Kathryn Schulz’s excellent long essay on the master-theory of self-help is here. From her standpoint, the weakness in all self-help approaches is that they posit a dualism. I agree, because all our evidence from neuroscience suggests that brain and mind are unified…
Read it all.
Ruggero Scorcioni is one of our neuroscience PhD alumni. We’re proud of him for other reasons, but here’s his latest brilliant success: he’s the winner of the AT&T hacakthon in Vegas! The story is here. Money quote:
At 41, he has had plenty of time to research brain wave science as well as write computer programs. After receiving a degree in computer science in his native Italy, Scorcioni came to the U.S. 12 years ago to earn a PhD from George Mason University in Virginia in neuroscience.
The Biological Bulletin held its editorial board meeting again this year at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Meeting. It was great to see some excellent talks and sit down to talk about the journal with my colleagues on the Board. There were some really great ideas for future virtual symposia and the possibility of inviting more junior level scientists to join the board in some capacity.
Meanwhile, I’m impressed lately with United Airlines. They really seem to have turned a corner since the merger with Continental. Flights were on-time and the service was excellent.
Daniel Sarewitz’s editorial in Nature is here. I completely agree with it. Money quote:
To connect scientific advice to bipartisanship would benefit political debate. Volatile issues, such as the regulation of environmental and public-health risks, often lead to accusations of ‘junk science’ from opposing sides. Politicians would find it more difficult to attack science endorsed by avowedly bipartisan groups of scientists, and more difficult to justify their policy preferences by scientific claims that were contradicted by bipartisan panels.
Happy 2013. The Fiscal Cliff compromise that was passed by Congress last night mainly addressed the tax (revenue) side of the fiscal debate between the Democrats and the GOP. The spending side of that debate was put of for a bit…as things stand science funding still will get axed across the board two months from now. With the tax leverage gone, the remaining hope is that somehow the NIH and NSF will get bundled into the debate over DOD such that they are all protected against across the board, mindless cuts. I’m not optimistic on that one, although historically NIH and NSF have enjoyed bipartisan support.
In the meantime, the notion of the need to prudently invest in science–as well as cut back generally–doesn’t seem to be out there as an argument.
Next up however is the second debt-ceiling debate. The House GOP members say they intend to use the debt limit as leverage to get more cuts. My economist colleagues tell me that is playing with fire.
Rita Levi-Montalcini has died. Her NYT obit is here. She was a neuroscientist Nobel laureate whose discovery of Nerve Growth Factor helped shape the way we think about wiring up the nervous system during development. I had the honor of hearing her speak at the 1981 Society for Neuroscience meeting in Los Angeles–we graduate students were packed into the nose-bleed seats of the giant auditorium, but we hung on every word…
She will be missed.
What I wrote in July still stands:
None of this is good for NIH or NSF. Because the fiscal cliff cuts are across the board, they are mindless (remember, the cliff was supposed to be a deterrent) so the excellent will get thrown out with the merely good.
Even, if by some miracle, Congress manages to get something to the President’s desk in time, my guess is it’ll be some sort of agreement on the revenue side (i.e. taxes) that punts on the spending cuts. And I’m not exactly optimistic about any agreement before new years.
Expect some legislative movement encouraged by the markets early in the new year–it’ll be very telling to see if Speaker Boehner has any difficulty being reelected by his caucus–once again probably on the tax side but probably also dealing with DOD. I’m not expecting much good news for science.
Of course he was the author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Mathew Rees’ perspective on how the concept of paradigm shift has fared is here, in The New Atlantis.
My own view is that neuroscience is in need of a paradigm, never mind the shift. We’re still largely data collectors as far as the big questions of how mind arises from brain activity.
It’s Christmas Day here in Washington. After an early morning fog, it’s fairly balmy outside–the perfect weather for a nice long walk through the woods.
In the meantime, consider the trials of Chicago’s wonderful Field Museum here. This story is being repeated at other institutions across the US, it’s not pretty and it doesn’t bode well for American competitiveness.
Hat tip Tyler Cowen, the link is here. It’s being published by Springer, and…it will be free for students in developing countries. Pfaff is a giant in the field, this is a worthy contribution.
Discoverers and Discoveries 