• 4 Posts
  • 51 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 19th, 2023

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  • Nothing in the Frontiers is reputable among scientists. It gets linked a lot on Reddit because it’s open access, but scientists tend to view it as essentially the not-actually-peer-reviewed equivalent of a preprint. In the past, if all reviewers recommend rejection at Frontiers, the editor would be forcibly assigned new reviewers by the publishing staff. This would continue until the manuscript would get accepted. Not sure if that’s still the same (I’ve blocked all Frontiers emails), but it’s not correct to call a Frontiers journal a major reputable journal.





  • ONLYOFFICE (sorry for the caps, poor name) has better docx compatibility than WPS or any other suite. It’s the only thing I’ve found that can do everything in an academic style paper without issue. In addition, its source code is open (unlike WPS) and it has Zotero and Mendeley integrations. Its Zotero integration was better than its Mendeley integration last I checked.

    I’m a professor and use ONLYOFFICE as the only word processor on my office computer.

    Edit: apparently the Zotero plugin needs to be updated.




  • I can’t imagine that flags will get awards automatically cancelled. Any human (f)MRI work is going to describe its participant inclusion or exclusion criteria, because you can’t put people with any risk of metal in their bodies within an MRI machine. Republicans tend to like brain research because the military really likes it. Additionally, virtually all NSF broader impacts will contain at least some speculative verbiage like, “this could help to increase representation.” My guess is that flags return an AI or actual person review, which then makes a decision. Some folks at my university have been told that their awards have been cancelled. My awards that have some of these words haven’t been cancelled.




  • When have we been talking about anyone’s diagnosis? We’ve been talking about the common misperception that depressive episodes caused by environmental triggers are not a result of treatable neurochemical dysfunction. MDD can certainly be a result of environmental triggers, and there are a wide variety of neurochemical bases of it. I distinctly said in my first comment that I was referencing a small part of your reply. I’m not trying to have a needless fight, I’m trying to correct a common public misperception that you reiterated. I do that whenever I see a misunderstanding of science; I care about public science education, especially on topics important enough as psychiatric conditions that are often fatal without treatment. If you feel like this is a pointless fight, sorry. I only commented because I understood your comment to mean something that, no matter my read of your wording, you clearly say you weren’t meaning.


  • MDD is a real disability. It can and often is precipitated by environmental triggers, and episodes can resolve once the environment is changed. Just because someone experiences remission in such a case doesn’t mean they don’t have a disorder that should be treated prior to another episode. Dichotomizing chemical and psychological/environmental is harmful.


  • My point is that such a lay interpretation isn’t helpful, and it may be harmful. Plenty of people with MDD have an environmental trigger prior to their first episode, and have their episode remit after that precipitating factor is managed. Convincing someone that their experience isn’t chemical suggests against treatment seeking during remission, such as seeking therapy, which could help prevent another episode (and one that may not have an environmental trigger). A depressive episode can be fatal. Telling someone that because their prior episode remitted spontaneously or after the environmental trigger changed might prevent them from getting the proactive and preventative treatment that they need to keep them from experiencing another episode and thus keep them alive. Don’t gatekeep depression.