Or, to put it more charitably, medicine and psychology are far describing far more complex phenomenon than we like to admit.

For example, in psychiatric genetics, there are dozens of articles every year that find a new gene associated with a common and important condition (e.g. autism, schizophrenia, depression). After each new finding comes out, there are dozens of labs that try to replicate that finding, usually one or two replicate (or partially replicate) the finding, and five or six don't replicate it. Why is it so hard to replicate these findings? Probably because there are really dozens of independent genes that contribute to these complex disorders (probably in combination with each other), and some populations tend to have mutations in one set, while other populations tend to have mutations in another set.

We're moving towards understanding, but the disorders are far more complex than the assumption that there will be a single cause.

Why stop with Calculus? The path of modern medicine is being decided by people who can't tell a stem cell from a potato, or tell the difference between genes and jeans. We have epidemics of diseases that were largely eradicated because people aren't getting vaccinations. And we have lawmakers and voters deciding on nuclear energy and chemical waste disposal who haven't the slightest idea about what they're deciding. Calculus won't help that.

I don't know about the deep meta-analysis, but I agree that scientific papers use many of the same skills as literature. Having written more than my fair share of published scientific papers, and having been on the other side as a reviewer quite a few times, I can't stress how important it is that a manuscript needs to tell a damn story. It needs to have a point, and each paragraph needs to sell the reader on that idea. Perhaps it's not Dickens, but a paper that doesn't tell a story that the reader can follow ends up on the scrap heap in a hurry.

There are plenty of brain issues that aren't well modeled in mice, such as anything involving the prefrontal cortex (the front of the brain, where most of the higher-order thoughts reside). Mice just don't really have a true prefrontal cortex, which is where we do much of our higher-order thinking. The cousin of this gene, RGS4, showed up as a candidate gene for schizophrenia; mice lacking the gene are largely unaffected. The same case is true for most mouse models of psychiatric disorders, for that matter.

Also, there's not that much literature on RGS14 at this point (it doesn't seem to have come up in any of the GWAS -- wide scale genome association studies) for psychiatric disorders, but it has been identified in molecular studies as a target of P53 (a central cancer regulatory mechanism). It would not be out of the question for this knockout to have a significant increase in cancer risk (brain or elsewhere), but not have this detected in a small-scale study.

No, it's "Pud" from F-d company. Pull the wiki page on Blippy, and it points to Pud's page, complete with a photo with him wearing a "I'd rather be masturbating" t-shirt. Sure, I'll trust my credit card numbers to Pud. No problem.

I haven't seen anyone mention that the growth in Autism spectrum disorders may be partially due to geek lovin'.

And there, in a nutshell, is why many commuters like the idea of an electric assisted bike.

Expertise in any subject area that is likely to come up in a trial will almost certainly get you excluded from the Jury pool.

Of note, he was executed in Texas. Evidence that someone didn't commit the crime they were convicted of is not a reason not to overturn an execution in Texas. After all, he was probably guilty of something else, right?

I don't brake at every green light, but I do sometimes wait a half a second or two when the light turns green to make sure that the dumbasses have finished running the red light, rather than just jump on the gas and get t-boned. Are you the type that is in the car behind me laying on the horn 0.01 milliseconds after the light turns green, or indignant that I don't make a left turn in the path of an oncoming cement truck?

You've obviously got lots of experience and observation under your belt. And, you're obviously 100% right. I've convinced myself that terrorism is a left-wing thing, because try as hard as I can, I just can't find any examples of right-wing terrorism!

Actually, it's more like a "cytokine storm" than anaphylactic shock. The response is toxic, and builds on itself in positive feedback loop.

Add in sitting in Houston for 16 hours for "mechanical problems" on the connecting flight, and lose my luggage, and you've got a deal.

Are you sure we're not? I haven't seen a published genomics paper in years that doesn't have the raw data accessible in some form. It's a requirement for most major journals, as well as from most funding sources. If you want to publish, you release the data.

I agree with you that every moron thinks they can analyze the climate data better than the entire field of climatologists. Relatively few people think they understand particle physics better than the people at CERN; but somehow everyone thinks they're an expert on climate change after reading a few headlines that they instinctively disagree with (although they don't actually understand). Science is rarely a good spectator sport.