What is science?

I am continually impressed by the disconnect that I see evidenced often between what the public thinks science is, and what science actually consists of. Most interesting is the surprised looks I get when I explain gently that trying to understand the universe/nature per se is not science. That science is the intellectual practice of constructing theories, developing hypotheses from those theories and then designing experiments with the explicit goal of falsifying the cherished hypothesis.

The lay public too often confuses science with religion, technology, clinical practice and just plain curiosity. Karl Popper would be rolling in his grave.

Jim

NICKI elects a chair

The Neuroimaging Core of the Krasnow Institute (NICKI) elected Raja Parasuraman as its chair Friday for a two year term. I’m really looking forward to working with him and the rest of NICKI to get the maximum scientific productivity from our 3T MRI. I’d also like to thank outgoing co-chairs Layne Kalbfleisch and Kevin McCabe for their hard work in getting the center going and especially to Layne for staying on as Chief Magnet Safety Officer in addition to her role as the head of KIDLAB.

Jim

The Institute for Advanced Study

Of course that moniker usually is reserved for the one in Princeton where Einstein was. Recently I saw the term used on its own for another institute at Los Alamos. That got me thinking about the usefulness of the term in communicating to stakeholders what we do at Krasnow. This week, I reported to Mason’s Board of Visitors on the past academic year and started out my remarks by referring to the successful year of the institute for advanced study–the one at George Mason.

Jim

Latest on DARPA’s Urban Grand Challenge

Money quote from CNet News:

DARPA also said that the qualifying and final events will be held at a military training facility in Victorville, Calif., home of the Route 66 Museum, the San Bernardino County Fair and a state penitentiary. The Urban Grand Challenge is the third in DARPA’s series of robot car races and it’s the first one the agency has pre-announced the location for months in advance of the final race. It typically keeps the location under wraps to prevent competitive advantage, but programming a car to navigate city streets by itself will presumably be hard enough.

Overheard in Woods Hole–on New York

Tonight’s Friday evening lecture by MIT’s Robert Langer will be my last event here for this visit. Langer is really one of this country’s great bio-engineers. That’s a growth area for George Mason and it will be interesting to see what’s going on at the top of the field.

I’ve noticed that the “chatter” (administratively important emails from my university) has picked up in the last 24 hours. That either means the semester is getting ever closer, or my colleagues are beginning to actively anticipate my return. Probably both.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of the Overheard in New York blog that I read every once in a while, I leave you with this conversation from the local convenience store in the village:

20-something shop clerk (female) to 20-something customer (male) on life in New York City:

“it’s so ironically invasive”

What does that mean?

Jim

Rainy and cool in Woods Hole


It’s rainy and cool outside here in Woods Hole this morning. In homage to Andrew Sullivan’s blog feature “the view out your window“, I’m posting the view out my window this morning. This was taken with my macbook’s built in i-sight camera which I’m finally learning how to use to take photos.

Yesterday Lynn Margulis gave a spectacular talk about the evolution of eukariotic cells. You can read a bit about her theory here. She also was in town for a book signing and reading from her fiction book, “Luminous Fish”, at the local book store.

I had dinner yesterday evening with Dr. Sonia Gasparini, who is here this summer as a Grass Faculty Fellow. She is working on Layer V entorhinal cortex cells–their dendrites are very different from the pyramids of CA3 and CA1 hippocampus. Of course the whole story of “grid cells” has made entorhinal cortex a very interesting area of the brain.

Jim

Fall Semester 2007

Summer is now winding down at Krasnow, and the usual “early-onset” George Mason University semester is only a few weeks away. With the end of summer, and the promise of cooler and less humid weather in the Washington DC area, the faculty and students begin to return from their summer travels and the lights in the Institute will begin to burn late late into the night again as experiments are run, brains are scanned and manuscripts are prepared for publication.

This new academic year marks the formal beginning of the Institute’s George Mason role as a full academic unit. This in addition to continuing as an institute for advanced study. It will be interesting and challenging to see how both of those missions blend. Most important will be the need to keep focusing on advanced science–science the challenges the paradigm.

Jim