How Ta-Nehisi Coates Inspired a Book About the Hunt for Vulcan. Quick learning of CRISPR/Cas9. The $761 Peanut Butter and Other Insanely Expensive Government Products. The Sound of Atoms Bonding. Sugar Doesn't Make Kids Hyper: Healthcare Triage #3. Theubercuber comments on ELI5:Why do I see articles daily practically saying we have found a cure for things like cancer, yet no cure actually exists? How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists « Violent metaphors. Update (1/3/18) I’ve been overwhelmed with requests for the shorter guide, and the email address below no longer works. So I’ve uploaded a copy of the guide for anyone to download and share here: How to read and understand a scientific article.
Please feel free to use it however you wish (although I’d appreciate being credited as the author). I apologize to everyone who emailed me and didn’t get a response! If you would like to let me know who you are and what you’re using it for in the comments below, I’d love to hear! Update (8/30/14): I’ve written a shorter version of this guide for teachers to hand out to their classes. Last week’s post (The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google) sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that their paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. It’s not just a fun academic problem. “Be skeptical. What constitutes enough proof?
1. 2. How Much Evidence Does It Take? Followup to: What is Evidence? Previously, I defined evidence as "an event entangled, by links of cause and effect, with whatever you want to know about", and entangled as "happening differently for different possible states of the target". So how much entanglement—how much evidence—is required to support a belief? Let's start with a question simple enough to be mathematical: how hard would you have to entangle yourself with the lottery in order to win?
Suppose there are seventy balls, drawn without replacement, and six numbers to match for the win. Suppose there are some tests you can perform which discriminate, probabilistically, between winning and losing lottery numbers. There are still a whole lot of possible combinations. So this box doesn't let you win the lottery, but it's better than nothing. Suppose you can use another black box to test combinations twice, independently. It so happens that 131,115,984 is slightly less than 2 to the 27th power. Next post: "Occam's Razor" Positron emission tomography. PET/CT-System with 16-slice CT; the ceiling mounted device is an injection pump for CT contrast agent Whole-body PET scan using 18F-FDG Positron emission tomography (PET)[1] is a nuclear medicine, functional imaging technique that produces a three-dimensional image of functional processes in the body.
The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide (tracer), which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule. Three-dimensional images of tracer concentration within the body are then constructed by computer analysis. In modern PET-CT scanners, three dimensional imaging is often accomplished with the aid of a CT X-ray scan performed on the patient during the same session, in the same machine. If the biologically active molecule chosen for PET is fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), an analogue of glucose, the concentrations of tracer imaged will indicate tissue metabolic activity by virtue of the regional glucose uptake. History[edit]