Seven trials, seven question marks

Seven myths of randomisation in clinical trials

I consider seven misunderstandings that may be encountered about the nature, purpose and properties of randomisation in clinical trials. Some concern the practical realities of clinical research on patients. Others are to do with the value and purpose of balance. Still others are to do with a confusion about the role of conditioning in valid statistical inference. I consider a simple game of ch...

Music and Emotion: Seven Questions, Seven Answers

Probing the Persistent Question Marks

The puzzle of the persistent question marks (a phrase coined by Harvey in 1993) refers to the occurrence of residual learnable alleles in simulations of the Baldwin effect, which concerns interactions between learning and evolution. Explanations of the puzzle have focused on the role of fitness proportional selection pressures and of drift. We replicated the original 1987 model by Hinton and No...

Seven challenges for neuroscience.

Although twenty-first century neuroscience is a major scientific enterprise, advances in basic research have not yet translated into benefits for society. In this paper, I outline seven fundamental challenges that need to be overcome. First, neuroscience has to become "big science" - we need big teams with the resources and competences to tackle the big problems. Second, we need to create inter...

'Lucky' seven times four.

No, we’re not making odds for a horse race or betting at a table in Las Vegas! Readers of my column in P&T might recall my discussions of our nation’s performance in health care in previous issues. I’ve noted, with disappointment, that our health care system does not perform as well as those in other nations we like to compare ourselves with. A report from the Commonwealth Fund that caught my a...