elijah mak foo keat

for the places seen, memories forgotten, novels read, moments seized, people cherished, and all the miles left to go.

[elijhmk-blog]

q / reproducibility of science

“After this intensive effort to reproduce a sample of published psychological findings, how many of the effects have we established are true? Zero. And how many of the effects have we established are false? Zero. Is this a limitation of the project design? No. It is the reality of doing science, even if it is not appreciated in daily practice. Humans desire certainty, and science infrequently provides it. As much as we might wish it to be otherwise, a single study almost never provides definitive resolution for or against an effect and its explanation. The original studies examined here offered tentative evidence; the replications we conducted offered additional, confirmatory evidence. In some cases, the replications increase confidence in the reliability of the original results; in other cases, the replications suggest that more investigation is needed to establish the validity of the original findings. Scientific progress is a cumulative process of uncertainty reduction that can only succeed if science itself remains the greatest skeptic of its explanatory claims. The present results suggest that there is room to improve reproducibility in psychology. Any temptation to interpret these results as a defeat for psychology, or science more generally, must contend with the fact that this project demonstrates science behaving as it should. Hypotheses abound that the present culture in science may be negatively affecting the reproducibility of findings. An ideological response would discount the arguments, discredit the sources, and proceed merrily along. The scientific process is not ideological. Science does not always provide comfort for what we wish to be; it confronts us with what is. Moreover, the research community is taking action already to improve the quality and credibility of the scientific literature. We conducted this project because we care deeply about the health of our discipline and believe in its promise for accumulating knowledge about human behavior that can advance the quality of the human condition. Reproducibility is central to that aim. Accumulating evidence is the scientific community’s method of self-correction and is the best available option for achieving that ultimate goal: truth.” - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716.full.pdf

[elijhmk-blog]

n / editing the human genome

crispr-cas represents a fascinating opportunity for us to edit our own genomes with unprecedented ease. genetic ailments underlying incurable diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative conditions could essentially be erased, and replaced with healthy ones. by changing a gene in an early-stage embyro, or in the cell that makes an egg, you could ensure that this change is present in every cell in the adult body, in his or her own eggs or sperm, which could pass it to the descending generations in perpetuity. how insanely awesome is that? nonetheless, the prospect of people modified in such ways raises a lot of uncomfortable questions. where will we draw the line and say this is where we will stop? history paints a distressingly bleak picture when we consider how often we have repeatedly recognized our errors only when it is too late. granted, it seems as though there is a still a long way before this technology reaches the level of functionality applicable on a wide scale. but the time is ripe to start asking about the implications of crispr-cas: questions that define our society, questions that gets at the very core of our moral compasses.

[elijhmk-blog]

urban larder, cambridge

coffee with a trove of backlog issues of the economist and haruki murakami - the perfect kind of saturday mornings.

[elijhmk-blog]

espresso library, cambridge.

today, i submitted all the documents for the trinity fellowship. it feels kind of surreal that i have just moved the first piece of the chess in the roadmap of my post-phd future. over to you.

[elijhmk-blog]

r / SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND

“In an Indonesian island – the small island of Flores – archaic humans underwent a process of dwarfing. Humans first reached Flores when the sea level was exceptionally low, and the island was easily accessible from the mainland. When the seas rose again, some people were trapped on the island, which was poor in resources. Big people, who need a lot of food, died first. Smaller fellows survived much better. Over the generations, the people of Flores became dwarves. This unique species, known by scientists as Homo floresiensis, reached a maximum height of only one metre and weighed no more than twenty-five kilograms.”

[elijhmk-blog]

r / sapiens: a brief history of humankind

“Scientists also agree that about 70,000 years ago, Sapiens from East Africa spread into the Arabian peninsula, and from there they quickly overran the entire Eurasian landmass. When Homo sapiens landed in Arabia, most of Eurasia was already settled by other humans. What happened to them? There are two conflicting theories. The ‘Interbreeding Theory’ tells a story of attraction, sex and mingling. As the African immigrants spread around the world, they bred with other human populations, and people today are the outcome of this interbreeding. For example, when Sapiens reached the Middle East and Europe, they encountered the Neanderthals. These humans were more muscular than Sapiens, had larger brains, and were better adapted to cold climes. They used tools and fire, were good hunters, and apparently took care of their sick and infirm. (Archaeologists have discovered the bones of Neanderthals who lived for many years with severe physical handicaps, evidence that they were cared for by their relatives.) Neanderthals are often depicted in caricatures as the archetypical brutish and stupid ‘cave people’, but recent evidence has changed their image. According to the Interbreeding Theory, when Sapiens spread into Neanderthal lands, Sapiens bred with Neanderthals until the two populations merged. If this is the case, then today’s Eurasians are not pure Sapiens. They are a mixture of Sapiens and Neanderthals. Similarly, when Sapiens reached East Asia, they interbred with the local Erectus, so the Chinese and Koreans are a mixture of Sapiens and Erectus. The opposing view, called the ‘Replacement Theory’ tells a very different story – one of incompatibility, revulsion, and perhaps even genocide. According to this theory, Sapiens and other humans had different anatomies, and most likely different mating habits and even body odours. They would have had little sexual interest in one another. If the Replacement Theory is correct, all living humans have roughly the same genetic baggage, and racial distinctions among them are negligible. But if the Interbreeding Theory is right, there might well be genetic differences between Africans, Europeans and Asians that go back hundreds of thousands of years. This is political dynamite, which could provide material for explosive racial theories.”

[elijhmk-blog]

n / everything will reveal itself

i don’t believe in hopes. hope is a beggar, try faith instead. hope walks through the fire. faith leaps over it.

[elijhmk-blog]

q / gone girl

“there’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.”

[elijhmk-blog]

q / norwegian wood

“now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts”

[elijhmk-blog]

Ortigia, Siracusa, Italy.

[elijhmk-blog]

q / norwegian wood

“..which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

[elijhmk-blog]

q / norwegian wood

“I straightened up and looked out the plane window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of what I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.”

[elijhmk-blog]

trinity college, cambridge, uk.

you go to sleep, and wake up in a world quite different from the night before.

[elijhmk-blog]

q / slaughterhousefive

“There isn’t any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvellous moments seen all at one time.”

[elijhmk-blog]

n / cambridge

today, i was awarded the gates cambridge scholarship to pursue my phd psychiatry at this venerable institution. there is a time limit for everything. there comes a time when, finally, our dreams have to cease being dreams; we have to start living them. cambridge was a last minute application, an idea on a whim. this was never part of the plan to be honest. i already accepted an offer to do a msc neuroscience at ucl then. it all started with a curious visit to the cambridge website. still, i thought the idea was too crazy, too intimidating. i don’t exactly remember how and when, but i started to send a couple of emails to professors there, and slowly, with each email response, the prospect of doing a phd at cambridge became more and more realistic. it's funny, isn't it? that sometimes, in life, all you need to do is get the ball rolling and your choices and decisions will gather some sort of momentum on their own. writing this in my buffalo apartment, i have a strange feeling that life is going to be very different soon.

[elijhmk-blog]

mojave desert, red rock canyon, las vegas, usa.

[elijhmk-blog]

n / no room in frame for two

we were equals. that proved to be our doing and undoing.