Garrison Keillor’s NPR show A Prairie Home Companion would sometimes report from a small fictional town call Lake Wobegon. Frankly, I found that show really boring, but I always chuckled when I heard this line: “Well, that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and …
The Lake Wobegon Effect in Science: Where Every Paper is Above Average Read More »
Idioms are helpful expressions. It seems many common idioms can be co-opted to apply to science and others can be taken almost literally with no change but funny implications for scientists. Please post your spins on science idioms here as comments or on Twitter with the #scienceidioms hashtag. There’s a madness to your methods section …
I recently started a poll on this blog asking for people’s views of post-publication (post-pub) review. Post-pub review includes a wide range of formats of reviews of scientific publications that occurs, as the name suggests, happens after the paper in question is published. In contrast, of course, peer review of papers happens before publication. Post-pub review …
Thumbs Up For Post-Pub Review in Poll; Dissenters Fault “Gotcha” Mentality Read More »
The idiom “you’ve got rocks in your head” means that you are stupid. What if I told you that you really do have rocks in your head and so do I. In fact we all have rocks in our head. Really. You’ve probably heard of or even had kidneystones or gallstones, but rocks in our …
Ear rocks & brain sand: there are rocks in your head Read More »
Post-publication (post-pub) peer review is one of the hottest topics in science today. Post-pub review means review of the scientific literature after papers come out. Post-pub review can take place on websites dedicated to it such as F1000 or PubPeer as well as on various blogs and even via comments on PubMed. In our first poll, please …
How Do You View Post-Publication Peer Review? Take Our Polls Read More »
A new paper in Science by Bert Vogelstein suggests that a good part of cancer is attributable to bad luck. There are so many big questions about cancer. They resonate with me very strongly as a cancer researcher and a cancer survivor myself (more on my cancer story here). What really causes cancer? Why does …
Review of Bert Vogelstein “Bad Luck” Cancer Science pub Read More »
One of my goals is promoting evidence-based medicine and science-based medicine that is in the best interest of the community including patients. Below is a list of recommended reading for you including mostly blogs, but also other resources that should be on your regular must-read list. Some are stem cell-focused, while most are broader. California …
Recommended reading for innovative, evidence-based medicine Read More »
It’s not technically winter, but it sure feels like it. Cold, rain, and darkness are here as the winter solstice approaches in less than two weeks. Imagine my surprise then to find a sunflower blooming in my Davis, CA garden along with my winter crops of beets, carrots, peas, cilantro, etc. You can see my …
Sunflower in winter, fungi, & other weekend garden musings Read More »
Change is in the air for the California stem cell agency, CIRM. It has a new President, Randy Mills, and CIRM is soon going to be like a new agency too. I recently did an interview with Mills that illuminates some of the big changes that are imminent. I also asked him what his favorite …
Radical Vision for CIRM Future: Interview with New Prez Mills Read More »
The Niche is the top, most authoritative stem cell and regenerative medicine blog on the web and the only one to our knowledge written by a professor. It is mainly written by Professor Paul Knoepfler of UC Davis School of Medicine, an internationally respected stem cell biologist and educator. Knoepfler is an advocate of rigorous …