Seth's Blog

This sidebar appeared in an article about self-tracking (only for subscribers) by James Kennedy, who works at The Future Laboratory in London. The top photo is at a market near my apartment. Below that are photos of my sleep records, my morning-faces setup, my butter, and my kombucha brewing jars. Back then I was comparing three amounts of sugar (each jar a different amount). Now I’m comparing green tea/black tea ratios.

I wondered if Patrick Vlaskovits, who runs the question-answer site PaleoHacks, could shed some light on the recent growth of interest in a Paleo approach to health.  So I asked him a few questions. (more…)

A successor to Medical Hypotheses, called Hypotheses in the Life Sciences, will be edited by William Bains and published by Buckingham University Press (BUP).

ROBERTS Does BUP hope to eventually make money from the successor journal? Or do they merely hope the subsidy required will decrease with time?

WILLIAM BAINS BUP is a small operation, and does not have the resources to subsidize Hypotheses in the Life Sciences beyond its start-up stage, so we hope to make enough money to break even fairly soon. Ultimately the aim is to be profitable. I for one am determined to put scientific quality first, and I have emphasized to BUP that I only want the journal to grow (and hence generate more revenue) when the quality of submissions allows it.

ROBERTS What led BUP to decide to publish the new journal?

BAINS I think a combination of similarity in philosophy and being in the right place at the right time. They thought it was an exciting project which would both raise their profile (in a good way) and make them money. Buckingham University is the UK’s only private university, and as such takes a heterodox, even iconoclastic view towards what the academic establishment says is writ in stone. The Chancellor has a robust approach to academic and individual freedom. So a journal trying to do something rather new, enabling those with good ideas but little power to be heard, fitted with their approach.  For me, an added advantage is that I deal directly with the man at the top. There are no intermediate layers of management to take decisions about the journal, and we discuss everything from philosophy to web page design. This is the sort of immediacy you do not get with a big publisher.

Part 1 (Bruce Charlton). Bioscience Hypotheses, a similar journal founded by Bains.

A successor to Medical Hypotheses, titled Hypotheses in the Life Sciences, will soon be published. I asked Bruce Charlton and William Bains, the founder of the new journal, about the economics of the situation.

ROBERTS Did Medical Hypotheses make money for Elsevier? How much did it cost to run per year (leaving aside time contributed by you and the editorial board)? How much of that did Elsevier pay?

BRUCE CHARLTON  Medical Hypotheses did for sure make money for Elsevier – but I was never allowed to see the accounts. (more…)

A writer for UC Berkeley media relations wanted to interview me for this press release about the Tsinghua Psychology department. I said I’d blogged a lot about Tsinghua but she said she wanted “fresh quotes”. So I wrote this:

Why did you decide to take this opportunity [become a professor at Tsinghua]?

Partly because I wanted to write more books — in addition to The Shangri-La Diet — and this job would let me, because I only teach one semester per year. Partly because I thought the undergraduates would be brilliant. Partly because I thought living in Beijing would be fascinating.

What have you learned/discovered?

How talented the students are. To get into Tsinghua as an undergraduate, you have to score extremely well on a nationwide test. Oh, so they’re bookish? Not quite. A month ago I went to a talent show put on by biomedical-engineering majors. One act was five girls dancing. After a few minutes someone told me that three of the girls were boys. I hadn’t noticed. It was really hard to tell.

Influenced by Mulan, perhaps.