Academia Will Not Save You: Stories of Being Continually “Underrepresented”

You may delay, but time will not!

Will Empathy Save Us?

Recent prescriptions for rescuing civilization from collapse involve extending our human capacity for empathy to a global scale. This is a worthy goal, but several indications leave grounds for cautious optimism at best. Evolutionary biology interprets non-kin helping behaviors as products of natural selection that rewarded only the transmission success of resident genes within ancestors, not t...

Will Theory of Everything save earth?

The story is a mix of futurology, science fiction, new technical ideas, science, science ideas of author [1, 2, 3, 4], and philosophy. The style is similar as in the paper of Makela [5]. On an example of crisis of overpopulated human species in future, it is described how to develop a theory of everything, how to give more sense to amateur science, and how reactions of professional science rega...

Commentary: Will academia embrace comparative effectiveness research?

In recent medical history, a number of therapies that were widely adopted based on observational data or pathophysiological constructs turned out to be useless or even harmful when tested in randomized comparative effectiveness trials. These therapies not only harmed patients but also did a disservice to the practical education of medical students, residents, and fellows. These trainees effecti...

Will blocking the platelet save the diabetic?

Diabetic patients with atherosclerotic heart disease are more likely to develop complications, whether treated medically, surgically, or with interventional techniques. Among the risks diabetics face is an apparent increase in restenosis after coronary stenting. This issue is addressed in this issue of Circulation by Marso et al.1 They suggest that although use of the IIb/IIIa antibody fragment...