And now for something completely different (or depending on your history folder, something exceedingly familiar)...



I'm going to begin this post with a copy of an Abstract from a paper entitled 'The pleasure is momentary…the expense damnable? The influence of pornography on rape and sexual assault' (Ferguson & Hartley, 2009) in Aggression and Violent behaviour.


The effects of pornography, whether violent or non-violent, on sexual aggression have been debated for decades. The current review examines evidence about the influence of pornography on sexual aggression in correlational and experimental studies and in real world violent crime data. Evidence for a causal relationship between exposure to pornography and sexual aggression is slim and may, at certain times, have been exaggerated by politicians, pressure groups and some social scientists. Some of the debate has focused on violent pornography, but evidence of any negative effects is inconsistent, and violent pornography is comparatively rare in the real world. Victimization rates for rape in the United States demonstrate an inverse relationship between pornography consumption and rape rates. Data from other nations have sug . . . More

[Scroll directly to the bottom for the check-list]

[See also the Skeptical Checklist v1.1]

I’ve had a couple of conversations over the last few days which have reminded how hard it is to be a skeptic. Perhaps this is misleading, it is not necessarily hard to be a skeptic, but rather it’s hard to become a skeptic.

Scientists, by training, are skeptics. In my mind they have a few clear advantages:



1. They clearly understand, both intuitively and explicitly, what evidence is;

2. They have a process for determining the quality of evidence / information;

3. They have practise in generating alternate explanations;

4. They understand parsimony;

5. Scientists are comfortable with not knowing, and accept that not knowing is normal and healthy;

6. They’re opinions / beliefs are frequently subjected to scrutiny; and

7. They are often surrounded by people who also share these characteristics.



Though it would be narcissistic of me to call myself a ‘scientist’, I do believe that I conform to these characteristics even though I am still earning my education. Additionally, I try to actively engage . . . More

An interesting spin off of my previous post about Dinosaur Science Camp was a was in regards to kids clothing and how I don't often see things like bugs, dinosaurs, rockets etc. on clothes marketed to girls (at least not frequently).

Becca pointed out in her comment that there are insects like butterflies and ladybugs associated with little girls, but I stood by my belief that the "creepy crawly" ones like spiders, centipedes and scorpions tended to be reserved for the boys section. The same is true for rockets, dinosaurs, trucks and other typically masculine icons. In general, they are hard to find amongst the racks and racks of pink Princess, Dora, and Hanna Montana adorned girls clothing.

Now yes, in all fairness I could shop in the boys section, but honestly my 4 year old wants to wear the princesses, fairies, ponies and unicorns (Hanna Montana is banned in the LabMom household.) She likes the real 'girlie' stuff. I am not going to fight it.

So imagine my surprise when this little number showed up in my twitter feed this morning, courtesy of . . . More

Plants never quite held an interest to me. I understood their vital roles in the ecosystem, I admired their beauty and their survival in the harshest of climates, and I spent a long time learning how they grow, evolve and reproduce.

But, they never were able to keep my interest compared to animals, which is why I studied zoology and not botany.

However, there are a few species of plants that I do like, and here they are:

Sundew



From the family Droseraceae, these plants look and act in an interesting way. At first glance, they appear to have some dew on the ends of their long leaves. But, like most plants, looks can be deceiving - they are true killers.

The droplets of dew are not dew at all, but a sticky substance known as mucilage that will trap any unlucky insect that happens to be attracted to the glistening globs.

Once the insect touches down to sample the fake dew, the true marvel of the Sundew is revealed. The plant then contorts its tentacles to the centre of the leaf, and traps the insect with a barrage of sticky globs of mucilage.

Once the insect is cornered, there is no escape.

It is survival of the fittest at its best.

*This entry conta . . . More

"This is the one thing you never want to mess around with. You'll wake up in the middle of the night crying like a baby and you'll have no idea why." These were the sage words of my undergraduate advisor, it's too bad they got discarded with everything else that I learned in undergrad.

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My scientific career has been filled with plenty of misadventures and screw ups. Most of them are really boring mistakes that didn't involve bodily harm, and only resulted in weeks of repeated work or extended nights in the lab re-preparing samples. Though, every good scientist has an epic fail story locked away in their skeleton closet. I think many of us go into science in the beginning thinking that we're unstoppable know it alls. That is until some event punches us in the gut to tell us, "Open your eyes and pay attention or else next time I'm going to aim a little lower and negatively affect your chances of reproduction."

When I was in undergrad, I worked on a bunch of projects ranging from ecology field studies to molecular biology projects in plants and fish. One of the last projects I worked on was one where we were trying to determine if fish bacterial infections could be transferred from mother to egg. This project involved c . . . More

I recently got an e-mail from David Bradley asking my opinion of Web 2.0 as it relates to science, where it’s heading, and how we can get scientists more involved in web 2.0 / data sharing / and the semantic web. I thought this would be a great topic for me to write a real post on since I’ve been involved in this field and trying to promote the ideas of web 2.0 in the sciences for the last 5 years.

For starters, I really have no idea what it will take to get scientists to be fully engaged with the on-line world. It's hard enough to get them engaged in the real world (I wish that was a joke…). I think for most scientists to get involved with a network, we're going to have to develop something that significantly increases scientific productivity, and I'm not talking just a free reference management site or being able to post lab retreat pictures to a profile. The last 4-5 years have showed us that scientists really are not interested in FaceBooks for science. The marginal success of ResearchGate, NatureNetwork, and LabSpaces can't be cited as triumphs because very little of wh . . . More

I bought my girlfriend a Wii some time ago and before playing any game we spent 2 hours making Mii's of ourselves and all the people we know. A Mii - for those not in the a know - is your Wii avatar. It is associated with your personal stats on games such as WiiFit and WiiSport. Now Mii's are downright cartoony, but we tried to make them as lifelike as possible. After you're done it asks for your weight and height (for WiiFit) and calculates your BMI. Now I had made my Mii a fairly fit looking character, but given I carry a bit of muscle, my BMI came out as 'overweight' and it updated my Mii accordingly, and blew the little guy out. I felt outraged! That is not me, what I created was me! And it wouldn't change me back without a judgmental message (yeah, WiiFit totally judges you).

I also created a second Mii. It was my stoner alter-ego. I used him exclusively when I was playing on the Wii after drinking. I created a dummy account because I didn't want to skew my 'real' stats.

I've also created some kind of weird cat-class avatar (who might have also been female, I can't remember) when I played Morrowind: Elder Scrolls (a game which I probably invested 150+ ho . . . More

How many times have you been presented with a decision and you've opted to sleep on it, sit on it, think it through, mull it over or any other [verb + preposition] combination?

I know I have. But the funny thing is I don't actually think about it. I don't know about other people but I find it really hard to sit down and weigh up the pros and cons in a situation like that. Often when I've chosen to wait it's because I need to go talk to someone about it, or to line up alternatives and contingencies. Here it makes perfec sense to wait - waiting, and the actions you subsequently engage in, allow you to make a more informed decision.

There are times, however, when we choose to wait knowing that waiting won't necessarily afford us new information. Experience tells us that its times like this we choose the fuzzy option of 'sleeping on it' in the hopes that it makes the decision making process easier.

I recently came across a paper entitled 'Reasonable Reasons for Waiting' by Tykocinski and Ruffle. Published in 2003 it's hardly new, but I found it fascinating all the same.

Their first study was a replication of work done by Bastardi and Shafi . . . More

I would like to thank AGreenMonster for these great questions for discussion. I am going to answer these from my perspective, which is from a life science company. I welcome anyone to give their feedback as well. In fact, if any of the readers out there feels like they have a lot to share, I would be happy to host your article on my blog so that you may provide more details. Just drop me a line.

Hi Jade!

The question from me would be, what would you say is the biggest difference between academic research and industrial research?   You say you don't have the same independence- how does that translate day by day?  Does that mean that you're given a project and are told what procedure to do at every step?  Or do you mean, that you told you need to work on x and get y in whichever manner you can?

To answer this question, let's first list some of the pros about working in an academic setting. You get to ask your own questions, questions that are interesting to you personally. No one is telling you what to do, how to do it, or for that matter keeping track of your time in any way. As long as you are productive and moving forward, you are doing well.

In contrast, in a company, you may have to work on a project that doesn’t interest you much. You ma . . . More

If you happened to be wondering -- or needed it explained to you -- why people get vaccinated, here is your reason.

The United States seems to be on track to have more measles cases than any year in more than a decade, with virtually all cases linked to other countries, including Europe where there's a big outbreak.

So measles is making a comeback? I wonder how that could possibly be happening.

Europe, especially France, has been hit hard by measles, with more than 6,500 cases reported in 33 nations. International health officials are blaming it on the failure to vaccinate all children.

Surprise, surprise. "But surely", the anti-vax crowd will say, "this has nothing to do with not getting vaccinated. That reason is just a canard!"

Of the 89 cases reported through the end of last week, 79 were people who were unvaccinated or who had no documentation of it, Wallace said.

You were saying, anti-vax crowd?

. . . More

So there’s been a bit of hype surround a paper entitled “Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males.” It seems a lot of people don’t like it, but I fear their dislike is something a knee-jerk reaction, and I feel like a little information could at least add nuance to the critics’ position.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like the paper, either. It’s just that most of the criticisms I’ve read seem to trend along these lines:

a) Scientist waste grant money proving something we already know (i.e. Women find funny men attractive); or

b) You can’t measure how funny someone is, therefore their conclusions are wrong; or

c) More Evo Psychology crap; or

d) Any combination of the above

see here (this post repeated frequently, verbatim) and especially here



Here’s why I don’t like that paper:

a) Given the data and the methodology the evolutionary hypothesis is overstated, and I feel out of place.

b) I feel that the methodology coul . . . More

I've had this one floating around in the back of my mind for a while.

. . . More

Michele Bachmann is a bigot and a hypocrite. She’s culturally inept and politically unsophisticated: Her thinking on many social issues (abortion and gay marriage, for starters) fall well outside the mainstream of Western Civilization, and she is demonstrably lacking in a fundamental understanding of the legal and historical framework underpinning the nation she was somehow elected to serve. She’s what I like to call a dumbass, or, in other parlance, a Republican. But it may well be that Bachmann, or some Republican like her, holds the key to the survival of our existence as we know it. Or, at least somewhat as we know it, because it’s pretty clear to anyone watching closely that “as we know it” is careening toward its expiration date.

Ask yourself: what are the truly critical issues facing humanity today? Abortion; the Sanctity of Marriage; gun ownership; the War on Drugs? Haha. No. The Debt Ceiling? Terrorism (or, more equitably, religious extremism)? Nope. Global Climate Change? OK, now we’re getting somewhere. But even terminology so broad as Global Climate Change** tends to oversimplify what’s happened, and make it seem like a separate “thing.” But it’s not just an item on a checklist, something to which we may allow ourselves . . . More

I've spent the last few nights buried in Facebook's API figuring out how to use their system to login new users. I finally figured it all out and you can now Login to the site and register new accounts using Facebook. The coolest thing is that we can import your data in here for editing to make the registration process essentially hassle free. No one likes constantly entering their work and education information at each new network...

Existing users can now login to the site using Facebook AS LONG AS the primary email address on their facebook account is the same as their email address here. Just click the Facebook Login button, give the login app access to your account, and voila!

I've done some testing of the system but please let me know if you run into any errors and I'll be sure to fix them!

Next on the facebook list is to sync comments on the facebook page with the articles/blogs on the website and vice versa.


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24hrs or less to live. Gotta make the most of it!

. . . More

So we (myself and the Psychobabble crew) are playing around with formatting and structure ideas for the podcast. Here's smething we're going to try and do a bit more of - Shorts. Something well less than 10 minutes that's on topic and covering a nice little chunk of information.

The following is only 8 minutes long, and it covers the history and science behind the idea of 'Women's Intuition'.





The rest of this post is cross-posted at the Psychobabble website, and covers some stuff we're looking at for the future of the show...

In other news we, the Psychobabble crew, have made some big decisions regarding the future format of Psychobabble. We’ve been doing this now since January and we think it’s time we tried to make the show a little bigger, a little better, and a little more accessible. Additionally, these changes should allow us to bring a little more insight to the topics than in the past.

Before I go on though – please consider filling out our survey - we’d like to know a little bit about you, about what you think, and how you’d like us to improve the show. Additionally, we’d like to know if the . . . More

Food labeling is complicated. And confusing. For one thing, there is a lot of information on there, from calorie count to ingredients to calories per gram of fat. You almost need a science degree to start to understand it. Serving size, for example, isn’t helpful. On a bag of Doritos you’ll see that the serving size is 1oz (28g), and that there are about 9 servings in a bag. Now I have a kitchen scale. I advocate the use of a kitchen scale in cooking. But I, for one, am not going to pull out the scale when I want some chips to watch the Niners in week 2 of the NFL Playoffs. I don’t sit at home on a Saturday after the Costco run measuring out individual servings of pistachios and chips and peanuts and pretzels. I have other things to do. And yes, the new labels do approximate how many Doritos make up a serving, about 12, but I’m still not going to sit there and count out 12 chips per person per serving. Friends and family will think I finally fell off the deep end and have me committed.

But one of the big puzzles about the nutritional information is how it is calculated. Calories can be done quickly. Throw the items into a bomb calorimeter and burn them. Measure the increase in temperature and calculate the kJ of energy. Then convert those kJ to kcal. 4.184kJ = . . . More

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Mary Canady is the founder Comprendia which provides marketing and social media consulting services to the life science and biotech industry. Additionally, she began the San Diego Biotechnology Network to help life science researchers and professionals connect online and at monthly networking events. Mary also serves as a liaison between life science companies and the science blogging community, and she can be found on Twitter at @comprendia.

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There is an ongoing, fascinating discussion in the science blogosphere about women in science, covering such topics as being a mom as a scientist (including Jade’s post which prompted me to write this one), women scienceblogging, and the ever present salary inequality discussions. To contribute to these conversations constructively, I’d like to list the best advice I’ve received as a woman in biotech. Since getting my Ph.D. in biochemistry, and moving into ‘industry’ about ten years ago, I’ve gotten great advice and also learned a lot. These recommendations can also be used by those with a science background in general, as qualities such as self-denigration are common and may be perpetuated by the culture of higher education.

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