General Science
sa smith | July 7, 2015So the guy who faked some HIV research results is officially going to spend about five years in jail, and has to pay back $7 million.
Former ISU scientist's stiff fraud sentence sends message
Yeah. It does send a message. The message is "The US government is not going to really investigate any of this, but every now and then we are going to go after some random nobody 'to send a message'".
My opinion on this topic has not changed in a year.
Oh! Thank god someone finally did something about that tyrant assistant professor from Iowa who fucked up, got caught, admitted what he did, and showed…
sa smith | December 6, 2014Want a unique gift for your sciency-nerdy-geeky-gamer friends this holiday season?
Ethan shared a list of his favorite ugly gamer sweaters, and I want to share a list of some things I like:
Geeky/Sciency Pendants: OrfebreEvolution, including the 'Lady Knights' designs by Ryan Grant Long
Geeky art: Ryan Grant Long has a shop up at Society6
Chain-mail, jewelry, pretty things: BinarySoul
Really really really beautiful wildlife photography: LouisShackletonPhoto
Please feel free to share your personal favorite, unique gift sites in the comments :)
sa smith | October 19, 2014Some time last Tuesday, that strange sound you heard was thousands of scientists screaming in agony, and smashing their heads against the nearest keyboard/desk/wall. Good lord, Sanjay. Good lord. What is wrong with you?
This video is like the scientific equivalent of 'Two girls one cup'. After you saw it, youd run and show your friends, just to see them writhing in horror.
"What is this now? Why are you taping my reaction? Okay. Huh. I dunno... I dunno... Wait. What is he doing with the chocolate sauce?.... No. NO! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! WHY??? AHHHHHH!!! WHAT IS HE DOING???? AHHHHHH!!! WHY…
sa smith | June 26, 2014Remember this?
Wait, what? Faked HIV vaccine results
The researcher accused of manipulating his reagents to 'show his HIV vaccine strategy worked' admitted he did it:
Investigators say former Iowa State University laboratory manager Dong-Pyou Han has confessed to spiking samples of rabbit blood with human antibodies to make an experimental HIV vaccine appear to have great promise.
And the government is prosecuting him for it:
Responding to a major case of research misconduct, federal prosecutors have taken the rare step of filing charges against a scientist after he admitted falsifying data…
sa smith | June 11, 2014Holy crap! This is so clever!!
A synthetic sex ratio distortion system for the control of the human malaria mosquito
Component #1-- Anopheles gambiae, the kind of mosquito that is notorious for spreading malaria.
Component #2-- I-PpoI, a protein that 'sees' a specific DNA sequence, and cuts it. aka, a homing endonuclease. It was originally found in slime mold. :-D
It might seem as if there is no way these two components could come together in any meaningful way.
But when you are an evil scientist, anything is possible!!
It turns out that there is a DNA sequence on the X-chromosome of the…
sa smith | March 21, 2014I have known about this for a while, and have been debating whether or not I should say anything. I really dont want to give the disgraces responsible for the XMRV-->CFS fiasco, Judy Mikovits, Frank Ruscetti, and Sandra Ruscetti, any more attention. What turned my opinion was something T.R. Gregory said yesterday:
I don't *believe* in science or have *faith* in science. Rather, I *trust* scientific reasoning and the conclusions that come from evaluating evidence scientifically. The difference is that belief and faith don't need to be backed up. Trust, on the other hand, is earned.
Of…
sa smith | June 2, 2013Some folks have been worried about me, so I thought Id write this post to mention that I am okay, Arnie is okay, everything is okay with me.
In the seven years Ive lived in OK, Ive been though a lot of storms. Its only been bad enough for me to come to work (I live close to work, work has an emergency shelter, generators, etc) three times.
This past Friday was one of those three times. And the first time I was actually scared. The wind, the frantic way the trees were shaking, the way the windows were breathing (not in unison)-- Its the first time Ive left my penthouse lab for the emergency…
sa smith | April 14, 2013Craig Venter gets it.
He gets it.
I wish I had 5 minutes to talk to him. I dont. But we do have this ~21 min vid where he talks about some of the innovative things he and his crew are working on (phage therapy, faster ways to make influenza vaccines).
True Revolution in Medicine
(Im dissertation writing, posts will be sparse for the next couple of months- but to those of you sending me emails with 'hey, what about ___?' I will make sure to get to those!)
sa smith | December 13, 2012Record yourself playing with your puppies for 30-60 seconds and upload the vid to the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab website!
Dog-dog play has been, relatively, well studied. The signs/signals/noises pups play, the repercussions for not playing by the rules, the benefits of play to an adult pup, its a very interesting fusion of evolution and animal behavior (unless you dont believe in using evolution and observation to study animal behavior...).
Some of the dog-dog play stuff I use as a human, I know. For instance, when puppies are playing, and one plays too rough, the 'victim' will make a high…
sa smith | November 9, 2012One of the more amusing aspects of 'You are only criticizing Islam because you are RACIST AGAINST MIDDLE-EASTERNERS!!!!' is the fact that most Muslims do not live in the Middle-East.
They live in Asia.
Case in point: Indonesia, where about >87% of the population is Muslim. 12.7% of all Muslims live in Indonesia (Iraq? 1.2%).
So naturally, like Christians in the US try to pass legislation to make Christianity The Law (for everyone, whether you are Christian or not), Muslims in Indonesia try to pass legislation to make Islam The Law (for everyone, whether you are Muslim or not).
And,…
sa smith | July 25, 2012Briefly, a lot of our vaccines and antibiotics need to be refrigerated, if not frozen, for them to maintain their usefulness. This makes it problematic to get vaccines and antibiotics to places that need them, but lack proper refrigeration (or electricity, for that matter)-- Its called the Cold Chain.
Some folks at Tufts think they have figured out a way to store some vaccines and antibiotics, which would obviate the need for the Cold Chain:
Stabilization of vaccines and antibiotics in silk and eliminating the cold chain
WARNING: I am not a structure person! But from my understanding, they…
sa smith | June 10, 2012I was just derping around at Cycle Gear this afternoon, when alovasudden, SCIENCE!!!
Couple: *debating about what color helmet to buy - its summer, should they get the white/yellow one instead of black/blue*
Cycle Gear Dude: "The material that makes helmets work as helmets insulates you from the 'heat' of the sun. We did an experiment last summer-- we put a white helmet and a black helmet out in the summer sun for four hours, with a cup of water underneath. There was like, not even a degree difference between the temperature of the water between them."
Me, from across the store: "HAAA!…
sa smith | February 22, 2012I am not a 'fan' of dietary sensationalism.
A can of Mountain Dew made with high fructose corn syrup once a week is not going to kill you.
Megadoses of various vitamins and minerals is not going to 'cure' you.
People who demonize or canonize food annoy me.
Funny enough, we have examples of both today, from 'pop'-news (har har) sources!
Raw milk is not a panacea. Its full of bacteria that make you sick, stupid!Raw milk causes most illnesses from dairy, study finds
CDC: Raw milk to blame for most dairy-related disease outbreaks
Yes, those are actually anti-food-woo articles in USA TODAY and…
sa smith | January 26, 2012Just, turn off your brain before you read this post, folks.
If you try to to think about this, Im pretty sure your entire brain will hemorrhage, and I dont want to be responsible for that.
You think I am joking.
I am not.
I actually heard rumors about what Im going to type here today a week ago, but I didnt write it because I thought it was just an internet rumor. It was too stupid to be real life.
And yet, after verifying the info, here I am. It is true.
*blink*
*deepbreath*
Okay.
Companies like Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Trident-- they take their food flavor/food additive/food everything very…
sa smith | January 2, 2012Oh my gawd this is so fun!
You know how we are always screaming online about some stupid thing Jenny McCarthy or Bill O'Reilly has said/done? A group of folks at Sense About Science have gotten together some of the stupid, if not outright dangerous 'potentially misleading' things celebrities have said about earth science/heath/diet/etc and matched them up with real explanations from real scientists/educated people within the appropriate field.PDF-- Celebrities and Science 2011
It includes a couple of my pet-peeves-- 'boosting' your immune system and mega-dosing on vitamins in the absence of…
sa smith | December 21, 2011The strangest things have happened in the past 24 hours.
1-- New FDA approved clinical trial of anti-HIV vaccine
YAY, right? Except I have no idea what the hell they are proposing to do in this clinical trial, other than what was mentioned in press releases-- Its some kind of killed virus. Why the hell putting one killed virus of a currently innumerable quasispecies will do anything, I have no idea. So I tried to look up some back-info on this vaccine, SAV001, in PubMed. Nothing. Tried to look up what this researcher, Chil-Yong Kang, has done with HIV-1 vaccines ("Kang CY"[Author] hiv…
sa smith | November 17, 2011My favorite 'artistic rendition' of the scientific process, the only realistic depiction of what science is/how it is done on TV, is this montage from Big Bang Theory.
This flow-chart is pretty damn accurate too:See more on Know Your Meme
This is what you are getting into if you want to be a scientist-- its a tangled web of '?????', not a linear chain of '!!!!!'
sa smith | November 11, 2011BlogBrother Ethan Siegel just caught (yet another) scientist manipulating data to generate the conclusion they want... not the conclusion the data actually supports.Exposing a Climate Science Fraud
Yeah, thats how we roll on SciBlogs.
But in my example, the scientists actively hid relevant data from other scientists they were speaking to/the journals they were submitting to/the patients they were preaching to.
In Ethans case, all of the data was happily and knowingly laid out for anyone and everyone to mess around with themselves. So either this Judith Curry character is a fantastic idiot,…
sa smith | November 7, 2011We get little earthquakes all the time in OK. This is my usual reaction:Department mates running into the hallway: OMFG WHAT WAS THAT???
Me: Wat?
Department mates: HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE!!
Me: ... I didnt feel anything... ... ... Thats what she said.
But this Saturday we had the strongest quake in OK history:Magnitude 5.6 - OKLAHOMA
2011 November 06 03:53:10 UTC
This was my reaction this time:Me in bed watching TV
*earthquake*
Me closing my eyes and holding my breath until its over, silently hoping it is an earthquake and not something worse.
Arnie making a bee-line for the bedroom…
sa smith | November 4, 2011The Southern Poverty Law Center just published an article on an interview they did with an animal liberation freak, Camille Marino (you remember her).
There isnt really anything I feel I need to say about it.
I think Marino says it all.
Marino thinks so too. After the article was published, she wanted it pulled:Marino was fully aware during the interview that she was talking with a blogger from the Southern Poverty Law Center, even volunteering that she is familiar with the SPLC's history of denouncing radical animal rights activists like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). She approved a…