Science Policy
scientificactivist | June 9, 2009In an attempt to save the sinking ship that is his current government, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has extensively shuffled his cabinet. As part of this the science (formerly the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills [DIUS]) has been merged with business (formerly the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform [DBERR]) to form the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (DBIS). Paul Drayson will remain Minister of Science, but--in another twist--he'll now also be moonlighting as Minister of Defence Procurement (a position he has held previously).…
sciencepunk | June 9, 2009Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, will tomorrow announce his intention to place science "at centre of vision of Britain's future prosperity" in a speech at the Science Museum in London.
Marking the launch of the museum's centenary celebrations, Mandelson will outline the role of science in the newly-created Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. In a press release he stated:
A new world is emerging. One on the edge of a new industrial revolution that's driven by new technologies and the world's shift to low-carbon. And where global…
sciencepunk | June 9, 2009I'm in the Guardian again, talking about the Government's decision to scrap the two-year old Department for Innovation, Universities, and Skills in favour of incorporating these duties into the Department for Business. Science is in a vulnerable position at the moment:
As the dust settles following Gordon Brown's cabinet shuffle on Friday, it's clear that the landscape of British science has been transformed. Where the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills once stood, now only a vacant lot and several skips filled with DIUS-branded stationery remain. If the forwarding address is…
scientificactivist | June 3, 2009I'll admit that I haven't paid a terribly large amount of attention to the upcoming European Parliament elections (taking place in the UK Thursday--i.e. tomorrow) since I can't actually vote in them. However, maybe I should have been paying attention, based on a write-up by Frank Swain (SciencePunk) and Martin Robbins (The Lay Scientist) that appeared earlier this week in The Guardian's Science Blog.
Swain and Robbins' article--about the disconnect between the importance science will play in the issues the European Parliament will face versus the lack of attention science has received in the…
ddobbs | May 22, 2009
Having lived with fire ants, stepped in fire ants, laid down with fire ants, and been bit just about everywhere by fire ants, the news that parasitic flies turn fire ants them into zombies by eating their brains pleases me immensely.
Speaking of pleasure: Vaughn whacks the dopamine = pleasure meme.
Sharon Begley says Obama may get a lot done, but he can't erase stereotype threat (so far).
We may be dozing, but Europe is ordering its swine flu vaccine. D'oh! Update: We're getting a start too.
"Good night, sleep tight, I love you." Why consistent bedtime routines work.
Why the best…
ddobbs | May 20, 2009
What's wrong -- but horribly expected -- in this picture? One week the CEO of Lilly attacks the idea of a public health insurance plan because it might reduce consumers' "ability to choose, in an informed way, from all the available alternatives." The next week, PhRMA, the trade group this CEO's company is a part of, launches a campaign to undermine comparative effectiveness studies -- which would produce the data necessary for informed consumer choice. If that's not enough, this campaign against collecting actual empirical effectiveness data, spearheaded under the astroturf group…
bioephemera | May 15, 2009
This appears to be from a graphic novel called The Unknown. But I happen to think it's the ultimate all-purpose illustration for every discussion of science policy ever.
I want it on a T-shirt!
via io9
ddobbs | May 7, 2009
I should just have a permanent pointer from here to Effect Measure. But as I've not figured out how to do that, here's some more sensible thinking from Revere:
No one on the public health side has over reacted. When an outbreak or pandemic is unfolding, you get only one chance. The window is a narrow one. CDC (and WHO) have acquitted themselves well, so far. CDC's daily briefings have been straightforward and informative. The public, understandably, has bounced back and forth from fear to relief and back again. I don't think either pole is avoidable. If the scientists are baffled and…
ddobbs | April 28, 2009The excellent blog H5N1 (now covering H1N1 as well, and all over it), points us to the New York Times for an op-ed by John M. Barry, author of the definitive history of the Spanish flu in the US: Where Will the Swine Flu Go Next? Excerpt:
As the swine flu threatens to become the next pandemic, the biggest questions are whether its transmission from human to human will be sustained and, if so, how virulent it might become.
But even if this virus were to peter out soon, there is a strong possibility it would only go underground, quietly continuing to infect some people while becoming…
ddobbs | April 27, 2009I'm guessing most everyone interested in swine flu already reads Effect Measure (as well you should; it was an invaluable resource in my reporting for my Slate piece on the mystery of the virulence of the outbreak in Mexico). But in case you haven't or are not, today's primer there on case fatality rates, virulence, and mortality would make an excellent start.
One of the things we'd like to know about the swine flu virus is its Case Fatality Ratio (CFR, commonly called a case fatality rate, although it isn't technically a rate but a proportion). But what is a CFR? And how is it different…
ddobbs | April 27, 2009
"Swine Flu and the Mexico Mystery," my story on the swine-flu outbreak, is up at Slate. It looks at a question hotly pursued right now: Why does this flu seem to take a much deadlier course in Mexico than elsewhere so far? The answers will suggest much about what's to come.
Of the two two qualities vital to a nasty pandemicm-- to spread readily, and to be deadly, -- this flu,a brand-new strain of swine flu, or H1N1, seems to possess the first: Evidence is high that it spreads readily among humans. In that sense, it's an inversion of the bird flu. Bird flu terrifies infectious disease…
scientificactivist | April 27, 2009Earlier today, President Barack Obama delivered a major speech on science policy to the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about it in my previous post. Now, though, Andy Revkin of Dot Earth is trying to annotate the speech with relevant background information. Go help him out by providing relevant information in the comments section of his blog post.
I already submitted a comment about Obama's reference to his March 9th memo on political interference in science:
President Obama refers to a March 9th memo, which can be found at http://tr.im/jOUz. The memo emphasized his…
scientificactivist | April 27, 2009Today, President Barack Obama addressed the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), making him only the fourth president in modern times to do so (the other three were John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush). He touched on a variety of areas, but the major theme was a renewed commitment to science.
Specifically, Obama pledged that under his leadership, the US will devote more than three percent of GDP to research and development. In his words, this will be the "largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American History," even exceeding the…
ddobbs | April 23, 2009Reading the Mindreading Studies - Science Progress seeks a handle on fMRI hype, hope, and horizons
The evolving Swine Flu story [Effect Measure] The skinny on a scary run of deadly swine flu, from people who've been doing this a while.
Green Issues Fade Is green losing its lustre?
Eli Lilly Tops List of Drug-Company Pay to Vermont Docs Altogether, 78 drug companies spent just shy of $3 million dollars in payments to health professionals in Vermont last year. This is a state of about 600,000 people, and only a few thousand doctors. Payments to psychiatrists, for instance, totaled $479,306.19…
ddobbs | April 22, 2009
As the comments and correspondence about my PTSD story and posts accrue, I've been pondering ways to pull out some of the most interesting, powerful, and affecting. I finally decided to just start posting some, sometimes with commentary, sometimes without. This is a story of many different colors and textures.
I'll start with this excerpt from a long, eloquent blog response to my story about PTSD at Scientific American by Kayla Williams, a vet of the Iraq War who blogs at VetVoice. Williams is accumulating quite a strong run of posts there, including posts on torture, being a woman veteran…
ddobbs | April 20, 2009Earlier today I drew attention to a post by Questionable Authority on The Torture Memos, Medical "Professionals", and the Hippocratic Oath. Says Mike,
I cannot remember ever in my life being as ashamed of my country as I am at this moment. The contents of the memos are so insanely wrong that I'd like to believe that they're fiction, but they're clearly not.
He ends by calling for the AMA to identify the medical professionals involved and help them find new lines of work. A commenter on one of my earlier posts on psychologists, doctors, and torture, T. Hunt, joins him:
While the modern…
ddobbs | April 20, 2009Ed Yong examines how a simple writing exercise helps break vicious cycle that holds back black students.
The Questionable Authority considers The Torture Memos, Medical "Professionals", and the Hippocratic Oath.
Jessica Palmer, in a healthy display of online media's corrective power, tries to make clear that For the last time: that "Twitter is Evil" paper is not about Twitter!.
Zimmer takes a tour of assisted migration.
Effect measure argues the lack of universal health care in the US is morally and fiscally bankrupt.
scientificactivist | April 17, 2009A month after the Obama Administration lifted Bush era restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research, the NIH has now announced its new draft guidelines for such research. The new guidelines will greatly expand the scope of federally-funded research by allowing funds to be used for work on stem cell lines derived from excess fertility clinic embryos.
However, federal funds will not be available for work on hESC lines derived from embryos that have been generated specifically for the purpose of stem cell work. This is a pretty severe limitation, actually, and…
bioephemera | April 14, 2009As I put it at a blogging panel last fall, "in science, it is normative to be not sure." It wasn't my most eloquent moment, but at least AAAS' president-elect Alice Huang agrees with me that one of the biggest challenges to public science literacy is understanding the contingent nature of scientific "truth".
But probably the most difficult concept to get across to nonscientists is that we look at data and then use probabilities to judge those data. The public wants an absolute black-and-white answer. We may look at something that is 80 percent likely as being good enough to base decisions on…
ddobbs | April 8, 2009When you propose that we are overdiagnosing PTSD in vets, you run into not only a lot of flak but many offerings of evidence suggesting that we're missing a lot of cases. Since publishing my article on PTSD, I've received those arguments directly in comments, and on Wednesday, April 8, Salon published an article, "I am under a lot of pressure to not diagnose PTSD," by Michael de Yoanna and Mark Benjamin, that offers unsettling evidence that at least some doctors working for the VA are being pressed to not diagnose PTSD in combat vets.
So which is it? Are we under- or overdiagnosing PTSD in…