“To be able to suppress your dislike or lack of interest in things and just do them to gain an extrinsic rewards like money or grades is a superpower when it comes to being professionally successful, but I… can’t?”

Med school selects for those who can!

Funny that the phrase “stylized facts” started out in economics and is being used in social sciences when 100% of clinical medicine is, in fact, based on stylized facts.

“Natural systems … may look like (a Rube Goldberg machine) superficially because we don’t fully understand what’s going on,” he said. “Once we understand the right way to look at it, we can hopefully appreciate it as a simple design.” Referring to GRNs, but broadly applicable.

🧪 Happy to see Quanta magazine recognized for its outstanding science reporting. Their website is an oasis!

“This is not the Apollo program; we’re planning to stay there for a whole month,” said Jim Green, NASA’s former chief scientist. He added, “The concept of acquiring materials and having habitats on the moon is viable.”

2025 is the year of the first Artemis launch and I can’t wait.

Also, if this week has already burned you out, Quanta Magazine is an excellent source of optimism.

🧪 For the five people out there who are interested in T-cell malignancies, one of the last papers we wrote with Dr. Waldmann is now out as early access at Blood Advances. It is a modest phase 1 trial of IL-15 and Campath with interesting results.

“Science gets entangled with politics; it always has and it always will. And every time it happens the reputation of science get damaged. I am of course not a scientist and cannot speak authoritatively to these matters; but I can at least point to some intellectual problems that need to be addressed.”

Full post here. As a scientist of sorts, I can only nod my head in agreement.

The Good Science Project is underselling how good it is. More like this, please. (signatures below the manifesto are a good — heh — example of quality over quantity)

🧪 Good morning to everyone except to whomever is in charge of the eRA Commons service desk. You’d think that a multi-billion dollar operation like NIH would have a decent answering service, with a call-back option, number in line, etc. ★☆☆☆☆, won’t use again (if only)

A marvelous xkcd from a few days ago. This one strip explains the trouble with odds ratios better than hours of premed/med stats 🧪