History/philosophy of science
ddobbs | March 2, 2009Below, the "jugum penis," designed to prevent "nocturnal lincontinence" (aka masturbation). One of many wonders in a new London Science Museum online exhibit of historical medical objects called "Brought to Life," as featured in this New Scientist photo essay.
Don't try these at home.
ddobbs | February 27, 2009I drove up to Montreal yesterday, and amid visits with anthropologist and Somatosphere founder Eugene Raikhel, anthropologist Allan Young, and Suparna Choudhury, talked about (among other things) the emerging new area of study they're calling "critical neuroscience."
What the heck is critical neuroscience? Well, one definition calls it
the attempt to assess and inform neuroscientific practice from a rich interdisciplinary perspective, and to categorize, evaluate and (begin to) manage the various risks resulting from neuroscience and its results and applications
.
Daniel Lende, one of the…
ddobbs | February 12, 2009Despite the rain on my window, it's a fine day indeed, with many wonderful celebrations of Darwin's 200th ringing throughout the blogoshere.
Most of these, naturally, focus on Darwin's theory of evolution and its many implications and reverberations. I much admire that theory. But what I find most fascinating about Darwin is not his theory of evolution but his method of empiricism. For as vital as was Darwin's theory of evolution was, his impact on how we view ourselves is rivaled by his impact on how we view and do science.
This and many other perverse oddities struck me when I was…
ddobbs | February 7, 2009"Science found wanting in nation's crime labs," says the headline at the NY Times, which ran one of many stories on the upcoming National Academy of Sciences report on forensic science. This kind of front-page attention is long overdue, as shabby science that claims to be infallible has jailed many an innocent (and probably freed a few guilty). As the Knight Science Journalism Tracker notes,
The main surprise, upon reflection, ... is that this news was not dug up and given heavy attention by media already, starting years ago.
Well, it was dug up, and it did get some press attention -- though…
ddobbs | February 5, 2009
A coral atoll, from Darwin's The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, 1842.
For those teeming millions near Hanover, N.H., here's notice that I'll be giving a talk at Dartmouth at 4pm today -- Thu, Feb 5 -- about Darwin's first, favorite, and (to me) most interesting theory, which was his theory about how coral reefs formed.
This is the subject of my book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, and I'll be posting more about it next week, during the Blog for Darwin festival. But the short version -- and the topic of my talk -- is this:
Darwin's coral…
ddobbs | January 13, 2009Rolling deadlines have kept me from the blogging desk, but I can occupy it long enough now to call out a few items that either haven't received as much coverage as they might have -- or that have gotten several interesting hits.
⢠At Huffpost, Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee offer the FDA a three-step program:
Step One: Admit that you are currently powerless over the industry you are supposed to be regulating. You have let Big Pharma take over your life. You have become dependent on drug company money that comes from the Prescription Drug Fee User Act (PDUFA) of 1992, and over the…
ddobbs | October 18, 2008The good folks at Neuroanthropology drew my attention to a pair of videos showing how chimpanzees work together to corral, kill, and then eat colubus monkeys. Amazing stuff.
The embedded video below shows a hunt from the rather chaotic point of view of cameramen chasing the chase at jungle-floor level. Impressive enough in itself:
Even more riveting, however, is the second video, which can't be embedded but which can be seen on YouTube. It mixes from-the-ground footage with aerial shots taken with infrared cameras to show how a team of five chimps -- a driver, three blockers, and an…
ddobbs | August 27, 2008
Surgeon, attributed to Jan Sanders van Hemessen, c. 1550. Museo del Prado, Madrid
Over at Biophemera, a ScienceBlog I've somehow overlooked to date, biologist and artist Jessica Palmer ponders a question raised by a number of Renaissance paintings depicting surgeons removing "stones of madness" from patients's skulls: Did surgeons (or quacks) sham these operations?
It's a juicy and provocative consideration, well worth a look both for the article and the several paintings shown there.
Hemessen, Huys, and Bruegel all depict the same procedure: the removal of stones from the heads of…
ddobbs | August 26, 2008This one's causing a dust-up over at the Scientific American's "60-Second Science" blog
Measles is back, and it's because your kids aren't vaccinatedDavid Biello
If you didn't vaccinate your kids, you too could find yourself partly responsible for the resurgence of a disease thought eliminated in 2000.
Measles—a highly contagious disease-causing virus—is making a comeback in the U.S., thanks to parents fears over vaccines. Fifteen children under 20, including four babies, have been hospitalized and 131 sickened by the red splotches since the beginning of this year in 15 states and the…
ddobbs | March 21, 2008Some great stuff I've come across, lack time to blog on, but would hate for you to miss:
In On being certain, neurologist and novelist Robert Burton, who writes a column at Slate Salon, looks at the science of what makes us feel certain about things -- even when we're dead wrong about them. His book on the subject, which I read in advance copy a while back, is fascinating fun reading. The most startling (and disorienting) finding he describes is that, from a neurocognitive point of view, our feeling of certainty about things we're wrong about is pretty much indistinguishable from our…