Science Practice
clock | August 23, 2006Looking at my two yesterday's posts, one on science fiction and the other on LabLit, together with Archy's excellent post on history of SF, something, like a hunch or an idea, started to develop at the back of my mind (continued under the fold).
If you look at the way scientists are portrayed in older SF and in recent LabLit, there is a distinct difference. There is not much old LabLit, and new SF does not have many scientists in it (what with the whole flood of cyberpunk and fantasy), so I'll ignore those for now.
In old SF, a scientist is likely to be portrayed as a loner, a refugee from…
clock | August 16, 2006The post coming immediately after this is, as far as I know, the only blog post so far that appeared in the List Of References of a scientific paper.
A guideline for analyzing circadian wheel-running behavior in rodents under different lighting conditions by Corinne Jud, Isabelle Schmutz, Gabriele Hampp, Henrik Oster and Urs Albrecht is an excellent article on methodology (and reasoning behind it) of basic circadian research. It was published in an online open-source journal Biological Procedures Online. I strongly recommend it to my readers.
The Reference #16 is to this post on Circadiana…
clock | August 11, 2006Not just in the USA. Visceral queeziness coupled with religious sentiment coupled with scientific ignorance appears in other parts of the world as well, as in the UK
The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, a professional group based in Edinburgh, has published a report on the ethical implications of the practice in the journal Human Reproduction and Genetic Ethics. The report is online at www.schb.org.uk.
The article lists some examples of research:
Later research has spawned human-animal creations, the report said. These usually die at the embryonic stage, but often survive if the…
clock | August 9, 2006
This post from January 21, 2005, is about insects, parasitoids and the mental approach to science:
This really cool science post (Speaking of sex differences reminds me of a seminar I attended a few years ago, about a parasitoid wasp that injects a single egg (together with some toxins and a DNA virus) into a (somewhat larger) egg of its moth host.
The speaker spent his 50 minutes describing his painfully difficult and inconclusive molecular experiments, trying to figure out where the DNA (from the injected viruses) inserts itself into the host genome and how does that insertion affect the…
clock | August 7, 2006In the comments to this recent post, Pedro Beltao points out his recent post - Opening up the scientific process - which I would suggest you read.
First reaction will probably be - ah, how idealistic! But it will make you think, I believe. Many elements are already happening, e.g., open-source journals, open comments on online journal articles, as well as blogs and wikis that report research in real time, e.g., Useful Chem Experiments, RRResearch and UsefulChem Wiki.
The world of academic science is slow-moving and resistant to change, but it is already changing nonetheless. And, as each…
clock | August 3, 2006
Being out of the lab, out of science, and out of funding for a while also means that I have not been at a scientific conference for a few years now, not even my favourite meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms. I have missed the last two meetings (and I really miss them - they are a blast!).
But it is funny how, many years later, one still remembers some posters from poster sessions. What makes a poster so memorable?
I guess it has something to do with one's interests - there is just not enough time during a session to check out every single one out of hundreds (or…
clock | July 27, 2006In an interview in Time magazine, Morgan Spurlock said, among else (and you should go and read the "else"):
We've started to make science and empirical evidence not nearly as important as punditry--people wusing p.r.-speak to push a corporate or political agenda. I think we need to turn scientists back into the rock stars they are.
Chris brought this quote to the bloggers' attention and Shelley was the first to respond:
I find this quote so refreshing (not just because it places us scientists up on a lofty pedestal), because it validates scientific authority figures as someone worth listening…
clock | July 26, 2006If you are interested in mammoths, or if mammoths make the news, the first place to go is Archy: WOOLLY MAMMOTH LINKED TO SCIENCE FRAUD!!!
clock | July 21, 2006Survey questions themselves may affect behavior:
Simply asking college students who are inclined to take drugs about their illegal-drug use in a survey may increase the behavior, according to a study that's making researchers understandably nervous.
"We ask people questions, and that does change behavior," study co-author Gavan Fitzsimons, a marketing professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, said Thursday. The provocative effect, he added, can be "much greater than most of us would like to believe."
Read the rest, it is quite interesting. My first thought - can frequent…
clock | July 20, 2006Natural scientists (unlike social scientists and humantities folk) are cautious, perhaps overcautious, about publishing data on blogs. So, it is really nice to see original research on a blog every once in a while. So, you should read this nifty little paper by Miss Prism. Rejected from Nature? Publish in samizdat - on your blog. (Hat-tip: Evolgen)
clock | July 19, 2006Sometimes a metaphor used in science is useful for research but not so useful when it comes to popular perceptions. And sometimes even scientists come under the spell of the metaphor. One of those unfortunate two-faced metaphors is the metaphor of the Biological Clock.
First of all, there are at least three common meanings of the term - it is used to describe circadian rhythms, to describe the rate of sequence change in the DNA over geological time, and to describe the reaching of a certain age at which human fertility drops off ("my clock is ticking").
I prefer the Rube-Goldberg Machine…
clock | July 19, 2006Years of research die with specially bred lab mice:
When a power failure triggered the death of nearly 600 mice at Ohio State University last week, a group of researchers lost more than their lab rodents. Mary Cheng lost years of insight into the human brain. Caroline Whitacre lost a better understanding of multiple sclerosis. Most of the mice were specially bred for research.
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University officials are still trying to determine what happened last Wednesday when one of two main electric lines was taken offline for a few hours for a construction project. When…