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“.
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Category Archives: Philosophy
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
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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.
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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
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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.
Continue reading Retire retirement
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Déjà vu extended
Given my interest in strange phenomena leading to science misperception I wonder why I didn’t find this site earlier as it tells you also everything about Déjà Vu, Déjà Vécu, Déjà Visité, L’esprit de l’Escalier (comeback when it is too late), Capgras delusion (replaced friend), Fregoli delusion (same person appears in different bodies) and prosopagnosia (unable to recognize faces also known as myopia…). Yea, yea.
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Visual experiments
Here is a new journal that I like very much – JOVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments. A click on the snapshot will lead you right to its home and a lot of interesting videos.
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Reading this blog will improve your academic skills
Aren’t hat good news being published by Science this week?
Process-specific training can improve performance on untrained tasks, but the magnitude of gain is variable and often there is no transfer at all. We demonstrate transfer to a 3-back test of working memory after 5 weeks of training in updating. The transfer effect was based on a joint training-related activity increase for the criterion (letter memory) and transfer tasks in a striatal region that also was recruited pretraining.
Continue reading Reading this blog will improve your academic skills
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Science as crowdsourcing enterprise
A new First Monday issue deals with iStockphoto although I would like to put this on a science level Continue reading Science as crowdsourcing enterprise
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Winning ugly
It is my impression (and it may be wrong) while reading old Nature volumes that research a few decades ago has been done inter alia or inter pares. In contrast, competition is now being much more favored Continue reading Winning ugly
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An anthology of thinkers
There are already several anthologies of thinkers. Miyaki finds the following 10 groups Continue reading An anthology of thinkers
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German Science blogging
The German blogosphere is now being mapped but with a few exceptions German science blogging doesn’ play a major role (in contrast to knitting that shows a large cluster Continue reading German Science blogging
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Placebo for placebo
or “Do placebo responders exist?” is a remarkable new review by researcher from the Harvard Medical School. I always wondered about the sheer size of the placebo effect (and its perception as nuisance parameter). The authors simply ask the question
… this paper also examines the evidence for the existence of a consistent placebo responder, i.e. a person who responds to placebo in one situation will respond in another condition or using a different type of placebo ritual….
Suggestibility is a human trait, yea, yea.
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Better suited to a more specialist journal
How many times did you hear that from an editor? At least I hear it 5 times every year … But have you ever heard of journal saying this is paper better suited to a more general journal? Never! So, this is a never ending loop, yea, yea.
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Open peer review – publish first, review later
c’t 10.2008:82-89 has a nice article about open peer review “Die Weisheit der Massen” summarizing the current peer review process – the top line of the cartoon below. Following submission of a paper, it is initially screened for some formal requirements before being submitted to anonymous peer review and finally being published. Anonymous peer review lasts between 2 months and 2 years (!) and is abbreviated so far only by one biomedical journal Continue reading Open peer review – publish first, review later
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