A couple of months back Mind Hacks stopped doing their weekly "Spike Activity" round-up of neuroscience and psychology news. That's a pity because it was really handy. So I've decided to step in and fill the gap.
So...
Image of the week is this, which looks like some kind of delicious glazed doughnut covered in sprinkles. Mmm. It's actually a disk on which mouse hippocampal neurons are growing thanks to some clever work at Pittsburgh.
The big story this week is that Science asked for the retraction of the famous 2009 paper implicating a virus, XMRV, in chronic fatigue syndrome. The authors are holding fast, for now, but there's growing evidence that the results may have been caused by contaminated lab products. Mind Hacks has a good overview and there's a detailed discussion going on at VirologyBlog.
Acupuncture has minimal benefits for "medically unexplained symptoms", according to a new trial. Despite flawed methods that mean it's the kind of study that gives big placebo effects, it still barely worked, sayskeptics.
Horrific undercover footage of serious abuse at a British hospital for people with autism and learning disabilities was shown on British TV. Not for the faint-hearted, at all.
Mobile phones "possibly" cause brain cancer, said a group of experts at the World Health Organization, who reviewed all the evidence. But they also found that the literature was poor. Skeptics say it's implausible.
Jonah
Lehrer is not a neuroscientist... and he's quoted some dodgy data on the 'wisdom of crowds', says new blog Neuroself in a blistering critique. Lehrer replies in the comments. I haven't read Lehrer's books so I'm staying out of this one.
There's a review of three books critical of modern psychiatry over at the NYROB. One of them is Daniel Carlat's Unhinged which I praised in my review a while back.
I'm sure more happened, but I can't read everything. So any tipoffs will be gratefully received, and ought to help make next week's round-up a bit bigger. Either leave them in a comment or drop me an email.
