OK maybe I was trolling the audience a tiny bit there. Or myself.  Mostly I found the prospect of duelling inhibitors and enhancers to be hilarious, but reality is never so neat, as several interlocutors of fine taste and discernment quite rightly commented.

In fact, while the SSRIs do inhibit serotonin reuptake, this is probably not how they ( Read more... )

The SSRIs--selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors--are a class of drugs commonly used as antidepressants. They 'work' by keeping neurons from absorbing serotonin from the synaptic cleft back into the cell, increasing the amount of available serotonin. This is good because serotonin is made of tiny pixies who want to be free, so keeping it out of ( Read more... )

Here's an article from the current issue of the New Yorker: The Baby In The Well. It argues that empathy can blind us to important facts. It's therefore ironic that it contains the following throwaway claim:Meanwhile--just to begin a very long list--almost twenty million American children go to bed hungry each night, and the federal food-stamp ( Read more... )

Obesity is strongly linked in the public mind to moral failure. One often hears remarks like, 'the solution to obesity is simple: eat less and exercise more.' In particular, obesity is linked to weakness of will, self-care and integrity ( Read more... )

The Venet et al. paper did get published, after all (though after multiple rejections from oncology journals), and suggests at least two valuable results, one specific and one general.

First, it gives strong evidence that cancer cells are more prone to expressing genes in general. That seems like a valuable high-level insight. It's not that the ( Read more... )

Taken from the study referenced in the previous post:


( Read more... )

Most Random Gene Expression Signatures Are Significantly Associated with Breast Cancer Outcome:..Researchers often suggest that a biological mechanism is relevant to human cancer from the statistical association of a gene expression marker (a signature) of this mechanism, that was discovered in an experimental system, with disease outcome in humans ( Read more... )

Part way through his project to reproduce promising studies, Begley met for breakfast at a cancer conference with the lead scientist of one of the problematic studies ( Read more... )

[D]uring one of her experiments, Patty noticed that an inflating drake’s penis could burst through a silicone model of an oviduct ( Read more... )

Lately I've seen a number of people post stuff about the Chernobyl disaster and how it proves that nuclear power is terrible. Then they talk about how we need more Marxism.

...

ETA: Of course, there's no shortage of fools willing to blame the situation at Fukushima on capitalism.