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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.
Category: Books
David Shenk thinks my orchid-dandelion metaphor for temperamental plasticity is fatally flowed. I disagree. We duel. You decide.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:27 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
The concern dominating the Motherlode commenter thread responses, and in a few other places as well, is whether the "Orchid Children" of my title are what many people call "gifted" children (defined roughly as very smart kids who have behavioral issues requiring some special handling). The short answer to this question -- that is, whether by "orchid children" I mean smart-but-difficult -- is No.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:12 PM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
PTSD, orchid children, military suicides, coral isles, and adjuvants. That was a SLOW month at Neuron Culture.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:20 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
I can finally broadcast the news with which I've been bursting for two weeks now: Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt, publisher of many a fine book over the decades, will be publishing "The Orchid and the Dandelion" (working title), in which I'll explore further the emerging "orchid-dandelion hypothesis" I wrote about in my recent Atlantic story.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:33 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
This is a good example of how reflexive diagnoses, as PTSD has become for any combat veteran (and sometimes even prospective combat veterans -- i.e., troops preparing to deploy), can do harm. They can lead you to ignore other possible causes of the symptoms on display.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:36 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
Ray Tallis takes to those who paint all things neuro.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:03 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
This is a transformative, even startling view of human frailty and strength. For more than a decade, proponents of the vulnerability hypothesis have argued that certain gene variants underlie some of humankind's most grievous problems: despair, alienation, cruelties both petty and epic. The orchid hypothesis accepts that proposition. But it adds, tantalizingly, that these same troublesome genes play a critical role in our species' astounding success.
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:15 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
A robot writes a sports story -- but misses the lede. Still working on the forest/trees thing
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:20 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
"Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time." This goes for writing too.
Posted by David Dobbs at 5:44 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
That post reported the news (via FiercePharma) that Pfizer had tucked away in its financial disclosure forms a $2.3 billion charge to end the federal investigation into allegations of off-label promotions of its Cox-2 painkillers, including Bextra. ... Because my post was was one of the few things already on the interwebz before Justice held its news conference, the Google rush shot it toward the top of the search results.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:19 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
laelaps 02.02.2010
Gene Expression 02.01.2010
Greg Laden's Blog 02.01.2010
erv 02.01.2010
The frontal cortex 02.02.2010
