July 9, 2009
Effect Measure alerted me to this very touching video, which shows the crowd at Fenway coming to the rescue of a kid who starts to lose it while singing the national anthem. Revere's set-up first, then some thoughts of my own:
I don't know what's going to happen with swine flu. I do know that if…
July 8, 2009
Ed Yong, echoed by Mike the Mad biologist PhysioProf asks what the heck investigative science journalism would look like. I hope to write more extensively on this soon. In the meantime, a few observations:
To ponder this question -- and to do investigative reporting -- I think it helps to have a…
July 8, 2009
I must keep my nose on the not-beta, hidden-till-last-minute, writing-Not-For-FREE grindstone, where it's getting shredded to bits -- but in the meantime, wanted to pass on these worthy web distractions, worthy of full engagement if you've the time:
Vaughan Bell peeks at The long dark nightie of…
July 7, 2009
Scientific American has a good story by Edmund S. Higgins suggesting that might be the case. As the story notes, the evidence for such a toll is still preliminary. But the story's opening, which tells of a parent seemingly overeager to medicate a child who didn't need it, gives an idea of why the…
July 7, 2009
As prominent neuroscientist Jane Costello resigns in protest from the DSM-V committee, Danny Carlat says the process near meltdown:
The Fifth Coming of DSM threatens to rend the fabric of American psychiatry. Let's hope some cool heads in the APA's leadership can find a way out of this mess.
Stay…
July 4, 2009
In case you missed them (or miss them, and want to read again ...)
The (Illusory) Rise and Fall of the "Depression Gene"
DIY circumcision with nail clippers Go figure.
Oliver Sacks meets Jon Stewart
Wheels come off psychiatric manual; APA blames road conditions
Alarming climate change chart of the…
July 4, 2009
Spencer Ackerman explores and explains the importance of eating the local food when fighting an insurgency:
One of the things that struck me when I embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is how little local food I ate. When I met some friends for drinks in April 2007 after coming a month…
July 3, 2009
It's been 26 years since health-care reform failed. Does the debate reflect anything that's happened since?
From The Columbia Journalism Review:
"The idea that we've made a great breakthrough just isn't so," says Jonathan Oberlander, a health-policy expert at the University of North Carolina. "…
July 3, 2009
Opponents of a public health-insurance plan pose two main objections: that it will create an 'unlevel playing field' that will harm the private market for insurance (an odd objection, since that playing field already tilts quite sharply away from patients' pockets and health and toward the wallets…
July 2, 2009
Helen Branswell delivers some sobering news:
Swine flu viruses are missing at least two key features seen in all flu viruses present and past that transmit well among people and yet the viruses are spreading quite efficiently, two new studies suggest.
The research groups which produced the work…
July 2, 2009
An article from the Standard ponders why, despite widespread recognition that the country needs health care reform, we may not get it.
The relatively new field of behavioral economics--a blending of psychology and economics--helps makes sense of these clashing views. One major tenets of this sub-…
July 2, 2009
What's been distracting me lately from the big story I really really need to finish writing ...
A splendid, rich fracas over Chris Anderson's Free, set off particularly by a pan from Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. The net fairly exploded -- search, and ye shall find -- with many noting that a…
July 1, 2009
"This is something we would advise men never to attempt," a medic. said.
I would think.
Bad news: Guy really did it. Good news: no pictures.
July 1, 2009
Among the many treats in Carl Zimmer's new Times piece on fireflies and sex -- go, and be enchanted -- I particularly liked this quick peek at how a life and a career can take a sharp turn for the most unplanned of reasons:
It was on a night much like this one in 1980 when Dr. Lewis first came…
June 30, 2009
I have suspected for some time now that the band oddly close process designed to produce the DSM-V --- the diagnostic statistical manual that is psychiatry's diagnostic guide and Bible --- would create an explosion of some sort. But I didn't think it would explode quite so soon.
As Daniel Carlat…
June 30, 2009
Okay, Jonah saw this first -- but in case you missed it there, here's a snip from Jon Stewart interviewing Oliver Sacks about music and the brain.
This is a nice meeting. I've not met Stewart, but I had the pleasure to spend some time with Sacks while working on a couple stories, and he once gave…
June 30, 2009
U.S. Cases of New Flu Hit a High This Week, notes the WS Journal. Or, as the BBC puts it, US passes million swine flu cases. Effect Measure, meanwhile, ponders the flu's course in South America, where Hospitals `Overwhelmedâ By Flu Cases In Argentina.
We have just 90 days till flu season resumes…
June 30, 2009
[note: addition/corrections at bottom added an hour after orig post. additions underlined. deletions struckthrough. See *]
Meet the meta-placebo: A new study suggests that ADHD meds do much of their work by producing placebo effects -- and more constructive behavior -- among the parents, teachers…
June 29, 2009
Paul Krugman tunes out the noise:
Temperature is a noisy time series, so if you pick and choose your dates over a short time span you can usually make whatever case you want. That's why you need to look at longer trends and do some statistical analysis. But I thought that it would be a good thing…
June 25, 2009
Much much much ado on the web this week, on the too-many fronts I try to visit. From my list of notables:
Carl Zimmer, who clearly doesn't sleep, writes up a nice post about a Nature paper announcing Limusaurus, a newly discovered fossil that is, Zimmer notes, is "not -- I repeat NOT -- the missing…
June 24, 2009
Nate Silver makes George Will clear:
Will's argument is apparently this: The government does not need to make a profit and will have greater leverage with providers; therefore it will deliver the same service for less money. That's unfair!
Is this really the best argument that one of the most…
June 23, 2009
You don't see this every day.
June 23, 2009
Ezra Klein makes his call TKTK:
I think health reform is going to go the way of stimulus.
The stimulus was a huge and important accomplishment. If you had told liberals in 2007 that they were going to pass an $800 billion dollar spending bill that made good on decades of promises about…
June 23, 2009
Perhaps because I so enjoyed the time I spent at sea learning about fish, I particularly enjoyed this collection of Nick Cobbing's photos of ice, sea, and people who work them â scientists, fishermen, adventurers. Cobbing has a great eye for color and form, particularly those of the icy north and…
June 23, 2009
I can't claim to be 'objective' or neutral on health-care reform -- but who can? Everybody needs health care, some more than others. I need it less than most, as my family and I are, knock on wood, generally blessed with good health. Even so, we laid out $18K last year for health care, still owe…
June 18, 2009
A key component of health-care reform -- and saving our ass from going bankrupt and sick from spending too much on lousy treatments -- is establishing comparative effectiveness measures, otherwise known as "actually knowing WTF works and what doesn't."
This idea terrifies companies who don't want…
June 17, 2009
Big psych news of the day is that a big JAMA study debunked the "depression gene" -- that is, this big new study (by Risch et alia, in JAMA, today) found that, contrary to a famous earlier big study (Caspi et alia, in Science, 2003), the short ("bad") form of a particular gene called 5-HTT does NOT…
June 16, 2009
Neuroskeptic offers an elegant unpeeling of a study seeming specifically designed to find a marketing-friendly distinction for a drug -- Abilify -- otherwise undistinguished.
Suppose you were a drug company, and you've invented a new drug. It's OK, but it's no better than the competition. How do…
June 16, 2009
What we know, Bill speaks:
I already knew, from my own modest experience installing and paying for installation of insulation and other energy-saving upgrades in my house, that such work is highly labor-intensive -- and so employs a lot of people per dollar spent. When we had our basement…
June 16, 2009
SciAm ponders evidence that fish hatcheries are watering down the trout and salmon gene pool.
Matt Yglesias looks at one of many lies being told by those opposing health-care reform â confirming Salon's prediction that the opponents of reform are not going to play nice. See also The American…
