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This couldn't be further from the truth. The linked pdf from ehtrust.org is a preprint version. It is NOT the published version of the paper. I pulled the published version of the paper down from my university account and the abstract is completely different, and the results show no statistical differences between those exposed to the magnetic fields vs controls.

The pubmed entry has the correct abstract: http://pubmed.gov/29549848
Read it for yourself.

The ehtrust.org should be reprimanded for knowingly spreading false information.

Go figure out which journals are most relevant to the work you are doing, and start reading some papers from those journals. After all, if you haven't read current research in your field how can you know that nobody else has already done what you are doing? You can start by searching for your topic through something like Google Scholar or Pubmed. You may need to pay a visit to a university to access some of the articles...

But either way, it is important to be knowledgeable in the research before attempting to publish a paper. You'll need to be able to cite previous works from other relevant authors to show why your own work is worthwhile; that is hard to do without reading those works.

Now that I am at work, where I have access to cell, I can read the article and attempt to explain its significance. I will attempt to do this without violating copyright - although I see the work was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, which requires that the papers be released to the public (within a certain time frame).

The paper mentions that the species barrier has been crossed by some prions (BSE) but not others (scrapies). They are looking for a way to show cross-species interactions without having to use whole organisms. One of their findings was a "novel" prion by using cell extract of two different species (mouse and hamster).

They also commented that there is no current method for predicting which prions will cross species barriers - after all it is driven by a protein-protein interaction, as the prion-based conditions carry no genetic component of infection.

They further mentioned that their in vitro work showed prions can move across the species barriers without cellular material, generating unique prions in this manner. From my perspective, I would say this could be one of the more significant parts of the study - it could mean that the prions are stable enough to not need a cellular carrier, and could potentially be picked up through secondary contact.

Addiction requires:

1) Physical dependence (body chemistry changes to require the substance)
2) Tolerance (body develops an ability to deal with the substance)
3) Increasing dose (body requires MORE substance for the same effect)
4) Withdrawal (body goes through clinical recovery before it can function without the substance)

Nope. Those tend to be correlated with addiction, but are neither necessary nor sufficient.

Put two rats in identical cages. Implant drug injectors directly into their brains. Rat #1 gets a lever that when pushed squirts cocaine into BOTH animals' brains. Rat #2 gets a lever that does nothing. It turns out that rat #1 becomes a raging junkie, because the action-reward-learning circuits of its brain are hijacked by the drug. However rat #2 does not, because from its psychological point of view, it is receiving random doses that are uncorrelated with its behavior. Yet rat #2 gets the full spectrum of desensitization and withdrawal.

The scientific literature defines addiction as a behavior that produces no useful result but, in the addictive context, tends to increase the tendency to perform the behavior in the future. E.g., look up "conditioned place preference" on PubMed, a phenomenon which is frequently used in animal models of addiction.

There was a time when information was distributed with books. Students would read them and learn... Too much to ask?

The following term was not found and ignored: Chitimacha. See Details.No items found.

Please post these sources. Reading the newsletters from the Chitimacha website leads me to believe their small tribe (about ~200 accordin o the wikipedia) still has some minor crime and marital problems to report on a monthly basis. No proof of mental illness, but they don't sound like self-actualized buddhas either - just normal folks.

I didn't see the specific "ethically difficult" tasks that they were proposing, but pain research that involves *causing* physical pain *is* done and IRB approved. One way to cause moderate pain without physical damage is to inject capsaicin (the heat inducing oil in chili peppers) under the skin. In the article's description of the ethical difficulties, the problems cited (radiopharmaceuticals, plastic facial mask, IV lines) are somewhat specific to PET scanning and wouldn't be experienced in an fMRI setting.

If you're bored, go to http://www.pubmed.gov/ and search for "coghill" and "pain" and you'll see one researcher's body of work.

Some of this was funded by the US National Institute for Dental Research (part of NIH), which I always found amusing.

Isn't that from "The Fountainhead"?

Anyway, there's a counterargument, although it's purely anecdotal: the NIH's PubMed system. It's an online index of most biomedical research published in the last 50 years. Probably the most essential web page for every biologist in the country, created solely by the US government.

So this type of project isn't necessarily a bad idea. The major differences, of course, are that PubMed was probably created by scientists who knew exactly what they needed, and there's a huge incentive for journal publishers to have their content indexed. As a result, it's self-sustaining and I doubt it costs much to keep running. There are few government projects I can think of that have been such spectacular successes.

If you want to read the seminal work on this topic it was published by Michael J. Behe in Darwin's Black Box (Amazon.com). Behe has also published a number of scientific articles (He is a biochemist, you know). Search Pubmed (http://www.pubmed.gov) for "Behe MJ."

• Scientists have to pay to get published. It's called page charges. Even the Public Library of Science does it: http://www.plos.org/faq.html#pubfee. $1500 seems a bit thick if you don't know that most journals charge $50/page, more if you put in colored figures.
• If the journal articles are to be accessible to the public, then they can't just be free; there has to be a major change in the writing of scientific articles so that a layperson can get the gist of the material. This can only be good. Right now, the stiff prose of scientific journal articles is about as fun to write as it is to read. Personally, I find grants much more enoyable, as they require a critical review of a line of research and an evaluation of its potential impact on the taxpayers funding the work; it's as close to creative writing as you can get in science.

At www.pubmed.gov, you'll find abstracts of virtually every medical journal article published over the last 30 or so years. It includes the Medline database and some other stuff.

If you're wondering about a specific topic, fire it up, and in minutes you'll know more than most physicians ever will about real science in medicine.

In short, this is all pretend science. If you're currently involved with any psychological types, and want to have a little fun, ask them to name specific, peer-reviewed controlled outcome studies (i.e., that which seperates science from, say, phrenology) which show that anything they are doing is reliable, valid, or can change outcome. If they are honest, they will turn red, flap their arms and admit that there is nothing. If they are dishonest or ignorant, they will name some literature. Look up the literature on Medline and you'll likely see that they the literature is not as advertised.

Basically, if there is some aspect(s) to your persoanlity that is causing you to be unhappy, I'd work on that. If you are generally happy, then don't bother with this stuff.

Because it is squishy, there is a lot of room for psyhologists to push a diagnosis one way or the other essentially based on gut feel. I've had at least on psychologist boast to me that she and her colleagues work hard to over-diagnose cases so that kids suffering from PDD in any form whatsoever can get the treatment that they so desperately need. However, there is NO evidence that the treatment is either safe or effective. For example, even the "definitive" work on autism admits that all of the treatments are essentially untested -- the evidence that they help anyone is no greater than the evidence that they hurt anyone. After admitting this, they go into page upon page of recommendations for treatment. (This is why Psychology is a pretend science -- they never let a lack controlled studies get in the way.)

I am also knowledgable on the subject. My son has been diagnosed by a number of psychologists, and the results vary all over the map. The most empirical pschologist of the lot, judged by a Medline search of her papers (she looks at outcomes! And tests significance!) and medical reputation, told us to go away -- our son is fine, just a little language delayed which is not atypical in very bright children. The least empirical psychologist diagnosed straight-out autism -- a check of her writeup showed that she had purely fabricated stuff, no doubt in order to support her gut feel. (This will be aggressively pursued with our state's licensing board).

This strange disparity in diagnoses led me to do a good bit of research on the area of PDDs -- I've been in another part of the medical field for a while, and have published in peer-reviewed journals, run clinical trials, participated in big multi-center studies, and so forth, so I believe that I know my way around medicine and science. There is really almost no science on the PDD field. Really apalling.

So, until there is some actual science here, my hypothesis, which is just as well proved as any oter, is that most, but not all kids being diagnosed with PDDs, particularly the oft-diagnosed offspring of geeks, are simply shy/introspective/bright. This over-diagnosis would explain the interesting statistics out of California.

Mostly, it would really be good if some folks did some real research on this. Using science and everything. But the number of Psychologists who understand the scientific method can probably be counted on one hand.

Finally, my heart goes out to you. Good luck to you and your son. This is tough stuff to navigate.

I'm surprised that none of the very-bright folks that comprise /. have pointed out the following: The diagnosis of autism has jumped by 3x. Not necessarily the actual incidence of autism. Real prevalence and diagnosed prevalence are often very close to each other -- for example, in cancer and other diseases that are diagnosed through actual science.

In the case of autism, which seems to have followed ADHD as the psychological pathology du jour, real and diagnosed prevalence may be *very* different. I've had the opportunity to research the subject lately, and the lack of science in the area is astonishing, even by the pathetic standards of the field of psychology/psychiatry.

The standards for diagnosing Autism (DSM-IV)are extraordinarily subjective, and thus very open to interpretation. The tests used to try to get a handle on certain aspects of development in an attempt to make a diagnosis are known to be very unreliable -- different folks giving the same test to the same child will typically get very different results.

At least one Psychologist has boasted to me that they, and others, make sure to over-diagnose children so that the children can get the marvelous benefits of the treatment, often comprising 25 hours of one-on-one time with a trained educator.

The problem is that the treatments have not been shown to be safe or effective. To my knowledge, there are NO controlled studies that have shown that any treatment for autism is either safe, or effective. See for yourself, search PubMed. Or look at this a grudging admission from the definitive book in the field, Educating Children With Autism, an otherwise evil little piece of work.

So, we have a nasty diagnosis being pinned on all sorts of kids, and very expensive treatments that, in my opinion, are as likely to drive the kids batty as to help them.

Very sad, particularly when all of this money and energy could be used to better help the folks that really do need it.