quoting another blog from my current reading list

an application specialist …  gave a day of training on qPCR applications in general and these instruments specifically. The scientist got to a point in her presentation where she was describing frequent errors and pitfalls in qPCR methods for quantitating gene expression, and she gave about 10 different examples that started out “I visited this one lab, and upon discussing their workflow with them it turned out they were making huge error such-and-such.” At this point, I raised my hand and asked for her honest estimation of how much confidence she places in qPCR or RT-PCR data that appear in standard journals. She paused for a few seconds and then tentatively admitted “maybe 25%.”

There is an increasing awareness of faked scientific papers, not just in predatory journals but also renowned publishing companies like Wiley, Karger, Elsevier. Even German Spiegel reported now on that based on an excellent article by@schneiderleonid that is itself based on work of Indigofera Tanganyikensis, @MicrobiomDigest, @SmutClyde, and many others.

In China, clinicians are expected to publish a certain number of research papers in international journals if they want to be promoted. The easiest way is to pay a paper mill, which seem to provide a full service: an English-speaking research paper containing Photoshop-generated fake research data, in a respectable peer-reviewed journal, with your name on it.

The big problem is the move now from isolated ghostwriters to big paper mills:

We have also witnessed the submission of identical template‐style manuscripts to multiple journals at the same time, presumably to increase the likelihood that the manuscript will be accepted. This practice could greatly amplify the burden of paper mill manuscripts on journals and peer reviewers. A high‐throughput approach to manuscript generation in the absence of experimentation could also result in paper mill manuscripts and publications presenting with features that are rarely found in genuine manuscripts.

Eric Topol highlighted a WSJ feature on BMI (or body mass index). The article basically says

The idea behind BMI was proposed in 1832 by the statistician Adolphe Quetelet, who wasn’t trying to define a healthy weight but to model a bell curve or normal distribution of human body sizes. He studied heights and weights and observed that weight tended to increase not according to the cube of height but with its square. The Quetelet index was renamed the body-mass index in 1972 by physiologist Ancel Keys, but it still wasn’t meant to measure the health of individuals, only to show trends among populations.

BMI calculation is wrong as an area increases according to length squared, but volumes according to length cubed.
Maybe it would be a nice bachelor etc thesis just ask 500 passengers during one busy morning at Munich airport and correlate their BMI with the body mass measured by a millimeter wave full body scanner?

Or using a laser scanner as a colleague recommended recently to me?

Was gibt es für Mechanismen für den interaktionalen Dualismus von Bewusstsein & Körper oder Leib & Seele? Etwa Quantenverschränkung und Kopenhagener Deutung?

Von Verschränkung spricht man in der Quantenphysik, wenn ein zusammengesetztes physikalisches System, z. B. ein System mit mehreren Teilchen, als Ganzes betrachtet einen wohldefinierten Zustand einnimmt, ohne dass man auch jedem der Teilsysteme einen eigenen wohldefinierten Zustand zuordnen kann. Im Bereich der klassischen Physik kann es dieses Phänomen nicht geben. Dort sind zusammengesetzte System stets separabel, d. h. jedes Teilsystem hat zu jeder Zeit einen bestimmten Zustand, der sein jeweiliges Verhalten bestimmt, wobei die Gesamtheit der Zustände der einzelnen Teilsysteme und deren Zusammenwirken das Verhalten des Gesamtsystems vollständig erklärt.

Physiker sind skeptisch, so Sean Carroll in einem Interview und Vortrag

oder auch Peter Clarke, der insbesondere die von Eccles favorisierte “open modules” an spezifischen Synapsen untersucht hat. Schwierig bleibt, das Konzept mit dem Energieerhaltungssatz der klassischen Physik zusammenzubringen. Noch schwieriger ist es, quantitativ die Vorgängen an den vielen Kontaktpunkten (etwa Ca, K, Na-Kanäle) mit Quantenverschränkung zu erklären, so Clarke 2004

Even if quantum phenomena could occasionally affect calcium flow through channels, it seems very unlikely that this could have a significant effect on synaptic transmission, because the numbers of calcium ions involved are sufficiently large to swamp any quantum effects. Smith has argued this in a detailed discussion of the possibility of quantum effects at synapses, stating that the number of ions involved is 10^18 – 10^19. The numbers going through a given channel at a single opening are much smaller, of the order of one thousand, but this would still be enough to swamp the effects of a 10 ms change in the channel due to quantum fluctuations.

Direkten Widerspruch habe ich bisher nicht dazu gefunden. Es beginnt da aber erst die Diskussion, siehe Jedlicka 2017

The recent rise of quantum biology as an emerging field at the border between quantum physics and the life sciences suggests that quantum events could play a non-trivial role also in neuronal cells.

und Pitts 2019, einer der rising stars aus Cambridge

The new general relativistic objection provides some support for realism about gravitational energy-momentum in General Relativity

Zabine…