Posts

April 18, 2013

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I just had a brilliant idea. Which means that probably someone else has had it before. Have you ever heard of someone going to an open-mic night at the coffeeshop and laying down a science presentation? I am disturbingly captivated by the idea of whipping out laptop, projector and talking about some of our recent [...]

April 17, 2013

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8:37 PM | Tightly wound

A friend was recently observing that we academics seem pretty high strung right now. Cranked up to the breaking point, I'd say. Of course we are. This sequester and continuing resolution thing has really put the bite on. The lab closings that seemed only in the realm of a Friend of a Friend or a [...]

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8:29 PM | "Please oh please let the suspect look like the kind of person who represents the group I already suspect was behind it"

Pretty much everyone, as we wait with bated breath for the first suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing to be arrested.

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6:02 PM | Quickly avert your eyes

I don't agree with calls to not show the pictures of the gory aftermath of the explosions in Boston this week. It's hard to look at and it shocks some people. If your kids run across it you might have some nightmares or some explaining to do. So what? This is what happened. And there [...]

April 16, 2013

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6:54 PM | How do your prioritize your manuscript writing efforts?

One duffymeg at Dynamic Ecology blog has written a post in which it is wondered: How do you decide which manuscripts to work on first? Has that changed over time? How much data do you have sitting around waiting to be published? Do you think that amount is likely to decrease at any point? How [...]

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4:53 PM | Self-perception

From Adweek: Gil Zamora is an FBI-trained forensics artist with over 3,000 criminal sketches under his belt. Dove and Ogilvy Toronto hired him to interview and draw seven different women—two sketches of each. The first sketch was based on each woman's personal description of herself. The second was based on a description provided by a [...]

April 15, 2013

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6:52 PM | The BRAIN Initiative, first thoughts

The current President of the Society for Neuroscience (Larry Swanson) sent out a letter on behalf of the Executive Committee (Swanson, Moses Chao and Carol Mason) last friday. It encouraged the membership to get on board with the BRAIN Initiative recently trumpeted by the Obama administration. Swanson's letter included: While we should all continue to [...]

April 12, 2013

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4:54 PM | LPU Redoux

Another round of trying to get someone blustering about literature "clutter" and "signal to noise ratio" to really explain what he means. Utter failure to gain clarity. Again.

April 11, 2013

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10:17 PM | GlamourMag Science: Homey don' play that!

Since I know many of my readers are comparative children who may have missed the legendary sketch comedy show.... Now. There's some Twittage today about the Glamour Science situation and what we (meaning the relatively established professoriat) are doing to back up our fine criticisms. Particularly in the face of younger and transitioning scientists who [...]

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7:01 PM | Ignorance is dangerous when it comes to Journal Impact Factor

A Twitt by someone who appears to be a postdoc brought me up short. @mbeisen @neuromusic @drisis @devinberg Does this mean I an screwed since I have NO FREAKING CLUE what the IF are of journals I publish in?! HOLY CANOLI! A followup from @mrhunsaker wasn't much better. @drisis @mbeisen @neuromusic @devinberg I agree that [...]

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5:30 PM | A videographic depiction of laboratories trying to obtain a GlamourPublication

No summary available for this post.

April 10, 2013

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5:03 PM | A Note for the IDC Warriors and CrowdFunders Alike

intrepid reporter @eperlste filed a dispatch from the front lines of the OpenScience, CrowdFund War. I've reached out to several @qb3 incubator biotech startups to learn more about leasing lab space. $900/bench/month is a pretty penny! $10,800 per year just for the bench space alone. One bench. He didn't elaborate so it is hard to [...]

April 09, 2013

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8:45 PM | Video of the Day: Country Music

Country Music from Peter Atencio on Vimeo. Additional Reading: Ta-Nehisi Coates Treason Appreciation Month Country musicians often sing a GOP tune

April 08, 2013

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7:57 PM | Consequences for academic fraudsters

ORI has a new Notice up: Andrew Aprikyan, Ph.D., University of Washington: Based on the report of an investigation conducted by the University of Washington (UW), the UW School of Medicine Dean’s Decision, the Decision of the Hearing Panel at UW, and additional analysis conducted by ORI, ORI found by a preponderance of the evidence [...]

April 04, 2013

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7:44 PM | Too many applicant institutions at the NIH Grant trough?

Head of the NIH OER Sally Rockey posted another set of data on the extramural research population, this time focused on the applicant institution, aka, Universities, Med Schools, Research Institutions, etc. my staff and I took a look at the number of institutions that submitted competing research project grant (RPG) applications each fiscal year, going [...]

April 03, 2013

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10:07 PM | Thought of the Day II

Never, ever pay one bit of attention to what any artist has to say about his or her creation. They don't know anything about it either and their insight is just made up bullshit. Just enjoy the damn thing for what it means to you.

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9:40 PM | Thought of the Day

It is scientifically proven that the polo shirt is the tool of Satan. __ additional.

March 29, 2013

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7:12 PM | As if we didn't have sufficient reasons to hate the ILAF prats

A Letter to the Editor from Princetonian alumnus and Princetonian mother. A few weeks ago, I attended the Women and Leadership conference on campus that featured a conversation between President Shirley Tilghman and Wilson School professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, and I participated in the breakout session afterward that allowed current undergraduate women to speak informally with [...]

March 27, 2013

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8:46 PM | Jane Goodall, Plagiarist

From the WaPo article: Jane Goodall, the primatologist celebrated for her meticulous studies of chimps in the wild, is releasing a book next month on the plant world that contains at least a dozen passages borrowed without attribution, or footnotes, from a variety of Web sites. Looks pretty bad. This bit from one Michael Moynihan [...]

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8:20 PM | Fun NIH RePORTER tricks

Select your favorite ICs of interest in the Agency/Institute/Center field. Enter %R56% in the Project Number field. Submit Query. Click on various grants and hit the History tab Grind teeth in impotent rage.

March 26, 2013

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7:22 PM | Scalia is a such a classic!

This is great. Skipping to the part where Justice Kagen is grilling the lawyer Charles J. Cooper, Esq, on the harms of permitting gay marriage..... JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, could you explain that a little bit to me, just because I did not pick this up in your briefs. What harm you see happening and when [...]

March 25, 2013

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10:54 PM | Watching the NIH ICs respond to the sequester and the CR

writedit said: but with only 6 months left in the FY, this in fact translates into a 10% cut in their remaining appropriation. More than 80% of that appropriation is already committed to salaries, intramural research, and ongoing awards. This means that the small sliver left to make new awards takes the brunt of the [...]

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5:35 PM | Blogrolling: The Dose Makes the Poison

A new blog on drug toxicology has recently appeared and I think some of my Readers will want to bookmark The Dose Makes The Poison. What is it about? Well, the Intro post indicates: So, a long time ago in a land far, far away, a brilliant scientist named Paracelsus (who is considered by many [...]

March 22, 2013

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7:03 PM | The return of double doc

Our good blog friend drdrA returns! I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve taken three steps back from the blogging business for a while now. Although I don’t want to provide an exhaustive list of reasons for why I did this, I do want to offer a brief explanation. The first, and probably most important reason, [...]

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6:16 PM | What was I thinking

No summary available for this post.

March 21, 2013

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4:37 PM | Greybearded TDWFs FTW

this is making the rounds... From the PBS News Hour Or, as Walt Kelly put it much more succinctly

March 20, 2013

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6:41 PM | NIH: Parental leave longer than 3 months is a "life choice," doesn't count as "real" maternal leave

Wow, wow wow. A recent comment on my last post: "From what I'm hearing as I prepare to request EIS extension, they will not even allow me the actual number of months I was on parental leave because it was longer than the typical 3 months. I'm told this constitutes a "life choice" and cannot [...]

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6:24 PM | So noob, you put in one grant, it didn't get funded and you feel mopey?

from a self described newProf at doc becca's digs. Last week, the first NIH proposal I wrote with PI status was rejected... I knew things were bad, but it still hurts...Problem is, I don't know how to allocate my time between generating more preliminary data/pubs and applying for more grants. How many grants does the [...]

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5:52 PM | Failure to Replicate

I should have put that in quotes because it actually appears in the title of this new paper published in Neuropsychopharmacology: Hart AB, de Wit H, Palmer AA. Candidate gene studies of a promising intermediate phenotype: failure to replicate. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2013 Apr;38(5):802-16. doi: 10.1038/npp.2012.245. Epub 2012 Dec 3. [PubMed] from the Abstract alone you can [...]

March 19, 2013

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2:56 PM | Blogrolling: SciRants

Check out this new blog by @boehninglab