Squid sort the wheat from the chaff...

Enhanced: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Seeing the world around you is like drinking from a firehose. The flood of information that enters the eyes could easily overwhelm the capacity of the visual system. To solve this problem, a mechanism-attention-allows selective processing of the information relevant to current goals. As the eminent physiological psychologist Helmholtz [HN2], [HN3], [HN4] noted over a hundred years ago, even wit...

Winnowing Wheat from Chaff: The Chunking GA

In this work, we investigate the ability of a Chunking GA (ChGA) to reduce the size of variable length chromosomes and control bloat. The ChGA consists of a standard genetic algorithm augmented by a communal building block memory system and associated memory chromosomes and operators. A new mxn MaxSum fitness function used for this work is also described. Results show that a ChGA equipped with ...

Separating the wheat from the chaff with machine learning

Winnowing the Chaff of Charlatanism from the Wheat of Science

Experts and lay people alike can sometimes find it difficult to demarcate the absurd. Here I propose a set of criteria that may be helpful in achieving this in the realm of healthcare: falsifiability, plausibility and some hallmarks of pseudoscience. Applying this method is unlikely to be fool-proof but it might be a valuable aid in discriminating credible from incredible health claims.

Polymorphisms and atrial fibrillation: sorting the wheat from the chaff.

In the last 5 years, we have gained an increasing appreciation for the genetic contribution to atrial fibrillation (AF). While Mendelian families with AF have been reported, they have typically been considered rare. Studies from Framingham and Iceland have demonstrated a genetic basis for AF in the general population. Family members of those with AF have an odds ratios of 1.8 for developing the...