There is, of course, more to the story of what goes wrong but honestly doubting the existence of one’s mind is a good start.
Medicine
The human back is, we are told, an evolutionary disaster
But the real villain is hands and opposable thumbs, right? They’re part and parcel of all the bad stuff humans do. The back pain is incidental.
Study: Psychiatric diagnoses are “scientifically meaningless”
People can certainly derive help from their relationship with a psychiatrist but that is an entirely different matter from saying that the science is sound. As science buckles under the strain of trying to be a secular religion, it pays to get things like this straight.
Researchers: Comatose people do show self-awareness
Michael Egnor: This study is consistent with the work of Wilder Penfield, who showed that higher-level abstract thought did not seem to arise from the brain in a material way.
Learning from one of “science’s biggest frauds” (we hope)
Research integrity specialist: Too many research-misconduct investigations turn out to be inadequate or flawed
When medical journals get woke…
We hope no one facing a difficult diagnosis has to listen to someone whose basic mission in life sounds like dumping on herself instead of serving others.
Why has a historic medical publication gone weird?
A science writer asks, citing several distinctly odd viewpoints aired in the journal that was founded in 1823, including This year, the weirdness continued. A paper in The Lancet argued that certain food experts should be banned from food policy discussions. (Of course, the experts that should be banned are any that are associated with Read More…
Researcher: Virus sequences in human genome implicated in ALS
The genome isn’t what it used to be.
Top Ten AI Hype Countdown 1: IBM’s Watson Is Not Our New Computer Overlord
Watson won at Jeopardy (with specially chosen “softball” questions) but is not the hoped-for aid to cancer specialists.
Neanderthals practiced some forms of health care 1.6 mya
For one thing, they had to cope with injuries inflicted by large wild animals they were hunting: Researchers investigated the skeletal remains of more than 30 individuals where minor and serious injuries were evident, but did not lead to loss of life. The samples displayed several episodes of injury and recovery, suggesting that Neanderthals must have had a Read More…
Researchers: Genes cannot “be read like tea leaves”
Which make the effects of mutations harder to predict than hoped. Of course, it’s also a blow for genetic determinism. From ScienceDaily: Ever since the decoding of the human genome in 2003, genetic research has been focused heavily on understanding genes so that they could be read like tea leaves to predict an individual’s future Read More…
Times a-changin’ New Scientist now hails mind over matter
No, really. Here’s what they say in 2018 about the placebo effect (you start to get better when you think you are getting better): “OUR minds aren’t passive observers simply observing reality as it is; our minds actually change reality. The reality we experience tomorrow is partly the product of the mindsets we hold today.” Read More…
Newly discovered tiny tunnels run from skull to brain
They may be a shortcut for the immune system. From ScienceDaily: “We always thought that immune cells from our arms and legs traveled via blood to damaged brain tissue. These findings suggest that immune cells may instead be taking a shortcut to rapidly arrive at areas of inflammation,” said Francesca Bosetti, Ph.D., program director at the Read More…
Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor: The brain is not a “meat computer”
At Mind Matters Today: Early in my neurosurgical career, I was called to the emergency room to see a four-year-old boy who had had a stroke. He was playing on a sofa and fell on his head, twisting his neck. He told his mom that his head hurt—then lapsed into a coma. The CT scan Read More…
Different psychiatric disorders linked to the same genes?
From Mark Fischetti at Scientific American: Bipolar disorder, for example, was more similar to schizophrenia than to major depression even though clinicians may link bipolar disorder and depression, based on their symptoms. These insights could possibly reveal new treatments, says neurogeneticist Daniel Geschwind of the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the investigators. More. Read More…