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Friday, October 4, 2013
Very Bad Science in Open-Access Journals
Stones, glass houses, etc.
Pharyngula October 4, 2013
John Bohannon of Science magazine has developed a fake science paper generator. He wrote a little, simple program, pushes a button, and gets hundreds of phony papers, each unique with different authors and different molecules and different cancers, in a format that’s painfully familiar to anyone who has read any cancer journals recently. The goal…
Who’s Afraid of Peer Review? by John Bohannon is about his experiments in sending a fatally-flawed paper to a variety of open-access journals, and the appalling lack of rejections that followed (note that PLOS-ONE correctly rejected it). To make it not too easy to reject just based on “I can’t find your institute on the…
A year in Open Access advocacy: 2012
Confessions of a Science Librarian December 31, 2012
While it has not generally been my practice to do year end review posts, artificially trying to tie the various and disparate strands of my blogging habits together into some sort of coherent story, I think for this year it’s worth doing. And that’s because my blogging year did seem to have a coherent theme…
Channel Surfing
Life Science
The latest celebrity fad is getting pet lorises. They’re adorable! They have such big eyes and a funny face! And look, they like to get tickled! Aww, so cute. I want one. At least, that seems to be the typical response in followers of pop culture. Anna Nekaris, a professor of primate conservation at Oxford…
This cat is going to be insufferable You may have heard we’ve got this satanic feline padding about the house now, getting into mischief — she has discovered my collection of cephalopodiana, and her favorite toy is one of my stuffed octopuses that she wrestles and bats around the floor. It’s like she’s rubbing it…
Physical Science
I almost killed the Pip last week. By accident, of course, but I do mean that literally. His day care was closed for the day, so I took him out to the store to avoid a freakout when Mommy left. I was heading into the store with him in one arm and a hot cup…
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
The USA Science & Engineering Festival Revolutionizing STEM Education Through Groundbreaking Nifty Fifty Program
By F. Mark Modzelewski The USA Science & Engineering Festival, supported by presenting host sponsor Lockheed Martin, is pleased to announce the launch of the 2013/14 school year “Nifty Fifty,” an innovative program that brings over 150 noted science and engineering professionals to schools across New York, California and the Washington, D.C. metro area to speak…
We cleared a bunch of space in our deep storage area over the summer, and one of the things we found was a box full of old student theses from the 1950′s and 1960′s. The library already had copies of them, but I thought it was sort of cool to have a look into the…
Environment
The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released last week, saying that global warming is occurring without a doubt, and human activity is extremely likely to be the cause. Greg Laden shares a number of graphics from the report, summarizing “It is getting hotter. It is getting wetter, or dryer,…
Who’s Afraid of Peer Review? by John Bohannon is about his experiments in sending a fatally-flawed paper to a variety of open-access journals, and the appalling lack of rejections that followed (note that PLOS-ONE correctly rejected it). To make it not too easy to reject just based on “I can’t find your institute on the…
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The University of Queensland have discovered a venom from centipedes capable of blocking pain more effectively than morphine! According to the study authors, centipedes have appeared in the fossil records as far back as 430 million years. They are also one of the first land-dwelling creatures…
Humanities
While OSHA has never been the most robustly funded federal agency, its efforts and regulatory authority have helped prevent countless deaths, injuries and illnesses on the job. However, recent budget cuts and future budget cut proposals threaten those gains, and it’s no stretch to say that worker health and safety hang in the balance.
“Early Clovis knew their land and stone” — Of course they bloody did! Finding a site with good obsidian would have been like striking oil today. People would have kept track of the site, and traded with far-off communities. For humans who want to make more random (or at least thoroughly scrambled) choices, try this…
About the time of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Greek writers started to offer lists of Seven Wonders that the well-read traveller should see. In the 2nd century BC the Hanging Gardens of Babylon began to show up on such lists. The location of Babylon is well known: on the River Euphrates…
Education
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The University of Queensland have discovered a venom from centipedes capable of blocking pain more effectively than morphine! According to the study authors, centipedes have appeared in the fossil records as far back as 430 million years. They are also one of the first land-dwelling creatures…
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
The USA Science & Engineering Festival Revolutionizing STEM Education Through Groundbreaking Nifty Fifty Program
By F. Mark Modzelewski The USA Science & Engineering Festival, supported by presenting host sponsor Lockheed Martin, is pleased to announce the launch of the 2013/14 school year “Nifty Fifty,” an innovative program that brings over 150 noted science and engineering professionals to schools across New York, California and the Washington, D.C. metro area to speak…
X-STEM - presented by Northrop Grumman Foundation and MedImmune - is an Extreme STEM symposium for elementary through high school students featuring interactive presentations by an exclusive group of visionaries who aim to empower and inspire kids about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). These top STEM role models and industry leaders are sure to ignite your students’ curiosity through…
Politics
While OSHA has never been the most robustly funded federal agency, its efforts and regulatory authority have helped prevent countless deaths, injuries and illnesses on the job. However, recent budget cuts and future budget cut proposals threaten those gains, and it’s no stretch to say that worker health and safety hang in the balance.
A few days ago I wrote a note to each of several trusted fellow political activists asking them to provide me with a short list of which of the many candidates running for Mayor of Minneapolis they would feel comfortable with winning this important race. I did not ask for their number one choice, but…
The federal government shutdown has put a halt on most workplace safety inspections. It’s another important public health program adversely affected by the spending showdown.
Medicine
Respectful Insolence
The Burzynski Clinic continues to issue press releases. Still more hilarity ensues.
No matter how much I try, it seems that I can’t escape blogging about Stanislaw Burzynski. Regular readers here are familiar with Dr. Burzynski, the “maverick” cancer doctor (he’s not an oncologist) who claims that peptides he’s isolated from urine and now synthesizes in his lab and manufacturing facility are highly effective anticancer drugs, so…
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The University of Queensland have discovered a venom from centipedes capable of blocking pain more effectively than morphine! According to the study authors, centipedes have appeared in the fossil records as far back as 430 million years. They are also one of the first land-dwelling creatures…
The Pump Handle
Houston firefighter’s recovery marks fourth month, May blaze killed four in his crew
Houston Fire Captain William Dowling spent seven weeks in intensive care recovering from injuries suffered in one of the deadliest fires in Houston history. Many more months of rehabilitation await him.
Brain & Behavior
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The University of Queensland have discovered a venom from centipedes capable of blocking pain more effectively than morphine! According to the study authors, centipedes have appeared in the fossil records as far back as 430 million years. They are also one of the first land-dwelling creatures…
The Amazon region is notoriously deficient in sodium because of its large distance from the ocean and because the Andes mountains block the delivery of windblown minerals from the West. Some minerals travel from the east, but much of the air is cleaned by rain before the minerals can make it to the western region…
Technology
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The University of Queensland have discovered a venom from centipedes capable of blocking pain more effectively than morphine! According to the study authors, centipedes have appeared in the fossil records as far back as 430 million years. They are also one of the first land-dwelling creatures…
The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 59 Table of Contents Chapter 61 Chapter 60 L1 Roustabouts, February 15, 2058 The L1 crew were not like the moon colonists. They were cowboys. We didn’t get up-close and web-personal with them. The corporate imagery around them played up rugged individualism and avoided any mention of colonization.…
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
GOOD and U.S. Air Force Call for Contributors to “Mind of a Quadrotor” Project
Guest Blog from the USA Science & Engineering Festival Sponsor United States Air Force The U.S. Air Force and GOOD are pleased to announce the start of the second project in The Air Force Collaboratory, an interactive online platform that invites science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) inclined students, educators and innovators to solve some of…
Information Science
First, get a list of over a dozen things you want to say. They don’t have to be true, and many, even most, of them can be versions of each other. Then, when you are in the debate, do this: Scientist: “If there’s one thing you should take away from this discussion, it’s… Denialist [interrupting]:…
I have a son who’s starting his second year as a physics undergrad. As you can imagine, I occasionally pass along a link or two to him pointing to stuff on the web I think he might find particularly interesting or useful. Thinking on that fact, I surmised that perhaps other science students might find…
Confessions of a Science Librarian
Lane Anderson Award Winners: Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada
Last night I attended the Lane Anderson Award dinner where this year’s winners were announced. A huge congratulations to all the winners and nominees and sincere thanks to the organizers for inviting me to such a wonderful event. Here is the press release from last night: $10,000 Lane Anderson Award Winners Celebrating the Best Science…
Jobs
While OSHA has never been the most robustly funded federal agency, its efforts and regulatory authority have helped prevent countless deaths, injuries and illnesses on the job. However, recent budget cuts and future budget cut proposals threaten those gains, and it’s no stretch to say that worker health and safety hang in the balance.
The Pump Handle
Houston firefighter’s recovery marks fourth month, May blaze killed four in his crew
Houston Fire Captain William Dowling spent seven weeks in intensive care recovering from injuries suffered in one of the deadliest fires in Houston history. Many more months of rehabilitation await him.
The federal government shutdown has put a halt on most workplace safety inspections. It’s another important public health program adversely affected by the spending showdown.
