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January 12, 2009
OSHA released on Friday, Jan 9, a new Field Operations Manual (FOM) for OSHA compliance officers and their supervisors who work in OSHA's area and regional offices. The 322-page manual is the procedural how-to guide for scheduling and conducting inspections, documenting violations of…
January 12, 2009
There's no way a day can be entirely predictable, but I do like sharing a glimpse into the personal/professional life every once in a while. You see, the personal and professional can't be so easily disentangled, and whether you are a physician, scientist, grad student, or barrista, you only have…
January 11, 2009
This week's PalCast is still in production, so your patience is appreciated.
Previous episodes are here.
January 11, 2009
Ok, really, it's bloggingheads.tv. Dr. Free Ride from Adventures in Ethics and Science invited me for a chat about ethics, which you can view, well, right now. Next time, I'll remember to keep the camera a bit further away.
January 11, 2009
Mrs. Pal just called me upstairs where she was watching Barbara Walters. She (Walters, not Mrs Pal) was interviewing actor Patrick Swayze who is battling metastatic pancreatic cancer, a disease which will certainly kill him. Walters asked him quite a bit about the disease and treatment, and…
January 9, 2009
There's a lot of news about food that might spoil your appetite:
Tom Philpott at Gristmill is "having a hard time accepting that Obama has picked an ethanol-loving GMO enthusiast as his USDA chief."Â
Revere at Effect Measure reports that the country is experiencing a salmonella outbreak that's…
January 9, 2009
The Washington Post reported yesterday that President-elect Obama wants Harvard law professor Cass R. Sunstein to serve as the head of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ( OIRA).  I'm not prepared at this point to tangle intellectually with a  magna cum laude graduate of …
January 9, 2009
During our holiday hiatus, the Washington Post published an article looking back at OSHA during the Bush years. R. Jeffrey Smith writes:
[During the Bush administration], political appointees ordered the withdrawal of dozens of workplace health regulations, slow-rolled others, and altered the reach…
January 9, 2009
Senator Edward Kennedy's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP Committee) held a hearing today to consider the nomination of Hilda Solis to be the nation's 25 Secretary of Labor. A webcast replay of the proceedings is available (here), as is a copy of Ms. Solis' written…
January 8, 2009
by revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
Many of you were readers here when science bloggers and scienceblogs in particular played a pivotal role in the case of the Tripoli 6, medics under sentence of death in Libya over trumped up charges of infecting children with HIV. Another urgent matter now…
January 8, 2009
ScienceBlogs is going to be having it's back end worked on starting sometime tomorrow, which is much less uncomfortable than it sounds. If I have something that I absolutely can't resist telling you, it will be up at my old WP blog until Sb gets its new and improved back end up and running.
January 8, 2009
Mr. Martimiano Torres, 37, was finishing up his 12-hour shift at about 5:30 am at the  Hallett Materials aggregate operation on Oct 1, 2008, when his pick-up truck curved off the road into a dredge pond. He drowned. The surface mine is located in Porter, Texas, outside of Houston, and owned…
January 7, 2009
Hi! My name is John. I've got a PhD in evolutionary biology, and I've spent much of the past decade writing about evolutionary ideas, as applied to everything from literary criticism, to language, to anti-terror policy, and even on occasion to biology. And I've got a confession - I've never read…
January 7, 2009
The feed for my nascent podcast (dubbed "PalCast" by Isis) has moved. You may or may not be affected (assuming you're a listener). The new feed address is here, but you're still better off using feedburner.
This switch is due to the benevolence of our Seed Overlords, who graciously gave me a…
January 7, 2009
Word is out that Obama will probably nominate Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and television correspondent, for the post of U.S. Surgeon General. Reactions in my office yesterday werenât very positive, but several bloggers have pointed out that Guptaâs high profile and credibility with the general…
January 7, 2009
What do the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the Migrant Clinicians Network, Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, and 65 other organizations have in common? They've all endorsed the "Protecting Workers on the Job Agenda", a collaborative product of the American Public Health…
January 6, 2009
As my regular readers know, I recently lost my father-in-law. He was a terrific teacher and loved to brag about students who had done well. One of his favorite "brags" was Sanjay Gupta of CNN, and now, the Washington Post is reporting that Obama wants Sanjay to be the next Surgeon General.
Dick…
January 6, 2009
by Carole Bass (posted with permission from the On-Line Journalism Project, New Haven (CT) Independent)
Black lung disease used to be nearly as common as dirty fingernails among American coal miners. Roughly a third of them got the fatal illness. Starting in the 1970s, a federal law slashed…
January 6, 2009
One of our favorite bloggers, BrooklynDodger, has returned to blogging after an extended break. Dodger is a scientific paper hawk, finding and commenting on important papers in journals we wish we had time to read.
We always learn something in Dodgerâs posts. Recently, for example, he had this (…
January 5, 2009
As the unemployment rate climbs, many of the newly unemployed are losing insurance coverage. Candice Choi of the Associated Press summarizes the options for replacing employer-sponsored health insurance: extending benefits for up to 18 months through COBRA; getting an individual policy; and, for…
January 5, 2009
Like her boss President G.W. Bush, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is offering her version of Labor Department history over the last 8 years. She posts prominently on the Department's homepage her "accomplishing milestones for American workers" including the claim:Â
"the current workplace…
January 3, 2009
I hate to do this to you but I have to fisk a fisking. You see, Dr. Michael Egnor, the creationist neurosurgeon, was a bit miffed about my takedown of a particularly idiotic post of his.
For those of you who left your program at the gate, Egnor is a (apparently competent) neurosurgeon in New…
January 3, 2009
(note: i didn't go out except to the hospital, and had to rely on what my upset friends and family reported)
Dear Protesters,
As someone who loves our American democracy, I value your right to protest. I would even fight to protect it. Still, I wish you would exercise some common decency.…
January 2, 2009
ScienceOnline09 is rapidly approaching, and I'm very excited about my "geek-cation".
I'll be co-moderating a session on anonymity with Abel from TerraSig, and I'll be leading a session on Blogging 101 at which you can actually start a real blog. w00t!
I'm also hoping to talk some people into…
January 2, 2009
...and I'm just itchin' for a fight. The medical "De-lightenment", that movement to marginalize the role of science in medicine, has just made a strategic error. Like other weak movements, they've formed unwise alliances. Orac reports that so-called mainstream altmed folks like Andrew Weil and…
January 1, 2009
Antidepressants are a very useful class of medications. With the introduction of the first modern antidepressant, fluoxetine (Prozac) in the U.S. in the late 1980's, the pharmacologic treatment of depression has undergone a revolution (and an enduring controversy). Older classes of…
January 1, 2009
I've been spending a lot of time with family and friends lately, something I don't often get the chance to do. And while I'm not happy about the reason for it, I'm still thankful for all the friends I sometimes forget I have.
One thing I found out from many of my friends is that if I post a…
December 30, 2008
Yes, it's true, Culture Dish has found a new (and improved) home. After a long blogging hiatus while I finished writing my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (see below for details), I'm now packing up shop and moving here to ScienceBlogs (you can subscribe via RSS here, or get Culture…
December 29, 2008
The latest edition is up at iTunes and Feedburner. Once again, I've failed to deliver the product I intended due to some difficult circumstances, but I promise some kind guests and some controversial guests in the future.