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Dark eyed lady

A commenter below observed that both the Sami and the Finns are cases where females tend to have darker eyes than males. He chalked this up to sexual selection. I was skeptical a priori because 3/4 of the time the variation between blue and brown eyes within the population can be explained by one genetic locus, and this is a region (OCA2) that seems to have been under massive recent selection. Sexual dimorphism tends to emerge slowly within populations because it takes time for modifier loci which express themselves conditionally in response to sex hormones to scaffold the initial gene…

Shepherd's Hill Farm is a hell-hole

Got problem kids? Man, when they hit those teenage years they all get rebellious and willful, and start thinking independently, and often start doing things their parents would rather they didn't. This is one of the tough responsibilities of being a parent — you have to be willing to let your children grow into independent human beings. But let's say you never got that memo, and you think your job is to raise children who are just like you: insecure, a little bit angry, shackled tightly into a fearful belief system that says all human beings are evil. Independent thinking is the last thing…

You only go extinct once....

Assume that you have a new mutation, totally novel. What's its probability of going extinct in one generation? That is, it doesn't get passed on.... Consider, you have a population of N individuals. Fix the population size across nonoverlapping generations. So, in generation t you have N individuals and in t + 1 you have N individuals. In the first generation of the mutation the proportion in the population is 1/N, that is, there is one mutant amongst N individuals (ergo, N - 1 other copies). The probability that the mutant is never "drawn" (copied) to the next generation in this fixed…

PISA and U.S. Academic Performance: The Zombie Myth That Just Won't Die

Over at The Art of Science Learning, Peter Economy writes: One of my great concerns for this country's future is the underperformance of our youth when it comes to achievement in math and science. In December 2010, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released the results of its 2009 Program for International Assessment (PISA) test, administered to thousands of 15-year-old students in 65 different countries around the world. The results were not good for the United States. In science, the U.S. ranked 23rd with a score of 502, well below Shanghai, China (575),…

Successful Blogging: Don't Appeal to Readers, but...

...other, larger bloggers. At least, that's what my site statistics tell me. I suppose my original response to a Bayblab post about the moral perfidy of ScienceBloggers wasn't serious enough, although, in light of the revelations that the Bayblab post was an experiment (in what, I'm not exactly sure), I gave the Bayblab post exactly the response it deserved. Nonetheless, the whole affair de Bayblab did lead me to ask what posts actually received the most hits over the last year. After looking at the top ten posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), one common thread emerged: every one of…

The Democratic Rank-and-File: Still Demobilized and Definitely Not 'Viral'

And demoralized too. Ian Welsh: ...for most of a year, everyone's energy was completely sucked into the never-ending health care debate, and many progressives regarded how it ended up as a demoralizing defeat, a defeat made worse by the fact that it was a betrayal from what many thought was "our own side". There's a massive trust issue. Many readers have a hard time believing in candidates any more, especially after the way so many "progressive heroes" have repeatedly caved in the last year. Betrayal has consequences. New candidates may not have betrayed anyone, but the people whose…

A Question for Mooney: Where Were the Professional Communicators? (Stop Blaming the Victim)

Before I start, let me say that I have no personal animus towards Chris Mooney: my limited interactions with him have been civil, and I agree with him on many things. But this beating up the victim has to stop. Sure, I agree with Mooney that many scientists need to learn how to communicate with the public better (although Randy Olsen really needs to stop setting up straw men to knock down). But many scientists do communicate with the public, in one form or another, to the extent they are able to do so. If a reporter contacts me, I always try to make time to speak with, usually to the…

Digby, Political Inertia Is Preferred...

...at least by the Blue Dog Democrats. Digby, in discussing the history of the demobilization of the Democratic rank-and-file, observes (boldface mine; italics original): Clinton was pretty good at speaking in several layers of code, but he had terrible problems in 1994, even though he delivered the economic plan he promised. And that's because that economic plan was based on the abstraction of reducing the deficit which is a conservative talking point --- even if not one Republican voted for it. He failed to get health care, of course, and passed NAFTA, another Republican initiative. (There…

Enough with Economic 'Irrationality': The Storytelling Edition

I know I've posted about the misuse of the concept of irrationality before, but a recent Robert Frank NY Times column is a ridiculous exercise in irrationality storytelling. Frank writes: A second problematic assumption of standard economic models is that people are properly attentive to all relevant costs and benefits, even those that are uncertain, or that occur in the distant future. In fact, most people focus on penalties and rewards that are both immediate and certain. Delayed or uncertain payoffs often get short shrift. Given the conditions under which human nervous systems evolved,…

Why the AIG Bonus Tax Is a Good Idea

I have to disagree with ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford about the proposed plan to tax 90 percent of bonuses paid out since Jan. 1 by any company that had accepted more than $5 billion in government bailout funds. I think it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do. So far, no one, conservative or liberal, has been able to find any constitutional grounds on which to oppose the bill. This leaves this argument: We can't afford to use the tax code as a political weapon. It's wrong, and it sets a hideous precedent. Say this to anyone familiar with the history of taxation in the U.S., and they'll burst…

Privatizing Infrastructure: Pennywise, Pound Foolish

Having parasitized private industry, our economic betters are now turning their sights on the public sector: The most popular deals in the works are metered municipal street and garage parking spaces. One of the first was in Chicago where the city received $1.16 billion in 2008 to allow a consortium led by Morgan Stanley to run more than 36,000 metered parking spaces for 75 years. The city continues to set the rules and rates for the meters and collects parking fines. But the investors keep the revenues, which this year will more than triple the $20 million the city was collecting, according…

Palin Is Ignorant, Not Stupid: For Palinists, That's a Feature, Not a Bug

Razib, in a link roundup, wrote: A Grand Unified Theory of Palinisms. Jacob Weisberg, Yale grad and Rhodes Scholar, wonders why Sarah Palin says "stupid and ridiculous things." An easy answer is that she's stupid. But I think the truth is that Sarah Palin is closer to the norm in intelligence and polish than the typical American politician. In fact she's probably somewhat above average in intelligence. The fact that she's a social conservative means that it's easy for Left-leaning elites to mock her, but if you go to a liberal college town in the Berkshires I'm sure you could talk to plenty…

Some More Thoughts Regarding Poverty and Education

Last week, I wrote about the effects of poverty on educational performance, and, in particular, science education. I received many responses, both in comments and by email. One reason I wrote this is that our current wave of educational 'reform' seems utterly focused on teacher managerial issues. I'm willing to cede that part of the poverty effect could--and I emphasize could--be due to some poor schools serving as warehouses for horrible teachers. Yet the amount of variation in test scores that is correlated with poverty is so overwhelming: I really didn't think it would be that high,…

Genetic Testing, Antibiotic Resistance, and CLSI

So, in some quarters, there's been wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Congressional hearings about the direct-to-customer ('DTC') genetic testing industry. I've discussed why I don't think regulation is a disaster before, but I'll add one more issue to the mix: maintaining subject confidentiality in NIH genomic studies. If someone related to a person in a study publicly releases his or her genome, it could be possible to identify a 'deidentified' anonymous subject. I'm curious to see how that issue shakes out. But that's not what this post is about. Instead, I propose that the DTC…

GE to Massachusetts: Give Us $25 Million or We'll Fire People (Another Legacy of Big Sh-tpile)

Keep in mind that this GE plant primarily makes parts for defense contracts--these jobs are provided by a guaranteed contract: General Electric Co. has made an unusual offer to the state: Give us $25 million in tax credits, and we won't cut any more than 150 positions at our aircraft engine plant in Lynn. The conglomerate has already cut the Lynn plant's workforce by 600 jobs and could cut 150 more. But General Electric said that if it receives the state aid to help fund a $75 million retooling of the plant, it would maintain the remaining 3,000 jobs for six years. If you're thinking this…

Now petition Obama to recognize Darwin Day

Go sign this petition, too: it asks Obama to recognize Darwin Day on 12 February. Who knows, he might be willing! A Proclamation Charles Darwin was the first to propose the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. On Darwin Day, celebrated on the anniversary of Darwin's birth on February 12, 1809, we celebrate the life and discoveries of Charles Darwin and express gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity. It is sobering to imagine where the human race would be…

Helsinki Finland Bird List

Talitiainen (Great Tit), Parus major. Photographed in Hietaniemen hautausmaa (Hietaniemi cemetery), Helsinki, Finland. Image: GrrlScientist, 24 November 2008 [larger view]. Here's my list of birds seen in the Helsinki area of Finland during my two visits. Even though I only visited for 8 days in November 2008, I actually went out on a birding trip with several grad students from the University of Helsinki, while I only once went birding during my much longer February/March 2009 visit -- to see the Eagle-owls that are nesting on the Lutheran Church (name?) in downtown Helsinki. Helsinki…

Bill Donohue is getting anticipatory apoplexy

30 September is going to be International Blasphemy Day, and I suspect Donohue will be turning purple while his head twirls around on his neck. It should be entertaining: he's already sending out press releases to complain. BLASPHEMY DAY TARGETS CHRISTIANITY The Center for Inquiry will launch the first International Blasphemy Day on September 30, the anniversary of the 2005 publication of the Danish cartoons that so inflamed Muslims worldwide. Billed as a free speech event designed to oppose such things as a Muslim-sponsored U.N. resolution banning criticism of religion, the day has drawn…

Moving Overseas, Part 4

I was so upset about the likelihood that I would spend the next six months (or probably longer) trapped in a bureaucratic cesspool of confusion and conflicting information whilst spending thousands of dollars on rent, penalties and veterinary bills, that I was ready to do something drastic. So I called USFWS. The USFWS computerized telephone voice warned me that they are experiencing "significant delays" in processing CITES permit applications for birds, so I expected I'd only be able to talk to a real person after appealing to my congresscritter, Charlie Rangell, who is under investigation…

Indonesia: hope for the best but expect the worst

As you read this a meeting of more than three dozen avian flu experts should be convening in Jakarta to discuss the disastrous state of public health in that country. Many poor countries have disastrous public health systems, but Indonesia has something else: a huge population of people living in close contact with a huge population of poultry infected with an influenza A subtype (the H5N1 subtype) that has crossed the bird/human species line. Influenza A is a major killer of human beings worldwide, but the global population has substantial (at least partial) immunity to the circulating…

An irrational demand

Holy shit! Melanie of Just a Bump in the Beltway tags me with the Random Eight meme and no sooner do I get it done (incurring her wrath because I didn't pass it on), when I learn that as a ScienceBlogs newcomer we also got tagged with the pi meme by Janet (Dr. Free-Ride). It could be a lot worse. Pi is an irrational number whose decimal expansion doesn't end or repeat and this is a truncated version (eight digits; I don't know if this is because the ScienceBlogs publishers are bandwidth cheapskates; or the mistaken notion you cannot represent an irrational number exactly on a computer. That…

Luring Stem Cells Down the Right Path

Getting cells to revert to a stem-like state – creating so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – was a true revolution, but the technique invented in 2006 is only half the game. The first challenges include getting enough adult cells to undergo the “reprogramming” in culture to be of use and removing those traces of “priming” that distinguish them from true embryonic stem cells. The second is keeping them in the iPS state – that is, holding back their urge to differentiate – in lab conditions. And then there is the challenge of directing their differentiation in the way that you want…

From the Archives: 40 Days and 40 Nights by Matthew Chapman

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. Since I did a science/religion review earlier this week, I thought I'd continue the theme this weekend with a couple of older reviews of books by Matthew Chapman. This one, of 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design,…

Best Science Books 2016: Science Friday Best Science Books

As you all have no doubt noticed over the years, I love highlighting the best science books every year via the various end of year lists that newspapers, web sites, etc. publish. I've done it so far in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,2014 and 2015. And here we are in 2016! As in previous years, my definition of "science books" is pretty inclusive, including books on technology, engineering, nature, the environment, science policy, public health, history & philosophy of science, geek culture and whatever else seems to be relevant in my opinion. Today's list is Science Friday Best…

Friday Fun: Why Professor Indiana Jones Was Hated By His Colleagues

Yeah, you have to figure good old Indy wasn't much of an academic colleague. Too flashy, never around to sit on a search committee, never willing to take his turn as chair, always blowing up the wrong building or disrupting the wrong classroom. And then there's the ghosts and arcs and demons and what not. And not even a book chapter or high-impact-factor publication to show for it! What, Science or Nature should have been beating down his door! Well, let's see what his colleagues had to say about all this! Why Professor Indiana Jones Was Hated By His Colleagues Aug. 27, 1936 Dr. Henry Walton…

The "bridge" fuel that wasn't

Among those who spend their working lives and/or spare time worrying about climate change, there are many subjects that still provoke heated debates, so to speak. Chief among them is the wisdom or folly of turning to natural gas as a "bridge" between the carbon-intensive oil- and coal-dominated present and the clean renewable future that we all know is coming sooner or later. The opponents just found their case a little bit stronger thanks to another controversial issue: nuclear power. Natural gas is, as anyone with a basic grasp of the fundamentals of greenhouse gas forcings can tell you,…

The Fukushima legacy

At one end of the hyperbole scale we have Helen "If you love this planet" Caldicott, who raises the specter of "cancer and genetic diseases" if things get any worse at the growing list of nuclear power reactors crippled or destroyed by last week's earthquake in Japan. At the other we have Republican congressman Mitch McConnell, who argues that we shouldn't abandon nuclear power, especially "right after a major environmental catastrophe." In between the pundits and genuine experts are pointing out that the mining, processing, and burning of fossil fuels kill hundreds or even thousands of times…

Climate and the Singularity

Ray Kurzweil might be right. It could very well be that Moore's law can be applied to all forms of technology, and within a couple of decades clean, renewable forms of power production will be so cheap they will have replaced all fossil fuels. Hey, it could happen. Maybe even it's not just possible, but probable. Kurweil calls it the law of accelerating returns: Today, solar is still more expensive than fossil fuels, and in most situations it still needs subsidies or special circumstances, but the costs are coming down rapidly -- we are only a few years away from parity. And then it's going…

Study points to role for both organic and conventional agriculture in sustainable food production

A paper in this week's issue of Nature and a commentary on Revkin's DotEarth blog reinforces the argument that a hybrid path in agriculture -- incorporating both conventional and organic production practices -- gives the best chance of feeding some 9 billion people by midcentury in an ecologically-based manner. The thoughtful and comprehensive study compares yields in organic and conventional systems and addresses the criticisms of an earlier study by Badgley et al (for problems with the earlier study, see the supplementary discussion in Seufert et al). The organic agriculture movement has…

Thinking Beyond Organic

There is little doubt that organic farmers have been instrumental in bringing the need for ecologically based agriculture to the public's attention. That is a good start. We now need to move beyond organic (still only ca 2% of US agriculture) and embrace other tools and farming practices that can help shift current agricultural systems towards enhanced sustainability. The need is dire. 1 billion people are malnourished, 300,000 people continue to die each year from pesticide-related poisonings, farming on ecologically sensitive land is expanding, the water needed to sustain farming dwindles…

Science Is A Family Affair: Spark Interest By Soothing Chapped Lips

Parents don’t need a science degree to shape their child’s learning or to explore STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). There’s a little science and engineering behind everything we see each day. From day trips to talks around the dinner table, there are lots of easy and fun ways to spark a love of STEM. Your next conversation or outing could inspire the future engineer inside your child! The Chevron STEM Zone — where students, teachers, and parents learn about how STEM solves real-life challenges — is a great place to continue the conversation. Techbridge, which has inspired…

Caterpillar Brings Expertise in STEM and Skilled Trades to Festival 2014 as a Major Sponsor!

Under the theme of "Start Your Journey," Caterpillar, as a major Festival sponsor and leader in STEM and skilled trades, is set to wow audiences at the Expo this month with a dynamic array of interactive exhibits and presentations designed to demonstrate the breadth of opportunities that exist at Caterpillar and Cat Dealerships around the country in STEM-related frontiers and career paths. Says Gwenne Henricks, Caterpillar's Vice President of Product Development & Global Technology & Chief Technology Officer: "We want attendees to leave with the impression that Caterpillar is an…

USA Science & Engineering Festival to Host U.S. News STEM Solutions National Conference

By F. Mark Modzelewski World's Largest STEM Event to Excite and Inspire Educators, Administrators, Students & Families The USA Science & Engineering Festival (www.USAScienceFestival.org), supported by presenting host sponsor Lockheed Martin, is pleased to join forces with the U.S. News STEM Solutions (http://usnewsstemsolutions.com/) to host their National Conference April 23-25, 2014 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The combined Festival and Conference will bring together educators, scientists, performers, business and government leaders -- as well as…

Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement: Benjamin Banneker

PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ARE INSPIRED BY THIS STORY! (Let Us Know Your Comment: In addition to being a brilliant scientist, did you know that Benjamin was also an outspoken critic against the evils of slavery in his day?) Born in 1731, Benjamin Banneker was born in Baltimore County, Maryland  -- the son of  free African slaves. Benjamin grew up on his father's farm with three sisters. After learning to read from his mother and grandmother, he read the Bible to his family in the evening. Briefly attending a nearby Quaker country school was the extent of his formal education. As he grew into…

What's New On ScienceBlogs.de, July 3-9

Feast your eyes on the top stories of the past week at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de: Wrapping Up Lindau Last Friday the Nobel Laureates Meeting at Lindau finished with a nice trip to the Isle of Mainau and a lovely farewell ceremony. Beatrice shows us many images of that beautiful day. During the trip we became eye-witness to a new kind of speed dating, which we'll call Nobeldating! These dates lasted during the whole meeting: Different groups of young researchers and somewhere in the center a Nobel laureate. (See the picture of Nobelist Douglas Osheroff, surrounded by young…

Where's Charlton Heston when you need him?

Some Christian fanatics are concerned, quite reasonably, about the economy, and have chosen, quite absurdly, to try and correct the problem with prayer. So far, so typical, but then … well, they picked a peculiarly oblivious way to do it. They prayed before a statue of a golden bull on Wall Street. We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the 'Lion's Market,' or God's control over the economic systems. While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do…

Shout out to Greenversations, EPA's blog

Thanks EPA for the blog post last week! We need all the help we can get with getting the word out to everyone about the Festival. Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays. By Aaron Ferster Back to school season always seems so refreshing. I find the excitement my kids show as they crack open new books and get reacquainted with long-lost schoolmates infectious. And this year, I'm happy to feel like we here at EPA are part of it. The science communication team that I work with has been enlisted to help plan the Agency's exhibition at the…

Travelin' man

My life isn't easing up just yet as we wend our way to the imminent end of the term. I'm going to be flitting about over the next few days. I'm chauffeuring #1 son to a job interview in Minneapolis today, and then returning him home to St Cloud again sometime this evening. I'm planning to be in St Cloud in time for a painful event: Kent Hovind is speaking there. Date :April 28, 2006 Time :7:00 pm - 10:00 pm Title:Dr. Kent Hovind (Dr. Dino) -- Creation v. Evolu. Description:Dr. Kent Hovind or the more popularly known Dr. Dino, is one of the most requested speakers on the Creation and Evolution…

On the ups and downs in biotech

Living in Seattle fosters a certain pessimism when it comes to large companies.  Boeing has always been a poster child for employment uncertainty, regularly hiring large numbers of people and just as regularly, laying them off.  Now, we have Microsoft and Amgen joining the club, with Microsoft layoffs impacting an estimate 1350 people in the area, and Amgen, planning to shed 660 jobs when it closes facilities in Seattle and Bothell.  Sometimes as a biotech educator, it’s hard to reconcile the prospects of knowing we're training students for well-paying, interesting biotech jobs, with the…

DNA and the Dead Sea Scrolls

We went on an excursion last weekend to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Pacific Science Center. None of us could resist going downtown to look at written texts over 2000 years old. Uncovered in 1946, by a Bedouin shepherd, the scrolls have had an interesting history over the past 50 years, most of it out of the public eye. Only recently, have a large number of scholars and members of the public been granted access. We're still kind of amazed that they came to Seattle. I'm fascinated by archeology, but I was also interested in how DNA analysis is being used to study the scrolls and…

My equipment wish-list for teaching bioinformatics

There's nothing like the first day of class to make you appreciate the difference between the equipment you end up using at schools and the equipment that you get to use on the job. For the month of January, I'm teaching a night class in bioinformatics at a local community college. We're introducing lots of web-based programs, and databases, and concentrating on the sorts of activities that biotechnology technicians are likely to use on the job. It's fun. It's practical. And I don't have to suffer through any lectures about the Semantic Web. I'm also getting reminded (although not for…

Tripoli 6: Free at last

At 3:50 am EDST I received the welcome news, via Declan Butler, that the Tripoli 6 were free and on the tarmac in Sofia, Bulgaria. All are Bulgarian citizens and were released by the Libyan prison authorities as part of an extradition arrangement. Their life sentences were immediately pardoned by Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov. Our six medical colleague had been accused of deliberately infecting over 400 children in a hospital in Benghazi, Libya and sentenced to death. They have been imprisoned for 8 years, through two trials and numerous appeals. Genetic analysis of the infecting…

Thoughts about statins

The jury is still out on the value of statins in H5N1 (see posts here and here). But these drugs seem to have many beneficial effects and are taken by a huge proportion of the at risk population to lower their cholesterol. But a new study suggests not as many are taking them as want to or might. The barrier is money.: Many patients taking statins to lower their cholesterol stop taking the drugs because of co-payments and shared drug costs, a new study found. These drugs, which have been shown to prevent heart attacks, should be fully covered by insurance, said study lead researcher Dr.…

Running the last lap for the Tripoli 6

Soon, maybe as soon as the end of the month, the Libyan Supreme Court will hear the appeal of the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor, the "Tripoli 6" (here, here, here, here, here and here). As it approaches there is intense activity from the international scientific community. On March 23, ten major medical associations wrote to Colonel Qadhafi: We the undersigned leading health professional associations in the United States are writing to urge you in the strongest terms to immediately release and exonerate the five Bulgarian nurses--Valya Cherveny, Snezhanka Dimitrova, Nasya…

Polonium-210 exposures to the public in the Litvinenko case: follow-up

The UK's Health Protection Agency has a follow-up on their monitoring of people and places potentially contaminated with the extremely dangerous alpha-emitter, Polonium-210, the weapon used to kill Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko (see our posts here and here about Polonium-210, and here and here about the murder). Their spin is that tests "so far" show minimal risk to the general public. What surprised me is that their tests showed widespread exposure to the public. Here are the reported results: Test result update Category 1 *596 people had results 'below reporting level' - below 30…

A vaccine that (might be) better than nothing

If the best you can say about the human bird flu vaccine made by Big Pharma's Sanofi Aventis SA is that it is "better than nothing," are you even correct about that? The Food and Drug Administration is considering a recommendation from an outside panel of expert advisers that it approve the Sanofi vaccine. Those experts endorsed the vaccine's safety and efficacy Feb. 27, but with a caveat: that it's only the first step in developing a way of successfully immunizing humans against the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. Sanofi said it recognizes the vaccine is only an interim solution, since…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Take the A[theist]-train bus

Atheism is making the rounds in the United Kingdom. Street by street. Bus stop to bus stop. A message of godlessness is being emblazoned on the sides of some 800 buses: Really not offensive, unless anything questioning God's existence is offensive. Apparently to a great many people it isn't. The atheist bus campaign was fueled by public pledges in response to another bus campaign, the Jesus Said ads on London buses last June: These ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in…

Will Obama's Ag Sec'y serve up the same old crap?

Mrs. R. and I tend to favor organic produce, just on general principles. It's a bit more expensive but compared to eating out it's nothing and we aren't such volume consumers that we can't make it up by my buying one less book a month. And while Obama's many of Obama's cabinet picks have gotten good marks, some haven't. One of the most important for consumers (and for public health) is the Secretary of Agriculture, and his nominee, Iowa's tom Vilsack, is a lousy choice. Honest advocates of sustainable agriculture are particularly dismayed, although you might not know it by looking at some…

Heartburn that gives you lawsuits

So what does heartburn have to do with diabetes? Funny you should ask. Big Pharma giant AstraZeneca is being sued by 15,000 people who claim that their atypical antipsychotic, Seroquel, causes diabetes. Seroquel is approved for bipolar disorder, but unless there are a lot more people with bipolar disorder than we know, it is clearly being use off label because it is AstraZeneca's second best selling drug. What's the best seller, at least for now? The heartburn/ulcer drug, Nexium: Seroquel, used to treat bipolar disorder, brought in $4.03 billion last year, making it AstraZeneca's second-…

Scientist sued for publishing paper critical of biotech company's product

Last spring NIH scientist Charles Natanson published a meta-analysis of studies on hemoglobin-based blood substitutes in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Natanson, C., Kern, S. J., Lurie, P., Banks, S. M. & Wolfe, S. M. J. Am. Med. Assoc. 299, 2304-2312 (2008)). Blood substitutes are . . . well . . . blood substitutes. Like blood, they carry oxygen, but have long shelf lives, don't need refrigeration, don't require cross-matching and meet the need for situations where there is a shortage of fresh whole blood. A meta-analysis is a systematic summary, often expressed…