Recent favorites, notables, and retweets:

Down on the Body Farm: Inside the Dirty World of Forensic Science A good read from the Atlantic.

History of Female Madness in the APA Monitor A bit unsettling, which is probably why it’s an important reminder. .

The dark side of oxytocin, much more than just a “love hormone” Ed Yong continues his well-advised check against oversimplification of matters genetic, hormonal, and neurotransmittical.

Trust and Temperature Jonah Lehrer ‘splains what he’d do if he were a con-man. I feel better that when we had lunch, he suggested I get the (cold) salad. Was damned good. He paid for it. Not sure what all that means.

Michael Nielsen » The mismeasurement of science The issue of what scientists get credit for — publication, being famous, reviewing papers, whatnot — has a huge influence on what scientists do. They react to incentives just as everyone else does. And right now, almost all the incentives favor flashy publications in certain journals, even as they discourage data-sharing and the evaluation of others’ work and fail to necessarily reward the biggest ideas. (As he notes, one of the biggest ideas in 20th-century physics was in a footnote.) Nielsen here offers one of the most readable and constructive proposals of how to rejigger academia’s credit/incentive/reward/reputational system.

Simple rubber device mimics complex bird songs What it says

and from the twittersphere:

imascientist: On why humanities are vital too RT @alokjha Such a gorgeous article. Angry, but well-contained. Exactly what’s needed. http://bit.ly/aN3Aff

edyong209: RT @Dirk57: RT @jonahlehrer: The long history of “information overload” anxiety: http://tinyurl.com/236rkct