Month: November 2014

Will Lawsuit Against PubPeer Chill Post-Pub Review?

PubPeer

Post-publication (post-pub) review is arguably one of the most innovative developments in scientific publishing in the past few years, including at the site PubPeer. An illustration of the widespread influence of post-pub review is the fact that PubMed recently started allowing readers to post comments about any paper.  Post-pub review drove the rapid debunking of the …

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Shirtgate / Shirtstorm poll results point to a polar community

shirtgate-shirtstorm-poll

After about a week of polling on views of shirtgate (also known as shirtstorm), the results are in and there are some pretty clear findings. The poll sought to measure people’s views of Dr. Matt Taylor’s wearing of a shirt covered in depictions of scantily clad woman including some with guns during a TV interview …

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Best analogies for stem cells for public outreach

stem-cells-scrabble

I’m often asked, “How can I help people ‘get’ stem cells with an analogy?” What are the best stem cell analogies? Here are the ones I’ve thought up that resonated most powerfully in my public outreach including with kids. Stem cells as Transformers. They are cool. They can transform into all different kinds of things. …

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Loring Open Letter to CIRM: Continuing Shared Labs Will Keep California’s Stem Cell Edge

Loring-in-lab-1

By Jeanne Loring As the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) celebrates its successes on its 10th anniversary, there is coincidentally a less happy CIRM-related event. One of CIRM’s first investments in stem cell research was a network of dedicated stem cell laboratories throughout California. This program, called “shared labs” has been cancelled. The shared …

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Response from Drs. Braude & Lovell-Badge to My Letter on Mitochondrial Transfer/3-Parent Technology

3-parent-baby

The following is a response to my Open Letter to the UK Parliament on mitochondrial transfer/3-parent technology from Drs. Peter Braude and Robin Lovell-Badge. Dear Professor Knoepfler, We read your open letter to the UK Parliament and the Science and Technology Committee with interest and concern. We are two scientists, like you, with particular interests …

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WAFSF stem cell vision talks: Hinton, Tsukamoto, Klassen, Takahashi

Henry-Klassen

Recently I was at the World Alliance Forum in San Francisco (WAFSF), a great meeting on stem cells and regenerative medicine. WAFSF had some excellent talks and I saw one session on the use of stem cells to treat vision impairment that was particularly striking. World Alliance Forum in San Francisco (WAFSF) This session’s all-star lineup included Drs. David …

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