2015

Olbermann Puff Interview on Stemedica & Gordie Howe

Stemedica-Olbermann

The stem cell company Stemedica has made a name for itself in the media lately through hockey legend Gordie Howe, who received a non-FDA approved stem cell “treatment” in Mexico via Stemedica and its partner, Novastem. Howe, known as Mr. Hockey, had several strokes in late 2014 and his health was declining. Stemedica and Novastem […]

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The Lake Wobegon Effect in Science: Where Every Paper is Above Average

Lake-Wobegon

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

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More on alleged stem cell clinic fraud: statement from David Audley

ICSS

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

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Stem cell clinic & Doug Broeska face stem cell fraud allegations

Doug-Broeska

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

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Austen Heinz of Cambrian Genomics Interview: GMO creatures & people

Austen-Heinz

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

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PubPeer “Stem Cell Shoot Out” & STAP 2.0 Clarification

Hanna-pubpeer

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

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Funny Science Idioms

Bunsen-Burner

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

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Horwitz Interview Zooms in on Allen Cell Institute: the GoogleMaps of Cells

Rick-Horwitz

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

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