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Information overload? Heavy multimedia users are more easily distracted by irrelevant information

Our minds are battlegrounds where different media fight for attention. Through the Internet, desktops, mobile screens, TVs and more, we are constantly awash with headlines, links, images, icons, videos, animations and sound.  This is the way of the 21st century - a saturated sensory environment where multi-tasking is the name of the game. Even as I type these words, my 24-inch monitor displays a Word document and a PDF side-by-side, while my headphones pump Lux Aeterna into my head (see image below). You might think that this influx of media would make the heaviest of users better at…

From the archives: A Structural Exploration of the Science Blogosphere: Director's Cut

This was originally posted 1/9/2009 on my old blog. Due to popular demand (well 3 requests :) ), this is a commentary and additional information for my conference paper and presentation: Pikas, C. K. (2008). Detecting Communities in Science Blogs. Paper presented at eScience '08. IEEE Fourth International Conference on eScience, 2008. Indianapolis. 95-102. doi:10.1109/eScience.2008.30 (available in IEEE Xplore to institutional subscribers) [also self-archived - free!- here] The presentation is embedded in another blog post, and is available online at SlideShare. The video of me talking…

Rube Goldberg Contest: Make a hamburger

Rube Goldberg is the inventor of the Mouse Trap ... the better mouse trap that is... He was actually a cartoonist who made famous the Rube Goldberg machines, which were increcibly complicated, intricate devices to do something simple in as many unlikely steps as possible. The board game "mouse trap" is based on this concept. I have a vague memory or Rube Goldberg being featured on a PBS TV show called "The Great American Dream Machine" ... must have been some time before his death in late 1970. Anybody remember that? Anyway, there is an annual compeition for the Rube Goldberg Prize that…

General Thoughts on the NIH

I've been tagged by Hope for Pandora (who was tagged by DrugMonkey, who was tagged by Writedit) in a blog meme regarding the NIH's request for feedback on its peer review system. I'm not huge into these blog memes, so I'm not going to pass this along to seven others, but I will share a few thoughts. Being only in the second year of my Ph.D. (and studying overseas), I haven't applied for an NIH grant before, so I'm not intimately familiar with the NIH's peer review system and can't offer much in the way of constructive criticism there. I can, however, speak generally about some of the major…

Soccernomics

With regards to the World Cup, the Dutch Bank ABN AMRO has asked the question, "which team is our 'economic favourite', that is, the country which should become world champion in order to maximise the impact on the world economy." Say what? Yes they released a report on this very important issue. So why do we do this? Leaving aside the fact that many economists who are also soccer fans will use any excuse to bring soccer into their work, we are convinced that soccer has an impact on the economy and therefore justifies some research effort. So ... the goal is to help the world economy. And…

The Nine Defining Characteristics of the Christian Conservative

Wingnuttia, O Wingnuttia. There are so many lunacies uttered in that fabled land that one cannot possibly keep up with them all, so it's useful when one of them distills it all down and gives us a condensed list of the properties of a True Conservative. We have such a useful list, written by Rob Hood in the Conservative Voice. He is a very silly man, but that online rag has him up there on the front page with Robert Novak and…and…well, a lot of ranting nobodies. This is a distinguished host in Wingnuttia, though! As a matter of fact if you like Ann Coulter and want to make some liberals'…

Race and gender and religion

America is a very religious country, and has been for a long time.  Regardless of broad cultural revolutions and trends in the culture wars, about the same number of people say religion is "very important" in their lives today as 35 years ago. Other measure of religiosity shift, as Gallup points out.  "Self-reported church or synagogue membership has drifted slowly downward over the past 70 years," they found in 2007, a year when perception of religion's influence in society plummeted.  Confidence in organized religion has dropped by a third since the '70s. But whatever people might think of…

Counting work-related injuries, disease and death among US workers: Part 1

"Death takes no holidays in industry and commerce," is how Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz described the toll of on-the-job death and disability for U.S. workers. The Secretary's remarks in 1968 were part of congressional hearings on legislation that ultimately established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He suggested that because most work-related fatalities and injuries happen one or two at a time, day in and day out, the carnage continues "because people don't realize its magnitude, and can't see the blood on the things they buy, on the food they eat, and the…

Koch Brothers And Utilities Try To Ruin Solar Energy

Solar energy is one of the best and most easily implemented options to reduce our use of fossil Carbon based fuels. Never mind that the sun is only up and strong for part of the day, and is often covered by clouds. If you put a few square meters of solar panels on the roof of a residential or commercial building, you get clean and free (after the investment into the system) electricity thereafter. Clearly, this is an underutilized technology. In recent years there has been a precipitous drop in the cost of implementing solar energy, so it is now economically kinda dumb to not put solar…

Further thoughts on the recount

Think back to Florida eight years ago. There is a reasonable argument that Al Gore was duly voted, even via the electoral college, to be President of the United States, but George W. Bush was placed in that office for one and only one reason: The recount process in Florida was transformed into a circus, and the mainstream press in the United States whipped large parts of the populous and many involved in the process into a panic. The delay in determining the winner was going to damage democracy. The free world could not survive any more waiting. It did not matter that the guy running…

Fish on Eagleton on God

During a recent bookstore browse, I came across Terry Eagleton's recent anti-New Atheist book Reason, Faith and Revolution. I was tempted to buy it in spite of Eagleton's deeply silly review of Dawkins in the London Review of Books. This review was, in large part, the motivation for P.Z. Myers to coin the term Courtier's Reply. By this Myers meant people who responded to Dawkins not by addressing his arguments in any serious way, but instead by rattling off a load of irrelevant theological esoterica Dawkins is expected to master before ever opening his mouth on the subject. Since I am…

The Truth Effect and Other Processing Fluency Miracles

Why are so many people convinced that we only use 10% of our brains, or that Eskimos have n words for snow, where n is as high as you need it to be for the desired rhetorical effect? Or more seriously, why have some people, particularly Fox News viewers (no, really), persistently believed in Saddam Hussein's involvement in 9/11? Why does that used car salesman who waves at you as you drive by the dealership on the way to work every morning look so trustworthy, even though you know used car salespeople are never, ever, under any circumstances to be trusted? And why do you dig Henri Matisse's "…

The Irony of Henry Adams: The most misunderstood quote evah!

I just received a mass emailing from Julia's high school, in the name of the principal. Routine business. At the end of the missive was this quote: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. What does this quote mean to you? If you don't know its context, you may be in for a surprise. A repost You see this quote all the time on K-12 educational material as a header, footer, slogan, logo, inspirational message, and so on. It obviously means something good about teachers. Maybe something good about education. The quote is by Henry Adams and comes from…

The Irony of Henry Adams: The most misunderstood quote evah!

I just received a mass emailing from Julia's high school, in the name of the principal. Routine business. At the end of the missive was this quote: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. What does this quote mean to you? If you don't know its context, you may be in for a surprise. You see this quote all the time on K-12 educational material as a header, footer, slogan, logo, inspirational message, and so on. It obviously means something good about teachers. Maybe something good about education. The quote is by Henry Adams and comes from his book "…

Two checklists for feminists

That implicit consent thread has just broken a thousand comments, so I'm closing it and inviting everyone to move here. Just to keep it interesting, I found (via Jen) a couple of lists. The one on the left is from one of those liberal progressive sites, and clarifies the whole issue of male privilege, which many of the commenters still fail to comprehend. The one on the right is from a batty wingnut site, where each point is greatly expanded into an exercise in blaming women. Here's your opportunity to find some common ground, I hope. There probably aren't many commenters here who find the…

Memory Hole: Preserving a post from Uncommon Descent

Over at IDolator Bill Dembski's blog, Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary has been on a tear lately, blogging about the supposed racism inherent in evolution. Fellow blog contributor DaveScot responded with a long post observing that the leadership of racist groups today and in the past are often vehement antievolutionists. DaveScot fails to observe that the Klan was prominent at the Scopes trial, firmly opposing the teaching of evolution. In any event, one might have expected this contrary voice to suddenly disappear from the blog, since Dembski and his sycophants have a long history of censoring…

Hybrids vs. Heirlooms: New York Times Death Match!

There's a very silly article in the New York Times about controversy over hybrids vs. heirlooms. Yes, this is a real debate. No, it isn't as stark or as stupid as the Times makes it. There are plenty of horticultural reasons heirlooms can grow glorious fruit. One is size. An heirloom tomato is often a big, robust plant. The central stalk is usually indeterminate: it keeps shooting up after setting fruit. Mr. Ball, of Burpee, recalls a customer telling him about a Brandywine plant that crept into the house through a second-floor window. An heirloom tomato will also have a lot of leaves, in…

Saletan on the Ethics of Stem Cells

William Saletan takes the position that progressives have no real bioethical position on stem cells in his most recent column in Slate. I'm a bit disappointed with Saletan over this one, because in his never ending quest to be thoughtful about everything, he's usually much more fair to people - even those he disagrees with. But listen to his characterization of "progressive bioethics". I have problems with liberals. A lot of them talk about religion as though it's a communicable disease. Some are amazingly obtuse to other people's qualms. They show no more interest in an embryo than in a…

On cannibalism and Jameson

A recent twitter conversation prompted me to dig up some old posts on cannibalism, and maybe a few memories of my time in Central Africa. The twitter conversation concerned a story in which it is claimed that James Jameson, heir to the Jameson Irish whiskey empire, bought a slave girl (for the price of six handkerchiefs) in order to watch her be eviscerated and eaten by cannibals, and in particular, so that he could make some nice watercolor painting of the event. Apparently this is going around the internet. If this is true, which as I will argue in a moment is not actually the case, then…

Tatiana Is Telling us Something

TatianaThe killing of one visitor and maiming of two others by Tatiana, a Tiger, in the S.F. Zoo raises questions that go far beyond one cat and three victims. One might ask: Should there even be zoos? We do not yet know what happened in the San Francisco Zoo yesterday, but some details are starting to emerge. It looks like Tatiana leaped out of her enclosure. If that proves to be true, we should not be too surprised. Cats have amazing, and I believe under investigated muscular ability. The 1.2 foot long cats we are cat sitting for routinely leap 600% of their length to achieve such…

The good, the bad, and the blurry: Wildlife Photography

Female Snow Leopard twins born last year at the Bronx Zoo. When I initially started posting pictures on my blog, I didn't know if anyone would have anything to say about my pictures. I frequent zoos, museums, and aquariums, usually shooting between 200 and 600 shots per trip, the handful of good shots making their way onto the internet. I've been certainly pleasantly surprised, therefore, to see all the positive remarks made about my pictures, especially since I don't really have any idea what I'm doing. Still, many of you have asked how I have been able to get the kind of shots I've…

Poof vs. the neo-creationist "orchard model"

Upchucky award runner-up and Disco. 'Tute staffer Casey Luskin is upset. Last fall, we were on a panel together, and I mocked his defense of the neo-creationist "orchard model" described in Explore Evolution as claiming that life "poofed" into existence. In the course of one of Casey's regularly scheduled bouts of logorrhea, he decides to respond to this claim: I presented some of this information discussed below at the St. Thomas conference last fall, and NCSE staff member Josh Rosenau repeatedly alleged that I was making a âpoofâ hypothesis for the origin of monkeys. No. That is not what…

Statements by those who have made general statements about the 1997 survey

[Note: This is a copy of a document found at this link on John Lott's website on April 6, 2003. I have added critical commentary, written in italics like this. Tim Lambert ] Statement on John Lott's Survey Work on Self-Defensive Uses of Guns by David B. Mustard Monday 10 February 2003 Background John and I started working on our concealed carry paper in the fall of 1995. I was finishing my Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Chicago, and John was a faculty member. We worked on our paper intensively from about February 1996 to September 1996. We presented it at the American Law and…

Birds in the News 183

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Fiji (MacGillivray's) Petrel, Pseudobulweria macgillivrayi, off Gau Island, Fiji. Fiji Petrel Pelagic Expedition, May 2009. Image: H. Shirihai, Tubenoses Project [larger view]. Birds in Science News Maori legends told of a giant predatory bird called the Te Hokioi, whose wingspan approached the length of a full-grown man and whose prey included human beings. Now Kiwi scientists are adding to the legend by claiming that a skeleton found in the 1870s shares some of the legendary bird's traits. "We don't think it…

Birds in the News 173 -- Memorial Day Edition

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Who's shooting endangered condors? The shooting of two rare California condors, like this one, set phones ringing at the offices of environmental groups. Image: [larger view]. Birds in Science Northern Mockingbirds tend to sing fancier tunes with changing climate, say researchers. The research team from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre (NESCent), the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and McGill University showed that species in more variable climes also sing complex tunes. "Survival and reproduction become more…

Common Sense: Math is the Root of All Evil (including Evolution)

Sorry that the blog has been so quiet lately; I managed to catch a vicious flu for the first time since I started getting flu shots, so I've been feeling too ill to write. I'm still far from recovered, but I'm feeling well enough to share a bit of delightful foolishness with you. After seeing my recent post about a relativity denier, a reader sent me a link to another extremely amusing anti-relativity site. (In fact, I've recieved a bunch of links to anti-relativity sites; I'm only posting the most amusing ones.) This one has several particularly amusing properties, but from my point of…

The Bullseye Diet

This was an important discussion back when I wrote it in 2007, and somehow, I've never re-run it (although it does appear in Aaron and my book _A Nation of Farmers_). It is definitely time to talk more about this model, and I'm hoping to enlist many of you in doing an evaluation of the real productivity of our home gardens and farms - using this as a model. So time to run it again, as a starting point for seeing how much progress the local food movement has really made in the years since it began! The 100-mile diet has gotten trendy - but there's a problem with this model. The idea that…

In which my words will be misinterpreted as "proof" that I am a "pharma shill"

I would have written about this one on Friday, except that Your Friday Dose of Woo had to be served up. (You did read last week's YFDoW, didn't you? It was a particularly loopy bit of woo, with a bad computer interface grafted on to it, to boot!) The reason I wanted to write about it is because the responses to this particular bit of news in the blogosphere grated on me, for reasons that will become apparent soon. It's about a new cancer drug that I learned about from both fellow ScienceBlogger Jonah and readers who forwarded articles about it to me. If you believe some other bloggers (one of…

Swine flu and ICU bed use in Canada and Mexico

The online publication of three papers and a commentary yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA; free access, links at bottom of post) provides some further data on what demand for critical care resources might be from the current swine flu pandemic. One paper reports on the Mexican experience, where mortality seemed unusually high but where access to services may have made the outcome worse. The papers from Canada are perhaps most pertinent to what might be experienced in the US and Europe. It appears that in terms of demand for ICU beds, the first wave from last…

Ship of fools

Every man and his lagomorph has a post taking the piss out of the "Ship of fools", so I won't bother. But (since I seem to have managed to get censored by every denialist blog I try to post on) I thought I'd make a handy list of said blogs and comments. Warning: there's no useful content anywhere in this post; its all just record-keeping for me. Also, I do find it tedious when people whinge on about censorship. So I'm a bit reluctant to do so myself. But I'm going to indulge. In roughly chronological order: P Gosselin: From “Jewish Science” To “Denier Science”: Copernicus Charade Is Latest…

Spotlight on Louis Villarreal

If you are looking for a 'hero' to look up to in the viral evolution world, you probably couldnt find a better choice than Louis Villarreal of the University of California, Irvine. I mean, he is like *the* definition of someone who came from a tough background, had to struggle through school a bit, but followed their passion to become a leader and innovator in an extraordinarily competitive field. Villarreal is a Mexican American who grew up in friggen East LA. First one of his family to graduate from high school, he tested the academic waters by first attending community college, then…

My voice has been absent from the blogosphere. . .

. . .because my voice has also been absent from the offline world. Yes, the final gift to me from LungMutiny2010 is a case of inhaled corticosteroid dysphonia - and another opportunity to cultivate compassion for those with chronic illnesses and permanent loss of physiological functioning. Here's a recap: After a three month battle with pneumonia, I returned to the university as much as I could about six weeks ago. I say "as much as I could" because, once again, I was amazed by how little my body would let me do after being confined to bed for ten weeks. Some days I'd just be doing great and…

Bring Rebecca Skloot and Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) to your town

Some readers may be aware that Rebecca Skloot is about to release her much-anticipated book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a story that is about much more than the black Southern woman whose cervical cancer gave rise to the most famous human cancer cell line. (Crown, 2 Feb 2010, preorder here). HeLa cells, as they are known, have played a role in the development of vaccines for polio and cervical cancer, the part of last year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Harald zur Hausen, and the PhD thesis 20 years ago of a certain natural products pharmacology blogger. Having been…

"Planet Earth today: imminent peril"

The headline for this post is stolen verbatim from a section headline in a paper on climate change just published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. It's yet another depressing read by NASA's Jim Hansen and five co-authors from the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Hansen has been trying to get our attention for some 20 years now with a series of papers laced with alarmist language, but in an email to the Independent, says "this one probably does the best job of making clear that the Earth is getting perilously…

STATE OF DENIAL: Woodward Amplifies Framing of a Dogmatic President Out-of-Touch with Reality; Interpretation Traces Back to Katrina as the Catalyst

Everyone here in D.C. is talking about Bob Woodward's State of Denial, as the book's insider accounts continue to dominate the news cycle this week. Woodward's impact offers a leading example of how politicians, journalists, and the general public use frames to cut down on complexity and uncertainty, and as tools to make sense of what's either wrong or right in America. Yet in order to understand why Woodward's book resonates so powerfully at this moment, you have to understand the history of the frame contest to define Bush. State of Denial is a classic example of a "frame device," a…

Embargo? Embargo? The case of the missing swine flu paper

[Note: An update from 25 Sept 09 is at bottom] Here's a sad mess. It seems a potentially important finding -- that getting a seasonal flu shot might increase risk of contracting the swine flu -- is being sat on by a journal, with the authors forbidden from talking about it, until they get through the slo-mo publishing process. The finding may or may not be accurate. But as it regards an important issue, it needs to be vetted and discussed openly, with the data at hand, as soon as possible. But it's not. This is a tricky situation, to be sure. There are, at least theoretically, both good and…

UK House of Lords report on genomic medicine: implications for DTC genetic testing

The UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee has published the long-awaited report (PDF) from its inquiry into genomic medicine. Mark Henderson at The Times has been busy today, putting out three excellent pieces on the report: a summary of the major implications, an opinion piece pushing the need for the health service to respond quickly to the arrival of genomic medicine, and a lengthy blog post praising the report and providing his views in more detail.  I find little to disagree with in Henderson's coverage, and certainly agree with his overall opinion of the report: this…

Woo: The future of American medicine?

After chilling out for part of the weekend, yesterday I became so engrossed in writing my part of a training grant for my postdoc that, before I knew it, it was way too late to provide you with the Insolence you crave for today. Oh, well. Tomorrow for sure; there's a lot that has been waiting for my attention. Besides, I haven't even really taken a vacation this summer; so I deserve a day or two (or three) off from time to time. In the meantime, I'll post a couple of bits of "classic" (if you can call it that) Insolence. This particular bit of insolence dates back nearly four years, all the…

Another Week of GW NEws, February 17, 2013

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Disruption News Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not Wisdom February 17, 2013 Chuckles, COP19+, Tesla, Maldives, Warnings, GreenPeace, Gleick Bottom Line, Subsidies, Thermodynamics, Cook Fukushima Note, Fukushima News Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Fisheries, Land Grabs, IP Issues, GMOs, Food…

Silencing the opposition over autism

Now here's something you don't see every day. Nature Neuroscience has weighed in about the pseudoscience that claims that mercury causes autism. Based on British experience with animal rights activists, it points out a parallel that I hadn't considered before: The idea that autism is caused by vaccination is influencing public policy, even though rigorous studies do not support this hypothesis. Legislators are right to take into account the concerns of parent groups and others directly affected by autism, but policy decisions should be based on hard evidence rather than anxiety. More…

In the pages of Nature, a full-throated defense of "integrating" quackery into medicine

Oh, no, Nature. Not you. Not again. It wasn't enough that you were busted shilling for traditional Chinese medicine with a big, glossy advertising supplement a few years ago. I thought you had learned your lesson after that, as you didn't do it again. Maybe I was wrong. Granted, your offense this time is not quite as bad as accepting cash from Saishunkan Pharmaceutical Co., ltd. and the Kitasato University Oriental Medicine Research Center to put together what was in essence pure propaganda for quackery, but, on the other hand, I do have to be worried that you might be thinking of backsliding…

The Question for Gene Sperling: You Took Goldman-Sachs' Coin-Could You Ruin Them?

Obama has finally gotten around to choosing a replacement for Larry Summers, and named Gene Sperling director of the National Economic Council (why he didn't prioritize this with nearly 10% U3 unemployment is puzzling). This has been controversial since Gene Sperling, like many of Obama's closest advisors, has ties to Wall Street. David Corn describes those ties: At some point, according to a source familiar with the episode, Goldman Sachs approached Sperling for advice on globalization. He took this opportunity to pitch the company an idea in sync with his nonprofit work: the firm ought to…

January PANRC Selection "Prelude" is Out!!

PANRC, by the way, is the acronym for "Post-Apocalyptic Novel Reading Club" pronounced by those in the know (ie, the person who just made this up 3 seconds ago) as "Panric" ;-). And while December's selection (we'll start on 12/1), Jim Kunstler's _The Witch of Hebron_ has been out for a bit, Kurt Cobb's _Prelude_ (which is, in fact, an immediately pre-apocalyptic novel) is now out. YAY!!!! I've read _Prelude_ and besides the fact that I think it is fun and readable - a peak oil novel someone might actually read for fun - I think what Cobb is doing is important and I want to support it.…

Casual Fridays: Mac users don't like people touching their technology

A few weeks ago, Greta got a new iPod. I was, naturally, interested to see how it worked since it was supposed to be the latest technology, but Greta would hardly let me touch it: "It's mine, and I want to learn how to use it before you do," she told me. This was surprising to me, since I generally let people try out my new toys right away -- I'd even say it's part of my own enjoyment of them. It got me to thinking whether there was some pattern to who lets others use their gadgets and who doesn't. So of course, we did something about it. Two weeks ago, we posted a quick survey that we hoped…

Zero (classic repost)

I'm away on vacation this week, taking my kids to Disney World. Since I'm not likely to have time to write while I'm away, I'm taking the opportunity to re-run an old classic series of posts on numbers, which were first posted in the summer of 2006. These posts are mildly revised. This post originally came about as a result of the first time I participated in a DonorsChoose fundraiser. I offered to write articles on requested topics for anyone who donated above a certain amount. I only had one taker, who asked for an article about zero. I was initially a bit taken aback by the request -…

Best Science Books 2012: The top books of the year!!!!!

Every year for the last several years I've collated and extracted the science books from all the various "best books of the year" lists in different mainstream media and various other outlets. I've done the same this year for books published in 2011! I can tell it's been popular among my readers from the hit stats I see for this blog and from the number of keyword searches on "best science books" or whatnot I see in my analytics program. Way back in 2009, I started taking all the lists I could find and tallying up all the "votes" to see which books were mentioned the most times. An…

Bio Databases 2015

Something interesting happened in 2014. The total number of databases that Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) tracks dropped by three databases! What happened?  Did people quit making databases?  No.  This year, the "dead" databases (links no longer valid) outnumber the new ones. To celebrate Digital World Biology's release of Molecule World I'll discuss some of the new structure databases below. But first, the numbers. As summarized in the database issue's introduction, Galperin, Rigden, and Fernández-Suárez tell us this year's issue has 172 papers. 56 of those describe new databases, 98 provide…

Paper on person to person spread in Indonesia Karo cluster

A couple of weeks ago CDC's peer reviewed journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, published online an ahead-of-print paper by Yang et al., "Detecting Human-to-Human Transmission of Avian Influenza A (H5N1)." The paper has now been published in the journal and predictably, it made news. It's an interesting paper, but we think some people are going beyond what it says. First, the gist according to Reuters: A mathematical analysis has confirmed that H5N1 avian influenza spread from person to person in Indonesia in April, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday. They said they had developed a tool to…

Pseudonyms and public health

As those of you who read other ScienceBlogs are probably already aware, the ScienceBlogs overlords have decided that all bloggers on this network must blog under their own names -- no more pseudonyms. I don't understand or agree with this policy. Some of my favorite ScienceBlogs are written by authors using pseudonyms, and the quality of their content is consistently high. Readers may not be able to check these authors' credentials, so the amount of trust they place in the authors' blogs is based on the content of posts. (I don't know that quality and credibility are the rationale for the no-…

Are generic drugs inferior to the corresponding brand names?

This issue was brought up by my fellow blogger, Joseph at Corpus Callosum, following an article in yesterday's LA Times. For those not familiar with the concept or countries other than the US where laws may differ, generic drugs are those with the same active chemical as the originally-approved "brand name" drug. The original drug manufacturer is the one that conducts all of the preclinical and clinical safety and efficacy testing, natural product isolation and/or chemical synthesis, formulation with inactive ingredients to assure dissolution and reproducible release of the drug, etc. In…