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Having recently left an academic post, I’ve been thinking about what will happen to the data that I collected during my previous role that remains unpublished. Will it, like so much data, end up stuck in the limbo of the proverbial ‘file drawer’? The ‘file drawer problem’ is generally understood to mean “the bias introduced into the scientific literature by selective publication – chiefly by a tendency to publish positive results but not to publish nega ...read more

A proposed dinosaur family tree rewrite may sound like a crazy idea, but remember, not that long ago scientists thought Iguanodon looked like this (hint: we know better now). (Credit Samuel Griswold Goodrich/Illustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom, 1859) Earlier this year, a trio of paleontologists led the charge to rewrite the most fundamental thing we believe about dinosaurs. Their call to action generated controversy and, more importantly, serious academic discussion. Now, a b ...read more

(Credit: Shutterstock) For years, experts thought Alzheimer’s, a progressive neurodegenerative disease, originated in the brain. After all, it’s the organ that takes the beating: Proteins build up in the brain, forming plaques or tangles that can damage cell function. And depending on which hypothesis you’re reading up on, the critical damage that kick-starts symptoms comes from either beta-amyloid proteins, the traditional suspects, or tau proteins, a relatively new but incr ...read more

C’mon, you’re not really afraid of this cute little guy, are ya? Photo Credit: Plamuekwhan/Shutterstock Few groups of animals are as feared as spiders. Doctors estimate at least 5% of people are arachnophobic, meaning they are terrified of the eight-legged critters. But such fear is largely misplaced. Of the nearly 47,000 species of spider on the planet, only 200 or so can actually bite through our tough skin and deliver venom that causes any kind of reaction. And of those, onl ...read more