How is research looking on stem cells for diabetes? I’m feeling more encouraged about the clinical research in that area. Before we jump into that let’s talk about two other things. The big news of the week was the felony plea deal by Liveyon’s John Kosolcharoen to charges related to marketing an unapproved cell therapy […]
Exactly ten years ago today, on January 29, 2014, I wrote about two new Nature papers on so-called STAP cells. The papers claimed that stress alone could convert regular non-stem cells into some of the most powerful stem cells. More specifically, the authors claimed to make pluripotent stem cells similar to iPS cells this way.
Every year I give out The Screamers Science Hype Award. The point of The Screamers is to raise awareness about science hype and catalyze new ways to combat it. In that spirit, I award what I see as the most extreme examples of science hype. Sometimes in addition to the one main winner, I give “honorable”
2023 The Screamers Science Hype Award goes to anti-aging media coverage Read More »
As we think about how much of a role belief should play in the hard sciences such as cell biology, a supposed cell type called VSEL or very-small embryonic stem cell-like cells comes to mind. For these guys it seems to me that the ratio of data to belief isn’t great. VSELs have nine lives. I
The role of belief in hard science: the VSEL case Read More »
I started The Screamers a few years back as a biomedical science hype award. It’s kind of in the spirit of an Ig Noble Prize in the sense of an alternative “award”, but in this case for hype. In 2020, sadly the FDA Commissioner at the time Stephen Hahn won The Screamers award for a
2022 The Screamers Science Hype Award goes to The BBC Read More »
This has been one of those weeks where I spent some time thinking about taking risks in science. How much risk one should take? Risks can come in many forms. It could be at the core level at the bench doing specific experiments and not others. There’s risk in clinical trials, and even in advocacy. Sometimes
Weekly science reads: Macchiarini trial, somites, CRISPR babies Read More »
Is 2022 going to be any better than 2020 or 2021 when it comes to things in general or for biomedical science? Related to the pandemic? It’s too soon to say but if I had to guess right now I’d venture an optimistic view that overall it’s going to be somewhat better by the end
Weekly science reads: senescence, alt CRISPR, sickle cell update Read More »
The amount of biomedical science hype out there is mindboggling at times, but some media or other items really take the cake for being exceptionally bad. Today’s post highlights the worst of the year 2021 as the candidates for my annual The Screamers science hype award. Click on the link in the previous sentence to
It seems like being somewhat skeptical would be an inherent part of being a biomedical scientist. But not always it seems. On the other hand, some of us take it to another level by science blogging out our skepticism about certain topics. Note that there’s something called the Skeptics Society that publishes a magazine Skeptic.
As Neuroskeptic blog ends, reflections on skeptical science blogging Read More »
Organoids and especially brain organoids, which are made from pluripotent stem cells, are one of the most interesting developmental biology technologies of the last half a dozen or so years. Still some folks can’t help but get carried away when thinking about brain organoids it seems. A new Science paper from a team led by
Dissecting that Neanderthal brain organoids Science pub Read More »