FieldNotes: Seductive Allure of Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations

The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations by Simon Oxenham at Neurobonkers:

.........As I so enjoy discussing at length on this blog, the evidence that people seem to fail to apply basic critical thinking to claims made about the brain is all around us. What I find equally concerning and somewhat closely related is the causes and consequences of a culture of "academic bullshitting" in which academics can feel coerced into speaking in a language of pseudoacademia, a language that only differs from everyday English in that it is impenetrable to the naive observer — enclosing an argument in a black box where it cannot be dismantled without great effort. This problem affects all disciplines to some degree, psychology perhaps more than others — as I suggested in a feature I wrote recently with Jon Sutton for The Psychologist. Taking advantage of terminology from neuroscience is just one trick in the toolbox........

Is it a bird? Is it a bat? Meet Yi qi, the dinosaur that is sort of both by Dr Dave Hone at Lost Worlds:

Researchers today announced the discovery of a stunning new dinosaur fossil: a glider with wings similar to both birds and bats. It has been named Yi qi (meaning ‘strange wing’) and is a small feathered dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic age fossil beds of China that have yielded a host of important fossils in recent years. Yi qi, like so many other small dinosaurs, is preserved with a full coating of feathers and was a close relative of the lineage that ultimately gave rise to birds. ......

Irish Eyes Aren’t Smiling: Decapitation in Medieval Ireland by Katy Meyers Emery at Bones Don't Lie:

Beheading was a popular mode of execution throughout human history- it is dramatic, final and is often part of a public display of power by the victors over the soon to be deceased. Whenever I think about this type of execution, I think back to the famous paintings of Judith slaying Holofernes. When I was a high school student, I took a summer art course where we had to do a large oil painting as our final project. I did a version of Judith slaying Holofernes, complete with a triumphant female in purple robes holding a bloodied sword and a decapitated head. Perhaps it isn’t surprising then that I’m a mortuary archaeologist… Moving on, decapitation and beheading actually have quite a long history, although it can be difficult to interpret this from the archaeological record. In addition to the execution style of head removal, we’ve seen certain cases where heads were removed after death as a form of ancestor veneration (see this article on Neolithic burials from the Near East and this one on gladiators), so the removal of the head cannot be assumed to mean something negative or violent- we need to look closely at the context and bioarchaeology.......

 

Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies by Thomas Leo Ogren at SA Guest Blog:

It’s the time year for watery eyes and itchy noses, and if you’re among the afflicted, you may be surprised to learn that decades of botanical sexism in urban landscapes have contributed to your woes. Arborists often claim that all-male plants are “litter-free” because they shed no messy seeds, fruits or pods. In the 1949 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, which focused on trees and forests, this advice was given to readers: “When used for street plantings, only male trees should be selected, to avoid the nuisance from the seed.” In the years following, the USDA produced and released into the market almost 100 new red maple and hybrid-maple-named clones (cultivars), and every single one of them was male......

Time on your side: how your brain 'encodes' your personal sense of time by Amy Coats at Occam's corner:

Those split second decisions, made almost without thinking. When to put your foot on the pedal when you’re at the red light. When to check how those sausages are doing. Remembering to grab your lunch from the fridge seconds before you leave the house. Or – too often – 20 minutes after. And those carefully considered ones. Do I just finish this paragraph before I make a cup of tea? Or do I wait until the boss is clear of the kitchen? Timing, that is our perception and estimation of time, is key in determining how we behave and in the decisions we make. New findings suggest that time in the brain is relative, not absolute. This means that your brain ‘encodes’ your sense of time depending on what happens to you, and not by the second, minute or hour. And this in turn determines how you behave.....

Against Therapies? (Maybe You Should Be, Too) by Doctor Ramey at David Ramey, D.V.M.:

I love that when people read my articles (thank you), they often feel compelled to comment. Most of the time, those comments and queries are constructive, and many people ask some really good questions, and offer some interesting observations. I love that. However, some people are apparently quite frustrated when a point that I try to make disagrees with their preconceived ideas, or perhaps their personal experiences. Rather than reading my thoughts with an open mind, and using those thoughts to expand their information base and – gasp – perhaps even using them to challenge their own belief systems, they may choose to make comments along the lines of me being closed-minded, or not up on the current info, or some other criticism that is not directed at the content of the article. Rather, it’s directed at me. It’s an old way of trying to discredit information – attack the messenger, not the message – and, frankly, it gets a bit tedious. But that’s OK, if you’re going to wade into controversy, you get used to it.......

To encourage environmentalism, let people be selfish? by Jason G. Goldman at Conservation:

The world is getting warmer, the oceans are becoming more acidic, there is a global biodiversity crisis. But despite decades of environmental messaging – reduce, reuse, recycle; save the whales – Americans as a group are no more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors than they were 20 years ago. Why not?.....

 

Birds, Brains, and Boats: The Harvey Karten Story by Ashley Juavinett at NeuWrite:

.......To be honest, it wasn’t how I expected to find Dr. Harvey J. Karten, neuroscience Professor Emeritus and recent inductee to the National Academy of the Sciences. But when I open the door his office on a bright San Diego afternoon, he is sitting in front of three monitors, hard at work. With zebrafish histological images on one screen, a neuron tracing program, Neurolucida, on the far display, and an image of his late wife positioned in the middle, it’s clear I’ve walked into a room where he spends much of his time. In the foreground I find a leaning stack of white slide boxes and a black baseball cap, while jumbles of cords, hard drives, and countless papers lurk in the background. For Harvey, the game is very much still afoot. Harvey Karten is an unsung hero in neuroscience, and a proud spokesperson for the non-mammalian vertebrates that are often overlooked in a field he dearly loves. What follows is just a glimpse into the insight and knowledge that he has gained from over 50 years in neuroscience.......

Spacecraft Crashes into Mercury at Insane Speed by Nadia Drake at National Geographic:

Mercury got a new crater Thursday, carved when NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft lost its battle with gravity and plunged to the planet’s surface at more than 8,750 miles per hour (14,000 kilometers per hour). The crash happened at 3:26 p.m. EDT, after MESSENGER zoomed behind the solar system’s smallest planet. This time, it didn't reappear on the other side, as it has done 4,104 times before. After four years of exploring, mapping, and studying the dense little world from orbit, the spacecraft ran out of hydrazine fuel in early April. For the last few weeks, mission engineers boosted MESSENGER’s orbit using helium gas, allowing the craft to fly almost impossibly close to Mercury’s surface and gather a trove of high-resolution data. It’s a demise that has been foretold for years, but that doesn’t make the mission’s end any less poignant......

Thousands Of Chickens Once Wore Glasses To Stop Them Killing Each Other by Esther Inglis-Arkell at io9:

“Eyeglasses” for chickens were once sold in the thousands — and they weren’t decorative. Rather, they were the only way to stop chickens from murdering each other. Learn why these lenses stopped chickens from killing, and see old film footage of hen specs.......

Robert Hooke and the Dog’s Lung: Animal Experimentation in History by Dr Lindsey Fitzharris at The Chirurgeon's Apprentice:

In 1664, Robert Hooke—a pioneering member of the Royal Society and lead scientific thinker of his day—decided to investigate the mechanisms involved in breathing. In his laboratory, he strapped a stray dog to his table. Then, taking his scalpel, he proceeded to slice the terrified animal’s chest off so he could peer inside the thoracic cavity......

When Do Scorpions Spray Their Enemies? by Felicity Muth at Not bad science:

Some animals defend themselves by spraying liquid at potential threats. Perhaps the most well-known example of this is the skunk, whose spray contains chemicals that smell awful to the animals it’s defending itself from. Other animals have slightly more exciting chemical sprays. Bombardier beetles can actually spray a chemical that is 100 ºC (212 ºF) as shown in David Attenborough’s ‘Earth’ series (a clip of which can be found here). They do this through a series of chemical reactions inside their body that then release the boiling liquid at exactly the right time (to prevent it burning itself).....

The legacy of flawed forensics: bad science and ruined lives by Susan E. Swanberg at The Tenacious Telomere:

Over the past decade, a groundswell of criticism has erupted concerning forensic science, a field once held in high regard, at least in the popular imagination. Forensic science, a discipline "relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems," is under siege on many fronts. One of those fronts relates to the admission of microscopic hair comparison evidence to connect an individual accused of a crime with a particular crime scene.....

Genetics might help grow the perfect cup of coffee by Diana Gitig at Genetic Literacy Project:

Coffee aficionados in the United States are familiar with the intense locality behind a cup of the good stuff. “African coffees are … bright, engaging, and, okay, sexy,” brags a popular Portland-based coffee roaster’s website....

Charcoal grilling might be adding carcinogens to your meat. Why doesn’t that bother you? by Puff the Mutant Dragon at Puff the Mutant Dragon:

In the early 1770s London doctor Percival Pott noticed something strange about the chimneysweeps in his town: an unusually high percentage of them had a rare form of cancer. Most chimneysweeps at that time were boys under the age of fifteen because kids were better at squeezing into narrow chimneys. Orphans and street kids, most of them, with not much family to care what happened to them either way. Pott found that by the time they hit their twenties and thirties they were unusually likely to get cancer of the scrotum. Outside of chimneysweeps scrotal cancer was pretty rare. But among chimneysweeps — much more common. He remembered one patient in particular, a young man aged 28 with a tumor the size of your hand growing out of his balls.....

Famous Cephalopod-On-Woman Sex Scene Reveals Octopus Isn’t That Into Her by Diane Kelly at Throb:

Tako to Ama (or, Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife) is a beautiful woodcut illustration from 1814 by Katsushika Hokusai and the ancestor of Japanese tentacle porn. I’m not going to discuss the woman. Her particular kink may not do anything for me, but she’s clearly having a good time. More power to her. I want to talk about the octopus between her legs. ‘Cos I don’t know exactly what that octopus is doing, but it doesn’t look anything like cephalopod sex....

And if that is not enough, more readings for later this weekend:

The next step in saving the planet: E O Wilson and Sean Carroll in conversation at Mosaic Science
T. rex's Oddball Vegetarian Cousin Discovered by Michael D. Lemonick at National Geographic
We Asked a Paleontologist What Dinosaurs' Dicks Were Like by Mike Pearl at Vice
Breaking the Sea Ice by Helen Fields at The Last Word On Nothing
You’re Worrying About the Wrong Bees by Gwen Pearson at Wired
Different Dog Breeds, Different Sensitive Period? by Zazie Todd at Companion Animal Psychology
New Research Gives An Inside Look At Lithium-Ion Batteries As They Fail by Melissa C. Lott at Plugged In
No more banging on the end of the bottle- New bottles that nothing gets stuck to! by Lucy Eccles at Sparkly Science
Bug of the Week: Busy Mud Dauber Wasp by Roberta at Growing With Science Blog
Murder Your Darling Hypotheses But Do Not Bury Them by Jalees Rehman at The Next Regeneration
What Facebook, Blue Jeans, and Metal Signs Taught Us About Tornado Science by Justin Nobel at Nautilus
The Evolution of Trust by Michael L. Manapat at This View of Life
Cats in the city: Tracking bobcats in Los Angeles by Jason Goldman at Earth Touch
Mesquite Invasion Threatens a Unique Species in India by John R. Platt at Extinction Countdown
The Danger Of GMOs: Is It All In Your Mind? by Tania Lombrozo at 13.7: Cosmos And Culture
A man of letters and soil by Lauren J. Young at Scienceline
REVIEW: Medical Monopoly by Dr. Jaipreet Virdi-Dhesi at From the Hands of Quacks
You're A Bioarchaeologist? What Is That? by Kristina Killgrove at Forbes
The Beautiful Drawings by Darwin's Artist-in-Residence by Elizabeth Quill at Smithsonian Magazine
Why Expectant Mothers Can Just Chill Out by Regan Penaluna at Nautilus
How the Polio Vaccine Trials Relieved a Worried Nation by Eliza Berman at Time-Life
Science Needs a New Ritual by Ben Lillie at Slate
A “Horse Storm” Is A Real Thing (But Nothing Like You Would Imagine) by Esther Inglis-Arkell at io9
Tube Worm Larvae Use Prickly Bacterial Flowers to Choose a Home by Jennifer Frazer at The Artful Amoeba
Could these giant dinosaurs have lifted up their pictured prey? by Jeff Hecht at New Scientist
For one flower, bad hair days are the best days by Alun Salt at AoB Blog
Lessons from The Stickleback by Simone at Eco-evolutionary dynamics
Gut bacteria easy scapegoat to explain diseases, but connections hard to prove by Meredith Knight at Genetic Literacy Project
Is “Brontosaurus” Back? Not So Fast! by Donald Prothero at Skeptic
Iconic. Almost by accident. by Geoffrey Giller and Richard Conniff at Yale Alumni Magazine
Vignettes of Famous Evolutionary Biologists, Large and Small by Robert Trivers at The Unz Review
A Week in the Life of U131 by Ambika Kamath at Ambika Kamath blog
Careful With That Axolotl, Eugene by Henry Gee at The End Of The Pier Show
Why Humans Took Up Farming: They Like To Own Stuff by Rhitu Chatterjee at The Salt
April High Five – Genetic Engineering, Brontosaurus and Loving Dog Stares by Paige Jarreau at Altmetric
Bed Bug Panic by Brooke Borel at Slate
The mathematics and geometry in John Hejduck by Gianluigi Filippelli at Doc Madhattan
The Decline of Pseudoscience by Phoebe Maltz Bovy at The New Republic
Do better written papers get more citations? by Daniel Lemire at Daniel Lemire's blog
Journal Club: Birdfeeding favours non-native bird species by GrrlScientist at Maniraptora
The Pseudoscience of Beauty Products by Timothy Caulfield at The Atlantic
Why Scientific American's Predictions from 10 Years Ago Were So Wrong by Sarah Zhang at Gizmodo
Open Science by Steven Novella at NeuroLogica Blog
The Beneficial Effects of Animals on Children With Autism by Hal Herzog at Animals and Us
The growth of the science PR industry has resulted in an overly exaggerated presentation of research findings. by Alasdair Taylor at Impact of Social Sciences
Why you shouldn’t wash your dishes by hand by Chris Mooney at The Washington Post
Resurrecting the Dead: Richard Conniff on Bringing Historical Characters to Life by Geoffrey Giller at The Open Notebook
Yi qi Is Neat But Might Not Have Been the Black Screaming Dino-Dragon of Death by Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology
Peter Thiel's interesting comparison of biotech with software by Ashutosh Jogalekar at The Curious Wavefunction
Urine For A Surprise: Your Pee Might Reveal Your Risk For Obesity by Poncie Rutsch at NPR - Shots
How do Animals Change Colour? by Ellen-Marie Smith at PH7 Science Blog
Dinosaur Diet Was Psychedelic by Melissa Hamilton at This View of Life
A Meeting of Art and Science by Felicity Muth at Not bad science



Previously in this series:
FieldNotes: a view to spotted horses in the morning
FieldNotes: The Word For World is Blue (or is it Gold?)
FieldNotes: Golden Mean, polite middle-ground, and optimal numbers of legs.
FieldNotes: speeding up and slowing down time
FieldNotes: from Captain Ahab to Jeff Goldblum, chasing the giants
FieldNotes: this is not your grandparents' neuroscience!
FieldNotes: Brontosaurus in, Food Babe out.
FieldNotes: Rogue Microwave Ovens Call Home
FieldNotes: Let the sleeping apes lie

Image: Judith slaying Holofernes by Adam Ehlsheimer, from Wikimedia Commons