Category Archives: Uncategorized

Evidence based medicine

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science by David Freedman We are taught that modern medicine is “evidence based medicine”. Evidence based medicine means rigorous scientific studies underlie every aspect of medical practice. Particularly drugs are supposed to be grounded in … Continue reading

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Mao

The card game “Mao” is so much like academia it should be named Academia, or perhaps academia should be called Ruthless Bloodthirsty Dictator Land. Since I’m not allowed to talk about the rules of Mao, I will illustrate by way … Continue reading

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Computers as Doctors

IBM’s computer “Watson” won Jeopardy recently. IBM’s claim that Watson’s progeny could benefit the medical community led Carey Goldburg to speculate on what the future of medicine may hold in this article, ‘The McDonald’s Rx’: How Computers Can And Should … Continue reading

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The Lab, Part II

I recently reviewed “The Lab”, an interactive video produced by the Office of Research Integrity, in which you can play one of four people who had opportunities to minimize the damage of another person’s misconduct. I had made a beeline … Continue reading

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The Lab, an interactive video on science misconduct

The Office of Research Integrity developed an interactive video for Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training, called “The Lab”. I am very impressed. The video was very well done. Only one actor seemed distractingly stilted, the dialog was not distractingly … Continue reading

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Can old professors learn new tricks?

A matter of trust, by Christie Rizk, is about fraud and scientific misconduct. In many cases of science misconduct, trainees (postdocs and graduate students) are eventually “convicted”. One might conclude that trainees are therefore more likely than people further up … Continue reading

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CellCraft

From www.freewebarcade.com, my 15 year old daughter is playing CellCraft. She complains it insidiously educates her. She just yelled, “I need more ATP! Who makes ATP?” “The mitochondria,” I answered. “Thanks,” she said, and grumbled that she was running low … Continue reading

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Grant considerations

Some professors have funny attitudes about what they could do with their grant money. As long as an experiment is sort of related to the general topic of the grant, they reason, it was fair game. When ordering supplies, the … Continue reading

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A new NIH blog

Sally Rockey, Deputy Director of Extramural Research at NIH, has a new blog, “Rock Talk“. I’m pleased about this development, because any massive bureaucratic government institution like NIH needs as much transparency as it can muster, and because she is … Continue reading

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When I’m grown up

Less than a couple years ago I was still wondering what I wanted to be when I grew up. At my age, another question has to accompany this question: when will I be grown up? Now that I have a … Continue reading

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