The Sequester, the budget and the current state of play for science funding…
The latest from ScienceInsider is here.
Short version: NSF is faring the best under the new regime, DOE the worst and NIH not much better.
Cultural neuroscience begins to hit its stride….
Ethan Watters wonderful piece in Pacific Standard, here. Experimental economics comes up with radically different results when 20 year old college sophomores from here aren’t the subjects. Read and enjoy!
"Gradual" School….getting stuck in the transition to PhD candidacy
Great piece for graduate students, in the Chronicle, here. For all of our Krasnow Institute doctoral students and their peers….
I would simply add that one of the great joys of wet-lab science is the ability to physically conduct experiments and use that structure to create routine where there otherwise wouldn’t be…
From this week’s Economist–the Real US Economy
The link is here. To the thesis that the states are getting many things right, I’d add that many cities and the US private sector are too.
The article correctly points out America’s dominance in research universities. I’d argue that it’s from that base, and in partnership with industry that real US long term success lies.
The latest from Mars along with an important caveat…
Yes, Mars seems to be potentially more benign for life that we had thought, but this important caveat:
The basic fact is that most in the news business do not understand (or at least, do not fully appreciate) the incremental, cumulative nature of modern science. It is seldom indeed when a single experiment or observation causes a scientific revolution. Moreover, it is equally seldom that a breakthough comes from one person or even one research team. Science is a complex, interdisciplinary effort. It makes progress, but slowly and in a manner that includes both leaps forward and (sometimes) backward.
The full article is here.
Great story except for the science…
The Washington Post’s Paul Whoriskey’s recent post on a Johns Hopkins scientific dispute was published on the front page here. It made for compelling reading…except there was something about the reporter’s grasp of the science that raised a red flag for me. Now here’s this report from the Tracker web site that nails it.
See what you think….
11,300 years of climate reconstruction…
Marcott et. al in Science Magazine, here. Here’s the figure that worries me (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish):
The famed hockey stick is scrunched and labeled “previous timeframe”. As is clear, what’s been happening very recently is not only large….its derivative (rate of change) is also large. Adaptation take time….
Colin McGinn’s take down of Kurzweil’s new book for homunculism…
It’s in the New York Review of Books here. Beautifully written and with important lessons for all of us who study mind…read it!
Our Annual Krasnow Symposium…NeuroX
This year, we’ll be bringing together thought-leaders and discipline experts to talk about the current neuroscience meme that’s become ubiquitous…from neuromarketing, to neurolaw to…..neuroX. The deep question for our audience and speakers will be simply: how much of this stuff has substance? What’s hype? What’s not?
The context for the neuroscience meme extends from the concussion problem that the NFL may or may not have all the way to the promised replacement of the polygraph by the fMRI machine. Simply put, neuroscience occupies a central piece of the cultural zeitgeist in a way that it never really has before. For many decision-makers, investors, and members of the intelligent lay-public the practicality of becoming “very smart” about this new meme will play an important role in real choices: do I allow my child to play American-style football? Should I listen to those ads for brain training on Pandora? Do I chose 100 dollars right now or 200 next week?
Our speakers will be outstanding…Caltech’s Antonio Rangel, MIT’s Aude Oliva, FT’s Gillian Tett, Jim Ecklund of the NFL players’ Mackey-White TBI Committee and Phil Rubin of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy are among them….
We’ll convene on May 8-10 in George Mason’s Founder’s Hall….located conveniently proximal to the GMU/Virginia Square Metro Station on the Orange Line in Arlington. I’m looking forward to meeting many of our readers there.
Discoverers and Discoveries 