Letters Remain

Category: science

  • Corruption in the (Legal) Drug Trade

    Marcia Angell reviews three books for The New York Review of Books and in the process creates an article that acts like an in-depth primer on the whole sordid business of “fraud, undisclosed payments, data burying and off-label promotion that pervades the pharmaceutical industry”. Like David Balan on Overcoming Bias, I felt this was the most damning admission…

  • Short Introduction to Molecular Gastronomy

    A (very) short introduction to molecular gastronomy, by Jonah Lehrer for The Boston Globe. In the graphic four tips are shared which we can all add to our culinary repertoires right away (if you haven’t already): Don’t fret about salting meat For juicy meats, don’t sear: you’re evaporating the juices. Pasta sticking together? Don’t add oil, add…

  • Richard Dawkins and Derren Brown on Psychics

    For the documentary The Enemies of Reason the ‘psychological illusionist’ Derren Brown gets interviewed by Richard Dawkins, and the two discuss psychics and the techniques they use (e.g. Forer—or Barnum—effects). This hour-long ‘uncut’* interview also covers Derren’s fascinating account of moving from faith to scepticism to atheism: definitely worth a watch, even if you already…

  • What Will Change Everything?

    The Edge annual question, 2009: What will change everything? Nobody ever voted for printing. Nobody ever voted for electricity. Nobody ever voted for radio, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, television. Nobody ever voted for penicillin, antibiotics, the pill. Nobody ever voted for space travel, massively parallel computing, nuclear power, the personal computer, the Internet,…

  • International Year of Astronomy 2009

    2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, and to celebrate Seed Magazine has compiled some awe-inspiring images. For more incredible images, see The Big Picture’s Hubble Space Telescope Advent calendar.

  • Journal Requires Authors to Submit to Wikipedia

    Despite the growth of open access, most scientific journals are still closed and the access debate rages on. Now, however, the closed access RNA Biology has chosen another option: it requires all scientists submitting an article for publication to also create a Wikipedia article outlining their findings. From the journal’s new submission guidelines: At least…

  • (Bad) Science Review, 2008

    The third annual ‘celebrity audit’ from the charity Sense About Science has been released, and it makes for amusing—and depressing—reading. The campaign, targeting celebrities who promote theories, therapies and campaigns that make little or no scientific sense, this year takes a swipe at Tom Cruise, Jim Carey, Barack Obama and Demi Moore, among others. In…

  • Improving the Public’s Perception of Science

    Prof. Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles highlights a number of ways we can all help to improve the public’s perception of science. Buy and promote science books Demand science from the media Support science education across the board Train and/or support science teachers Encourage science students in other careers Encourage good commuicators Reward outreach Written primarily…

  • The Anthropological Divide

    Times Higher Education discusses the divide between evolutionary and social anthropologists.  On one side are the evolutionary anthropologists. “(They believe) our behaviour is based on things that we did to find mates in our years of evolution,” says Alex Bentley, a lecturer in anthropology at Durham University. “Then we have the social anthropologists. Some of…

  • MIND08 Talks

    Videos of talks from MIND08; the Design and the Elastic Mind Symposium. Collaboration between science and design is yielding a radical new way of visualizing, understanding, and manipulating the natural world. MIND08 is a conference […] which aims to catalyze this convergence. Bringing together an eclectic group of speakers and participants, including leading scientists, designers, and…