It’s been quite a ride doing this blog on stem cells and other technologies for more than a dozen years.
So far it seems like I’ll keep it going. A large part of the reason is because of people needing good information about our field. Those people include scientists and physicians but also many in the general public. Some of those are patients looking for a way to navigate this jungle.
Stem cells, Google, and clinics
Most people, whether patients, doctors or scientists or someone else, turn to Google. As I recently wrote about the stem cell clinic DVC Stem, it’s not always clear to me why certain websites do so well with Google search. There’s a lot to dig through here.
Check out my new piece at STAT News on the problem of stem cell clinics using Google search to bring in customers and the broader issue it points to with unproven therapy promotion on the search engine.
It was encouraging to see within hours that Danny Sullivan of Google said they were going to look into this on Twitter (below).
I'll pass along the feedback so we can look at this more.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) March 23, 2022
Ultimately, what will matter is whether Google makes concrete changes so that profit-focused clinics aren’t portrayed as the authorities.
Recommended stem cell reads
- Stem Cell Transplant Gaining Ground as MS Therapy Option, MS News Today. I like the fact that this article goes into quite a lot of depth on the topic. It in part covers the HSCT clinical trials at NW by Richard Burt. Overall, this area of stem cell research looks very promising.
- PPARdelta activation induces metabolic and contractile maturation of human pluripotent stem–cell-derived cardiomyocytes, Cell Stem Cell.
- No misconduct found in the VSELs papers, Elisabeth Bik at Science Integrity Digest. She noted this finding from the University of Louisville investigation into the matter. For reference, in Elisabeth’s original 2020 post she noted reasons she had for concern including some she reiterated in the new piece:
“Most of these papers included reused images, presented as new experiments without proper citation, while some others appeared to show overlapping photos or duplicated elements within the same photo. You can read my 2020 blog post here.”