Alternatively, stop using mice as models for much of human biology…

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-case-for-free-range-lab-mice

Time to bring universal masking.

Not masking led to “excess cases implied a minimum of 6500 days of staff absence and 17,500 days of student absence… Poor and rich school districts were “differentially equipped to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic,” with harms concentrated in low-income and Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities.”

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2213556

Saw this somewhere (can't find OP, sorry) and really like the metaphor of surfers v divers in science.

We tend to train and value divers (people who go deep in a clearly defined area) and our institutions (including systems of eval) are set up to accommodate them. If you're a surfer (working broadly and across areas, as I am) there are many hurdles including people just thinking you're nuts and/or have no chance at success or you're trying to "do too much".

https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/career-advice-article/in-academia-we-need-two-types-of-researchers-divers-and-surfers/

This commentary is 🔥 🔥 🔥

"The amygdala and the nine circles of scientific hell - Confirmation bias in the brain correlates of psychopathy"

(ideas apply way beyond psychopathy, IMO)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763422004407

Revising our paper on sex differences in monkeys' toy preference and the phrase "boy toy" appears dozens of times and I cannot stop chuckling...

(spoiler alert: there are not major sex dif but the one that is most robust is that male monkeys love dolls... and i mean looooooove, not just love)

Hi 👋 Mastodon Science Community! Seems like this is the place to be these days...

I am a developmental affective neuroscientist interested in the biological and social origins of affective states and experiences (aka feelings). My lab works mostly with nonhuman animal models and studies them across their lives (womb-to-tomb) and across levels of analysis (synapses-to-social systems).