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Why we fight for patients

Never let it be said that Orac can't match Mark Crislip in shameless promotion. The world might indeed need more Mark Crislip™, but I like to think that it needs a bit more of his friends, too. So, in that spirit, here are the videos, recently released by the James Randi Educational Foundation, of Bob Blaskiewicz, myself, and some key SBM players that you've come to know and love. The first video is a talk by my best "friend" in the world at The Amazing Meeting in July about Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD. It's entitled Why We Fight (Part I): Stanislaw Burzynski Versus Science-Based Medicine.…

Best Science Show

This weeks ask the Scienceblogger question is: What's the best science show ever? I'll go with David Attenborough's Life on Earth. I probably would have become a biologist without Attenborough's example, but who can be sure. I watched our tapes of that show until they wore out. I wanted to be David Attenborough until I realized that wasn't really a career description. The cinematography of all of his work is just astounding, and the man can explain biological diversity with the sort of personable passion that you just don't get often enough. The show is available in pirated BitTorrent…

Chesterton, Madness, Reason

Adam Gopnik has a great New Yorker article (not online) on the genius and wickedness of G.K. Chesterton. Although he wrote some masterful books - my favorites are The Man Who Was Thursday and the Father Brown detective stories - Chesterton was also a consistent antisemitic, prone to tedious defenses of Catholic orthodoxy. To be honest, though, my favorite thing about Chesterton are his aphorisms: only Wilde is more quotable. Gopnik has found some great ones ("The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, but to make settled things strange") but he left out a few of…

Justice for Chad Cook: What Took MSHA So Long??

What does it take for MSHA's Richard Stickler and the Solicitor of Labor to do their jobs? Front-page newspaper stories about MSHA's failures? A letter from a grieving mother? A petition signed by other family-member victims of workplace fatalities? Apparently, it took all this and more for MSHA finally to decide that the November 8, 2005 coal truck accident at the Alliance Resources' Metikki Mine which killed Chad Cook, 25, was work-related.  Chad Cook, a contract driver employed by the Utah-based Savage Services, died when his haulage truck, heavy-loaded with coal, ran off…

Science journalism: don't forget the editors

Continuing the current discussion of the questionable quality of popular science journalism, British researcher Simon Baron-Cohen weighs in at the New Scientist with his personal experiences of misrepresented research. Baron-Cohen complains that earlier this year, several articles on his work linking prenatal testosterone levels to autistic traits, including coverage in the Guardian, were titled and subtitled misleadingly: It has left me wondering: who are the headline writers? Articles and columns in newspapers are bylined so there is some accountability when they get things wrong. In this…

Trolling the antivaccine trolls

There are many ways to combat antivaccine pseudoscience. Personally, I've chosen my favored methods, namely blogging, giving talks, and generally combatting pseudoscience on social media wherever I find it. That's not all I do (for example, I do have a couple of papers in the peer-reviewed medical literature designed to combat the infiltration of pseudoscience into academia), but it is where I put most of my effort. For one thing, I'm good at it. For another thing, it's fun. Also, it's something I can work into my busy schedule more easily. It even brings me a bit of notoriety now and then,…

A smorgasbord....

Being quite busy lately, I accumulated a lot of links to stuff I wanted to comment on but never found time. Well, it does not appear I will find time any time soon, so here are the links for you to comment on anyway (just because I link to them does not mean I agree with them - in some cases quite the opposite): In Defense of Secrecy : Given the pervasive secrecy of the Bush-Cheney administration, and the sorry consequences of that disposition, President Barack Obama's early emphasis on openness in government seems almost inevitable. One of the first official communications issued by the new…

Talkin' Trash

I know everyone in the sci-blogosphere is swooning over Carl Sagan. But as a kid I never cared much about him - I usually fell asleep halfway through each episode of 'Cosmos'. But I would not miss for anything an episode of 'The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau' with Jacques-Yves Cousteau. That was breathtaking. And what he and the crew of Calypso did was truly ground-breaking, both in terms of scientific discoveries and in terms of under-water filming. And those discoveries and breakthroughs were shared with us, the audience, in an intimate and immediate manner. That was a long time…

Research Triangle Park

My regular readers probably remember that I blogged from the XXVI International Association of Science Parks World Conference on Science & Technology Parks in Raleigh, back in June of this year. I spent the day today at the headquarters of the Research Triangle Park, participating in a workshop about the new directions that the park will make in the future. It is too early to blog about the results of this session, though the process will be open, but I thought this would be a good time to re-post what I wrote from the June conference and my ideas about the future of science-technology…

New work on speciation

Just lately there's been a flurry of papers on speciation that I haven't had time to digest properly. Several of them seem to support "sympatric" or localised speciation based on selection for local resources with reproductive isolation a side effect of divergent selection. So here they are below the fold with abstracts and my comments... Evolution of reproductive isolation in plants Heredity advance online publication 23 July 2008; doi: 10.1038/hdy.2008.69 A Widmer, C Lexer and S Cozzolino Reproductive isolation is essential for the process of speciation and much has been learned in…

Food vendors: Taking the gloves off

Stories like this really interest me, so a special thanks to Jody Lanard who sent it along. It's about those gloves they wear while making you a sandwich at the deli or a fast food joint. You know the ones. The disposable plastic kind. Disposable so you can change them often and throw them away. The kind that prevent the hands of the person behind the counter making direct contact with the food. Those gloves. From the Journal of Food Protection Volume 68, Number 1 p. 187-190, a paper by Lynch et al.: A study was conducted to determine whether the levels of selected microorganisms differed on…

Our Budget Boondoggle

Perusing the Congressional Budge Office website, I came across some fascinating numbers from the Federal budget. For instance, where does Federal revenue primarily come from? Let's look at the historical budget numbers. In 2003, personal income taxes provided 44.5% of all revenues; in 2000 it was 49.6%. Corporate income taxes provided 7.4% of all revenues; in 2000 it was 10.2%. But in that time, total Federal revenues have dropped from 2 trillion dollars to 1.78 trillion dollars, while federal spending has gone from 1.79 trillion to 2.16 trillion - almost an exact reversal. The result? In…

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for "success"

It's been a couple of weeks since we last checked in with The DCA Site, that dubious advertising site for BuyDCA.com, where a chemist named Jim Tassano sells to desperate cancer patients non-pharmaceutical grade and non-FDA-approved dichloroacetate, the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent with an interesting and unusual mechanism of action that has shown promise in rat models of cancer but as yet has not undergone clinical trials in humans to determine if it is effective in cancer. Based on a lot of hype by the credulous and proudly ignorant, a lot of distrust of big pharma (some justified…

Birds in the News 159

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Black-throated Sparrow, Amphispiza bilineata, in Chaco Canyon. Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view]. Birds in Science This is a link to a fascinating slide show that documents 9 links in the dinosaur-to-bird transition -- plenty of strong evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs! GrrlScientist comment: "link" number four is very dubious, though, and I am surprised they even used it in their story. People Hurting Birds Both engines of the US Airways flight that crash-landed in the Hudson River last month…

At Home with the Numbers Game.. or John Michael Greer is Singing my Song!

As you know, Greer and I at times have our differences in perspective, but I think this week's column is particularly acute, and offers up two point that I think are really essential to grasp when thinking of the future. The first is that technical feasibility is not all - that technical feasibility rests on a complex bed of other feasibilities. Thus, simply observing that it is technically possible, to, say, create zero impact cities or whatever does not usefully tell us whether we are going to do it. For example, it has been technically possible to eliminate most causes of death in…

Mommy, I want a saber-toothed kitten!

In 1990, the late Michael Crichton published his most influential book. Sure, a lot of us loved 'State of Fear', but let's be honest - that's not his most popular book. If you haven't been under a rock through the '90s, you've probably heard of it - Jurassic Park. Of course, the series' portrayal of dinosaurs may have been a bit off (we now know the velociraptors had feathers, for example), but the idea was pure brilliance. Resurrecting animals from blood stored in preserved mosquitos - genius, and eventually, maybe even possible. This, the week of his death, scientists have published a few…

Making popcorn for the coming tardigrade wars

This could get interesting. I've seen a lot of stories about this recent paper on the tardigrade genome: Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the transfer of genes between species, has been recognized recently as more pervasive than previously suspected. Here, we report evidence for an unprecedented degree of HGT into an animal genome, based on a draft genome of a tardigrade, Hypsibius dujardini. Tardigrades are microscopic eight-legged animals that are famous for their ability to survive extreme conditions. Genome sequencing, direct confirmation of physical linkage, and phylogenetic analysis…

Geekiness of Years Past -or- What the hell is AYBABTU?

I was having a conversation with someone the other day, and I mentioned the phrase All Your Base Are Belong to Us (AYBABTU) and just got a really blank stare. This is a shame because not only is it a funny line, but it is an absolutely critical part of recent geek history. So I thought I would share it with you -- you meaning those of you who were not already aware of it. The phrase All Your Base Are Belong to Us originates from a video game called Zero Wing that was translated poorly from Japanese to English upon its release here (apparently in Japanese it made a lot more sense). Here is…

Hippies might have something going with that incense crap

Actually, I'll let you read the press release first and then we'll decide if 'religious leaders' and the damn hippies know something we don't ;) Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. In a new study appearing online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), an international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly…

Active Engagement Works: "Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class"

Physics is a notoriously difficult and unpopular subject, which is probably why there is a large and active Physics Education Research community within physics departments in the US. This normally generates a lot of material in the Physical Review Special Topics journal, but last week, a PER paper appeared in Science, which is unusual enough to deserve the ResearchBlogging treatment. OK, what's this paper about? Well, with the exceptional originality that physicists bring to all things, the title pretty much says it all. They demonstrated that a different style of teaching applied to a large…

Cheap personal genomics: the death-knell for the industry?

Yesterday I discussed the decision of personal genomics company 23andMe to slash its price for a genome scan by 60%, to under $400. In the comments to that post, industry observer David Hamilton pointed me to an article he's written for BNET on the implications of 23andMe's price plunge, which (like everything he writes) is well worth a read. Hamilton has long argued, quite compellingly, that the true business model of personal genomics companies relies only indirectly on selling genome scans to consumers: ...personal-genomics companies don't intend to make money by selling the tests.…

Finally, the FDA acts on TheDCASite.com

It sure took the FDA long enough, nearly five months, but it finally acted. It finally shut Jim Tassano down, as this notice on TheDCASite.com states: Two agents from the FDA visited us on Tuesday,July 17, 2007 and ordered that we stop making and selling DCA. Unfortunately, the site www.buydca.com will be shut down immediately. It is against US government law to sell substances with the suggestion that they are cancer treatments unless they are approved by the FDA. DCA can still be obtained from pharmacies with a prescription and from chemical companies. To keep you informed and abreast of…

Rabble.ca article repost: Question! What is really happening at the DFO libraries?

A couple of weeks ago I was approached by Rabble.ca to write a piece for them with some of my thoughts about the current controversy surrounding the government of Canada's closure of several Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries. I have a link compilation here. I was happy to write up something and it appeared here. Rabble also allows authors to keep all rights to their work so we agreed that after a few days I would be able to repost it here on my blog. Which is what I've done below. I will reiterate my thanks to Kaitlin McNabb for offering me this opportunity and for her very…

A sad day for public science advocacy

I've been at this blogging thing for more than a decade now. Looking back on those years, I find it incredible that I've lasted this long. For one thing, I still marvel that there are apparently thousands of people out there who still like to read my nearly daily musings (or, as George Carlin would call them, brain droppings) after all these years. More importantly, being a public advocate for science is a rough business, as I've documented over the years. Back when I first started out, I was completely pseudonymous and anonymous. I kept my real name relatively secret. It was less than five…

Science & Technology Parks - what next?

As you may have noticed if you saw this or you follow me on Twitter/FriendFeed/Facebook, I spent half of Tuesday and all of Wednesday at the XXVI International Association of Science Parks World Conference on Science & Technology Parks in Raleigh. The meeting was actually longer (starting on Sunday and ending today), but I was part of a team and we divided up our online coverage the best we could do. Christopher Perrien assembled a team (including his son) to present (and represent) Science In The Triangle, the new local initiative. They manned a booth at which they not only showcased…

The Evolution of Asshatitude on The Internet

Matini chewed hungrily on the cooked forearm of the monkey as I watched, thinking, "WTF, is he really not going to share?" The others watched him with looks of incredulity that told me they were thinking the same thing. Finally, Latala said to Matini, thumb pointing sideways to me, "You know, he knows the rules." "Huh?" Matini replied, looking up vaguely with his eyes while chewing the arm. "You killed that monkey with an arrow he had given you. Therefore, that arm is his, according to our traditional way of dividing up the portions of animals we have hunted. But you are not sharing."…

The "pharma shill" gambit

Over the last couple of days, I've been discussing How "They" See "Us," which is basically that "they" see "us" as pure evil. Well, maybe not always sheer evil, but certainly not good, and even more certainly as having ulterior motives, the most common of which is filthy pharma lucre. So it seemed appropriate, as a grant deadline fast approaches and constrains my time, to revisit a topic that comes up here from time to time. Basically, every so often, my day job intrudes on my blogging hobby, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to…

Swine flu: more on the genetics of the virus

A reader (hat tip, sandy) has pointed me to a very interesting interview with CDC's chief virologist, Ruben Donis, in Science Magazine's blog, ScienceInsider. In it he provides further information on the confusing reports about the species origin of the current swine flu, originally said to be of swine, human and bird origin but later claimed to be only swine. It may be that both are true, depending on how you look at it. According to Donis, who has been sequencing the isolates, the virus is all recent swine but bears the marks of human and avian ancestry in some genes. Different genes have…

NYT Takes the Wrong Angle on Senate Climate Debate

For the first time since 2005, the full Senate chamber is debating climate legislation: the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, or CSA. Although the chances of this legislation becoming law this year are slim, it could lay important groundwork for the next Congress and Administration. If you want to know the key details about what the CSA proposes and what the remaining sticking points are, go read this excellent Gristmill post by Kate Sheppard â and donât seek your information from todayâs New York Times. As the title suggests, John M. Broderâs NYT article âSenate Opens Debate on…

DIY biology: incubating in Seattle

This afternoon, I attended the first meeting of a DIY biology group in Seattle, after a kind invitation from one of the founders.   DIY, for those of you new to the acronym, stands for "Do It Yourself."   But, you say, there are lots of people who do biology on their own. Some people keep pets. Some have children. Others raise tropical fish, go bird watching, or mushroom hunting. Some people even make yogurt or cheese, or brew beer, or make wine. What makes DIY biology so different?   This isn't your grandfather's home brew Well, lets say for now that it's a little more technical…

Top Songs of 2007

Here are the 22 five-star-rated songs that I added to my iTunes library in 2007 (aphabetcal by artist): "Rehab," Amy Winehouse "Antichrist Television Blues," Arcade Fire "Open All Night," Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band "Bottom of the Rain," Buffalo Tom "CC and Callas," Buffalo Tom "Sly," The Cat Empire "Gimme Some Motivation," Delta Spirit "Gasoline Drawers," The Holmes Brothers "Ruby," Kaiser Chiefs "Sugar Buzz," Li'l Cap'n Travis "Dashboard," Modest Mouse "The Road I Must Travel," The Nightwatchman "Lost to the Lonesome," Pela "Mr. Stupid," Richard Thompson "The Angels Hung…

Happy Open Access Day!

I'm tired of being prevented from reading academic papers because of subscription walls. Both as a student and someone who loves to dig into the history of science, I often cast a wide net when I'm searching for information on a topic I want to know more about. At this very moment, for instance, I'm taking a break from writing a chapter of my book about birds and dinosaurs. In doing research for the chapter, I have come across a number of references that have been hard to come by, one of which is Alick Walker's 1972 Nature paper "New light on the Origin of Birds and Crocodiles." Rutgers,…

Mommy Monday: Minnow's ideal day

Minnow woke up yesterday morning snuggled in my arms. We rolled over and nudged Fish awake as Minnow happily wiggled between her parents. After a few minutes, she decided she wanted a little something to eat, so I obliged. When she was finished, she rolled away from me and let out a sigh of pure satisfaction. I looked down at her and she had a huge smile on - I swear it was the sort of smile one has when they've just had really good sex. She just seemed blissful. Minnow's good mood got me thinking about what a perfect day would look like in her eyes. It's hard to know for sure because her…

Email Management

Pretty much every academic on-line has already commented on the New York Times piece on student email today. As usual, Timothy Burke says most of what I'd like to say: Much of the complaint recorded in the article also seems much ado about nothing. As Margaret Soltan observes, what's the big deal about answering the kid who wants to know about school supplies? It's almost kind of sweet that the student asks, actually. I get queries from junior high school kids who want me to do their homework for them, more or less: what does it cost me to be gentle and modestly accomodating in return? A few…

BioRay: Whittemore Peterson Institutes BFF is a woo-factory

VIPDx took this down from their website, but this is the internet. The internet remembers everything. VIP Dx Laboratory is highly regarded in the field of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and neuro immune disease testing. VIP Dx also tests for intestinal gut dysbiosis by means of the Immunobilan test, the same test used in BioRay's CytoFlora study. The CytoFlora study showed remarkable results with autistic children. Specifically: Improvement in speech and social interaction Reduction in abdominal pain and gastro-intestinal symptoms Until now, antibiotics have been the only recognized treatment for…

Journalism of the Gaps

I've seen a bunch of links to this interview with Peter Aldhous, mostly focusing on this quote: I think for most science journalists, their model of journalism is explanatory. It’s taking the arcane world of the high priests and priestesses of science and translating what they do into language the ordinary mortal can understand. And I think that’s incredibly valuable and very important if we’re to have an informed society. But it is a different mindset from thinking that part of your job is to keep an eye on these guys and check that science isn’t being used and abused, that there isn’t…

The Friday Fermentable: The Presidential Beer Summit Edition

I absolutely guarantee that the President wanted a fine, handcrafted American ale. But I am certain that the conservative press would've jumped this as an "elitist" choice as they did his campaign comments on arugula. Instead, he chose Bud Light. The President had a choice to promote the craft-brewing industry in the US - the most noble and patriotic of pursuits shared by our Founding Fathers. Instead, craft brewers across the country - nay, perhaps the world - let forth a collective "D'oh" upon the announcement of the President's watered-down choice. There has been much ado about President…

Cowards at University College London

From The Guardian's reliable and irreplaceable Ben Goldacre, who writes the "Bad Science" column, we learn the sad news that the ivory-tower types running University College London have no spines. Such a shame. It was such a good school. The offense? Asking one of their own to stop attacking alternative medicine. Prof. David Colquhoun, "one of the most eminent scientists in the UK" according to Goldacre, has been taking on the merchants of woo, whether they be posing as homeopathists, acupuncturists, or faith healers, for six years "in attempt to improve public understanding of science." The…

When Fair Use Isn't Fair

Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math, Bad Math has a very supportive article up summarizing my tangle with lawyers yesterday over the 'fair use' of a figure from the fruit antioxidant paper. In short, I was threatened with legal action if I didn't take it down immediately. I used a panel a figure, and a chart, from over 10+ figures in the paper. I cited and reported everything straight forwardly. I would think they'd be happy to get the press. But alas, no. I got around them by complying, but reproducing the figures myself in Excel. They didn't bother me anymore, as apparently thats 100% legal and…

On Intelligence and Talent

Probably the dumbest person I've ever met in my life was a housemate in grad school. I didn't do my lab work on campus, so I wasn't living in a neighborhood where cheap housing was rented to students, but in a place where folks were either genuinely poor, or in the market for very temporary lodgings while they looked for something better. There were low-income housing units across the street, and also an apartment building full of families who didn't quite qualify for welfare. This particular guy rented one of the other rooms in the house, and worked a series of unskilled jobs-- assistant on…

Dinesh D'Souza promised me an afterlife, and all I got were the same old cheap lies

I am so disappointed. The little evangelical goober has a new book that promises to provide evidence of life after death — it's right in the title, Life After Death: The Evidence — but he doesn't seem to have, you know, actually provided any evidence. Newsweek has a summary of his arguments. The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian…

Random Observations About Life in Germany: Apotheken versus Drogerien

tags: cultural observation, expat life, Life in Germany, Apotheken, Drogerien Expats, immigrants, and people who travel internationally often are impressed with differences between their home country and the country they are visiting or living in. I thought I'd write about some of the daily features of my life in Germany that are different from my former life in Seattle and in NYC; sometimes amusing, other times annoying. If you also have similar experiences, I'd sure like to read about your experiences and observations in the comments thread. Because I only recently found a "drug store," I'…

Eisen Busts Rep Carolyn Maloney parroting Elsevier Publishing's defense of the Research Works Act

At It's not junk Michael Eisen continues to expose the shameless actions of Carolyn Maloney to sell out science for the sake of publishers like Elsevier. As we remarked last week, it seems that very little money is required to buy a representatives favor towards your industry, even if that means acting against the public interest. Now, in her defense of the Research Works Act, which undoes the public distribution of research findings paid for by the public, her response appears to have been written by Elsevier itself. Eisen busts her in the act. From Maloney's letter: First, I…

No God But God

I'm about halfway through Reza Aslan's book No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam, published in 2005. I've read enough to recommend the book whole-heartedly. Aslan is an excellent writer who presents some very dry material with a lot of verve. At times the book is hard to put down. On the other hand, I don't entirely buy Aslan's view of things. As Aslan tells it, Muhammad was a social reformer of stunning moral insight, far ahead of his time on the subject of social, especially gender, equality. The notion of jihad, far from being a license to go out and kill…

Response to Dan Ariely's Duke Sex Toy Study Is Predictably Irrational

Father Joe Vetter, director of Duke University's Catholic Center, is protesting trial participant accrual for a study being conducted on campus directed by Dr Dan Ariely, the James B Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Fuqua School of Business (story and video). Ariely is also the author of the best-selling book, Predictably Irrational, an engaging, science-based examination of the rational and not-so-rational influences that contribute to decision-making. The new and expanded version of the book ranks #442 on Amazon.com book sales in the United States. Look for that number to…

Latest attempt to visualize the mess we're in: A wheel of misfortune

The journal Nature has just published a massive feature series on, to use a well-worn phrase, "the limits to growth." The centerpiece is a graphic created by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and his colleagues as part of "a new approach to defining biophysical preconditions for human development. For the first time, we are trying to quantify the safe limits outside of which the Earth system cannot continue to function in a stable, Holocene-like state." Here's their wheel of misfortune: The green is the safe limit, the red represents more or less where we are. For those…

A Horrific Spill: Chemical Company Kills Thousands then Refuses Responsibility

This would be the headline from 25 years ago at Bhopal, India, when the Union Carbide plant there leaked a toxic cloud of methyl-isocyanate. My headline is indicative of the complexity of this disaster: the causes, responses, and historical path since then of regulation, cross-national legislation, and corporate attempts (or lack thereof) at responsibility to the communities where they operate are not straightforward. The company in question, Union Carbide, attempted at the time to claim it wasn't their fault (that it was sabotage). Never mind that a mere six months later, a similar…

Crunchy goodness

So, as many of my readers and all of my friends know, I am a moral vacuum. I routinely brush those earnest young folk aside who seek my signature on their morally worthy petitions with that statement - they usually stand there blinking. I mean, what do you do? Run after the psychopath and try to reason with him? Just try it, young fellow... Anyway, in a self-conscious attempt to make up for this, see below the fold. Janet has done all Seed stablemates proud by attempting to get us to donate to DonorsChoose. Since it's an American thing, and I am not American, I have chosen to not get…

Best Of: Gender Disparity: An Open Letter to 'Gabe'

originally published November 2, 2007 by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum I'm publicly responding to a particular reader's provocative comments because women-in-science is a topic that needs to be settled. Finally. After which, I'll be moving away from the great gender divide for a while and back to science and policy next week. Here goes. November 2, 2007 Hello there Gabe, You may be wondering why I'm addressing you in this forum. Well, since you visited both blogs and stirred up quite a response, I figured you deserve to be in the spotlight. To begin, I'm glad you read our blog and take enough of…

Gender Disparity: An Open Letter to 'Gabe'

I'm publicly responding to a particular reader's provocative comments because women-in-science is a topic that needs to be settled. Finally. After which, I'll be moving away from the great gender divide for a while and back to science and policy next week. Here goes. November 2, 2007 Hello there Gabe, You may be wondering why I'm addressing you in this forum. Well, since you visited both blogs and stirred up quite a response, I figured you deserve to be in the spotlight. To begin, I'm glad you read our blog and take enough of an interest to participate. My favorite aspect of The…