Assorted Links

Another psychology professor resigns after allegations of data fraud
Is 1 masculine and 2 feminine? Apparently. The pattern seems to be that odd numbers are more masculine and even numbers more feminine.
Lauren Collins shows again that she is one of The New Yorker’ s best writers
inaccuracy in the work of Stephen Jay Gould
Long ago, Daniel Koshland, the editor of Science, said (not as a joke) that “99.9999% of [scientific] reports are accurate and truthful”. Now it is clear he was wrong.
Rewriting financial history was, in one dataset, very common. This paper was published in 2009 but I just learned about it.

Thanks to Hal Pashler and Robin Barooah.

grading and identifying cocoa beans
benefits of Vitamin K2 (short)
In 1971, Babette Rosmond, a journalist, failed to take her doctor’s advice. “When the tumor turned out to be cancerous, [the surgeon] told her she needed an urgent radical mastectomy. Ms. Rosmond demurred, asking for three weeks to consider her options. The surgeon, who had never before encountered such resistance, called her a “very silly and stubborn woman.” Then he played his trump card. “In three weeks,” he said, “you may be dead.” “
blood passports

Thanks to John Shonder and Alex Blackwood.

ALS patients test promising chemical, collate the results themselves.
Did you know about “side letters”? New ways that Hollywood makes money by Edward Epstein.
Parents have stronger immune systems than non-parents.
Does sewer work improve your immune system? ” Sewer workers think so. “The [sewer workers] that Mayhew met were strong, robust and even florid in complexion, often surprisingly long-lived–thanks, perhaps, to immune systems that grew used to working flat out–and adamantly convinced that the stench that they encountered in the tunnels [while searching for valuable stuff, such as coins] “contributes in a variety of ways to their general health.”
Steve McIntyre tries to get Science and PNAS to enforce their data archiving policies. Thompson = Lonnie Thompson, an Ohio State climatologist.

Thanks to Adam Clemens, Melissa McEwen, and Navanit Arakeri.

Are the Boston Red Sox malnourished? Paul Jaminet looks at the connection between poor health of the Boston Red Sox and the dietary advice they were given.
Cognitive benefits of chewing gum. “Chewing gum was associated with greater alertness and a more positive mood. Reaction times were quicker in the gum condition, and this effect became bigger as the task became more difficult.”
Dave Asprey and Quantified Self. “He claims to have jacked up his IQ by 40 points.”
“Why is this country called China in English?” I asked a Tsinghua student. “It was a source of china,” she said. She was more right than she could have known. The world’s oldest pottery has been found in China. (Via Melissa McEwen.) Given this head start, it’s no surprise that for a long time China had a monopoly on really hard pottery, called bone china or porcelain. It was the only source of this china.

criticism of Richard Florida
tea drinking associated with reduced risk of stroke
James Lovelock changes his mind about global warming. “Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing.” . . . He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence.”
The American Psychiatric Association suppresses criticism of the forthcoming new edition of its diagnostic manual, the DSM. (The new edition is DSM 5). The more arbitrary, top-down and evidence-ignoring the actions of health professionals, the greater the value of personal science (= finding out for oneself). Here are criticisms of the new edition.
More about autism and ultrasound
Nora Ephron misses butter and bacon

Thanks to Bryan Castañeda and Alex Blackwood.

Thanks to David Cramer.

New study shows that a Yakult probiotic drink helps people with lactose intolerance and the benefits persist 3 months after one month of drinking it. Yakult is common in Chinese and Japanese supermarkets but rare in American ones. Until I read this article, I didn’t realize that people drink it because of lactose intolerance, which is much more common in Asia than America. Via Cooling Inflammation.
news from the Human Microbiome Project. “To the scientists’ surprise, they also found genetic signatures of disease-causing bacteria lurking in everyone’s microbiome. But instead of making people ill, or even infectious, these disease-causing microbes simply live peacefully among their neighbors.” You may recall that a Nobel Prize was given for the discovery that ulcers are caused by a certain species of bacteria. However, almost everyone with the “disease-causing” bacteria does not get ulcers. Apparently the “surprise[d]” scientists studying the human microbiome did not know that. If it were better known that you don’t need to kill bacteria to make them harmless, antibiotic usage would be less attractive.
Air pollution epidemiologist fired from UCLA after his research contradicts claims about the danger of air pollution.
How to conduct a personal experiment: biphasic sleeping

Thanks to Melissa McEwen, Peter Spero, Tim Beneke, Dave Lull and Bryan Castañeda.

Hospital costs at one hospital over 200 years (via Marginal Revolution). The graph of hospital costs versus year illustrates what you should never do: make a graph like that using an unlogged (raw) y axis (cost). It is nearly impossible — or actually impossible — to learn anything from the low numbers since they are so close to zero. New England of Journal of Medicine editors need better statistical advice.
Cooking with Marmite.
Steve Jobs, orthorexic.
The Telgi fake stamp paper scam.
preorder Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday