Welcome to the NFL era of the brain injury epidemic. It’s always been an epidemic, but we as a society are only realizing it now. Remember those old anti-drug commercials that aired on TV I think in the 80s saying “This is your brain on drugs”? They showed an egg frying in a pan (see […]
The end of the NFL? The “new” brain injury epidemic Read More »
Here is the scientist’s guide to insulting other scientists. Strap in.Scientists have special ways of using words to insult each other and believe me it can be vicious even if almost uninterpretable to those not fluent in that language. These insults are sometimes brutal or fatal career-wise, but also sometimes ironic and telling of our
The scientist’s guide to insulting other scientists Read More »
It’s been a big couple weeks of headlines in the news for prostate cancer. Let me help you make sense of it all. I’m a prostate cancer survivor and cancer biologist. Prostate cancer is almost an inevitable fate for men in America and for many around the world, but a significant fraction of the cancers
Making sense of all the big prostate cancer headlines of the last few weeks Read More »
How do you use Twitter as a scientist? If you know how to Tweet (posting things on Twitter), you have a new avenue for interacting with the world including colleagues, students, editors, etc. Twitter can be a very powerful tool for scientists. If you, as a scientist, don’t use it you are putting yourself at a
The scientist’s guide to Twitter Read More »
On Monday, I made a big stink about Texas GOP Governor Rick Perry visiting a lab (that of Jeanne Loring) at Scripps Research Institute here in California because the lab in question is a leading group doing human embryonic stem cell (HESC) and Perry is a strong opponent of such research. I thought the visit
Great letter on Guv Perry’s California visit video from the artist Read More »
Yesterday I did an interview with the President of ICMS and then today I did a follow-up post providing my recommendations to them publicly on how they should move forward. Why did I do this? Or to paraphrase a stem cell scientist who just now let me have it: “Why the #*@#$&^# did you do
Why did I have a dialogue with ICMS? Read More »
Yesterday I posted an interesting interview with ICMS President Dr. Ricardo Rodriguez. I again thank Rodriguez for participating. Please note that one issue that I had already raised to Dr. Rodriguez was that I could not find the membership of their IRB listed on their website and this was apparently just addressed as that information can
Recommendations to ICMS for improved practices Read More »
I’m discussing the seamier side of science in a seven part series on what I call scientific sinning, including science hype. The first three pieces in this series covered Failure to Cite, Paper or grant killing and a Need for Speed. Today we talk about how bad it can get when scientists hype their work and I’m going
Seven Sins of Scientists Part 4: science hype Read More »
Why don’t professors blog and do social media? Why am I the only professor with a stem cell blog across the globe (if there are other please let me know)? Why do I do this blog? I’ve written before about why I blog and listed the numerous blogs about stem cells out there that I
Academia’s love-hate relationship with social media Read More »
What are the sins of scientists? It’s not all that bad in the grant scheme of sins. Still, some scientists do really rotten things, often to each other, a topic I’m exploring in a seven part series on what I call scientific sinning. I started my series on the sins of scientists a few weeks
Seven sins of scientists part 3: a need for speed Read More »