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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: 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: Medicine
W.C. Fields (above) famously called death the “fellow in the brite nightgown.” A few years ago Donald Fagan turned this into a catchy song. To those unconcerned about H1N1 feel free to hum it on your way out the door, when said fellow gives you the victory hug.
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
He walked away from it cold, and went on to live a rich, fulfilling life. He and Moyers talk about something else for a bit. And then Moyers returns to the climb, "I know you did so much else, but I want want to return to that K2 climb again...," says Moyer. And Houston says, "The best thing I ever did."
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:20 AM • 0 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
Category: Culture of science
There were a myriad of choices (for animals; in the US and Canada there's only one adjuvant, alum, that's licensed for humans), and they all mostly worked, and sometimes one worked better and sometimes another worked better, or differently; but there was no understanding of how, or why. ... While a few new adjuvants are coming online (most notably MF59 , the adjuvant used in seasonal flu vaccines in the EU, as well as in many of the swine-flu vaccines now being made), the most common adjuvant for human vaccines remains alum, and alum is, at this point, the only adjuvant approved for use in the U.S.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:17 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
This shouldn't be something that flu experts feel compelled to discuss sotto voce. If the journal has good reasons to sit on the paper for now, it should declare them. If not, it should get the paper out in the open so the data and findings can be examined and vetted openly.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:58 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
Hard to accept that doctors miss things. They always will. The shame is that they so often miss things and then bury the mistakes -- as they do now about 10-15% of the time.
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Public health
The good news? The US's swine flu vaccines seem to work really well. The bad news? Because they use twice as much antigen as necessary, they leave about a quarter BILLION people elsewhere naked to the virus.
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:44 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Animals first. Then everybody else.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:22 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
