Slashdot Mirror

Link to the actual study
Took me a minute to find it.

Why does the area of academic research matter?

Humans love patterns and "big things" more than insular and isolated cases.

Article quotes heavily the Survey of Academic Field Experiences which was featured here at Slashdot at least twice.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
http://science.slashdot.org/st...

Both times it was presented as a science-wide issue - though the survey only covered anthropological fields.

Nearly half of the study participants self-identified as anthropologists from several subfields (applied, biological, linguistic, medical, physical, psychological, and socio-cultural) (N=319/666, 47.9%).
Nearly a quarter of the sample self-identified as archaeologists (N=159, 23.9%).
The rest of the sample comprised biologists (N=68, 10.2%); zoologists (N=31, 4.7%); geologists (N=29, 4.4%); other life, environmental, and agricultural scientists (N=22, 3.3%); and other social scientists (N=12, 1.8%).

This time on the other hand, that survey actually CAN be used to show that this particular case is a part of a PATTERN of sexual harassment in anthropology.

Only problem is... that survey is JUNK as its methodology is crap.
This is how sexual harassment was defined:

A majority (64%, N=423/658) of all survey respondents, stated that they had personally experienced sexual harassment: i.e. inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other such jokes.

PDF version defined that a LITTLE differently:

Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex differences, or other jokes, at a field site?

This is what kind of data was gathered:

A majority of survey respondents reported that they had directly observed or been told about the occurrence of other field site researchers and/or colleagues making inappropriate or sexual remarks at their most recent or most notable field site (N=448/619, 72.4%).

I.e. Literal hearsay was accepted as data.

Also, while the study claims that "Men were more likely to report that comments never occurred, whereas women were more likely to report that comments occurred frequently" - graphs representing that data show something else.
First off... by using "proportion of respondents" as a y-axis of the graph, 50 males who answered "never" (as well as 50 who answered "rarely") is depicted as MORE than 117 females who answered "never" AND 180 females who answered "rarely".

In other words, 100 males and 297 females answered "never" or "rarely".
While 20+12 males and 94+90 females answered "regularly" or "frequently".
I.e. However you look at it - that line about women being more likely to report "frequent" comments IS BULLSHIT.

Also, while on the side of "sexual harassment" survey was rather broad in defining sexual harassment, definition of "sexual assault" was rather vague.

Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact, or sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent at a field site?

I.e. On one side "other jokes" are sexual harassment.
On the other, no definition of "unwanted sexual contact" or "physical sexual harassment" is given, while it is implied that it is something different from "sexual contact in which you could not or did not give consent or felt it would be unsafe to fight back or not give your consent".

The components are becoming more available now, and as more tech-friendly people wind up in "wet sciences" labs the need is getting more widely recognized. My group put a basic system together (and everyone is invited to contribute additional sensor interfaces etc!). It's built around a Raspberry Pi and sensors from Phidgets (and note the Phidgets people sell a 4-20 interface so it can talk to all sorts of things).

In terms of capability this is not new, but we're trying to automate the setup as much as possible, so that people who don't consider themselves "computer people" can set something up, run a couple of basic sanity checks on the outputs, and have a functional monitoring system.

Full study here.

Pretty tame conclusions, but I'm glad they're still doing research into this. I'm actually really curious to see what kind of psychological effects show up (or don't) as graphics technology gets ever closer to perfect fidelity. Not in the moral panic or "we must legislate this" sense, but just to understand whether and how a technology is capable of damaging us. VR is right around the corner, and game developers are focusing constantly on immersion -- this makes me wonder whether a sufficiently advanced game could cause PTSD, or a similar condition. I suspect not now, and not soon, but it'll probably be an issue some day.

Los Alamos National Laboratory:
Mammalian Stem Cells Reprogramming in Response to Terahertz Radiation
http://journals.plos.org/ploso...
We report that extended exposure to broad-spectrum terahertz radiation results in specific changes in cellular functions that are closely related to DNA-directed gene transcription. Our gene chip survey of gene expression shows that whereas 89% of the protein coding genes in mouse stem cells do not respond to the applied terahertz radiation, certain genes are activated, while other are repressed. RT-PCR experiments with selected gene probes corresponding to transcripts in the three groups of genes detail the gene specific effect. The response was not only gene specific but also irradiation conditions dependent. Our findings suggest that the applied terahertz irradiation accelerates cell differentiation toward adipose phenotype by activating the transcription factor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARG). Finally, our molecular dynamics computer simulations indicate that the local breathing dynamics of the PPARG promoter DNA coincides with the gene specific response to the THz radiation. We propose that THz radiation is a potential tool for cellular reprogramming.

University of Alberta Edmonton
Intense THz pulses cause H2AX phosphorylation and activate DNA damage response in human skin tissue
http://tinyurl.com/jsx5q7x
Recent emergence and growing use of terahertz (THz) radiation for medical imaging and public security screening raise questions on reasonable levels of exposure and health consequences of this form of electromagnetic radiation. In particular, picosecond-duration THz pulses have shown promise for novel diagnostic imaging techniques. However, the effects of THz pulses on human cells and tissues thus far remain largely unknown. We report on the investigation of the biological effects of pulsed THz radiation on artificial human skin tissues. We observe that exposure to intense THz pulses for ten minutes leads to a significant induction of H2AX phosphorylation, indicating that THz pulse irradiation may cause DNA damage in exposed skin tissue. At the same time, we find a THz-pulse- induced increase in the levels of several proteins responsible for cell-cycle regulation and tumor suppression, suggesting that DNA damage repair mechanisms are quickly activated. Furthermore, we find that the cellular response to pulsed THz radiation is significantly different from that induced by exposure to UVA (400 nm).

This article is horrible.

Narcisissm was but one of the many things the study correlated with geekdom. Yet the article by "The Independent" talked about only that one aspect. The study actually doesn't include Star Wars as an example of geekdom since Star Wars is mainstream. The study does consider someone a geek if they mix "Star Wars" with zombies. Yet The Independent started their headline with that "Star Wars" - probably because it is so popular in the news right now and people will have knee jerk emotional reactions to it.

I am sad that Slashdot chose to link to this article, rather than to the study itself which is completely free, reasonably short, and paints a different and more interesting picture. It talks about geek involvement with family, the political process, civic organizations, and long-term life goals. It even explains how the term "narcissism" is used differently in the clinical context and might be misinterpreted when used without the relevant context. Yet that is exactly what The Independent did.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142200

Actually, we do have the abstract and the entire article. PLOS Medicine is open source. http://journals.plos.org/plosm... I think you can even follow the links to the original questionnaire.

There's a pretty strong consensus among epidemiologists, including the ones who gave the talk I linked to https://www.elsevier.com/conne... , that you can't infer causation from association.

But any statistical study worth their salt will check the data for bias and other effects.

Yes, they'll check, but without a randomized, controlled trial, it's impossible to rule out bias and other effects.

Those of us sitting around unable to sleep now have our apparently imminent mortality to think about, too.

The summary of the actual article suggests that too much sleep is the bigger problem, and that sleep issues may be a symptom rather than a cause anyway.

When sleep was present as a lone risk factor, short sleep duration was only marginally associated with mortality (HR = 1.09), while long sleep duration was associated with much higher risk (HR = 1.44)....The mechanism for the association between long sleep duration and mortality is not well understood [17,47]. Most studies suggest that long sleep duration tends to be associated with sleep fragmentation, fatigue, depression, and underlying disease and poor health [53]. Therefore, the observed association between long sleep duration and all-cause mortality could be due to “reverse causality” or residual confounding [17,54].

Raw AQ distribution

From the data (n = 450,394), the reported mean AQ score was 19.83 (SD = 8.71), and tests of normality (Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling) revealed this data had a positive skew of 0.47 and a kurtosis of -0.27.

http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

Further... STEM or no-STEM means about... the diddly part of the diddly squat.

When sex, age, and occupation are entered into a multiple linear regression model, less than 4% of the variance in AQ in the current sample is explained, indicating that other unmeasured variables contribute to autistic traits as measured by the AQ.

I.e. IF we are to take this study at face value - there is no significant difference between sex, age or occupation.

On the other hand...
It was an anonymous online-survey.
Of people who have just seen a documentary on autism.
Who were then invited to take the BIGGEST TEST EVER.

In the episode, the TV presenters (both medical doctors) introduced the topic of autism by giving population prevalence estimates, and explained that many individuals in the general population have autistic traits.
They invited viewers by saying, "Why not go onto our website and take the My MindChecker test to measure the extent of any autistic traits you might have, and whilst your results are confidential, the overall data will form the biggest national survey of its kind."
The program continued by explaining the symptoms of autism: difficulty with social interaction, trouble understanding aspects of humour such as sarcasm, feelings of anxiety associated with sensory stimulation, and intense special interests and hobbies.
The presenters concluded, "If you are experiencing similar symptoms [...] and want to find out if you have a condition that affects how you interact with the world and other people, then take part now in our self test."
The link to the data collection site was displayed at the outset of the autism segment and at intervals throughout the episode.
The presenters announced approximately 30 minutes after the initial mention of the website that 40,000 individuals had already completed the survey.

BTW, do you suffer headaches? Are you frequently tired? Do you forget things?
You might be having A DISEASE - take our test to find out.
COME ON! Everyone else is doing it!

Oh... and then there's the test.
Which, at it's higher specificity and reliability level, WHEN ADMINISTERED on people already referred to an autism clinic (i.e. someone with a degree in mental health sent them to be checked for autism) - guessed right in 3 out of 4 cases.
And it doesn't work for lower IQ individuals. Online test had no such limitation. All you had to do is click links.

A "drinking bird" would probably score slightly above average.

at a cut-off score of 26, 83% of people referred to an adult autism clinic were correctly identified (sensitivity 0.95, specificity 0.52, positive predictive value 0.84, negative predictive value 0.78), while a cut-off score of 32 was found to correctly identify 76% of people (sensitivity 0.77, specificity 0.74) [3].
The AQ was designed for adults with average IQ or above [1], so is suitable for use in the general population and for at least 50% of people on the autism spectrum [24].
The questionnaire is not suitable for individuals with low IQ or language impairment, as it relies on the comprehension of the 50 questions.

We've grown plants in regolith simulant.

So it's not like we don't already know that the answer is "yes".

http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

that happens also after the reassignm. (not talking just about dr. Money) not accepting reality is the problem here

This douche jumped in to the convo earlier putting words in people mouths

That's because trans people are treated like shit. Constantly.

Which Elia responds

maybe that's just a (legit) opinion, I still fail to see how that kind of invasive surgery on kids can b cherished

anyway it's months that in Italy school after school sneaks genderism lessons in without parents consent. Not cool

I 100% agree with you transpersons need access to treatment, but gender reassignment surgery is dangerous and I think someone should have to at least be a consenting adult before they make that decision. It's a huge decision that children shouldn't just make on a whim as it's a lifelong commitment. On top of that, the suicide rate of people that HAVE had gender reassignment doesn't look that much better to me than those that haven't had it. On the flip side, the ones that survive are more satisfied with their lives.

That said, Elia's issue was with Italian schools using some controversial teaching methods and encouraging children to have reassignment surgery, which was all done without parents knowing about it.

Which apparently made him a transphobic bigot. His opinion, IMHO, is not that hateful or off the wall.

This krainboltgreene guy though https://twitter.com/krainboltg..., I started looking at when I was trying to understand what was going on. Guy is a major asshole troll, he uses the same name and image on several platforms (G+, Twitter, GitHub) and is consonantly starting shit with people.

He shows up in the branching issue a few times to basically pick fights with anyone that's arguing against accepting the suggested CoC.

https://github.com/opal/opal/i...
https://github.com/opal/opal/i...
https://github.com/opal/opal/i...
https://github.com/opal/opal/i...
https://github.com/opal/opal/i...
https://github.com/opal/opal/i...

The conversation just continues to degrade with him. He spends a lot of time accusing people of not contributing to the Opal project, but he doesn't contribute either so I'm not sure why that should matter. One of his main projects seems to be a library that analyzes twitter conversations and determines how toxic it is https://github.com/socialkardi...

I almost think this guy is a parody account, because he fits exactly the type of person someone would say is an "SJW". White guy, acts like an asshole to other white guys, assumes anyone disagreeing with him is a white guy, obsessed with gender politics and incredibly quick to accuse people of being misogynists,

That's true with most drugs. But the whole point about taking drugs is that you tend to over-use them because they are enjoyable. (This is equally true with legal drugs like alcohoil).

Except when they cause psychoses, which are (or should be) very expensive to treat as they have long term effects.

Overdoing them is not inevitable. It depends on the person and the drug. Most people don't over-do alcohol even though it's got a pretty high potential for addiction. Some drugs, such as psychedelics, are self-limiting and most people tend to use them less rather than more. This is because there's a short-term tolerance effect that stops you being able to repeat the experience daily and the experience can be too intense at times which causes you to voluntarily stay away.

Regarding your suggestion that psychedelics can lead to psychosis: this is at best contentious. For instance, there is even evidence for the opposite: that people who take them have lower rates of psychological distress. I'm sure there are individual cases where psychedelic drug use resulted in a psychotic episode, but the implication of recent studies is that the drug use is a trigger and not a cause. Other triggers can include things like stress, bereavement, etc. In other words, psychedelics do not appear to hold a privileged position as a cause of psychosis. It's actually a pretty interesting field of research.

Well put.

Number of people killed by homeopathy: zero.

Number of people killed by the medical system. Well, that's awkward, the medical system itself if the third leading cause of death in the United States today.

Examining the actual evidence on all sides is appropriate at this juncture.

The medical system third-leading cause of death in the United States.
Starfield B (July 2000). "Is US health really the best in the world?". JAMA 284 (4): 483–5. doi:10.1001/jama.284.4.483. PMID 10904513.

Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
http://journals.plos.org/plosm...

What is medicine's 5 sigma? - Richard Hortonemail - DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S014... http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

Pharmecutical companies write their own "clinical reports", then bribe doctors to put their names on them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/soci...

Such "ghostwriting" is not uncommon at all.
Lacasse JR, Leo J (2010) Ghostwriting at Elite Academic Medical Centers in the United States. PLoS Med 7(2): e1000230. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000230
http://www.plosmedicine.org/ar...

There are bacteria and eukaryotes that have been found consuming plastic in the ocean.

Your purported support :

"The study is the first to document the biological communities living on the tiny particles of debris known as microplastics, and recorded many new types of microbe and invertebrate for the first time.

"Biological communities" living ON particles is one thing, similar to people living ON the coast ; people CONSUMING the coast is a different thing to people CONSUMING a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

And for reference, the Discovery channel is not a peer reviewed journal for publication of scientific reports. I'll grant that there is probably more science in the average hour of Discovery Channel than the average hour of ... well things like the Italian film that my wife is occupying the TV with at the moment ... but it's still pretty thin soup.

Following up from your link, the article seems to be a re-presentation of "Marine Plastic Pollution in Waters around Australia: Characteristics, Concentrations, and Pathways" Julia Reisser and 6 others, Published: November 27, 2013 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080466 Abstract Plastics represent the vast majority of human-made debris present in the oceans. However, their characteristics, accumulation zones, and transport pathways remain poorly assessed. We characterised and estimated the concentration of marine plastics in waters around Australia using surface net tows, and inferred their potential pathways using particle-tracking models and real drifter trajectories. The 839 marine plastics recorded were predominantly small fragments (âoemicroplasticsâ, median length = 2.8 mm, mean length = 4.9 mm) resulting from the breakdown of larger objects made of polyethylene and polypropylene (e.g. packaging and fishing items). Mean sea surface plastic concentration was 4256.4 pieces kmâ'2, and after incorporating the effect of vertical wind mixing, this value increased to 8966.3 pieces kmâ'2. These plastics appear to be associated with a wide range of ocean currents that connect the sampled sites to their international and domestic sources, including populated areas of Australia's east coast. This study shows that plastic contamination levels in surface waters of Australia are similar to those in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Maine, but considerably lower than those found in the subtropical gyres and Mediterranean Sea. Microplastics such as the ones described here have the potential to affect organisms ranging from megafauna to small fish and zooplankton.

Nothing there about organisms digesting plastics, though the original reportage from Discovery (sorry, it's not original - it's re-hashed from Agence France Presse, I think) does talk about the effects of organisms ingesting plastic particles, and I also pick up implications form Discovery's writers that the plastics then get caught up in the faeces of the organism, and the faecal pellets then sink to the sea bed, hopefully taking the plastic out of the system. Which might work, but if the pooh is re-eaten on the seabed, all bets are off.

Well, I don't see anything in that which goes beyond vague hints of mechanical erosion of plastic debris in the guts of marine organisms. Which is very definitely NOT digestion of the plastic in any chemical sense. (There is a mechanical sense used in the ore-processing industry where "digestion" includes mechanical reduction, but there is normally chemical digestion going on there as well.) I don't think you've made your case.

LINES and SINES _are_ everywhere. They are mostly silent, thanks to epigenetic silencing.

Here's more (with a nice plot): http://journals.plos.org/plosg...

Sort it yourself. Tweak search terms if you need to. A quick skim indicates that quite a few artificial sweeteners have established negative effects on the gut microflora, however, and the few whose abstracts I've skimmed add that it also makes for acidic feces & altered drug metabolism because of altered gene expression.

If you're going to idly drink something, soda is not a good choice, but I've used it on occasion when I want something that raises electrolytes or actually need 'empty' calories...which can easily happen if you're running a caloric debt.

Remember, it's not your caloric intake itself but the ratio of intake-to-burned that's important: You can eat a diet 100% free of 'bad' foods and still be fat, and you can eat a diet with a lot of calorie-rich food...and have problems having enough calories.

Too much stressing about your caloric intake probably is just plain unhealthy, anyway. I've been having to get it through an anorexic's head that the moment they started referencing BMI for calling themselves overweight, I got concerned. (Casual article covering parts of why BMI is a bad measure--basically, it's used because it's popular and easy, not because it's accurate because it's not.)

http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

Look at their graph and compare the first year with the last year. They're so f'ing similar.

Beyond that, consider they're not showing you how many illnesses anyone had... just hospital visits. Thus they could be going to the hospitals because idiots in the media scared them and it is causing a clearly very small uptick in hypochondria.

If I had a super power... it would be to urinate in the faces of people that push this shit.

Please contradict me. I would love to be wrong. I really would be... No really. this garbage depresses me with how dumb it is and if I just made stupid mistakes then that would be on me. I'd much prefer that. No really.

Until that happens... I'm going to be exposing myself to gamma rays and letting odd radioactive insects bite me on the off chance that I'll get the super power the world both needs and deserves.

Those aren't complete citations, but it wasn't hard to find the PLOS One paper, if anyone is interested.

It's not a terribly strong correlation, and there are some interesting outliers that defy it. For example, Nevada has a very high level of teen pregnancy (~90 per 1000) despite being an area without "abstinence only" education, whereas Utah and Pennsylvania have a fairly low level (~48 and ~51 per 1000), despite the latter ones being "abstinence only" areas. Nevertheless, if you take out those outliers there is trend, especially with a bunch of the highest values in the "abstinence only" category (e.g., Texas).

Even ignoring the inverse trend and calling it "unclear", it's pretty obvious the technique is ineffective or there would be a stronger correlation of some kind. The strongest case you could make is that it isn't doing much compared to other factors. Worse, the paper also points out that the US has the highest teenage pregnancy rates and STD rates among developed countries despite widely implementing "abstinence only" education for a decade, so *something* is going wrong with the strategy for sex education in the US versus other countries.

After cursory glance at that, it seems neither of the graphs in the EWG thing you linked to even mention GE. More widely accepted publications tend to say otherwise, depending on the situation.

I also like the part where no one ever explains how insect resistance is supposed to increase insecticide use, but only when that resistance is transgenic. No one would ever argue against conventionally bred resistances, and somehow, once genetic engineering is involved, then the genetic component of integrated pest management (which is to say, select varieties and/or species resistant to your local insect populations as a first line of defense against them, as opposed to chemical controls later) is suddenly a bad thing.

I do love that they mentioned the insects that have overcome the transgenic defenses. Typical anti-GE nonsense: deny the crops help pest problems, meanwhile say the crop resistances are creating selection pressure for resistance overcoming insects (which shows they slept through population genetics), then deny there are benefits, meanwhile say that the resistant pests are a huge problem. I mean, yeah they genuinely are a problem, but because they threaten the benefits we've already gotten.

Yes, there was at least one study with irritable bowel syndrome. Links: the paper or a random summary

"I agree it's not a problem." Many scientists disagree with you. John Ioannidis and Andrew Gelman come to mind particularly. http://journals.plos.org/plosm... http://andrewgelman.com/

The article referred to in the original news above is fluff. Here's the actual publication being used to effect a probiotic cure for the bats:

http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

Okay, 39/100 is an absolute, total and complete failure in all possible regards. Legitimate scientific fields don't get recognized for being able to backup 39% of there research.

Yes, that's why we abandoned the pseudo-science of medicine ages ago. Oh, wait...

Given the little data we have, psychology is 'average'. We won't know if they're doing exceptionally well, or exceptionally poorly, until more studies are done not only on reproducibility in psychology, but in other fields as well.

Reproducibility problems aren't often investigated, and very few fields are actively studying the issue. I suspect that we'll find serious problems in virtually all branches of science as these studies continue. Nature has already taken action. I expect this crisis to hit even physics which is certainly not immune to controversy.

There's also the question of fraud, to which no branch of science is immune. It would be difficult to determine, but very helpful, if reproducibility problems could be divided between methodological problems and fraudulent or falsified results. It's difficult enough to stop computer generated articles from slipping through. How much more difficult would it be to find "real" papers with falsified data?

If nothing else, this should stress the importance of replication in all fields. Scientists are humans, after all, not the purely objective machines you imagine them to be. It's a dangerous belief, often held by non-scientist "science fans", which ultimately undermines the whole enterprise in the minds of the public.

Ionnidis paper proves that
"After a research finding has been claimed based on achieving formal statistical significance, the post-study probability that it is true is the Positive Predictive Value,"
PPV = (1 - beta) R / (R - beta * R + alpha)
= 1 / [1 + alpha / (1 - beta) R) ]
where

Here, for psychology, with alpha = 0.05,
PPV = 0.39 = 1 / [1 + .05 / (1 - beta) R]
so

That is, these psychology papers operate in a field with around R = 0.15 true/false relationships.
Germany's Pharmaceutical Bayer found only 30 percent (PPV=0.30) of all pharmaceutical papers verifiable, corresponding to an R = 0.11.

You can change the ratio R to
R / (1-R),
the pre-study probability the relationship is true. Call this the "Background Probability" of a true relationship.

In the extreme though not uncommon genetics field, research seeks from 30,000 genes the (at most) 30 genes that influence a genetic disease, for which
R = 30/30000 = 0.001
and at this small R, PPV is then also about 0.001.

Don't lose track. There are three fractions mentioned here,
(1) R (ratio of true relationships to false relationships in the field, before experiment)
(2) Background probability = R / (1-R)
(3) PPV (after an experiment and publication, this is the probability the result as significant)

While the researchers/statisticians can set alpha = 0.05, and can get beta = 0.80, their probability meaning is clouded by their frequentist interpretation. What the statistician can't set, and what is never mentioned -- the Background Probability -- differs and is important in each research field!

When the Background Probability is moderate, a design with moderate power (1 - beta) can get good PPV. But research often works in a field of previously unseen results, or uses data mining software (a good generator of false results and tool of charlatans), where R does equal 0.01 or even 0.001. In these many fields, the Background Probability swamps any statistical design's alpha and beta. "Most research findings are false for most research designs and for most fields... a PPV exceeding 50% is quite difficult to get." Indeed, a look at the PPV formula shows that whatever alpha, even a power of 1 (a little thought reveals why more power hardly helps here) produces mostly false results if the Background Probability itself is less than alpha!

If R must be relatively large in a "field" for published results to represent true relationships, then a large proportion of relationships considered in that field are true (significant). Such a research field should be exceedingly boring. In the other extreme, in a "field" with relatively few true relationships, research produces mostly false conclusions. However, in followup studies from published results (eg, pharmaceuticals check results with further studies), R becomes large (note the conditioning). When you see that the probability published research represents a true relationsh

Anesthesia doesn't equate no pain at all. It is subject to research at Stanford to help anesthesists to determine if the patient under anesthesia actually suffer or not when he/she is unable to communicate. You can administer drugs to create short term amnesia, hence, someone may have actually suffer under anesthesia, but because he was under such drugs, no memory of this episode can come to his/her mind. Here is the article: http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

That actually would be the worse way given there's a possibility that the brain remains conscious a few seconds after decapitation.
Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’

Two conclusions were drawn from this experiment. It is likely that consciousness vanishes within seconds after decapitation, implying that decapitation is a quick and not an inhumane method of euthanasia [for rats]. It seems that the massive wave which can be recorded approximately one minute after decapitation reflects the ultimate border between life and death. This observation might have implications in the discussions on the appropriate time for organ donation.

If your depression is indeed low thyroid, that's one of the very easiest things to fix, and that in turn fixes loads of other stuff. And if you can persuade 'em to prescribe natural desiccated thyroid instead of or in addition to synth, that's usually better (not always. But I definitely do better on NDT.)

Yeah, the spay/neuter craze has done dogs no good. (In most of Europe it's considered mutilation, and in some countries is even illegal, but that's changing -- not for the better.) Cancer rates skyrocket (four times higher in some breeds). Other health issues that increase significantly: temperament issues, especially fearfulness and inappropriate aggression. Joint disorders, notably ACL and hip dysplasia. Immune issues including fatal blood disorders.

A good overview:
http://speakingforspot.com/blo...

another, with numerous citations:
http://www.naiaonline.org/pdfs...

a few studies I happen to have bookmarked:

http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

http://avmajournals.avma.org/d...

a vet's rant:
http://www.angryvet.com/neuter...

Unwanted puppies? There's an ancient invention that adequately covers that problem. They use it in Europe. It's called a leash.

Be well. I'd miss you. :)

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False!

P-values are bunk in many (30%) of cases.

It is difficult to give exact figures because there are so far few formal studies quantifying the extent of the problem. We know that for example psychology retractions have quadrupled since 1989, a rate higher than the growth in the number of publications in the same period. It is also likely that most scientific misconduct remains uncovered or unacknowledged. It seems that few scientists admit misconduct, but many more know someone else who is committing it:

How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data

"an average of 1.97% of scientists admitted to having "fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once – a serious form of misconduct by any standard – and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices." (from http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/sep/13/scientific-research-fraud-bad-practice)

But a placebo can still be effective even if you know it's a placebo: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/jou...

I wouldn't be so sure... http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

http://www.pnas.org/content/99...

http://journals.plos.org/plosb...

http://rspb.royalsocietypublis...

http://www.esajournals.org/doi...

http://www.pnas.org/content/10...

driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money,

You mean like every other conventionally bred seed they also sell? Better take a stand against conventional breeding. Or maybe you mean Golden Rice, developed by the International Rice Research Institute, or the Rainbow Payaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, or any number of other GMOs I could mention that have bugger all to do with corporations and are developed by independent university, public, or NGO scientists (who nonetheless are likewise opposed while anti-GMO people ignore them or have the gall to accuse them of being corporate or even vandalize publicly funded GMO research).

acquire copyrights and patents on key food crops

You mean like conventional breeding already does and has been for a long time? You mean the patents that expire and are used in public domain works? By the way, do you have a fair alternative?

'bundle' their own special seeds with their own special pesticides and weedkillers.

Like conventional breeding? Also, selling two products that go together is immoral now? Really? Guess Nintendo must be absolutely abominable for selling gaming systems and the games that go with them for decades, those monsters. By the way, are you referring to the special herbicide (not insecticide as you wrongly imply) that went off patent in 2000? And furthermore, did it ever occur to you that maybe farmers have adopted the herbicide tolerant crops in such large number for a good reason?

You don't even want to take a tiny, tiny risk of killing off pollinating insects or having 'terminator' genes or antibiotic markers jump species.

The refusal to accept any risk at all is a flawed ideology. That's the kind of thought that leads people to refusing vaccines on a 'risk aversion basis.' When one considers your rational of terminator genes (never even been used) and horizontal gene transfer (common only on an evolutionary time frame, and no more or less likely to happen to a transgene than any other gene; maybe I say we ban conventional breeding because I don't want rice sd-1 to jump species hmm? What risk do you see the NPTII gene you refer to having anyway?), your argument falls apart completely.

only if you own shares in big agro (unless you think buying expensive seed and complimentary chemicals from multinationals and not being able to re-plant harvested seed is somehow going to cure third world hunger).

You forgot increased yield, decreased insecticide, safer for farmers and consumers, lower environment impact by replacing harsher herbicide and soil degrading tillage, and saving an entire industry from a devastating virus. You mean beside those benefits you conveniently neglected to mention? And even if none of that were the case, you'd still be wrong because you'd be saying that the present use of a technology is not good therefore there is no good use for it. That's completely absurd, and made all the mor

Somehow these journals need to be paid for their work. Peer review is not free, publishing is not free. Just putting it all out on the Internet for free is not a viable business model, as is proven by the many pay-to-publish crap journals discussed here many times recently.

You mean the crap journals published by e.g. PLOS and BMC?

Let's see here what we have here...

1.Don't use tobacco...

Okay that one has some science behind it...

2. Eat a healthy diet... Although making healthy selections at the grocery store and at mealtime can't guarantee cancer prevention, it might help reduce your risk.

3. Maintain a healthy weight and be physically active... Maintaining a healthy weight might lower the risk of various types of cancer

4. Protect yourself from the sun

Apparently they didn't get the news that apparently sunscreen doesn't help

5. Get immunized...

For HepB sure, for HPV, the jury is still out as "Most infections with high-risk HPVs do not cause cancer. Many HPV infections go away on their own within 1 to 2 years. However, infections that last for many years increase a person’s risk of developing cancer..."

6. Avoid risky behaviors...

Like unprotected sex and sharing intravenous needles? Cancer is only a minor reason not do partake in these activities....

7. Get regular medical care...

Actual screening for cancer has only been clinically shown to be effective for breast, lung, colon and cervical cancer. This doesn't actually prevent cancer, only increased the odds of catching it before it becomes serious.

For some people, they tend to strongly advocate these things because it is what they do anyhow. As for the science behind a list like this, the science somewhat vague. Other than stopping smoking and getting your vaccinations, (one reducing environmental exposure and the HepB issue), it's a mixed bag when it comes to science.

The whole thing about eating health is that we really don't know what the hell we are talking about yet. First it's low fat, then it's low sugar, then eating cholesterol is bad, then we find out there's only a minimal relationship to the cholesterol we eat, and then we find out that there's good and bad cholesterol and then it doesn't really show a strong correlation.... Then vitamins good, then vitamins bad... Exercise good, too much exercise bad...

Of course, the answer is not to eat cheeseburgers and not exercise, the take away is to don't take all this crap on the internet as gospel, and all things in moderation, right? ;^)

Next thing you know they'll start practicing buddhism...

In addition to technical solutions, you might want to investigate stem cell therapy to regrow or heal nerves in the spinal column. The technology is still in the early stages but has been show to improve motor and sensory function in some cases. Here's a recent review article from PloS that might be a starting point for you.

Their journals aren't in my field (they are all bio journals), so I have not heard of them, but is it true that they are that big? Their web site wasn't much help in terms of information on subscriptions or article numbers, or I simply missed it. Can anyone familiar with them provide any input?

Their data policy might work for the biosciences, but good luck requiring all the many TB of raw data from a particle physics experiment to be put up somewhere. And in some instances, like that one, the raw data will most likely be useless without knowing what it all means, what the detectors were, what the detector responses are, etc. etc. etc. For experiments where it takes man-months or man-years to collect and process the data, making it all available in raw format will largely be a waste of time.

In general, at least for experiments done in the lab that use specialized equipment, raw data will not be very useful if you don't understand what you're collecting or familiar with the equipment. You can end up with situations like that guy who took the Mars rover images and kept zooming in until he saw a life form.

PLOS ONE (eISSN-1932-6203) is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication. PLOS ONE welcomes reports on primary research from any scientific discipline. It provides: Open-access—freely accessible online, authors retain copyright Fast publication times Peer review by expert, practicing researchers Post-publication tools to indicate quality and impact Community-based dialogue on articles Worldwide media coverage PLOS ONE is published by PLOS, a nonprofit organization. PLOS ONE is run as a partnership between its in-house PLOS staff and international Advisory and Editorial Boards, ensuring fast, fair, and professional peer review. To contact the Editorial Director, Damian Pattinson, or any of the Publications Assistants (who can be found at our contacts page), please e-mail plosone [at] plos.org. To access EveryONE, the PLOS ONE community blog, please visit http://everyone.plos.org/

The information is the journal is fixed and static.

That depends on the journal, e.g. this journal Source Code for Biology and Medicine offers the option to comment on articles, just like all the other Biomed central journals, or the PLoS journals.

PLoS is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit and discloses their finances in detail as required by the IRS. There are also links to detailed financial statements for the last 2 fiscal years which are audited by a 3rd party.

Which is why it's fairly costly to publish in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) with publication fees ranging from $1,350 to $2,900. Fortunately most grants allow you to use those funds to pay the submission fees and many universities (at least in the US) have programs that can help support the cost as well.

There is growing evidence that the dogma of taking all your antibiotics is mistaken. Or at least oversimplified. The theory is essentially that antibiotics kill off healthy flora while leaving antibiotic-resistant microbes to thrive and conquer.

http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2012/11/29/are-we-causing-antibiotic-resistance-by-trying-to-prevent-it/

The whole process, to date, is self-perpetuating, since serving as an Editor or Associate Editor for a prestigious journal also gets you points when you come up for promotion. As noted by others, serving in an editorial capacity or even as a reviewer for these journals is uncompensated. (You might think of it as falling into the same category as contributing voluntarily to an open source project.) The best that one can say for this activity is that it helps build an academic network, making it easier to obtain recommendation letters from senior faculty to include in your promotion case. The best way to disrupt this system in the short-term is for libraries refuse to renew their exorbitantly-priced journal subscriptions. (Money talks.) The high-quality online journals (e.g.,PLoS) have not yet made a significant dent against the biggest academic publishers.

He mentions Susan Kare but I'd like to give another shout out to her work. We are still using derivatives of her designs, and the brief simplicity of them really led the way for a lot of the icons we use now.

This story originated on PLOS ( The public library of science ), my number one fave science site. Peer reviewed! http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2012/12/06/prowling-catfish-catch-pigeons-on-land/

Our mission is to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. Every article that we publish is open-access - freely available online for anyone to use. Sharing research encourages progress, from protecting the biodiversity of our planet to finding more effective treatments for diseases such as cancer.
The Public Library of Science (PLOS) applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) to works we publish (read the human-readable summary or the full license legal code). Under this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.

Freely available doesn't mean that there's no cost involved. Instead of paywall/restrictions between article and readers, for PLoS and other open access journals, the paywall/restrictions are between the authors and publication. The activities surrounding peer-review, editing, and publication of an article are absorbed somewhere: either from the suppliers/authors, or from the consumers/readers. The authors paid the publisher (PLoS ONE) to have their article produced and published.

A downside of the author-pays (aka "open access") arrangement is that the research team has to either have the financial means to directly pay the publishing fees themselves, or convince a sponsor to cover their publication fees. Research that doesn't align with funding agencies' scientific or political leanings may not be sponsored.

PLoS submissions fees for US authors are $1350.

Apparently the 'minimalist' design of Apple stores was based on Steve Job's buddhist teachings. He was a practicing Buddhist and brought that aesthetic into his iDevice designs whenever possible, and also into the layout of the stores.

Some interesting info on his Buddhist past up to the current: http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/10/28/what-kind-of-buddhist-was-steve-jobs-really/

(an) estimated three per cent of Canadians who appear to suffer from acute electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, a crippling condition characterized by the onset of painful and debilitating symptoms in the presence or perceived presence of cellular, Wi-Fi and radio frequency radiation.

Versus what science tells us:

Earlier today, the British Medical Journal published an update on a study of more than 350,000 people that investigated whether there’s a link between cellphones and cancer. The conclusion? In this update of a large nationwide cohort study of mobile phone use, there were no increased risks of tumours of the central nervous system, providing little evidence for a causal association.

Call me old fashioned, but ten year study of 350,000 people trumps someone who imagines headaches from the WIFI at Starbucks.