Now on ScienceBlogs: My Mother's Hairbrush and the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) Right now I'm writing my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which explores the hypothesis that the genetic roots some of our worst problems and traits — depresison, hyperaggression, violence, antisocial behavior — can also give rise to resilience, cooperation, empathy, and contentment. The book expands on my December 2009 Atlantic article exploring these ideas.
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
May 22, 2009
Category: Brains and minds
Speaking of pleasure: Having lived with fire ants, stepped in fire ants, laid down with fire ants, and been bit just about everywhere by fire ants, this pleases me immensely: Parasitic flies turn fire ants them into zombies. The fly maggots eat their brains.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:12 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 20, 2009
Category: Healthcare policy
This gets at the deep, deep problem created by allowing pharma to dominant drug testing data while we lack the ability to collect information on how well various drug and other treatments actually work in clinical practice.
Posted by David Dobbs at 12:02 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 19, 2009
Category: Sports
The curveball further explained; Koufax Ks Mantle; and how even Koufax was better than his peerless stuff.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:36 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 18, 2009
Category: Matters military
A concern with bogus POWs suggests I have a problem with -- well, bogus POWs. Should it not bother us when people masquerading as POWs are collecting benefits and kudos and sympathies they didn't earn — and which others earned through rather excruciating means?
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:32 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
"A small, lemur-like creature may have been an early ancestor of monkeys, apes, and humans." Or not.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:04 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
"That orange line headed heaven-ward? That's our deficit. All those other lines dipping down? That's our deficit if we had the same health care spending per person as France, Germany, Canada, and the UK (all countries, incidentally, with higher life expectancies than our own)."
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:55 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 15, 2009
Category: Sports
The good curves do that: Even when you have that millisecond of curveball detection beforehand, they still seem to take a bend sharply and suddenly late in their path, as if some invisible hand gave them an extra tap. Here's how they (appear to) do that.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:22 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 12, 2009
Category: Brains and minds
Most of us recognize the power of the urge to conform , but you don't often see it evoked and displayed so starkly as in this old Candid Camera segment.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:04 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
"he opponents of health reform are, at this juncture, entirely isolated...."
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:28 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 7, 2009
Category: Medicine
While approaching an intersection you see a truck on the intersecting road is fixing to run the stop sign and smash you. You slam on the brakes -- as the truck driver slams on his. You release the brakes and roll through unharmed. Have you overreacted?
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:38 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Gene Expression 01.30.2010
Christina's LIS Rant 01.31.2010
Casaubon's Book 02.01.2010
Dot Physics 01.31.2010
Dynamics of Cats 02.01.2010
