Happy accidents, in Art and Science

Blobs of ink spill over the page.. and out of the shadowy pool emerge visions of tubing and syringes, veination, neurons, and pulsing organs. Vesna Jovanovic described a while back how she came to create her Pareidolia series of images, like the one below, out of randomly spilled ink.

Art and science both usually require a process of study, synthesis, and imagination to generate great new ideas - visionary new hypotheses, experiments, or masterpieces. But the haphazard nature of Vesna's inkblot creations remind me of another way that great scienctific discoveries have oft been achieved - by happy accident.

Most people have heard the story of penicillin's discovery. Absent-minded scientist (Alexander Fleming) leaves bacterial cultures out unprotected, returns to find a fungus has invaded, surrounded by a bateriocidal ring of death. But there is also the story of Constantin Fahlberg, who discovered the sweet properties of saccharin by contaminating his meal with hands still dirty from the lab (presumably then returning to the lab to taste his coal tar extracts and figure out which one was so delicious). And Percy L. Spencer was set on the path to create the modern microwave oven after a magnetron (a component found at the heart of radars) melted the chocolate bar in his pocket. And many more...

Read more:
discovery top 10 accidental inventions
popsci top 10 accidental science
Vesna Jovanovic

Science-Based Medicine

For those with ADD, the condensed-soup version of my previous post.

Read this blog:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Science-Based Medicine (note: should there be any other kind?)

So, I have fallen off the horse that I once so valiantly declared I would ride fast and true... the horse of science journalism. Maybe I haven't fallen off, so much, but taken a detour called grad school. And while I have never before been bombarded with so many amazing ideas, ripe fodder for my blog, I have also never been so busy.

My dilemma is this: I refuse to write about something (usually a current popular and controversial science/health issue) without doing sufficient research on the subject that I feel I can write an educated, unbiased, and hopefully enlightening commentary. This usually takes me a long time... and extra-curricular time has been in short supply lately.

So let me present you with a blog that does just what I would like to, and that has the man-power and credentials to back itself up. Science-Based Medicine is a blog written by a number of physicians and scientists, who identify controversies in health and medicine (eg. vaccine safety, alternative medicine), and thoroughly research the subjects and do an excellent job of detangling the myths and pseudoscience from the well-founded science. To be fair, the odd article does exhibit the author's contempt for pseudoscience and crankery, but in the end, the facts speak for themselves.

Props to the crew of SBM... I wish everyone would read this blog!

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Monkeying around at the beach

Feeling the summer heat? Heading to the beach? Bringing your favourite cool, refreshing beverages with you? Watch out for the alcoholic monkeys!



As you can see from the video, alcoholism isn't unique to humans. Maybe these guys should be the next organism I study for my fetal alcohol exposure research... any excuse to do a research project in the Caribbean!

To boldly go where most young Ontarions have gone before...

I have recently become the proud owner of an Honours Bachelor's of Science degree in Biomedical Toxicology. And with this degree in hand (or on the wall), I have traveled from Southern Ontario to the mecca of the Canadian youth... British Columbia.

But, unlike many, I have not come to pick fruit or live in a camper van on the west coast of the Island, while the spray of the ocean tickles my face and the breeze of freedom tousles my hair. Here, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, I have begun my Master's of Science degree in Medical Genetics. Here, I hope to bring new light into the fields of epigenetics and fetal programming. And here, I hope to conduct research that, partnered with the various hospitals and research centres in Vancouver, will contribute something translatable and tangible to diagnostic or therapeutic medicine.

Here, I begin my next adventure in science!

A Short History of Medicine

A Short History of Medicine: "Doctor, I have an ear ache."

2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."
1000 A.D. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
2000 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root!"

What are we going to be laughing at in the future about today's medicine?


From: Medical Jokes and Milestones of Medicine

An aspiring science writer's pledge

A friend and I were discussing blogging yesterday, and he commented that I should write more often on my blog. I agreed with him, whole-heartedly, but explained to him the difficulty I face. My problem is this; the more zealous I am about an interesting subject that I would like to write about, the more afraid I am that I haven’t learned enough about the many facets of that subject to be able to write about it without bias.

I have a tendency to preach about the value of recognizing your own bias. Or at least, I would like to preach about it, because I think it is important. As such, I am petrified of my own bias… I am certain that it will sneak into my fingertips when I’m not looking and type itself into existence on my blog, only to be caught by a reader stopping by for a dose of my blathering. Of course, there is no escaping bias, no matter how hard we try. Everyone ultimately has an agenda (usually to live, preferably in a world that best suits one’s interests and needs), and a person’s actions and words will come to represent the goals therein. I haven’t yet figured a way out of that one.

What I can do, however, is devote myself to incessant inquiry when I decide to write about a subject, especially one that stirs many people to passion. I hereby declare that I will do everything in my power (or in that chunk of my free time that I have chosen to spend researching and blogging) to look at every possible side of an issue (or, umm, all the ones I can think of) before defending one side over another. I will set aside my own prejudices, and seek out the prejudices of the parties I am investigating. I will form my opinions based on verifiable empirical evidence whenever possible, well-educated guesses when they are probable, and not-so-educated guesses only when they are particularly comical. So rest assured, dear reader, that when I am writing here, from now on, I will certainly have done my homework (unless, of course, the dog ate the parts that I didn't like).