A friendly reminder about the fringe of science

The fringe of science still has to play by the rules (e.g., falsification) to get the honor of being called science.

Leveraging the long tail of posters

Chris Anderson points out in the The Long Tail an aggregator is necessary to manage increased options, for example the Sears catalog aggregated consumer goods and Google aggregates web sites. Currently, there are no scientific poster aggregators to leverage the long tail of posters. That is an opportunity for a risk-taking conference to build a community.

Bonus - Requiring posters to be a vector image would facilitate digital searching.

The center, frontier, and fringe of science

What follows are my personal, working definitions of the center, frontier, and fringe of science*.

The center of science are the concepts and principles taken for granted in a particular field. This is the material taught in the classroom. An neuroscience example is neurons exist and have certain properties. The frontier of science are novel conjunctions and hypotheses within established paradigms. This is the day-to-day work of science. Reward prediction error is an neuroscience example. The fringe of science is outside of current scientific paradigms. This is can be found at post-conference happy hours. The idea that neurons are able to predict 500ms in the future what will be required of them is fringe neuroscience.

Each of those elements has an inherent medium. Textbooks are most often contain the center of science. They take massive amounts of resources and time to produce. It makes sense to have them reflect the central tenets, which are unlikely to change. The bulk of journals, posters, and talks are at the frontiers of science. Those media take less resources and time to produce and can afford to take more chances. The best medium for the fringe of science is blogs. The cost of blogging is effectively free. It provides the opportunity to try ideas and receive immediate feedback. Blogs can serve a vital function in the world of science.

* Excuse me if I'm "reinventing the wheel." I could not find a digital or hard copy of Notes on the Nature of Fringe Science. I would greatly appreciate if someone could provide or point me to a copy.

Plenty of work to do

One of my missions at Neuroscience 2011 was finding interesting single-unit recording studies, there was no shortage of high-quality studies. One common, but not universal, phenomenon was a dearth of coherent theories for the work being done. It appeared to me history and technology were the greatest driving forces behind recording sites and task selection choices. While each individual study is well-executed, there could be much greater value with coordinated effort between theorists and empiricists. Theorists can elucidate the most important questions, in contrast to the empiricist's intuitive focus on the most convenient questions.

There is still plenty of work to do for a theoretical neuroscientist who likes to get his/her "hands dirty."

The long tail of posters

An example of a power law graph showing popularity ranking.
To the right is the long tail; to the left are the few that dominate.
Notice that the areas of both regions match.
Picture by Hay Kranen

Not so long ago, posters were one time only events. All the time and energy that went into the construction of a poster would only have a brief flicker of life during a conference. Shortly after the conference, the poster would either be hung in a research hallway or tossed into a poster graveyard found in the corner of every laboratory.

Posters now can live a second, longer digital life. Scientists have the tools to easily host and post their posters. You can find mine here.

Most posters will have their biggest impact during the physical conference, the head of "the long tail", but the digital afterlife provides posters with a continuing opportunity to be social objects.

Keep Moving and Get Out of the Way

"Keep moving and get out of the way" is my mantra for collaboration.

I always try to move a project forward, sometimes inch-by-inch.

At the same time, I get out out of the way. I try not to be the bottleneck in collaborations.

It is Ape Law that works in science.

Poster Success!

A big thank you to everyone who took time to stop by my poster.
I enjoyed engaging with so many people.

Bonus - PDF version of my poster

Posters are social objects

Posters are one of the primary social objects of science.

It is easy to start people talking with posters. Posters are both the pretext and context for a conversation. They are a conversation script with their predefined beginning, middle, and end. The poster medium is inherently one-on-one or small group. People are comfortable communicating in that context, in contrast to the contrivance of "giving a speech."

All that and a good acronym

Walking around Neuroscience 2011, I wonder how science ideas spread. An idea needs to first catch my attention before I start spreading it. Here is what I look for:

Data that is unexpected and unexplainable
Data that helps choose between two competing theories
A theory that explains previously unaccounted for data
A theory that synthesizes multiple, separate data sets
A method that generates those types of data and theories

A good acronym doesn't hurt.

My Neuroscience 2011 Poster Tomorrow (11/13)

My poster "Expectancy violation and functional connectivity in musical syntax processing" is tomorrow.

Date and Time - Sunday, November 13, 2011, 8:00am - 12:00pm

Board - JJ7

I will be there the entire time.

Neuroscience 2011 Zeitgeist

Every year the Society for Neuroscience conference has an unofficial theme. Looking at the upcoming events, neuroeconomics is my guess for Neuroscience 2011's theme.

Classical economics makes assumptions that are frequently untested. This creates an environment for unbridled speculation. Adding a neuroscience perspective to economics provides constraints that can create the foundation for meaningful conversation and science.

Stop me if you heard this one before ...

A theoretical physicist and a mathematical psychologist walk into a bar. Sorry, I don't have an actual joke. Just an observation:

Math is elegant. That elegance has a dark side and seduces people people away from the real world of data. Math can unequivocally prove their results, whereas real world data never proves anything. At its best, data can falsify a theory. More often data is consistent with several theories. However, messy real world data can be far more valuable than the fragile perfection of math.

Society For Neuroscience Conference Meet-up?

Society For Neuroscience Annual Conference starts this Saturday, November 12. I'm looking forward to attending every day. If anyone wants to meet-up for coffee and interesting conversation, contact me.

(I recently relocated to the Washington, D.C. metro area so I know a couple places that are off the beaten path.)

Holmium

I'm currently enjoying The Elements, an amazing book that profiles the entire periodic table. I was surprised to read about Holmium which is used to concentrate fMRI magnetic fields. I have done research with fMRI for years and never heard of it.

It made think me about the amount of time fMRI researchers focus on the technical minutia of fMRI (e.g., Larmor precession). Those technical aspects are only tangentially related to creating meaningful research. Understanding Holmium and Larmor precession doesn't directly contribute to better research. Just as I leave Holmium to the magnet makers, researchers should leave pulse sequences to the physicists and technicians.

fMRI researchers should spend their time asking better questions, collecting and analyzing the best data, and effectively communicating the results.

My Limitations

I don't have access to _________ technology.

I don't have a grant for _________.

I don't have a degree in _________.

I don't have access to _________ patient population.

Everyone has limitations. What am I going to do within mine?