Blogrolling: Professor In Training

Professor in Training has been blogging about her post-doctoral training experiences in the biosciences, and is now transitioning into independence as a tenure-track Principal Investigator at a large research institution. Go check out her awesome blog!

More On Study Sections

Regular DrugMonkey commenter Becca has some more questions about study sections:

O Wise and Wonderous DrugMonkey… thank you for another extremely useful post. Like always, that just means I have more questions 🙂

What am I, fucking chopped liver!?

NIH Basics: The Study Section

A comment from drieken on a previous post asks:
Can anyone provide some context (eg, what’s a study section that’s not in the library?) for us not-yet-researchers?
This was echoed by a recent comment over at Evil Monkey’s pad.

is there an online resource that explains the entire grant review process (NIH, NSF, whatever)?

There was also an email I received some time ago asking for an overview of the NIH system (sorry for the delay on that!).
Let’s start with the NIH study section and how you should go about educating yourself with the information that you need to guide your own grant writing.

Blogrolling: On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess…

Another blog that I’ve been dropping across now and again is On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess… by Isis the Scientist. Blurb sez Isis is:

…a physiologist beginning a career at a major research university, I am working to establish my research while also being a domestic goddess. I have told students that it is possible to have both a career and a family. Now I just need to figure out how.

Sounds good, let’s take a stroll around…

Read Ilyka's Post, NOW!

Ilyka published a post yesterday that further reinforces what a deep thinker and powerful writer she is. All the wackaloon hypocritical fuckwits that respond to attention being drawn to their privilege with “Where’s your argument; where’s your evidence; you’re not convincing; waah, waah, waah” should be forced to read her post over and over and over and over. (Not that they’d ever get it, but at least it would keep them out of my fucking hair!)

An Editor Lays Down the Law

Incoming Editor in Chief of the Journal of Neurophysiology David J. Linden has written a fascinating editorial. As new Editors often do, he lays out his vision of science publishing. If I am not sorely mistaken, he is issuing a little smackdown to the GlamourMagz!

I’ve always greatly admired the scientific ethos of Journal of Neurophysiology. Reading the Journal reminds me of what I like best about science. I like that it publishes full-length reports,
which are still being cited 20 or 30 years on. I like that each paper can stand on its own, without 10 supplemental online figures… Most importantly, I like that Journal of Neurophysiology has been guided solely by publishing excellent and interesting science, regardless of perceived “sexiness” or “impact factor.”

Almost makes you want to jump into some neurophysiology yourself, doesn’t it? And he’s not done…

Blogrolling: Dr. Professor Chaos

I’ve been enjoying the Professor Chaos blog authored by River Tam of whom the about blurb says:

I am a young assistant professor in the biological sciences, married to another assistant professor (aka General Disarray) in my field. It is not uncommon for me to feel like I am Alice in Wonderland.

I think you will also like this one DearReader.

Clarification Of Comments On Medical Battery

My blog post the other day about the surgeon who committed battery by placing a temporary tattoo on an unconscious patient has generated quite a bit of, shall we say, consternation among some physicians and surgeons. In re-reading the post, I see that it was written in a way that was overly hyperbolic and generalized even for PhysioProf.
And for that, I am genuinely sorry. As bloggers, we always try to create controversy and argument, but I see that in this case I went too far.
Although I am not an MD, I love being a peripheral part of the medical profession, love being a basic science faculty member at a medical school, and love teaching medical students. I care very deeply for my medical students, and spend a lot of time and effort on effective teaching. I also have great affection for them, and wish them only the best in their future medical careers.
And that is why I am so concerned about the behavior of the “tattoo surgeon”. I do see an issue with paternalism, arrogance, and omnipotence in the profession, and I do not see the behavior of this surgeon as being solely attributable to a “lone bad actor”. Bad acts occur in a context, and I believe that to at least some extent, the medical profession includes a context that makes bad acts like this one more likely.
Accordingly, I disagree strenuously with something PalMD posted today about this issue:

The days of systematic pathologic paternalism on the part of doctors is long gone. It may linger in places, but it’s just not part of the culture anymore.

I believe this is not true, and it harms the medical profession to pretend that there is no longer an issue to be addressed.

Who are you, what are you doing here and why do you keep looking at me!!??!

Ed Yong recently asked his readers to tell him a little about themselves and what they enjoy about his blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science. The comments got really interesting to read. Since typical comment-to-lurker ratios bandied about run in the very-small-minority ranges, 5-10%, bloggers do not really have a good feel for who their readers are and why the regulars keep coming back.
This is by way of partially excusing my completely self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing behavior- blame it on someone else! (I’m not capping on Ed here, he’s an actual, you know, professional science writer with some serious chops. In his case this is obligatory market research for his professional work.) Anyhow, consider this one of those de-lurker posts from YHN.
I’ll treat Ed’s post as if it were a meme*. Among other things, that lets me blatently steal his framing of the question.

Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier, more academic fare? And if not, what brought you here and why have you stayed? Let loose with those comments.

Have at it my friends.
__
*If you blog, consider yourself tagged! [Update: Similar threads from ScienceWomen, Coturnix and drdrA.]

The Women of MDMA Research

A comment left by a reader some time ago took exception to one of my posts highlighting another blogger.

wow, that is some excellent PR for a grad student to get for free. perhaps you could spotlight a female grad student as well…?

The ensuing discussion planted the idea for this post.

Repost: Summary statement tea leaves

SciMonkbling Evil Monkey has a post up at Neurotopia (Version 2.0) in which he rails against idiot reviewer comments found in the summary statements. These latter are the written critiques provided by the three (typically) reviewers assigned to a NIH grant application. Applicant complaints about such comments are rampant and YHN as ranted about many such comments in his day. Nevertheless, writing and reading many such summary statements while serving on a study section has provided me with a great deal of additional context that was not obvious to me from my previous experience as only an applicant.
First, go read Evil Monkey’s post and chime in with your favorite idiot reviewer comments. Then come back over here and read the following thought I posted over at the old blog a year ago.

---

Now that we’re past the new-R01 deadline and heading for the revised-R01 deadline it is time to talk summary statements. Out they come and we start perusing them for clues as to how to revise so as to improve our score. Frequently, one starts tearing one’s hair when it seems that the reviews cannot have been done by anyone 1) with a brain, 2) familiar with the science or 3) who actually read the grant.

Surgeon Commits Battery On Patients

Apparently, a surgeon has been committing battery on his patients by applying temporary tattoos to their bodies while they are unconscious during surgery. Given the way physicians are trained to believe they are gods who function on a practical and ethical plane that is above mere mortals, this kind of shit doesn’t surprise me one bit.
From a legal standpoint, this is clearly battery, as these patients gave informed consent to a particular operation, and not to having temporary tattoos placed on their bodies while unconscious. It is battery in exactly the same way it would be battery if you put a temporary tattoo on the body of a stranger asleep at the beach.
For more discussion, see my and Lauren’s posts at Feministe.

Nevada Loves the Vicodin Part 2

In my post on the interactive map of US prescription opiate use trends provided by the Las Vegas Sun I initially missed the association with a three-part series on “The New Addiction”. This explains why the Sun came up with the map in the first place which I should have thought about a bit more. Bad DM!
At any rate there’s all kinds of interesting stuff in here such as a reader poll with only 53% of respondents (as of 7/22/08) saying it is “difficult” to persuade a doctor to provide a prescription for narcotics:

Jennifer Hilton says that after she had a tooth filled, her dentist handed her a prescription for Vicodin even though she was not complaining about pain. She bristled at the unsolicited prescription because she’s a program coordinator for an inpatient drug addiction program for adolescent girls that’s run by Westcare, a Las Vegas nonprofit that specializes in substance abuse treatment.

and a suggestion that the rising trend is all the fault of the American Pain Society in cahoots with BigPharma.

Sizzle Rhetoric Chapping My Ass

Chris Mooney has a post up at The Intersection in which he lauds an LA audience for “getting” Sizzle, for laughing “at all the right moments”, and rues the fact that many ScienceBloggers “either didn’t like Sizzle or didn’t appear to get it”.

The War on Drugs Didn't Work, Eh?

If you are a reader of my posts on drug abuse science you will have noticed that it rarely takes long for a commenter or three to opine some version of “The (US) War on Drugs is a complete and utter failure”. Similarly, while Big Eddie mostly comments on the liberty aspects (rather than the effectiveness) of the WoD himself, a commenter to his posts will usually weigh in, commenting to a similar effect.
Now I’m open to all the arguments about personal liberty trade offs, economic costs, sentencing disparities, violations of other sovereign nations and the like. Nevertheless, I’m most interested in the fundamental question of whether the War on Drugs worked. That is, to reduce drug use in the US. For those who believe it has not worked, I have a few figures I would like explained to me.