Nature magazine has a collection of interesting opinions about future developments of science. My favorite contribution is open content management Continue reading Invention is the mother of necessity
Category Archives: Philosophy
Beer lets humans settle down
Occasionally, I am taking up a topic that directed a google search to my site. Anyway, I have doubts if this is really a big scientific question as highlighted in an interview and a new book of a Munich professor. With the Neolithic Age farming was raising – and usually thought as a response to famine. Reichholf believes that humans put down roots by drinking beer. Is that a good joke right to Octoberfest this year? Cheers.
Science magazine on bible references
Yes, a somewhat unusual topic, but a HONORABLE MENTION in the “2008 Visualization Challenge“shows an
illustrated Bible with a modern twist. Römhild started with a list of verses in different versions of both the Old and New Testaments that referred to figures or ideas from earlier passages, then combed through both books for additional examples. Using a custom-built computer program, Harrison translated the trove of data into “Visualizing the Bible.” … “It almost looks like one monolithic volume”.
true observation or wishful thinking?
Gödel’s proof
A recent opinion article (Nature, Aug 14) has an interesting retrospective look on Gödel’s proof, the 1958 secondhand description of Gödel’s 1931 finding that rules of logic for quoting axioms eg. substituting variables and formulating deductions are themselves mathematical operations – pretty much the same of todays object oriented programming Continue reading Gödel’s proof
Dealing with noise
Public Rambling discusses post-publication journals:
These ideas of sorting based on measures of usage is already being tested by the new Frontiers journals. These are a series of open access journals published by an international not-for-profit foundation based in Switzerland. As PLoS ONE, these journals aim to separate the peer-review process of quality and scientific soundness from the more subjective impact evaluation. In practice they are doing this by publishing research in a tiered system with articles submitted to a set of specialty journals.
I am already in favor Continue reading Dealing with noise
The logic of science?
Edge has a wonderful article about statistics:
… statistical and applied probabilistic knowledge is the core of knowledge; statistics is what tells you if something is true, false, or merely anecdotal; it is the “logic of science”; it is the instrument of risk-taking; it is the applied tools of epistemology [and epidemiology Continue reading The logic of science?
Informed Consent 2.0
PLoS medicine publishes today a piece that we wrote already last summer. As we have removed the narrative abstract (PLoS uses keypoints instead of an abstract) here is it – pleading for an update of traditional informed consent. Continue reading Informed Consent 2.0
Bench (marks) to bedside
For the first time, I found some data about “bench to bedside” transit times. Of 101 promising claims between 1979 and 1983, there have been only 5 clinical interventions in 2003 and only 1 had extensive clinical used; mean lag time 24 years, yea, yea.
Continuous partial attention – a frequent scientist disease
Originally coined by Linda Stone 2007 as a Harvard Business Review “Breakthrough Idea” this gets a rapidly expanding disease among scientists and journal editors. A New Atlantis essay has some more details on the Myth of multitasking Continue reading Continuous partial attention – a frequent scientist disease
Fulchester graduates
Nature June, 19, 2008, has a nice correspondence: Fewer academics could be the answer to insufficient grants. A British author writes what many think but nobody wants to say. Read more about the country of Euphoria, his four universities, each with ten academics and the ambitious president of Fulchester … Unfortunately there is no proposal Continue reading Fulchester graduates
Genetics proposes, epigenetics disposes, environment exposes
Genetics proposes,
epigenetics disposes,
environment exposes,
the human composes,
and doctor diagnoses.
(c) for the first part is by the Medawar & Medawar in “Aristotle to Zoos“.
Accurate reporting
One of the PLoS editors has a vocal report on a recent meeting “Why accurate reporting is an ethical duty“. When dealing here with a misconduct case, I had the impression that many colleagues as well as some other editors think of Continue reading Accurate reporting
Will the Data Deluge Make the Scientific Method Obsolete?
A new Edge article answers this question. According to Chris Anderson, we are at “the end of science”, that is, science as we know it.
The quest for knowledge used to begin with grand theories. Now it begins with massive amounts of data. Welcome to the Petabyte Age.
Yesterday I reviewed a paper that crunches massive amount of data (and even found a new pathway for asthma). Nevertheless I was asking the question if this wishful thinking? Just take the next gene in one region and the overnext in another one and I would come up with a completely different pathway. This is all about association and not by the traditional “theorize, model, test it” way of science we have been brought along, yea, yea.
The best climbs
It is a fact that the best climbs are performed by famous mountaineers before they became famous (Doug Scott in “Mountain” according to an inscription at Firmian/Messner Mountain Museum). Continue reading The best climbs
Retire retirement
May 29, 2008 Nature has an interesting commentary by Peter Lawrence (66) about the archaic practice of retirement of active scientists at a determined age. It is a quite luxurious habit of “Doing what I like” while having a mostly pleasant life here on earth as a scientist, it may be a quite logical to prolong the scientific career.