Former Stanford president retracts Nature paper as another gets expression of concern
"The two Nature papers – which have together been cited more than 1,000 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science – were among five the university investigation examined on which Tessier-Lavigne was the principal author. The other three have been retracted – two from Science and one from Cell."
"Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is stressed that artificial algorithms attempt to mimic only the conscious function of parts of the cerebral cortex, ignoring the fact that, not only every conscious experience is preceded by an unconscious process but also that the passage from the unconscious to consciousness is accompanied by loss of information."
"I argue that inclusion of Occam's razor is an essential factor that distinguishes science from superstition and pseudoscience. I also describe how the razor is embedded in Bayesian inference and argue that science is primarily the means to discover the simplest descriptions of our world."
"The authors introduce the two main theoretical approaches in SM, Boltzmannian SM and Gibbsian SM, and discuss how they conceptualise equilibrium and explain the approach to it. In doing so, the authors examine how probabilities are introduced into the theories, how they deal with irreversibility, how they understand the relation between the micro and the macro level, and how the two approaches relate to each other."
"The findings gave a unique understanding of life and death in this early Christian Viking community and indicated that it was common to suffer from dental caries, tooth loss, infections of dental origin and tooth pain. These Vikings also manipulated their teeth through filing, tooth picking and other occupational behaviors."
New study warns "that protracted PhDs and lengthy postdoctoral stints are holding back even the best scientists from 'achieving independence and tenure'."
Author argues that "universities should have more flexible rules that allow them to promote people quicker if they prove to be 'really outstanding in their early steps' [...and that] funding should shift to younger scientists,"
One of the world’s longest-running experiments has been going for 144 years!
In 1879, botanist William Beal wanted to study how long buried seeds would remain viable. He buried bottles w different seeds in a secret spot on Michigan State's campus.
Every 20 yrs, a small group scientists dig up the bottles & seeds continue to germinate 🌱 (My husband @DavidLowry is the one on the right).
Congratulations to CBI Sr. Research Fellow William Aspray who just published Understanding Information History: The Case of America in 1920 (Springer).
CBI Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) History Award Call for 2024
Applications/nominations (self-nominations are WELCOME) due Feb. 15, '24, for book, article, other media from trailing 3 yrs '23, '22, '21. PLS Share! Cmt: @teaselmuir, G. Con Diaz, Dag Spicer, Liz Petrick & me.
‘Tis the season to remember that all of Santa’s reindeer are female.
You see, males drop their antlers after the Autumn mating season, so since the world’s most celebrated reindeer are always depicted with spectacular antlers, we must assume that Ol’ Saint Nick’s entire intrepid team - including Rudolph - are female. #science#Christmas
"To address questions about the real appearance of St Anthony, we applied body mass estimation equations to the osteometric measurements taken in 1981, during the public recognition of the Saint’s skeletal remains. Both the biomechanical and the morphometric approach were employed to solve some intrinsic limitations in the equations for body mass estimation from skeletal remains. The estimated body mass was used to assess the physique of the Saint with the body mass index."
"Medieval hospitals were founded to provide charity, but poverty and infirmity were broad and socially determined categories and little is known about the residents of these institutions and the pathways that led them there. Combining skeletal, isotopic and genetic data, the authors weave a collective biography of individuals buried at the Hospital of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge."