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.
CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 17.04.2026
Category Archives: Philosophy
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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A protestantic view of science
The 2006 document on perspectives of the German Protestant Church (EKD) briefly touches also the relation to science on p. 44 Continue reading A protestantic view of science
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We are the model organisms
Genomeweb today reports Sidney Brenner (Nobel Prize winner 2002 and pioneer in the use of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism) speaking on a conference. These days he’s pushing a new model organism: humans.
“We don’t have to look for a model organism anymore,†Brenner said. “Because we are the model organisms.â€
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To be honest
Bruce Alberts, the new editor-in-chief of Science magazine, has in his March, 21 editorial a nice comment that I would like to highlight here
Scientists share a common way of reaching conclusions that is based not only on the evidence and logic, but also requires honesty, creativity, and openess to new ideas.
Struggling in an area where no (or only seldom) conclusions ar being reached, I agree Continue reading To be honest
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Evolutionary psychology and science: The full error list
The appendix of Frey includes a list of errors based on evolutionary psychology (EP) – some acquired during development of our species, some acquired during individual ontogenesis. It is certainly the best what I have read since the famous study biases Continue reading Evolutionary psychology and science: The full error list
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How to do better research
There is an interesting new dissertation (“Ulrich Frey. Der blinde Fleck. Kognitive Fehler in der Wissenschaft und ihre evolutionsbiologischen Grundlagen”) that contains a nice game
{democracy:5}
Continue reading How to do better research
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Yes, it is true and and quite right too
Science reports that the NEJM is being sued by Pfizer
in various jurisdictions on product liability grounds. Plaintiffs are claiming that its products Celebrex and Bextra cause cardiovascular and other injuries. Pfizer asserts that in some cases plaintiffs are making use of published papers from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). So it wants to dig though the confidential reviews of those papers in search of something to strengthen its defense.
Two giants fighting each other… Continue reading Yes, it is true and and quite right too
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