samadhisoft.com

– For those who worry about the competence of their tax officials, here’s a story to put your minds at rest:

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From Spiegel On-Line International:

Something that many people secretly believed has been confirmed: You don’t actually need a brain to work in a tax office. A French civil servant has been found to have a huge cavity filled with fluid in his head — yet lives a completely normal life.

The commonly spouted wisdom that people only use 10 percent of their brain power may have been dismissed as a myth, but one French man seems to be managing fine with just a small fraction of his actual brain.

In fact the man, who works as a civil servant in southern France, has succeeded in living an entirely normal life despite a huge fluid-filled cavity taking up most of the space where his brain should be.

Neurologists at the University of Marseille described the incredible case in the latest edition of the medical journal Lancet published Friday.

They describe how the 44-year-old man went to the hospital in 2003 because he felt a mild weakness in his left leg. When the doctors went to look at his brain to see if the problem lay there, they found, well, pretty much nothing but a great black hole.

The man told the hospital that as a child he had suffered from hydrocephalus (also known as “water on the brain”), a condition in which an abnormal ammount of cerebrospinal fluid accumulates in the brain cavities, causing pressure inside the skull. To treat the condition, a valve known as a “shunt” had been inserted in his head to drain away the fluid when he was a six-month old baby. It was removed when he was 14.

This information prompted the doctors to give him a computed tomography scan (CT) and a magnetic resonance imaging scan (MRI). They then saw that there was what they — somewhat euphemistically — called a “massive enlargement” of the lateral ventricles, chambers that hold the fluid which cushions and protects the brain and which are usually tiny.

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More… ➡

And the same story as ScienceDaily reported it… ➡

– I really eat this stuff up. The more it surprises us and the more counter intuitive it seems, the more we need to own it, I think.

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Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn’t sexist, and blonds are more attractive.

On to the article, enjoy! ➡

– I’ve got a friend who has strong doubts about the gathering scientific consensus around Global Climate Change. We’ve debated the issue to a stand-still and decided to let it sit since we agree on so many other aspects of the Perfect Storm Hypothesis.

– But, I’ve heard many of his concerns loud and clear about the reliability of the science behind the ‘consensus’ on Global Climate Change – so it gives me the creeps to publish this little piece. It’s like putting a sharp knife in his hand. And, frankly, what the article has to say is worrisome.

– But, having said that, this article and others like it should become the impetus to make science and the scientific process better rather than the revelations that tear it down. because, after all, science is the best tool we have in the box – bar none.

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Are most published research findings actually false? The case for reform.

In a 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, epidemiologist John Ioannidis showed that among the 45 most highly cited clinical research findings of the past 15 years, 99 percent of molecular research had subsequently been refuted. Epidemiology findings had been contradicted in four-fifths of the cases he looked at, and the usually robust outcomes of clinical trials had a refutation rate of one in four.

The revelations struck a chord with the scientific community at large: A recent essay by Ioannidis simply entitled “Why most published research findings are false” has been downloaded more than 100,000 times; the Boston Globe called it “an instant cult classic.” Now in a Möbius-strip-like twist, there is a growing body of research that is investigating, analyzing, and suggesting causes and solutions for faulty research.

Two papers published this spring in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine by Benjamin Djulbegovic from the University of South Florida and Ramal Moonesinghe from the CDC have delved into the issues raised by Ioannidis and suggested possible ways to mitigate this apparent failure of scientific enterprise. One of the suggestions is to ensure that experimental results are independently replicable. “More often than not, genuine replication is not done, and what we end up with in the literature is corroboration or indirect supporting evidence,” says Moonesinghe.

More… ➡

– Big thanks to Michael Tobias over at Only in it for the Gold for posting this link.

As he says, “All sincere doubters ought to consider Naomi Oreskes’ excellent overview of the state of knowledge about anthropogenic climate change in specific, and about how we collectively come to know anything about anything in general.”

– Bravo, Michael and very big bravo, Naomi!