People, not clusters
Surveillance of people with infectious diseases is a public health measure, yet such surveillance can lead to serious injustice. In an editorial in the Amer...
Surveillance of people with infectious diseases is a public health measure, yet such surveillance can lead to serious injustice. In an editorial in the Amer...
An article in Slate by Kevin Arceneaux and coworkers recounts their experiences trying to publish a replication of a high-profile psychology study in Science...
I have no political position on the impending departure of Britain from the European Union. Nevertheless, I wanted to point to this article in The Guardian t...
Yesterday, the U.S. Congress conducted a hearing on the topic of sexual harassment in science. Anthropologist Kate Clancy provided testimony at the hearing, ...
Ethiopia is undergoing an unexpected government transition, and Yohannes Gedamu in The Conversation gives some context: “Premier quitting and state of emerge...
Undark is running an op/ed by Aspen Reese, a former visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, about the recent (and ongoing) flap concern...
Charles C. Mann has written a historical account of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb as a part of Smithsonian magazine’s retrospective on the year 1968: “T...
By Linda Nordling in Science: “San people of Africa draft code of ethics for researchers”:
Science magazine: “Americans may know more than you think about science”. Looking at a more expansive view of knowledge that tries to get at how people actua...
The New York Times reports on the new initiative to fund massive research on personalized medicine: “Obama to Request Research Funding for Treatments Tailore...
Lots of people have been talking about this New York Times article about the increasing philanthropic funding of big science projects: “Billionaires With Big...
Chris Mooney reviews the book, Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us by Avi Tuschman, in an article in Washington Monthly: “The O...
In the New York Times, Alan Dershowitz reviews the book, The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind–and Changed the History of Free Speech...
This is big education news, from the California legislature: “Measure Seeks Campus Credit For Web Study”.
Alice Roberts writes about the process of childbirth as she awaits her second delivery: “Childbirth: why I take the scientific approach to having a baby”. Th...
Peter Morgan and Glenn Reynolds, from their book The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Societ...
Michael E. Smith comments on the Chagnon/Sahlins flap from the perspective of archaeology: “Chagnon, Sahlins, and science”:
Rand Simberg: “Should NASA Be Doing More Asteroids?”
The text of this lecture by Mark Lynas is remarkable (“Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, 3 January 2013”). Lynas gained prominence as a critic of genetic...
Dan Lieberman, writing in the New York Times, supports the Bloomburg soda ban with a call for additional regulations banning: “Evolution’s Sweet Tooth”.
The Boston Globe has a a story about a new institute, founded by Jon F. Wilkins, that aims to solve some of the administrative problems facing independent sc...
Zen Faulkes comments on last week’s National Academies meeting on Science Communication: “Self-defeating prophecy”.
Christopher Reddy, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, comments on his experience doing science around the Deepwater Horizon oil accident in the Gulf ...
Barbara King joins the Neandertal Anti-Defamation League with her new post at NPR: “Giving Neanderthals Some Respect (Especially In An Election Year)”.
I saw a reference to this new book by Jeffrey Moran: American Genesis: The Evolution Controversies from Scopes to Creation Science. From the description:
I submitted the following essay in response to the Request for Information on Public Access to Digital Data Resulting from Federally Funded Research from the...
Molecular biologist Michael Eisen, writing in the New York Times: “Research bought, then paid for”.
Last week I linked to my essay, “What’s wrong with anthropology?” My theme was that anthropology has been a failure over the past two decades at engaging wit...
Alice Bell raises an essential question: “Whats this public engagement with science thing then?”
I had a wonderful afternoon Sunday at the Madison Science Pub. The featured guest was Ron Numbers, the historian of science at UW-Madison whose research has ...
Much news coming out of the FDA public meeting on direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetics. Dan Vorhaus was at the proceedings and reports on them (“Looking Ahead A...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been holding a meeting about Direct-to-Consumer genetic testing. Daniel MacArthur has been following the proceeding...
Fascinating detective story in Vanity Fair about how computer security researchers ferreted out the workings of the Stuxnet worm. I especially enjoyed the ps...
Why do they have to bring poor Neandertals into it?
Misha Angrist has written a strong guest post at Daniel MacArthur’s “Genetic Future”, taking a clear stand in favor of disclosure of genetic information from...
Penn Gillette, writing in 2002 about an experience with a TSA “pat-down”:
LA Times: “UC Berkeley adjusts freshman orientation’s gene-testing program.”
I wrote about the UC Berkeley genetic testing of incoming freshmen earlier this spring. The summer is halfway over and the saliva kits have been sent. Now Sc...
In yesterday’s DNA news, the U.S. House of Representatives wants to pay for an expansion of federal DNA databases to include all arrestees:
It’s been a busy week for DNA news. In the DNA arrest database example, Congress seems to have no problem with more testing. In the case of personal genomics...
If you’re a regular reader, you may remember my comments on some geologists’ attempt to define an “Anthropocene” epoch to recognize the world-changing scope ...
I’m not sure which tags to apply to this story. I’m torn between “colossally-bad-ideas” and “university-auditions-for-big-brother”.
Rex Dalton reports on changes to the federal implementation rules of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: “Rule poses threat to museum...
Remember when we were going to have to hold bake sales to save the schools? Well, New York has found one way to solve that problem: “New York schools’ ban on...
The National Institutes of Health directorate this week announced the creation of a new database for tracking and providing public information about commerci...
A couple of weeks ago, the Texas Tribune reported on an investigation of the archiving of blood samples taken from newborn infants: “DNA Deception”.
Pam Belluck explains the hold-ups with the 7-billion-dollar National Children’s Study: “Wanted: Volunteers, all pregnant.”
Here are some links that have been piling up in my browser tabs this week:
John Tierney reports on an idea to link carbon tax increases to future global temperatures. The idea is that if warming doesn’t happen, there won’t be a tax,...
The Obama Administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy is running a forum on public access to federally funded research. There seem to be ongoing...
Carl Zimmer, giving a quick synopsis of three recent books on science communication, begins his post:
I’m reading through Chris Anderson’s Free, and ran across a sidebar on page 104, titled, “How can healthcare software be free?”. The answer is by selling dat...
In case you’re wondering whether you have a chance at some of that stimulus money for your grant proposal:
I’d like to point readers to a story in Nature reported by Rex Dalton, on a story of repatriation from the University of California, San Diego. In some ways ...
A story on how new Energy Secretary Steven Chu is planning to dole out the stimulus money:
Putting science back in its proper place, Congress has taken up a bill to eliminate the requirement that publicly-funded research be freely accessible by the...
Ronald Bailey opines about coming pressures for politicians to release their genetic test results:
Genome scientist Eric Lander has been appointed co-chair of Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology:
Here in paleoanthropologyland, we are often subject to the whims of the nomenclatura. These folks come up with new “logical” ways to name things, and we eith...