Last year President Obama announced a new biomedical initiative, aimed at understanding the human mind and cunningly acronymed to “BRAIN”. In the recently proposed FY2015 budget, $200 million is allocated for the project, double the $100 million in FY2014.
Author: Olivia S. Rissland
Understanding (and respecting) the limits of your data
The business of gathering data, of performing experiments—this is the bread and butter of being a scientist. The task of doing controls, of analyzing data—these are the essential jobs that just must be done if we want to make models and to understand the universe. Our ability to dissect the truth relies entirely upon the quality of the data we generate.
Unicorns, MBAs and Background Distributions
Numbers are vital to science and scientists. No matter how obvious a hypothesis may seem, just thinking that something is true doesn’t make it so. But equally important is ensuring that we analyze data appropriately, carefully and rigorously. Scientific pitfalls can lurk in even the seemingly simplest of analyses, and a good scientist is always her harshest critic.
A HoTBAS Primer
I am a scientist.
And I am extraordinarily proud to write those words. Being a scientist is a noble profession: we explore the untamed wilderness of the universe and chart its rises and falls, its rivers and oceans, deserts and mountains, and those far-off distant places that exist beyond even our imagination. But scientists are more than just cartographers—we bring order to this so-called chaos, always striving to illuminate the rationale underlying this wild, most beautiful topography.
Uncovering the whats and the hows and the whys, we are the universe’s storytellers.
How to Be a Scientist 