Specializations.

I am a biophysicist who is married to a biochemist.

A biophysicist is someone who knows less about physics than a physicist, and less about biology than a biologist.

A biochemist, on the other hand, is someone who knows everything.

from SERIOUSLY COMMA

IT MUST BE DONE IN A WAY

IT CANNOT BE TAUGHT (HE

SIMPLY HANDED ME A SPEC-

IMEN AND WAS GENEROUS

ENOUGH TO SAY: IT IS EASY

TO IDENTIFY. HE SAID

NOTHING ELSE. I THEN

NOTICED THE OPPOSITE

LEAVES ARRANGED ALTER-

NATELY ON THE STEM AT

RIGHT ANGLES). IT REMAINS

TO BE SEEN WHETHER

I'LL REMEMBER, HAVE TIME

TO DIG.

- from SERIOUSLY COMMA by John Cage, originally published in Preuves (Paris) March 1966; reprinted in "A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings by John Cage", 1969.

e.g., "less hairy mothers would have to park their young"

Fans of our "just one sentence" feature may appreciate the "Out of Context Science" tumblr.

Do you mostly hang out with WEIRDos?

In their paper "The weirdest people in the world?", Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan argue that:

1. The scientific literature in the field of experimental psychology consists primarily of reports of experiments upon subjects who were handy and willing – namely, college undergraduates, who are "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD)".
2. "...WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers ... [in] domains ... includ[ing] visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ."
3. "...we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity."

having nothing to do with Gov. Mark Sanford

I have never hiked the Appalachian Trail. But somewhere I read advice for what "through-hikers" should carry in their backpacks, and I have used this advice to pack for various trips.

The advice, as I recall, is this:

Make three piles of gear:

1. Items you definitely need and cannot do without.
2. Items you might need, but could likely do without.
3. Items you definitely do not need, but would like to have along (e.g., guitar, camera, or frisbee).

Then:

• Take half of the items from the first pile;
• none of the items from the second pile;
• and one item from the third pile.

[Title refers to this. If you know the original source of the advice I recapitulate above, please let me know!]

8/day

I apologize for not remembering where I saw this estimate, but somewhere recently I read that the rate of publication of peer reviewed research papers using functional MRI is currently running at about eight per day. Don't know if that's calendar days or business days.

Q & A

War! What is it good for?

Writing as "Helvidius" in 1793, James Madison (1751 – 1836), who would go on to serve as the fourth President of the United States, explained:

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.

"twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift"

The single most valuable thing I learned during my years of post-doctoral training in the intramural research program of the National Institutes of Health is:

Never attribute to maliciousness anything that can be explained by stupidity.

And the single most valuable thing I learned in my first faculty position, at Georgetown University Medical Center, is a modification or addendum to that lesson, yielding:

Never attribute to maliciousness anything that can be explained by stupidity or inattention.

[title is from this]

Cognitive Diversity

I am extremely bothered by the trend of business partners or colleagues to aggregate their years of professional work and declare in marketing materials, for instance, "Between them, they have 50 years of experience." I thought this bugged me because it is a meaningless statement. What knowledge does this offer? It merely serves to distract me from their following statements, as I mentally attempt to divide up and guess their respective ages. (If any readers have an inclination of the origins of this trend, please do let me know.)

I now realize that, rather than lacking in meaning, such pronouncements do indeed impart a message: that this team is offering More of the Same. Why, their work is so similar, it can all be lumped and added up together! Such mathematical trickery serves only to disguise empty value.

Please, tell me about the cognitive diversity of your team. Provide information about the idiosyncratic knowledge of your team members. How is your team's cognitive diversity affecting its performance, and resulting in positive effects for your clients? How is your brilliantly assembled team of varying perspectives going to provide me with more creative solutions than a group of like-minded colleagues?