Count Rumford-Physicist Extraordinary

Categories for the practising physicist

In this chapter we survey some particular topics in category theory in a somewhat unconventional manner. Our main focus will be on monoidal categories, mainly symmetric ones, for which we propose a physical interpretation. Special attention is given to the category of sets and relations, posetal categories, diagrammatic calculi, strictification, compact categories, biproduct categories and abst...

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

At the beginning of 2003, the Journal of Health Economics published a paper of great importance in public policy by DiMasi, Hansen, and Grabowski (referred to hereafter as “DHG 2003”). The paper is based primarily on confidential, proprietary data supplied by pharmaceutical companies to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, a research center that receives significant unrestricted ...

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

We thank Light and Warburton (2005) [hereafter LW] for providing a context for us to further discuss and clarify our studies on the cost of new drug development (DiMasi et al., 2003 [hereafter DHG]; DiMasi et al., 1991b [hereafter DHGL]; Hansen, 1979). We disagree, however, with their analyses, comparators, and conclusions. Although LW suggest, through the invocation of selected reported cost f...

Quaestio disputata. Ordinary and extraordinary treatments: when does quality of life count?

A Physicist Looks at Biology

A mature physicist, acquainting himself for the first time with the problems of biology, is puzzled by the circumstance that there are no "absolute phenomena" in biology. Everything is time bound and space bound. The animal or plant or micro-organism he is working with is but a link in an evolutionary chain of changing forms, none of which has any permanent validity. Even the molecular species ...