ethics
grrlscientist | June 23, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, scientific ethics, Hippocratic oath, life scientists, corporate culture
I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member.
Scientific misconduct is very expensive, leading to years of wasted research dollars and effort in pursuit of a scientific mirage, and it damages…
grrlscientist | June 23, 2008tags: pro-life is anti-woman, George Carlin, humor, comedy, streaming video
George Carlin talks about the so-called pro-life people, who use their hypocritical position to legalize and institutionalize their hatred for women. He asks, Why, when it's us, it's an abortion, but when it's a chicken, it's an omelet? [9:50]
chaoticutopia | May 2, 2008Senator McCain thinks the effort to preserve our horticultural record and a potential treasure trove for medicinal science is a waste of money.
This morning, I went to Senator McCain’s town hall meeting at the Jewish Community Center in Denver. The Rocky Mountain News made it sound as if I was part of some sneaky infiltration:
"The mainstream media has basically given McCain a free ride so far by not asking him tough questions," wrote Michael Huttner, president of ProgressNow. "So it’s important for citizens to ask those questions ourselves."
The group became concerned, however, when the…
voltagegate | April 25, 2008
Two waterways meet in a surreal junction at Vale Summit, a small low streambed in the Appalachian forests of Maryland, surrounded by high sandy banks and the faint sound of passing traffic.
Bright orange coal mine drainage from the Hoffman tunnel washes iron oxides and sulfates over rocks and tree limbs and completely distorts the little brown flow of Braddock Run, a smaller, slower but rich stream, providing a home to benthic invertebrates and young fish that the drainage cannot.
Braddock Run exhibits all the attributes of a healthy stream: neutral pH, low iron levels and a diverse scatter…
voltagegate | April 24, 2008Ed has a great review of a recent paper in Nature presenting new research that describes just how extensive the damage done by the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia. The culprit of the outbreak is most likely climate change since sudden drops in temperature common in northern areas like BC have historically been a check on the beetle's population; in recent years, the winters have been less intense and the beetle populations have benefited from the extension.
It immediately reminded me of the extinction-themed AAAS session I attended and blogged about last year, where ecologist Jim…
voltagegate | March 27, 2008
The black caiman is just one of the endangered species that inhabits the Guiana Shield.
Back in November, the president of Guyana, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, offered the entirety of his country's rainforest to a British-led international body in return for help with development. Jagdeo was searching for alternatives to an obvious, but morally objectionable solution.
"Maybe we should just cut down the trees. Then someone would recognize the problem," said Mr Jagdeo. "But I want to think we can fulfill our people's aspirations without cutting down the trees."
British…
purepedantry | March 21, 2008I have been thinking a lot lately about the problem of expertise. By the problem of expertise, I mean how people who know better should relate to those who don't. Whether you are a physician or a physicist, this issue comes up a lot. People want the opinions of educated people -- pundits of various stripes proliferate -- but they do not always follow those opinions in their personal lives. Further, nearly every controversial scientific issue today involves some element of the knowers trying to impose their views on the know-nothings (or at least those who know significantly less). How…
pharyngula | March 12, 2008Usually, when I read one of these common stories about people denying themselves reasonable medical care for religious reasons (such as the Jehovah Witness's proscription against blood transfusions, or the Christian Scientist's insane denial of illness altogether), I find myself siding with the doctor trying to overcome their foolishness, rather than the deluded theists. This one is an exception.
To make it short, a Jehovah's Witness couple are expecting twins; one of the twins has a circulation defect that prevents pulmonary circulation, meaning it would suffocate to death as soon as it was…
purepedantry | March 10, 2008MarkH, SciBling at denialism blog and fellow MD-PhD student, takes issue with my post about a move to ban "poaching" of doctors from African countries. I can't say I am entirely surprised, since I knew that post would be controversial. I want to respond to his -- in my opinion very substantive -- criticisms.
(You might notice that people on ScienceBlogs don't always agree. No worries. I have no expectation that a group of smart and diverse people will agree on everything, particularly in science. I respect the opinion of everyone who blogs here including Mark, so I don't lose sleep in…
purepedantry | March 7, 2008Unbelievable.
Unbelievable is simply the only word that can describe this article in the Lancet. Citing problems with retention of doctors in under-treated populations in Africa, Mills et al. argue that direct recruitment of doctors by groups in the West should be criminalized and the individuals perpetrating it prosecuted in the International Criminal Court.
The authors present clear and compelling data to support the assertion that there is a brain drain of health care workers from Africa. Further, they show that this brain drain is exacerbating an already severe doctor shortage in…
grrlscientist | February 28, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, mental illness, mood disorder, functional genomics, blood test, biomarkers
Image: Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, serious mental illnesses affect approximately 44 million Americans. Serious mental illnesses include mood disorders; depression and bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, correctly diagnosing mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, appears to be a sort of voodoo science that depends upon the skill of the mental health professional…
esiegel | February 23, 2008As someone who's spent a lot of time in a University setting, one of the thing that often shocks me is the number of vegans that are out there. Why is it shocking? Because you need meat for proper nutrition. Now, I thought this was common knowledge, that humans are omnivores and that eating other animal products was the best way to get many of the essential nutrients your body needs. Plus, meat is delicious, and when I've gone a long time without eating it, my body physically feels better when I finally have some again.
But apparently, it isn't common knowledge, because a vegan couple…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2008tags: James Watson, racism, sexism, genetic engineering, seed media group, scienceblogs, Adam Bly
James Watson, 1962 Nobel Prize winner
for co-discovering the structure of DNA along with
Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins.
Yesterday, Adam Bly, founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Seed Media Group, was interviewed by Carol Goar for an editorial about the Canadian government's dismissal of its national science adviser, Arthur Carty.
"Science is driving our global culture unlike ever before," Bly is cited as saying. "Now is not the time to send a signal -- domestically and internationally --…
purepedantry | February 12, 2008The NYTimes published two articles about abortion in the last couple days. The first was a review by William Saletan of the book Embryo, A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen. The second was an article about the science of trying to detect pain in infants and possibly fetuses as well.
The two juxtaposed reminded me of the tendency of the abortion debate in this country to degenerate into moral absolutes -- and simplistic ones at that. This is the subject of the Saletan article, but I believe it also applies to discussions of fetal pain.
In the Saletan…
purepedantry | January 7, 2008About a month ago, I posted about a paper in Child Neurology that was correcting a previous paper that looked at the relationship between mercury and autism. The original paper, Ip et al. 2004, was a case control study that compared the levels of mercury in hair samples from children with autism as opposed to children without. The 2004 paper showed that there was no statistically significant difference in mercury content.
DeSoto and Hitlan showed that the p-value for the 2004 paper was improperly computed. Further, they argue that using new corrected data -- published in an erratum by…
revere | January 1, 2008I guess there are a lot of things in the newspapers that leave you shaking your head, but a recent Op Ed by surgeon Atul Gawande left both Mrs. R. and me shaking our heads simultaneously, accompanied by jaws headed south and and eyes bulging. Quite a visual, I admit. But consider the source. I'll let Gawande describe it:
In Bethesda, Md., in a squat building off a suburban parkway, sits a small federal agency called the Office for Human Research Protections. Its aim is to protect people. But lately you have to wonder. Consider this recent case.
A year ago, researchers at Johns Hopkins…
grrlscientist | December 20, 2007
This worthless jackass claims to be my president.
George Bush; a hypocrite? Well, I am shocked, simply shocked, I tell you.
Well, okay, all sarcasm aside, I am very surprised to hear that the politically conservative George Bush, who demands mindless and unquestioning loyalty from his minions, has shown his true colors by betraying all those people who supported him throughout his entire political career: political conservatives. Today, Bush denied California state's bid to regulate greenhouse gas emissions produced by all new automobiles that are sold there -- a move that flies in the…
purepedantry | November 29, 2007I wrote earlier today about mercury and autism, and how I thought a criticism of an earlier paper on statistical grounds was fair. Some of the commentors including Orac took me to task saying that the original analysis was indeed better. After thinking about it for most of the day, I changed my mind. The more I think about the original study and the re-analysis, the more I think that the original study got a fair conclusion and performed fair statistical analysis. On a second look, I think the re-analysis may have been nitpicking unfairly.
Marginal results or not, it is barely ever OK to…
purepedantry | November 29, 2007I was struck by this paper that came out in the Journal of Child Neurology, looking back at previous study of mercury levels in autistic children. DeSoto and Hitlan looked back at Ip et al. 2004, a case control study that compared the blood and hair levels of mercury in children with autism to those in children who didn't have autism.
The Ip et al. study found no statistically significant increase in the levels of mercury in the children with autism as opposed to the children without. However, on further analysis the DeSoto and Hitlan realized that Ip et al. had made an error in…
purepedantry | November 19, 2007Revere has spoken out in support of Michael Siegel at The Rest of the Story. Dr. Siegel is a public health specialist that focuses on among other things the effects of second-hand smoke.
Siegel took Action for Smoking and Health -- an anti-smoking group -- to task for the following statement:
3. Even for people without such respiratory conditions, breathing drifting tobacco smoke for even brief periods can be deadly. For example, the Centers for Disease Controls [CDC] has warned that breathing drifting tobacco smoke for as little as 30 minutes ( less than the time one might be exposed…