Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Proposed pandemic flu research at Wisconsin…

ScienceInsider has an excellent roundup of informed opinions here. I share the concerns of Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch:

 “The fact that the global population is being put at risk by such experiments, to an appreciable but unknown degree, without being informed, much less consenting, is an ethical problem that has not been faced squarely.”

The real issue here is of tail risk. Accidents do happen in labs. In this case, the potential consequences of such an accident would be extreme. In a sense, this reminds me of the first test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico–the scientists involved weren’t completely sure that the thing wouldn’t ignite the entire world’s atmosphere. I suppose they went ahead because the value proposition in terms of ending the War was very attractive to the ultimate decision makers.

Impact factor debate….

Michael White’s thoughtful piece on the use of Impact Factor on assessing scientists for promotion and tenure is here. The piece is in Pacific Standard, a magazine publication that I’m increasingly impressed by.

I’m a supporter of DORA for readers who are curious.

Those are the docks of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as I arrived yesterday by ferry. My office here at the MBL is on the opposite side of the Knorr, the large research vessel in the foreground.

Tomorrow, at the MBL Society Meeting, we’ll learn perhaps a bit more about the new affiliation between MBL and the University of Chicago. Ultimately, I’m anticipating it’ll involve some significant transfer of resources to the marine lab in return for a significant degree of control from the University. In any case, it represents a monumental change for the 125 year old MBL.

My take on the economy here is that it’s still in recovery mode. While Martha’s Vineyard was extremely busy, the local businesses (with one key exception) seem to be struggling.

Climate change solutions….

Bjorn Lomborg’s eloquent case for increased R&D on green energy sources, from the FT, here.

Money quote:

The analogy here is the computer in the 1950s. We did not get better computers by mass-producing subsidised vacuum tubes or taxing typewriters. The breakthroughs were achieved through a dramatic increase in R&D, leading to innovations such as the transistor and the integrated circuit, which enabled companies such as IBM and Apple to produce computers that consumers wanted.

The False Memory Paper…

Out of Tonegawa’s research group at MIT. My colleague Earl Miller blog has good links to the original paper and science media stories about it, here.

I think it’s a real tour de force. They used optogenetics to essentially demonstrate the power of a cell assembly to represent an engram. Hebb would be proud.