Hubmed – RSS feeds of literature queries – updated daily.
Mass Spectrometry Blog likes the citation incidence plot and XML Resources for Molecular Biology. It’s great to see some of the new data technologies getting wider application.
Thanks for the great links, Dr. Murray.
Secular Blasphemy, which has several other great articles, has a summary of the seven warning signs of bogus science. I’ve added two of my own. For laypeople trying to sort through some of the difficult issues today, these are good to keep in mind:
The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation. The discoverer refuses to show his data.(I’m not linking to the R-elians here, but you know what I mean) The discoverer claims only he or she can do the technique
The foundation of scientific integrity is peer-review and reproducibility. One scientist making a claim doesn’t make the claim true. See rhetorical strategies. Getting an article published in a major scientific journal doesn’t even mean that it is an eternal truth, but if someone is making a big claim by himself, and no colleagues nor journals are backing him up, then check your bogometer.
CoffeeBlog makes the Best of Blogs list at MSNBC!!
I know it’s just because the editor, Will Femia, decided to focus on medical blogs, and the field isn’t really all that big, but hey…it still counts as major media attention! He found my page linked from Lagniappe, and says:
One recent post that caught my attention is a discussion of a really cool idea for mixing text/audio translator tools with the XML program known as RSS which allows potentially wide distribution of Weblog entries. This leads to a vision of a future where we can sit in our cars and listen audio translations of our favorite blog feeds.
I thought it was a little far-fetched when I wrote about it. I was just pissed off at the moment at the Clear Channel radio monopoly and wishing I could get my favorite webcasts in my car, when I happened to read about AudBlog.
Obels.net is blogging homocysteine.net. It’s a little secret of the medical community that the correlations between blood lipoprotein levels and heart disease aren’t exactly perfect. Information is coming out suggesting that homocysteine isn’t simply a marker, but may cause some of the problems itself. Thanks for the blogroll Obels!
Mardi Gras comes and goes here in New Orleans and I miss out on all the controversy. I think I have discovered the real reason some people get so queasy when talk of genetic engineering of intelligence arises.
If the comments on this forum are in any way indicative of how the dialog will go on the larger scale(and I suspect that they are) the discussion will be like every other debate about genetic engineering, cloning, or pre-emptive medical intervention.
The anti side will be ignorant of the basic science and will be composed of liberal art majors chattering about how wrong it is to “tamper with nature” and religious right-wingers chattering about how wrong it is to “tamper with god’s creation.” The pro side will be composed of those who understand the basic science involved and realize that this really is nothing new and nature has been doing it all along, but this side will be totally unable to communicate with the anti side because:
1)the anti side is ignorant of the basic science.
2)the anti side doesn’t really want a reasoned debate anyways, they just want to yell and scream about how wrong it is.
[ EDIT 10-2007] It took me a long time to realize that not everyone agrees that rationality should be the basis for all policy decisions. If you want to get across to those people, you have to speak to their heart, not their head.
Nobody will probably notice this but me, so I’ll point it out because it’s so cool. My top-of-the-page ads(which you can remove by clicking here) no longer come from ad.doubleclick.net, which I have blocked at the level of the HOSTS file, but from pagead.googlesyndication.com. This is the cool part: no longer are they for bonzi buddy and the x10 spycam. They have apparently used the same algorithm to target ads to my page as they do for their search pages. Now my ads are for DNA sequencing and genotyping! I think that’s awesome.
There is a nice analysis of the HIV vaccine results at Lagniappe. This story has been all over the news, even making the local television news. Apparently, it’s supposed to be some big deal that the vaccince caused a greater immune response in hispanic and african americans than in asians or “others”. Who can practice medicine, now in the post genomic era, and not take as old news the fact that different genes may mean different medical treatment? I would certainly hope my doctor places patient care over being politically correct, wouldn’t you?
I am so ready for this to become a non-issue, but, as Derek mentions, it is going to come up more and more often now, like a repressed memory whose only release is through catharsis. Only then we can start talking about what we’re going to do about it.