“In 2006, researchers at the University of Alberta tried to replicate a 1993 mouse study. But they found that the stress levels of their mice, when put through an anxiety-producing maze, differed from the original data. They attributed this discrepancy in results to minor variations between laboratories, but could something else have been amiss?” ~ learn more
This one cut me deep. My foundational belief in the placebo effect’s efficacy is shaken. It’ll take some more time and reading for me to fully come around to this point of view, but I am no longer going to mouth off about placebos as if I know a thing. “To repeat my earlier maxim, if there is a statistically significant effect of placebo on an objective outcome, chances are…
Here’s an interesting thought: “Amid the gewgaws and heavy machinery of federal health policy there sits a single, absurdly obvious lever: reclassify a low-dose statin (say, atorvastatin 10 mg or rosuvastatin 5 mg) from Rx-only to true, Walmart-checkout-aisle OTC. Pull it, and you do more for cardiovascular prevention than a decade of slogan-heavy wellness campaigns.” ~ learn more
“You could call it Oura paranoia, though the phenomenon is hardly exclusive to any one product: As wearable health technology, including Apple Watches and Fitbits, have become more popular in recent years, some users have struggled with the unintended psychological side effects of the devices.” I don’t know that I have the right approach, but I avoid this by keeping my sights on sustainable lifestyle adjustments and not dwelling too…
King was quoted saying, “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” … Well, this author thinks “And that is nonsense (also bunkum, hooey, hogwash, twaddle, and poppycock). A thesaurus a treasure trove of words cataloged with a librarian’s exactness to help writers compose the best phrase to express their ideas and thoughts.” ~ learn more
“There’s something strange and a little awe-inspiring about hearing someone ask for champagne on a two-hour domestic flight. … Champagne, really? … Maybe you really can take the champagne approach—not just to flying, but to everything. Maybe there are opportunities to celebrate all of the time. What if you can just choose to be optimistic, even when life feels bad?” ~ learn more
“The concept that I call the surface area of success is all about creating an asymmetric likelihood of winning in the market. It is orchestrating the circumstances and context of the startup where the likelihood of success moves from highly unlikely to highly probable.” ~ learn more
This is a nice compilation of clips. They are confident that the value will accrue to the application layer, and maybe the big AI labs will capture that market after all. “To start the session, the Partners from Sequoia presented their first hand insights of where the opportunity in AI lays right now, and how to capitalize on it…” ~ learn more
“After implementing numerous AI solutions in healthcare settings, I've developed healthy skepticism toward any approach claiming comprehensive insights from a single data modality. … This is where the paper represents something genuinely different from typical AI hype. … SURVPATH tackles a fundamental integration challenge most AI systems conveniently sidestep, connecting visual patterns from histology with molecular pathways driving disease progression.” ~ learn more
“Venture Capitalist continue to not-generate returns for their investors. Not all of them, of course (and they’re not the only ones), but as an asset class, Venture overpaid by a country mile, and now having ‘bought high,’ their only option is ‘sell low,’ and that’s no way to generate returns.” ~ learn more