purepedantry

Professors are not effective at indoctrinating their students with their own politics -- or so says a study in the journal PS as reported in the NYTimes: A study of nearly 7,000 students at 38 institutions published in the current PS: Political Science and Politics, the journal of the American…

This Sunday you are slightly less likely to have a heart attack. Swedish researchers, publishing in the NEJM, looked at a registry of heart attacks from 1987 to 2006. They found that the incidence of heart attacks slightly increases for the three days following the Spring daylight savings time…

A survey of American internists and rheumatologists has revealed that over 50% of them regularly prescribe placebos. Tilburt et al. surveyed internists and rheumatologists to see whether they were prescribing placebos, and if so how and what kind they were using. The study, published in BMJ, found…

Whenever you are having a debate -- particularly a policy debate -- it is always important to check your premises. That is why I found this article in the Journal of the American Medical Association refreshing. Emergency Department utilization is clearly on the rise in the US, and this rise in use…

I am a little late to this party, but I do want to talk about this paper in Nature Neuroscience. Moritz et al. implanted an electrode into a monkey's motor cortex. The electrode was designed to only record from a single neuron at a time. Then the output of that cell -- after a little…

I have been a bit lax on the blogging, but here is what I have been reading on the economy. Tyler Cowen attributes the financial bubble to three main causes: The current financial crisis comes from a conjunction of three major trends, common to many countries and to a wide variety of financial…

Lawrence Lessig, co-founder of Creative Commons, writes in the WSJ in defense of piracy -- or more aptly the culture of remixing of which blogging is certainly a part: The return of this "remix" culture could drive extraordinary economic growth, if encouraged, and properly balanced. It could return…

Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel and psychologist Fiery Cushman have designed a moral sense test. The test poses scenarios and asks you to evaluate the relative morality or immorality of different actions. The purpose of the test for the researchers is to compare the responses between philosophers…

The scientific process is composed of generating hypotheses and testing those hypotheses through experiment. Yet we don't know a whole lot about how about hypothesis generation happens on the level of the brain. Recognizing that I am dealing with a loaded term -- scientists have strong opinions…

An article at RealClearPolitics of interest to those living in the Southwest. (I am looking at you, Mom and Dad.) Political observers agree that, like in the Northeast, Democrats have made gains because they have broadened their coalition to include those more supportive of gun and property rights…

Kara showed me this clip when I was in London, and it is too funny not to share. It is of British comedian James Sherwood detailing his "rules of songwriting." My favorite: "...but ignores the more psychologically interesting detail that he cannot lie."

Many scientifically-inclined voters were a bit shocked by McCain's comment criticizing Obama for supporting a "3 million dollar earmark for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago." The "overhead projector" in question was actually a top of the line piece of equipment for the Adler…

John Tierney reports this shocking revelation: our marijuana control doesn't work and no one -- particularly the government -- wants to admit it. Now that the first five years' results are available, the campaign can officially be called a failure, according to an analysis of federal drug-use…

Neal Young, John Ioannidis, and Omar Al-Ubaydli have an article in PLoS suggesting that because the emphasis in scientific publishing is too much on the big positive results in the big journal, many results are going to be wrong. (Remember that Ioannidis published another paper saying that many…

Not really a lot for me to say about the bailout package, but I stumbled on this funny sentence in the NYTimes: After the overnight drafting efforts on both sides of Capitol Hill -- with pizza on the House side, and Thai food in the Senate -- Democratic officials said they had completed a unified…

For those of you who are interested in science blogging -- either to ask questions or to start one of your own -- I will be participating in a panel discussion about science blogging next week (Wednesday, Oct. 1st at 7 pm) at the Apple Store in Soho New York. More info here if you would like to…

Sorry about the light blogging everyone. I am super-busy at work preparing for an upcoming vacation, so I just don't have the time for it at the moment. I expect light-blogging between now and the middle of October, so check back with us then.

Here is a clever idea for making sure you never have to search for a parking space: congestion pricing. San Francisco is trying out a system based on this principle: The SFpark project will begin early in 2009 with a new network of pavement sensors in 6,000 of San Francisco's metered parking…

A recent report questions the wisdom of an outright ban on bushmeat sales: The report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), based in Bogor, Indonesia, suggests instead that the bushmeat trade should be regulated, with hunting allowed for relatively common, fast-reproducing…

As we witness the self-destruction of portions of our financial institutions, many of us have been ask ourselves: what the hell is going on? University of Chicago economists, Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap, have a Q&A at the Freakonomics blog to answer some questions. One important question…

USA Today prints a (sort of) joke job description for the next generation of doctors: Idealistic Generation X/Y overachievers with low- to mid-six-figure student loans to work in imploding health care system currently subject to runaway entitlement spending. Future salary to be subject to…

Apparently, some people think that the name "Large Hadron Collider" fails to capture the terrific grandeur of the device's mission. The Royal Society of Chemistry had a contest to pick an newer, better name, but the winning name proved to be "Halo." No way can they call it that. That name is so…

It is speculation time. My roommate and I were watching a story this morning on CNN by Sanjay Gupta about how astronauts lose bone mass while in space. One of the limitations with space travel is that because of the absence of gravity, your bones steadily deteriorate. Load bearing exercise is…

An Israeli town has come up with an aggressive method to fight uncollected dog poop: DNA IDing the "originator." An Israeli city is using DNA analysis of dog droppings to reward and punish pet owners. Under a six-month trial programme launched this week, the city of Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel…

Both candidates have answered the questions about scientific issues posed by the ScienceDebate2008. You can read their answers side by side here. Several comments in no particular order: McCain mentions ending earmarks in reference to supporting scientific funding. How are those two even related…

Philosopher Thomas Nagel, writing in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs, criticizes the exclusion of Intelligent Design from science classes on the grounds that evolutionary science too rests on an assumption: the naturalistic assumption. He argues that both evolution based on natural…

The New England Journal of Medicine compares the candidates visions for health care reform. (Hat-tip: PalMD) On John McCain: The McCain campaign emphasizes key advantages of this approach. First, the current tax exclusion disproportionately benefits higher-income Americans, since its value depends…

Now -- via this useful website -- you can check whether the activation of the Large Hadron has destroyed the Earth. Go ahead...click it...you know you want to...

From Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek: There are two ways to reduce the connection between politicians and money. One is to reduce the role of money. The other is to reduce the role of politicians. I choose the latter. I contend that reducing the role of money of politics in order to make politics…

Inside Higher Ed describes a study of complete rates for PhD students broken down by race/ethnicity, gender, whether the student is international or domestic, and by discipline. Here is the key chart: Cumulative Completion Rates for Students Starting Ph.D. Programs, 1992-3 Through 1994-5 Group…