is as far as we got since I saw some other research with a similar goal that didn't seem to be…

Climate Crisis Action Day Pt. II: Thoughts on Celebrity, Consumerism and Conservation

The other day I made a passing comment about the issue of using celebrity as a face for conservation: I have a few tough questions for the organizers of the event, mostly about the questionable choice of using celebrity to promote and give a face to conservation. It has worked for promoting purely humanitarian causes in the past, but is this movement different and should it be addressed in a different manner? Furthermore, where are the young Goodalls and Attenboroughs of the world? Surely they would be glad to step up and reach out to people instead of a polarizing, disconnected celebrity.…

Instructions for a retrovirus vaccine? Not really

When folks in my lab think about biological problems, we think about basics. A pathogen has some molecular component that trips a sensor on the outside of a cell. That sensor (the receptor) grabs on to some adapter proteins and starts a cascade of chemical reactions catalyzed by various enzymes, which eventually leads to the activation of a transcription factor or factors that changes the behavior of a cell. We think at the level of the cell, at the level of the protein and at the level of the molecule. Occasionally, if we write a paper and the reviewers insist, we might do an assay to see if…

Fantastical Fridays: Psychedelic Psilocybin Psychology

Although a given scientific paper probably has at least something fairly interesting or unique about it, most people aren't going to be too interested in reading about, for example, the structural details of the protein-protein interactions between cytoplasmic integrin tails and focal adhesion-associated proteins (my work). But this paper... man, this is completely different. Not only could I not wait to read it, hell, I wished I was there when the experiments were taking place! On July 7th, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine published a paper in Psychopharmacology…

Protein folding probably requires the assistance of Frigg

The Discovery Institute doesn't understand the protein folding problem. I mean that literally: they don't understand the problem. Scientists don't know the answer, but they have a clear understanding of the problem. PNAS published a "Perspective" article, "The Nature of Protein Folding Pathways," by S. Walter Englander and Leland Mayne. Unsurprisingly, they try to approach the problem from purely materialistic presuppositions. There is no mention of specificity, amino acid sequence, or digital information. You see, there really is an interesting problem here: given a specific amino acid…

"A Doll That Looks Likes Me...with Down's Syndrome"

Down Syndrome's Dolls. One of this year's top finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search is a High School student studying self image of children with Down's Syndrome, using dolls. Such creativity gives me hope for our next generation of scientists. This competition has launched many careers, including my own when I was a finalist in the then Westinghouse Science Talent competition {my topic was not as interesting, in retrospect.} Below are the top 40 finalists. I love the diversity of topics! California Arcadia Li, Jiacheng (Arcadia High School) Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance for…

How a Robot Helped Denver Broncos Tim Tebow's Pass

Tim Tebow Foundation Tim Tebow with Jacob Rainey, one of the many people dealing with health problems Tebow hosted at Broncos games this season. Photo source. Denver Broncos Quarterback Tim Tebow has become a popular culture phenomenon not only because of his extraordinary athletic skills but because he lives out the values of his religious faith - displayed publicly and shamelessly - everyday (more on that later.) But something that has not received much coverage in the news media is that three years ago, Tim Tebow had a "mysterious pain in his throwing shoulder" and he sought out some…

APS Overview, Days 0-1

Today was the first full day of APS in Boston. Well, sort of. The main APS program began this evening, but starting last night and continuing through the rest of today was the pre-conference APS-STP (Society for the Teaching of Psychology) Teaching Institute, which I attended, and during which I presented a poster. Here's a review and recap for the conference thus far. Last night there were only two concurrent sessions, I went to a session on teaching about the chemical senses presented by Debra Zellner and Scott Parker. Demos abound for teaching about visual and auditory sensation and…

Would you learn the philosophy of science from a creationist?

Yesterday, I attended a discussion led by a philosophy professor after a matinee showing of God's Not Dead. It was a strangely skewed group: about half the attendees were local pastors or wives of pastors. Also, not to my surprise, most of them didn't care for the movie. It was too over the top, it paid short shrift to serious theology, some of the scenes (especially the death scene) made them uncomfortable and wasn't true to how Christians actually respond to death. So that was good. Of course, I had to point out that the caricatures of atheists were also unrepresentative. One guy wandered…

Age of Autism and Gardasil: What's that again about not being "anti-vaccine"?

I've frequently referred to Age of Autism as the "anti-vaccine" crank propaganda blog and Generation Rescue, the organization that primarily runs it, a an anti-vaccine propaganda organization. Although longtime readers know exactly why I say such things, newbies might not. That's why I consider it instructive to take note of this observation by reader Todd W.: You know, I always wondered why Age of Autism, the "Daily Web Newspaper of the Autism Epidemic" has articles on Gardasil. They have absolutely no connection to autism. There have been no studies linking Gardasil to autism. There aren't…

A straightforward example of creationist error

A creationist, Rob McEwen, left me a little comment here which lists a number of his objections to evolution. It’s a classic example of the genre, and well illustrates the problem we have. The poor fellow has been grossly misinformed, but is utterly convinced that he has the truth. I’m not going to dismantle his entire line of blather (thanks to Loren Petrich, who has already briefly pointed out the flaws in his thinking), but I do want to show what I mean with one example. Here’s what Mr McEwen says: Mutations have NEVER produced additional DNA structures. NEVER! Even as scientists study…

"Outing" anonymous bloggers: A favorite technique of antivaccine cranks

A reader of this blog was outed by a moron posting as "Mark" on the Age of Autism blog. I will not link to the outing, nor will I link to Age of Autism. I have, however, kept a nice screen shot of the page, just in case someone over there has an attack of conscience, and I will also comment on the observation that "outing" its enemies is a favorite technique of cranks in general. However, it seems to be a particular favorite of antivaccine cranks. So is hypocrisy, it would appear. After all, "Mark" did not post under his full name but only under his first name, while he thinks nothing of…

Darwinism leads to anti-Semitism? Or, the commonality of denialist tactics

Well, I'm here in sunny San Diego and about to head on over to the convention center to check out the day's festivities and to make sure to check out a friend's poster this morning. (If anyone reading this is attending AACR, you might recognize me by the Plexiglass box full of multi-colored blinking lights and the bad attitude who will have a propensity to whip out a laptop and blog if he finds interesting science to blog about.) The flight sucked, as usual. I was stuck in the middle seat, and the guy on one side of me looked like a bodybuilder and was suitably wide. It occurred to me that…

The Art of Empathy

The Frontal Cortex has an interesting post about a recent study conducted by psychologists at the University of Toronto on the effects of reading fiction. (Full disclosure here: I haven't read the entire study, which was published in the October issue of The Journal of Research in Personality. I just can't bring myself to fork over the money for a subscription at the moment. So, the following observations are based solely on the abstract, which you can read here.) The thrust of the study appears to be this: researchers found that avid fiction readers are more socially adept and empathetic…

Homeopath Dana Ullman is an idiot (in my humble opinion)

Dana Ullman is an idiot. Or maybe insane. I'm not sure which, but his latest article at the Huffington Post reveals such a severe defect in rational thought that it must be one or the other (charitably speaking). He calls it "Lies, Damn Lies (sic), and Medical Research," and the point of it is quite clear: Ullman calls himself an "expert in homeopathic medicine" (which is akin to being a unicorn veterinarian) and since he has never been able to show that his particular health religion has any validity, he lashes out futilely at reality. His entire argument boils down to a profound…

Clinical Marijuana Research Update

Human beings are fundamentally narcissistic, and this narcissism can be antithetical to good science and good medicine. We place far too much confidence in our individual abilities to understand what happens to us, and we place far too much importance on our own experiences, inappropriately generalizing them. That's why science is so important in medicine---to avoid basing life-or-death decisions on something some guy thinks he might have heard once. In my recent piece on medical marijuana in Forbes, commenters took me to task for what they perceived to be a host of errors in my reasoning…

ACGME moves to limit resident work hours

When it comes to medical blogging, no one has been as consistently good, fresh, and snarky as Orac. Respectful Insolence sets the standard for all other medical blogs, and though Orac may not be a media star like some other med bloggers, his writing has had a significant impact on some important medical issues such as vaccination. The fact that he is often the target of vicious attacks by anti-vaccination activists and other quacks and wackos shows just how good a job he is doing. Though he has been criticized for being a bit loquacious, his thoroughness is one of the traits that makes…

Mike Adams says that the "fun will begin" on January 7, 2014. For once, I agree with him on something.

This one's too brief to be worth a full Orac-ian deconstruction, but it's so juicy that I can't resist mentioning. Regular readers know that Mike Adams, the all-purpose crank who founded NaturalNews.com, is a frequent target topic on this blog. The reason is obvious. Whether it be his support of quackery, his rants against vaccines, his vile attacks on cancer patients, or his New World Order conspiracy mongering and support of the radical fringe in US politics, no one brings home the crazy quite like Mike Adams, and no one brings home such a wide variety and vast quantity of crazy, with the…

You know it's agony for me to listen to Christian talk radio, right?

You are a cruel readership. One of you — I won't name names to protect the guilty — told me to go listen to this radio program out of Colorado Springs called "Generations With Vision", by some guy named Kevin Swanson, and in particular to an episode called The Secular Hold is Slipping. He's a very cheerful, confident fellow, and I listened to several minutes of him lying blithely and loudly. It was…painful. It was a happy idiot gloatingly making stuff up to make himself feel good. Here's their summary of the episode. It’s getting harder and harder to “shut up” the little boy in the Emperor’s…

An Experiment of One (Water Version)

It has been said that running training and the resulting personal performance level is an experiment of one. While there are certain general training characteristics to which all humans undoubtedly respond, the speed and level of adaptation to a specific training stimulus vary from individual to individual. Further, there is little doubt that the individual's response changes over the long haul. Next month I'll be turning 50, and like most competitive runners, I look forward to moving into a new age group. (No more pesky and quick 40 and 41 year olds to worry about.) Unfortunately, my zeal,…

Estrogen-Depleted Geese, Meet Androgen-Compromised Ganders

Speaking, or rather screeching, as a menopausally-crazed, cognitively-impaired winged harpy, I feel it is my duty to swoop in and squawk about the recent hormone replacement therapy free-for-all that's goin' down at Science Blogs. Links are hardly necessary given that this is front page news but those of you who have wandered into this mess of bonobo scat and banana peels called the Chimp Refuge can scurry off to Neurotopia v.2 where another insidious primate provides extensive and authoritative reviews in three parts. I'd just like to point out a couple of things. I may have missed these…

Why Health Care Reform In The U.S. Is Doomed

Among other reasons.... You can have a rational soul like Laura provide a comparison of her personal experience with the U.S. and Canadian health care systems, like this: Let's cut the crap and put it this way: System #1: When I worked in the US, patients would come in and present their insurance cards; we would call the insurance company and wait on hold for 30 minutes (if we didn't get disconnected) to verify that they had officially chosen me as their primary care physician. They might pay a copay, or they might pay a percentage of the fee, for which they would be billed after the…

On to Ohio

The Panda's Thumb issues an Ohio Call to Action: Please write the Board of Ed TODAY. Politely urge them to hold a vote of the entire Board –at their Tuesday Sept 12 meeting – establishing that additional language is NOT needed to replace the creationist nonsense removed at the Feb 06 mtg. The Board should devote their energy to closing the achievement gap, solving the school funding crisis, and other genuine issues. They should resist religious extremists pressuring them to corrupt science education and co-opt the classroom for religious conversion. Politely insist they stand up for freedom…

Setting some goals

I'm sorry to say that things with Rutgers are still a mess, but the spring semester is over and now I've got about three months to work on some of my projects. There's a lot I want to do, but most importantly I want to become a better writer and photographer. Towards that end I have set a few goals for this summer, and even though I've stated them before I thought that I would re-iterate what I want to accomplish; #1) Finish my book. - I haven't added anything new to my book in a long time, mostly because final exams were much more of a priority. Now that I have much more time to devote to…

Uncertainty in measuring the launch speed

This is really a lab that I have students do, but I am pretty sure they don't read this blog - so it is ok. If they are reading this, hi! We have these projectile cannons that shoot small balls. In order to look at projectile motion, they need to first determine the launch speed of the ball. I have a great method for this. Basically, shoot the ball horizontally off the table and measure how far horizontally it goes. You can get the final location of the ball by having it hit a piece of carbon paper on top of normal paper. If you don't know what carbon paper is, you are young. Anyway,…

Obama's speech

There's much discussion and analysis of Obama's speech yesterday. I continue to be amazed, as I look at Obama's speeches, simply that they are written with complete paragraphs, and not (as in so many speeches, even Hillary's) with a single sentence per paragraph. That is how Obama thinks, and I truly believe the time has come for a president who thinks in paragraphs, not in talking points. The emphasis on the speech is on the notion of a "more perfect union," the idea of perfectibility, and the entirely uncontroversial notion that we aren't there yet. Our Founding Fathers promised more…

Expensive Wars

Here is the most depressing lede of the day: $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign -- a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children's lives. Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn't use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge…

Interacting with Machines

I have a complicated relationship with my GPS unit. On the one hand, it rarely works. Here's what happened the last time I turned it on. First, there was a five minute delay while it searched for the satellite signal. Then, it couldn't find the street I was searching for. Then, it found the street but lost the satellite signal. Then, it regained the signal but sent me in the wrong direction. And then, after I'd already gotten accurate directions off my phone, the GPS unit finally decided that it knew where I was going. In other words, the device sucks. But here's the funny part: I still use…

Insomnia

I'm a terrible sleeper, which is perhaps why I got invited to contribute to a NY Times group blog on "insomnia, sleep and the nocturnal life". Here is my first contribution, which focuses on the work of Dan Wegner: My insomnia always begins with me falling asleep. I've been reading the same paragraph for the last five minutes -- the text is suddenly impossibly dense -- and I can feel the book getting heavier and heavier in my hands. Gravity is tugging on my eyelids. And then, just as my mind turns itself off, I twitch awake. I'm filled with disappointment. I was so close to a night of sweet…

Robert Reich: Bail out the education system

Bob Reich is rarely wrong, and here he makes a very important point: Teachers are being laid off and new hiring frozen, after-school programs cut, so called "noncritical" subjects like history eliminated, schools closed, and tuitions hiked at state colleges and universities. It's absurd. We're bailing out every major bank to get financial capital flowing again. But we're squeezing the main sources of our nation's human capital. Yet America's future competitiveness and the standard of living of our people depend largely our peoples' skills, and our capacities to communicate and solve…

Egypt & evolution & the Muslim world

Last week I pointed to numbers on evolution and the Muslim world. The New York Times has an article up about the conference which inspired my investigation into that topic. The reporter focuses on the rote learning and creativity as the factors behind a lack of knowledge or understanding of evolutionary theory. Plausible, but really unlikely. East Asian nations have the same issues (which they are trying to reform), but acceptance of evolution is high there. In fact, even in non-developed nations such as the Philippines acceptance of evolution can be high. It is higher than in the United…

More framing

Mooney and Nisbet take their case for framing science from Science, to the Washington Post's Op-Ed page. PZ Myers is not happy. I agree with him that the title sucks, but I'd lay odds that it was the work of some copy editor. On the other hand, I agree with Mooney and Nisbet when they say that Richard Dawkins, by blurring the line between science and theology, "stands as a particularly stark example of scientists' failure to explain hot-button issues, such as global warming and evolution, to a wary public." Dr. Myers is, not surprisingly, less happy about that point. In the comments to…

Local school boards: No on Morasch

Charley Morasch is a wingnut. Here are some answers to questions from the Kansas City Star: What would you like to accomplish if elected/re-elected to the school board? • Provide a stimulus to improve social studies curriculum to include the words and ideas of the founding fathers, and the legal foundations of our nation, which have been censured to reflect politically correct nonsense. I want to see our district face the brutal facts of reality, that censuring history, censuring the words and ideas and even our founding principles is something we will not allow to continue in American…

Advice on protecting your intellectual property.

Occasionally I get email asking for advice in matters around responsible conduct of research. Some readers have related horror stories of research supervisors who grabbed their ideas, protocols, and plans for future experiments, either to give them to another student or postdoc in the lab, or to take for themselves -- with no acknowledgment whatever of the person who actually had the ideas, devised and refined the protocols, or developed the plans for future experiments. Such behavior, dear reader, is not very ethical. Sadly, however, much of this behavior seems to be happening in…

Does Television Cause Autism?

Over at Slate, Gregg Easterbrook proposes an audacious hypothesis: the rise of television viewing among infants is responsible for the current autism epidemic. The idea is wholly speculative. No scientist has shown a link between autism and television, but so far as I could determine no scientist is working on this question, either--and maybe someone should be. Beginning in about 1980, TV watching in early childhood began to rise, coincident with the proliferation of affordable VCRs and cable channels offering nonstop cartoons and kids' shows. The child's brain is self-organizing in the first…

WALL-E and Darwin

I loved WALL-E. In my opinion, it's the best Pixar movie yet, and I was a huge fan of Ratatouille. While the movie has an obvious environmental subtext - we are destroying the earth with our love of disposable things - I was most taken with its subtle endorsement of Darwin. And no, I'm not talking about evolution or natural selection. As I watched WALL-E , I couldn't help but think about Darwin's last major work, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. The Origin gets all the attention, but The Expression is Darwin at his most inventive and audacious. The title only hints at its…

MRI's, Back Pain and Transparency

Over at the wonderful World's Fair, Ben Cohen has an interview with Kelly Joyce, author of the forthcoming Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency. Here is how Joyce summarizes the main argument of her book: In the United States, MRI is socially constructed as a sacred technology--one that represents progress, certainty, and good health care. The technique's sacred status is achieved in part because cultural ideas link anatomical pictures and mechanical reproduction to transparency and truth. But, it is also achieved because information about contexts and actors is often missing…