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David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) Right now I'm writing my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which explores the hypothesis that the genetic roots some of our worst problems and traits — depresison, hyperaggression, violence, antisocial behavior — can also give rise to resilience, cooperation, empathy, and contentment. The book expands on my December 2009 Atlantic article exploring these ideas.
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
November 28, 2008
Category: Brains and minds
Jerome Kagan, a highly prominent developmental psychologist, weighs in the Dana Foundation's Cerebrum on the roots of the skyrocketing...
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 26, 2008
Category: Culture of science
Critics of the FDA drug-trial process have often complained that the drug companies are free to publish only the trials that are flattering to their cause (that is, only those that show effects above placebo and relatively low side-effects). As explained in Wired Science, UC San Francisco health policy expert and Cochrane Collaboration co-director Lisa Bero has been picking this process apart:
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:36 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
If you liked the Grifters, you'll love this: Watch Skeptic editor Michael Shermer participate in a classic con called the...
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:24 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 25, 2008
Category: Brains and minds
More wheels coming off the bus. Research Center Tied to Drug Company - NYTimes.com: By GARDINER HARRIS Published: November 24,...
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:57 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Food and Drink
Vintage Trillin:By Meat Alone: The Best Texas BBQ in the WorldThe first time Burka went to Lexington to check out...
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:14 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 24, 2008
Category: Music
Some musico-video relief from darker matters.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Psychiatry has painted itself into a nasty corner, and not necessarily because of bad intentions. The move from Freudian to biological psychiatry that began in the 1950s was spurred by the soundest of scientific impulses -- a desire to make the discipline accountable to replicable empirical evidence about physical processes rather than subjective judgments about theoretical psychic constructs. Some apparent improvement in antidepressants during the 1970s and 1980s seemed to confirm physiologically based theories like the serotonin theory; the discipline understandably got on the bus. But even as the chemical-imbalance theories failed to solidify -- and progress in related medications or insights flattened out -- the bus appears to have got hijacked. Now no one's sure how to get off without getting left behind -- and banged up pretty badly on landing.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:09 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
Computerized reconstruction, via BBC from Nature's The Great Beyond: Copernicus corpse confirmed - November 21, 2008 A skull from...
Posted by David Dobbs at 5:06 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 21, 2008
Category: Brains and minds
This one hits close to home, as I live in Vermont. As Carlat notes, Vermont is one of the few states to actually require drug companies to disclose drug-company payments to MDs, but the state allowed exception for payments related to 'trade secrets.' The companies apparently made the most of this.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:30 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 10, 2008
Category: Music
The wonders of YouTube. Couple of highly distinctive voices here. Wonderful stuff. Hat tip: kottke...
Posted by David Dobbs at 5:22 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
