Assorted Links

The Practice of Personal Science (talk by Gary Wolf)
fingerprints predict mental abilities (might be gated).
“When compared with nondepressed individuals, both medically ill and medically healthy patients with MDD [Major Depressive Disorder] have been found to exhibit all of the cardinal features of inflammation.” Article here.
“A professor of physics [from Australia] told me: Brian [J. O’Brian, a professor of physics], I completely support what you’re saying [about lack of evidence for man-made climate change], but I’ve got 65 researchers in my laboratory and the only funding I can get for them and to get their PhDs is greenhouse funding from Canberra or wherever. Twenty years people have been indoctrinated.”. Excerpts here.

Intervention bias by Nassim Taleb
article about self-tracking in the Economic Times (India).
Autism and PFCs
Two weeks of FitBit
Psychology professor Marc Hauser resigns from Harvard
Stay classy, Larry Summers. Calling people far less powerful than himself “assholes” is entirely consistent with this. I like to think if Spy magazine still existed, it would run a Larry Summers Watch.

Thanks to Dave Lull and Aaron Blaisdell.

MMO (massively multiplayer online) game connoisseurship
Thorstein Veblen lives! (cartoon)
article about self-tracking in Technology Review with several associated articles. The author, Emily Singer, describes a month of self-tracking, including what went wrong.
triumph of new-age medicine. Emily Blackburn, a Nobel Prize winner, says modern medicine does a good job with infectious disease. What about antibiotic resistance? What about failing to understand how to boost the immune system?
Medtronic didn’t waste $23 million. Associated article. A surgeon named Thomas Zdeblick, who received $23 million from Medtronic, has drawn attention away from the company by claiming he has no financial interest in a product that generates substantial income for him whenever it is used according to FDA guidelines.

Thanks to Tim Lundeen, J.C. and Ben Casnocha.

2007 IPCC climate model predictions compared to what actually happened. I hope the discrepancy will be enlightening.
In response to food safety scares, the Chinese Health Ministry has announced measures to combat and contain ‘the few media organizations that are deliberately misleading the public.’”
Dangerous hospitals. “Only 14 percent of physicians favored making hospital errors public.”
Track your breath.

Thanks to Dennis Mangan.

FT on the First Quantified Self Conference
great library of articles about hormesis. Such as Hotel Hormesis (from the MIT undergraduate research journal).
Pay attention to lunch. “Rated vividness of lunch memory was negatively correlated with snack intake.”
Dean of medicine at the University of Alberta plagiarizes well-known graduation speech. Philosophy professor says this “merits no more than a wrist-slap.” In an apology, the dean says the actual author “was flattered by my use of his text and took no offense,” apparently unaware that boasting is not appropriate in an apology.
More plagiarism by Canadian medical school professors — this time in a report on medical ethics.
The philosophy of CureTogether

Thanks to Grace Jone, Anne Weiss and Bryon Castañeda.

n=1 tests of low-carb products. Are low-carb versions of everyday foods (such as pasta) better for your blood sugar, as claimed?
Chelation improves Alzheimer’s. After lengthy trial and error.
How to teach computer programming. The article contains a quote (“That student is taught the best who is told the least”) from Robert Moore, a college mathematics teacher. An article by Paul Halmos about Moore’s method (“The best way to learn is to do” it began) inspired me to start my self-experimentation.
Overview of the first Quantified Self conference

Category: quantified self movement