Technology
oracknows | May 21, 2008"Early detection of cancer saves lives."
How many times have you heard this statement or something resembling it? It's a common assumption (indeed, a seemingly common sense assumption) that detecting cancer early is always a Very Good Thing. Why wouldn't it be, after all? For many cancers, such as breast cancer and colon cancer, there's little doubt that early detection at the very least makes the job of treating the cancer easier. Also, the cancer is detected at an earlier stage almost by definition. But does earlier detection save lives? Does finding more disease before surgery that wouldn…
oracknows | May 20, 2008I hate it when I fall behind in my journal reading. Of course, it happens all the time, as you might expect, with my time sandwiched between running my lab, writing grants, seeing patients, and operating. Sometimes, though, I get a chance to try to catch up a bit. Such was the case the other day, but unfortunately I came across an article that almost made me wish I hadn't. It was a study published in the February issue of Annals of Surgery1 and it showed that the situation is much worse than I expected. it also shows that I may be a rarer bird than I thought I was, and not just because of my…
purepedantry | May 19, 2008Steven Wiley, writing in the Scientist, discusses the contradiction of the recent fad for "hypothesis-free" research:
Following a recent computational biology meeting, a group of us got together for dinner, during which the subject of our individual research projects came up. After I described my efforts to model signaling pathways, the young scientist next to me shrugged and said that models were of no use to him because he did "discovery-driven research". He then went on to state that discovery-driven research is hypothesis-free, and thus independent of the preexisting bias of traditional…
oracknows | May 13, 2008Last week, I wrote about factors that lead to the premature adoption of surgical technologies and procedures, the "bandwagon" or "fad" effect among surgeons, if you will. By "premature," I am referring to widespread adoption "in the trenches," so to speak, of a procedure before good quality evidence from science and clinical trials show it to be superior in some way to previously used procedures, either in terms of efficacy, cost, time to recover, or other measurable parameters. As I pointed out before, laparoscopic cholecystectomy definitely fell into that category. The popularity of the…
sb admin | May 12, 2008By Olga Naidenko
After lead, asbestos, aromatic amine dyes, Minamata disease, Bhopal, and fluorochemicals, we presumably have learned something about worker safety, especially when it comes to large-scale production in cutting-edge chemical industries. So here comes the test: can we use this knowledge to ensure worker safety in the up-and-coming nanotechnology industry?
An international survey published in the May issue of Environmental Science and Technology addressed precisely this question: are nanomaterials firms and laboratories installing adequate, nano-specific environmental health and…
mikethemadbiologist | May 5, 2008Over at the Intersection, Sheril asks the following about new media and science communication:
consider these questions from the program:
* New media addressing S&T issues - what/where/who are they?
* Who do they see as their primary audiences?
* What do they try to convey (or try not to convey)?
* What do they see as missing from the current dialogues on S&T and policy?
* How are they addressing those elements?
* What are the new media missing?
I think the primary role that new media can play is the development of new narratives. Most science stories are…
evolvingthoughts | May 3, 2008
Duck and cover, folks. I'm about to upset somebody.
I have previously been fairly critical of DNA barcoding, the proposal to use a small fragment of the COI gene - a mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase, subunit I - as a surrogate marker for species. That is, in simple terms, the use of COI sequences to "barcode" species so that straightforward molecular gene sequencing will tell you if you have a species or not, and how many there are in a given area.
Now I'm going to defend a new paper that proposes a barcoding method, for philosophical reasons. Here's the paper:
Inferring Species…
gregladen | May 2, 2008I almost literally grew up in the shadow of the Albany Medical Center. Many of my family members were at one time or another employed there, perhaps cleaning the floor while in high school or in a clerical position as a part time job, etc. I have been in and out of the emergency room there countless times (though hardly ever as the patient). Some of my favorite stories begin or end at AMC.
Well, I never realized it before, but the Albany Medical College (part of the center) has a thing called the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research which is, according to many,…
scientificactivist | April 29, 2008Last Thursday (April 24), the Senate unanimously passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA, H.R. 493) in a landmark vote. The goal of this bill is "to prohibit discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment," and it therefore would help fill this gaping hole that exists in our current protection of employees' and patients' rights.
The bill was passed by the House roughly one year ago by a vote of 420-3, and although it was scheduled for debate in the Senate, it wasn't voted upon until last week. Now, the Senate has…
sb admin | April 24, 2008The Union of Concerned Scientists has released another disturbing report about political interference with government science. For Interference at the EPA, they surveyed EPA scientists from all of the agencyâs scientific program offices and 10 regional offices, and from more than a dozen research laboratories, to learn about the extent and type of political interference with EPA science. Like UCS's previous investigations on the Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and federal climate scientists, this one found significant…
terrasig | April 23, 2008Just a little blurb in my local paper this morning that is making a big splash in the stock market: international pharma giant GSK is purchasing Cambridge, MA-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. for an estimated US$720 million.
Glaxo plans to bolster its pipeline with Sirtris's experimental biotechnology treatments targeting aging-related diseases.
In early trading, Sirtris shares gained 81.6 percent to $22.21 while Glaxo shares added 19 cents to $43.92.
Apparently I should've gone immediately from my morning bathroom newspaper reading to my online stock purchase website. Instead, you get a…
nisbetmc | April 22, 2008In his appearance last week on NPR Science Friday (audio), Columbia University's Jeffrey Sachs framed the climate challenge not in terms of regulating pollution but rather as an energy and technology problem. Sachs brings an important moderating voice to the climate debate, offering a message that goes beyond the polarized rhetoric of conservatives and many environmentalists.
Sachs appeared on the show to talk about his new book "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet." Early in the interview, he was asked by host Ira Flatow about the common argument against taking action on climate…
purepedantry | April 21, 2008Eddie Izzard eyes entering European Union politics. Well that would at least make things more interesting.
So much excellence on NPR lately.
Robert Krulwich explains why -- though radio and television communications have long been projected into space -- it is unlikely that aliens are listening. Short answer: the inverse square law causes the power of such transmission to decline below the microwave background radiation at about the edge of our solar system.
Dutch engineers are building floating cities in Dubai. Reminds me a little of Operation Atlantis. (A libertarian movement to…
kateseip | April 21, 2008As many of you may/may not know, my two wonderful colleagues and I organize an interdisciplinary lecture series on science communication, called the Science Communication Consortium. It followed on the heels of the framing debate, after I invited Chris and Matt to speak at New York Academy of Sciences last year.
My colleagues and I believe that framing is one small component of the larger systemic problem of deteriorating science communication, and began organizing a series of lectures to delve deeply into other critical areas. We hope that this dialogue will flesh out the broader issues of…
sb admin | April 17, 2008Doubt is Their Product is the focus of the second piece in a three-part series by Slateâs Daniel Engber on âradical skepticism and the rise of conspiratorial thinking about science.â After describing the strategy of manufacturing doubt, from its tobacco-industry roots to its use by energy and drug companies and politicians, Engber suggests that anti-regulatory forces arenât the only ones using it. His perspective is an interesting and useful one for those of us who are immersed in the scientific back-and-forth and might not realize how the general public views the issues.
In the first in his…
nisbetmc | April 9, 2008The latest in the Science Communication Consortium series...
The Science Communication Consortium presents:
Science and Congress: The Role of Think Tanks and Congressional Science Committees
Thursday, April 24, 2008
7:00-8:30pm
CUNY - 365 Fifth Avenue, NY NY (directions below)
Recent years have seen a rise in prominence of legislative issues that control how scientists work or that require scientific information for decision making. How do legislators receive this information, and what are the potential effects of distortion or misunderstanding of it on science in the United States? Join us…
clock | April 7, 2008The Science Communication Consortium presents:
Science and Congress: The Role of Think Tanks and Congressional Science Committees
Thursday, April 24, 2008
7:00-8:30pm
CUNY - 365 Fifth Avenue, NY NY (directions below)
Recent years have seen a rise in prominence of legislative issues that control how scientists work or that require scientific information for decision making. How do legislators receive this information, and what are the potential effects of distortion or misunderstanding of it on science in the United States? Join us for a discussion on how science-related think tanks and…
pharyngula | March 24, 2008Britain is experiencing some dissent over research on human-animal hybrid embryos. One the one hand, you've got researchers and charities arguing that this is a technique to probe deeper into the genetic and molecular properties of developing organisms, and is key to developing treatments for genetic diseases and developmental abnormalities; on the other side, we have plaintive lowing from the do-nothings and ignoramuses about the "sacredness" of human life, and kneejerk rejection by the usual collection of suspects, the Catholic church.
In his Easter address today, Cardinal Keith O'Brien,…
razib | March 19, 2008Everyone on ScienceBlogsTM is talking about Arthur C. Clarke. I put up a short post where I noted his passing. I wasn't a super fan of Clarke's fiction, though I found it interesting and thought provoking. My personal favorite was the The City and the Stars, which tells the story of a future human civilization of immortal citizens who have turned away from the cosmos. Clarke, being a science fiction writer, does not depict this inward looking conservatism positively, though to some extent one might posit that it is a sort of Benthamite utopia.
And that is the significance of men like…
voltagegate | March 19, 2008
I heard this morning on the news that Sir Arthur C. Clarke has passed. NPR did a nice piece on him, if a bit focused on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke was a big influence on me and my interest in science and science fiction, and I thought it would be nice to have a permanent memorial of sorts, celebrating some of his own words.
Here's to the long, influential life of a great author and scientist.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of…