science & society
apalazzo | December 12, 2007Reading in the NY Times about James Watson's genome I stumbled on to this:
Professor Church predicted that as the science of genetics advanced, fuzzy categories like race would become less important because genetic characteristics would point to factors like disease at an individual level.
Meanwhile, he said: "There are still a lot of bigots in the world. Maybe showing these things are more nuanced than they'd like it to be makes them think about it."
apalazzo | November 25, 2007I woke up yesterday, made myself a cup of coffee and sat down with the New York Times, and a left over piece of corn bread from Thanksgiving.
It was a beautiful morning and I was at peace.
Then I read this (I will try to be polite) by Paul Davies.
Apparently scientists operate on faith. Faith that the world is rational and non-changing. Apparently scientists are no different than theists. Apparently science is distributed as theistic dogmas which are never to be questioned.
My morning went from a 10 to a 2. I've been grumbling for 2 days now. But I need to get this off my chest. And so ...…
apalazzo | November 23, 2007This week we learned about the latest results from the emerging field of induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells). I just wanted to give a few links and my latest thoughts on the subject.
What this field has given us is the ability to study how cells are programmed and how they are deprogrammed. I agree with Thomas Robey who writes:
.... most of science is not about designing cures! It's about asking questions and answering them. Goal-oriented science and translational research is what pays the bills because it captures our imagination. But when it comes down to the bottom line in…
apalazzo | November 14, 2007Bellow the fold:
Fellow science enthusiasts,
I am sending you this email to alert you that ACS has a plan in place if Open Access passes in Congress. I've been told by multiple colleagues that ACS executives are creating a bogus controversy that Open Access will impede scientists' copyright privileges in regards to the studies they publish. ACS has already begun to "educate" scientists about intellectual property rights, with hints that this "education" will help them protect the integrity of their studies.
In reality, this is little more than a stealth campaign to sow confusion and doubt…
apalazzo | November 11, 2007There is one small event from the conference (Publishing in the New Millennium: A Forum on Publishing in the Biosciences) that I would like to share with you. I asked Emilie Marcus, head editor of Cell, a few questions. But before we go there I'd like to delve into one aspect of the whole open access debate.
When you think about who pays the publishers to produce all these journals, the answer is simple - the NIH. And it does not matter whether the journal requires a subscription or whether it is open access (i.e. author based subscription).
Lets see how this works.
Subscription based…
apalazzo | October 25, 2007All the info is here. A copy of the resignation letter can be found here.
[HT: Eye on DNA]
apalazzo | October 24, 2007Last night, the US Senate approved the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that includes a provision requiring all NIH funded studies to be available free of charge (i.e. Open Access). Furthermore, the bill passed 75-19 preventing any possibility of a veto. And the Inhofe amendments? From Open Access News:
Inhofe withdrew his anti-OA amendments earlier in the day and as a result the bill passed with the OA mandate for the NIH intact. However, Inhofe did file a "colloquy" (statement for the record to be included as part of the legislative history) objecting to the NIH provision and asking the House…
apalazzo | October 24, 2007I'm sick and tired of this debate of "do you believe in evolution?" Who cares? Who freakin' cares?
You see to me belief is cheap. Any person can claim to believe in any old idea. So what if Obama and Hillary believe in evolution and Huckabee believes in creationism? What I want ...what I expect from my elected officials (and from any well educated person) is that they understand evolution. Yes that is what truly matters.
When the debate revolves around belief, it is really about who do you trust ... the scientific establishment or the leaders of certain clerical movements. With this context,…
apalazzo | October 23, 2007OK here is some background.
AAP: American Association of Publishers.
They are behind PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine), a lobby against Open Access (OA). This organization was set up based on suggestions from Eric Dezenhall, a lobbyist has worked for Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling and ExxonMobil.
ACS: American Chemical Society. This non-profit professional association was founded in 1876 and has approximately 160,000 members who work in academic and industrial labs. ACS publishes several journals including JACS and the newsletter C&EN.
Of course ACS, is a…
apalazzo | October 22, 2007This site says it all.
If you are wondering why the American Chemical Society is fighting open access, the answer is simple ... ACS management receives bonuses that are tied to the revenues generated from ACS publications. They are also paid in part with money collected from membership dues (yes, if you are a member of the ACS you pay part of their salaries.)
So if you are upset about the state of affairs let the ACS know.
See entries by BK, petermr, Everyday Scientist and over at The Chem Blog.
apalazzo | October 22, 2007As you probably know, today the US Senate votes on amendments sponsored by Senator Inhofe (Rep. - OK) which would effectively nullify parts of the the bill (FY08 Labor-HHS Bill) that would require all NIH funded work to be published in a media freely accessible to the public (i.e. Open Access).
Inhofe's amendments are,
Amendment 3416 - Strike this passage from the bill:
The Director of the National Institutes of
Health shall require that all investigators funded by the
NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National
Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic
version of their…
apalazzo | September 19, 2007Well it would seem that in the past couple of years pop science has discovered RNA. Via Genomicron, I found this article in Scientific American from a few years back. Unfortunately all the lit on RNA in the popular press is a little overhyped and not very well understood.
Sure, there is probably a lot of non-coding RNA that does important work. Sure gene regulation through micro-RNAs is one of the biggest discoveries of the last decade. And yes the evolution of eukaryotes is intimately tied in with RNA splicing - the main purpose of the nucleus is to separate mRNA synthesis and processing…
apalazzo | September 18, 2007Over at The Scientist, they're asking
Tell us what your favorite life science blogs are and why by clicking the button and leaving a comment, and we will publish a list of the most popular choices across the different areas of life sciences. With your help we hope to provide a list of who is currently hot in the science blogosphere, and why you should be reading them.
Attila Csordas, who was asked to contribute to the main article chose ... me (amongst others). Several additional bloggers gave their 5 favorites.
So who are my favorites? I hate that idea - top 5 ... so instead I'll tell you…
apalazzo | September 12, 2007PRISM (or the Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine) is a lobby against Open Access (OA) put together by the The Association of American Publishers (or AAP). Most Science Publishers are members of AAP, but since the unveiling of PRISM (and of their website) now many publishers are distancing themselves from this organization ... and rightfully so.
Mike Rossner, Executive Director of Rockefeller University Press (publishers of the Journal of Cell Biology) wrote an open letter to PRISM that most of us would agree with.
I am writing to request that a disclaimer be placed on…
apalazzo | September 11, 2007I usually don't comment on sensational science news (unless it has to do with basic cell biology) but this is just really ... bad. According to several news we can now use radio waves to convert water into hydrogen, which of course can be burned back into water. What exactly are these reports saying?
From an AP article:
The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
And read this, from Wired:
Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist ... called Kanzius' discovery "the most remarkable in water science in 100 years."…
apalazzo | September 8, 2007This summer has been bad on the book-side. I've picked up so many books that looked promising yet in the end disappointed. Recently I just finished Culturing Life, How Cells Became Technologies by Hannah Landecker, a book dealing with the history of tissue culture. I was please that someone had written about a topic rarely mentioned by the current crop of science journalists. Strange, considering that Cell Biology is currently one of the most active scientific fields.
Back to the book.
What to say ... I admit that it was a worthwhile read. Landecker is an anthropologist and so much of the…
sb admin | September 3, 2007Read this book.
First and formost for a book review: Storm World is a good
read. You will not find yourself bogged down or forcing yourself to
push through a book that's "good for you." You will keep reading
because you will want to know more.
As for the book itself: Mooney clearly has a point of view in the
book, and does not hide it. However, that point of view is considered
based on the evidence, and he also admits that it is not exactly the
same as the point of view he expected to have when starting research for
the book. This is not a polemic, it is not a "the sky is falling, we're…
apalazzo | August 11, 2007Over my ear phones I hear Ira Glass tell the audience of This American Life about Radiolab, a show produced by WNYC (New York's NPR). Then a couple of days later while perusing down Ouroboros I see this:
In case you missed it on the air, you can hear the Mortality episode of WNYC's clever and insightful program Radiolab program as a podcast. In this episode, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich (who are the science equivalent of the Tappett Brothers without the lame jokes and annoying laughter ) tackle the question that keeps Ouroboros readers awake at night-- why can't we have more life?…
apalazzo | August 8, 2007Do you remember that letter in which the editors of The Journal of Cell Biology criticized Howard Hughes Medical Institute for capitulating to Elsevier? Just to remind you, HHMI had been pressuring Elsevier, publisher of Cell and other scientific journals, to allow the free distribution of published material, 6 months after the date of publication. HHMI & Elsevier reach a compromised (described bellow) and JCB criticized HHMI for giving in to Elsevier.
Now HHMI has officially responded, and that letter appears in the most recent edition of JCB. You'll find that and JCB's reply below the…