How has President Obama done on science during his presidency so far? Obama has talked about science (most recently last night in the State of the Union address) and has held cool science fairs at the White House (see him watching a sciency kid shoot a marshmallow gun in the image). But, concretely beyond the …
The Texas stem cell clinic Celltex was one of the most controversial businesses in the world of stem cells in 2012 and 2013 (see here for background and as an update see this new post on how the Texas clinic has teamed up with a local university). The FDA essentially shut down the Celltex clinical …
Arthritis Foundation Sell Out To Stem Cell Clinic Celltex? Read More »
Garrison Keillor’s NPR show A Prairie Home Companion would sometimes report from a small fictional town call Lake Wobegon. Frankly, I found that show really boring, but I always chuckled when I heard this line: “Well, that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and …
The Lake Wobegon Effect in Science: Where Every Paper is Above Average Read More »
This week the big Winnipeg Free Press story on the Regenetek/Doug Broeska alleged stem cell fraud case broke (covered here on this blog). David Audley was quoted in the story as a Regenetek spokesperson so I asked him for further comment and below is what he emailed me for this post. David Audley: “1. GoodPartners …
More on alleged stem cell clinic fraud: statement from David Audley Read More »
Who is Doug Broeska and what is Regenetek a Canadian stem cell company doing that is drawing attention of authorities? The Winnipeg Free Press is reporting that Regenetek faces serious charges related to for-profit stem cell therapies. (Update: a followup story in the Free Press has been published). A very thorough article in the newspaper …
Stem cell clinic & Doug Broeska face stem cell fraud allegations Read More »
What’s Cambrian Genomics? With rapid advances in genomics, gene editing, and methods to reproduce life in the lab such as cloning, today creating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has never been easier. While there have been of course loads of discussions of GMOs in the past, we are entering a new era of what one might …
Austen Heinz of Cambrian Genomics Interview: GMO creatures & people Read More »
A heated series of discussions on stem cell publications is ongoing on the Post-publication review (post-pub) website, PubPeer, which has been called by a PubPeer user “The stem cell shoot out“. This “shoot out” goes well beyond the one page on PubPeer. It is notable to see that the authors of the papers that are the …
PubPeer “Stem Cell Shoot Out” & STAP 2.0 Clarification Read More »
Idioms are helpful expressions. It seems many common idioms can be co-opted to apply to science and others can be taken almost literally with no change but funny implications for scientists. Please post your spins on science idioms here as comments or on Twitter with the #scienceidioms hashtag. There’s a madness to your methods section …
One of the most exciting developments in the biomedical sciences in 2014 was the announcement of the new Allen Institute for Cell Science. This new institute, which will be focused on cell biology, received $100 million in funding from high-tech pioneer and philanthropist, Paul Allen. I am very curious about how the institute will tackle cell …
Horwitz Interview Zooms in on Allen Cell Institute: the GoogleMaps of Cells Read More »
I recently started a poll on this blog asking for people’s views of post-publication (post-pub) review. Post-pub review includes a wide range of formats of reviews of scientific publications that occurs, as the name suggests, happens after the paper in question is published. In contrast, of course, peer review of papers happens before publication. Post-pub review …
Thumbs Up For Post-Pub Review in Poll; Dissenters Fault “Gotcha” Mentality Read More »