Science Policy
ddobbs | November 26, 2008
Lisa Bero
Critics of the FDA drug-trial process have often complained that the drug companies are free to publish only the trials that are flattering to their cause (that is, only those that show effects above placebo and relatively low side-effects). As explained in Wired Science, UC San Francisco health policy expert and Cochrane Collaboration co-director Lisa Bero has been picking this process apart:
The difference between what drug companies tell the government and doctors suggests that they're cooking the books, which could mislead doctors making prescriptions.
Of 33 new drugs…
scientificactivist | November 25, 2008Clearly, I owe my readers some true post-election analysis--something that has been slowed down by the insanely busy schedule I've been keeping in the lab and the totally overwhelming implications of the fantastic and historic recent election of Barack Obama. In the meantime, though, I'd like to point out a particularly insidious aspect of the Bush legacy that has so far gone underreported, although it has been publicized by AAAS president James McCarthy and was recently reported in The Washington Post:
The president of the nation's largest general science organization yesterday sharply…
ddobbs | November 24, 2008
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa
As the Times reported Friday, Senator Charles Grassley's pharma-money sweep has taken down another huge player in psychiatry: Grassley revealed that Fred Goodwin, a former NIH director who has long hosted the award-winning NPR radio show "The Infinite Mind," which frequently examined controversies about psychopharmacology, had taken in over $1.3 million consulting and speaking fees from Big Pharma between 2000 and 2007 and failed to report that income to the show's listeners and, apparently, to its producers. (For rundowns on this, see Furious Seasons,…
ddobbs | November 21, 2008
This one hits close to home, as I live in Vermont. As Daniel Carlat notes, Vermont is one of the few states to actually require drug companies to disclose drug-company payments to MDs, but the state allowed exception for payments related to 'trade secrets.' The companies apparently made the most of this.
The Carlat Psychiatry Blog: How Drug Companies Hid Millions in Physician Payments in Vermont:
Vermont is one of a handful of states that requires drug companies to disclose their payments to physicians. But the law contains a loophole as big as the Ritz%u2014companies are allowed to…
sb admin | November 16, 2008
Population biologists often want to infer the demographic history of the species they study. This includes identifying population subdivision, expansion, and bottlenecks. Genetic data sampled from multiple individuals can often be applied to study population structure. When phylogenetic methods are used to link evolutionary relationships to geography, the approaches fall under the guise of phylogeography.
The past decade has seen the rise in popularity of a particular phylogeographical approach for intra-specific data: nested clade analysis (Templeton et al. 1995; Templeton 2004). Many of…
sb admin | November 10, 2008From the BBC:
US President-elect Barack Obama will seek to reverse Bush administration policies when he enters office on 20 January, his transition chief has said.
John Podesta said executive orders by President George W Bush on issues such as stem cell research and oil drilling were at odds with Mr Obama's views.
Plans to pass a raft of last-minute regulations are also being watched. ...
Read the rest here.
gregladen | November 10, 2008From the BBC:
US President-elect Barack Obama will seek to reverse Bush administration policies when he enters office on 20 January, his transition chief has said.
John Podesta said executive orders by President George W Bush on issues such as stem cell research and oil drilling were at odds with Mr Obama's views.
Plans to pass a raft of last-minute regulations are also being watched. ...
Read the rest here.
sb admin | November 6, 2008SEA has put together a list of state ballot measures that involved science including info on what the end result was. The list can be found here and below. It was particularly interesting that Colorado rejected an amendment to the state constitution that defined "the moment in which an egg becomes an established "person."" Also heartening was the passing of the Minnesota constitutional amendment to "allocate funding for protecting Minnesota's water sources, environment, cultural heritage through an increased sales and use tax rate."
California, Proposition 7
By 2010, government-owned…
cevans | November 6, 2008
Barack Obama's achievement of the American presidency is significant for an endless litany of reasons, but here's a few more.
The lives that will be saved due to his support of stem cell research. All those ideological, anti-science Bush cronies that are going to be booted off scientific advisory boards. The as-yet-unknown discoveries that will come from his promised investments in basic science research. The school kids that are going to get a huge boost in STEM education. No more wildly upsetting dismissals of science in policy speeches. No more censorship of climate change research. A…
sb admin | November 4, 2008The day is finally here. You've heard it from everyone, but I'll pile on...VOTE! Our final tally on the YouTube AVoteForScience challenge is 30 something videos from scientists endorsing Obama....and not one video from a scientist endorsing McCain. That seems to reflect a general consensus on the issue of who is better on science policy issues. It's too bad, really. It would have been nice to see a good justification for voting the other way if such an argument could be made on science issues. Here are two entertaining videos from the submissions.
Happy voting everyone!
revere | October 30, 2008As I write this the Obama-Biden ticket has been endorsed by 231 newspapers across the country, the McCain-Palin ticket by only 102 (see here for latest tally). The final Kerry-Bush score was 213 - 205. Most of us don't really care that much about the newspaper endorsement bragging rights and I doubt it makes much difference to voters, either. No one expects the Wall Street Journal to endorse Obama (although the Financial Times did). After all, the WSJ knows that Republicans are much more reliably corporation friendly than Democrats. Along the same lines, I am extremely pleased to announce…
evolgen | October 27, 2008
In the recent kerfuffle over Sarah Palin's disparaging remarks about "fruit fly" research, an important point was missed by the general public, scientists, and even Drosophila geneticists: she wasn't talking about Drosophila. Now, this point has been clarified by a few people (notably Mike the Mad Biologist), and I think people are starting to get it. But it was remarkable how people automatically assumed she was talking about Drosophila.
Okay, maybe it wasn't so remarkable, given that even Drosophila researchers refer to these little insects as "fruit flies". The problem with that…
tsmith | September 27, 2008Obama announced last week plans to end deaths from malaria by 2015. I have an analysis of his plan here at Aetiology.
gregladen | September 26, 2008Linux Dot Com has a piece comparing Obama and McCain. Here. This will be important to anyone with an interest in Open Source technology, the intertubes, all that stuff.
apalazzo | September 26, 2008If you live in the Boston area:
Symposium: Science and the Presidential Election
September 30, 2008 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School
Confirmed Speakers:
Dr. George Daley, Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Kelly Gallagher, Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard University Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Dr. Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Dr. Henry Kelly, President, Federation of American Scientists
Mr. Kevin…
scientificactivist | September 26, 2008Yesterday, the Obama campaign released a letter of endorsement signed by 61 Nobel Laureates (click here for a nicer looking pdf). Michael Stebbins of Scientists and Engineers for America points out that "this is the largest number of Nobel Laureates to ever endorse a candidate for office."
And, why should we be surprised? Obama's answers to a scientific questionnaire released last month were scientifically sound and indicative of good scientific advising. Then, earlier this month, we got to find out who has been behind that solid scientific advising. Wired gave a good rundown of the five-…
apalazzo | September 25, 2008Umm ...
Seriously, the latest issue of Nature has a special section on the US presidential election, including another Q&A with the candidates:
Barack Obama accepted Nature's invitation to answer 18 science-related questions in writing; John McCain's campaign declined. Obama's answers to many of the questions are printed here; answers to additional questions (on topics including biosecurity, the nuclear weapons laboratories and US participation in international projects) can be found at
www.nature.com/uselection. Wherever possible, Nature has noted what McCain has said at other times on…
scientificactivist | September 24, 2008Earlier today, Elias Zerhouni--who has been the director of the NIH since 2002--announced that he will resign at the end of this October. According to the NIH press release, he is stepping down "to pursue writing projects and explore other professional opportunities." The Hill has more from Zerhouni about his resignation:
"I felt it would be in the best interests of the NIH for me to leave before the election," Zerhouni said. With a vacancy in the directorship, he explained, when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) or Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) wins the presidential election in November, he would be…
apalazzo | September 19, 2008Governmental funding of science is fundamentally important to our economic future.
First let's look at funding for the National Institutes of Health, the main source of money for biomedical research in the US:
Joseph j7uy5 @ Corpus Callosum points out:
I can't help but notice that the funding leveled off the same year that the Iraq War started.
How about the Physical Sciences, Engineering, Math & Computer Sciences? They have all flat-lined since GWB came to power:
On the biggest issues of our time, energy, the story is no better. Money for alternative energy research has been flat…
dmunger | September 15, 2008If you're like me, your eyes might have glazed over just a bit at the fields of red and blue text generated by ScienceDebate 2008. Obviously these issues are important, but a quick cut-and-paste job into my word processor reveals that the two candidates have written over 12,000 words in response to the 14 questions! Let's distill that information into slightly more digestible chunks.
1. Innovation
Obama: More money for schools, more NSF Fellowships, extend R&D tax credit for business.
McCain: White House Science and Tech adviser, Fund research (no specifics on how).
The Skinny: Obama has…