Posts

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

March 11, 2013

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6:57 PM | A full modular, $250K per year NIH grant doesn't actually pay for itself.

In response to this recent comment from Dave, You need people to do the work, but you don't need AS MANY. No...way. Not in a million years. Give me a break DM. You know this...as well as I do. which he made as an elaboration on this comment The role of the NIH is to [...]

March 07, 2013

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5:36 PM | Scientists: Delusional or selfish?

In email chatting with PP, as is our wont, I had the following query. Do you think these "do it to Julia" muppethuggers really think they have the best objective solution? Or do they really know they are just looking out for número uno? What do you think, Dear Reader?

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1:46 AM | Why cascading manuscript acceptance schemes can't work

For reference, Scicurious' proposal What if manuscript submission could be as good as a one-shot? Like this: you submit a paper to a large umbrella of journals of several "tiers". It goes out for review. The reviewers make their criticisms. Then they say "this paper is fine, but it's not impactful enough for journal X [...]

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12:30 AM | analogies

my blather on the realities of being an NIH extramurally-funded investigator is to "game theory" what screaming and waving in panic is to dogpaddling over to the side and climbing out the pool ladder.

March 06, 2013

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4:52 PM | Idle thought

Relevant to Sci's recent ranting about the paper chase in science... Sorry reviewers, I am not burning a year and $250K to satisfy your curiosity about something stupid for a journal of this IF.

March 05, 2013

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6:51 PM | This is why I love experimental psychology

because it strips away all the confident predictions about what you would do if some shit was going down...

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6:28 PM | Kington calls out one of the thousand cuts

Kington, as in Raynard Kington (PubMed), senior author of the Ginther et al. (2011) report that identified poorer NIH Grant success for African-American applicant Principal Investigators. Also as in previous Principal Deputy Director of the NIH Kington and current President of Grinnell College Kington. He had an observation in The Scientist recently, responding to their [...]

March 04, 2013

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7:08 PM | Sciquester Tales: PIs are just not "creative" enough

from someone on the Twitts going by @ilovepigenetics Annoyed that PIs prefer to cut positions vs. experiments. #sciquester #dotherightthing #shortsighted Fewer jobs=less taxes=less funding this was followed with an interesting response to YHN: @drugmonkeyblog Do the right thing. You have a responsibility to your trainees. and the lunacy goes on (reverse chron): @SciTriGrrl @BabyAttachMode I [...]

March 02, 2013

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4:07 PM | Question for the domestic terrierists

Why do many urban jurisdictions ban the keeping of a rooster but you think banning established dangers to life and limb (instead of mere sleep/wake cycle) is the equivalent of racial discrimination? ___ *having just learned at PhysioProf's blog that Jack Russell terriers are "statistically" dangerous just like pitbull terriers perhaps we are getting at [...]

March 01, 2013

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8:41 PM | It is always the chemists.

Every year we get an annual safety meeting from our EH&S department and they show us a bunch of instructional slides on how to handle various laboratory hazards around the campus. They always include a few chuckles, like the guy operating plugged-in powertools standing on a ladder immersed in a pool, the guy Lincoln welding [...]

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8:00 PM | Life in No-A2ville

The good Comradde PhysioProffe has launched a new discussion on grant strategy, informed by the past few years' worth of experience with the new reality at the NIH. Specifically, the reality that prohibits more than one resubmission (amendment) of an unfunded grant proposal. As you know, a whole lot of people weren't fond of the [...]

February 28, 2013

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3:57 PM | Pondering the Pitbulldenialista

Fascinating. The dog botherers always insist the dog attacks are due to "bad owners". And that presumptively "good owners" will never have a dog that attacks or kills anyone. We'll leave aside their denialism about their own doggy's noninjurious but threatening behavior and the inherent circularity of their argument for now. The interesting point is [...]

February 27, 2013

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8:46 PM | Oh the (seriously injurious) irony.

Remember the Maryland Court of Appeals decision labeling pitbulls as inherently dangerous? Well apparently that was undermined by the Maryland House of Delegates. One day after the Maryland House of Delegates unanimously approved a bill that overturned the Maryland Court of Appeals decision labeling Pit Bulls as “inherently dangerous,” an Edgemere woman was attacked and [...]