I’m enjoying attending and speaking at the annual Science Writers 2018 meeting in D.C. where I spoke this morning on a panel about stem cells. The session was specifically on the Wild West of stem cells. You can follow the meeting events on Twitter with the #sciwri18 hashtag. I had three wonderful fellow panelists, Marilynn Marchione of …
Highlights of Science Writers DC Stem Cell Panel with FDA’s Peter Marks Read More »
What do you read on the weekend? I wish for me it was at least in part some contemporary novel or science fiction, but that’s rare. More often than not it is almost all science. I do read the Sunday NY Times at least. I usually accumulate things during the week that I want to …
TGIF Weekend Science Reads: stem cells, PRP, CIRM, CRISPR, & more Read More »
What is stem cell media? When us scientists hear the phrase “stem cell media” we usually think about the liquid food that we feed our stem cells in the lab, which resembles a kind of nutrient-rich Kool-aid, but another kind of stem cell media consists of the news coverage of stem cells. This other kind …
Grading 3 stem cell media reports on clinical science: vision, MS, & paralysis Read More »
Here are my suggested weekend reads on stem cells & regenerative medicine. I also threw in some stem cell news headlines and more general science stories…and some CRISPR. What are your weekend reads? Lysosome activation clears aggregates and enhances quiescent neural stem cell activation during aging in Science (a.k.a., taking out the stem cellular trash for …
What are human lab rats? And I don’t mean humans in a clinical trial. I’m one of those people who can accurately be called “lab rats” in the sense of a scientist loving being in the lab doing experiments, analyzing data, and so forth. Ever since I started as a lab technician in 1990, I …
On President’s Day, let’s think about our country’s leader, Donald Trump. Do we have to? Yeah, sometimes we do. For the first time in my lifetime, I see the President of the United States as a serious threat to overall science & to our country’s democracy. Trump is not well-acquainted with fact-based reality and that’s …
On President’s Day: Dealing with Reality Trump is Threat to Science & Democracy Read More »
I’ve got some TGIF recommend reads on stem cells, etc, but first, what a week, right? We need more action on preventing gun violence. It’s a uniquely American health crisis that doesn’t have to be. There’s no real, common sense reason that gun control can’t reduce mass killings of our kids and others like the …
TGIF: Guns, stem cells, science weekends reads & good news Read More »
Are you a risk-taker or do you do everything possible to avoid risks? Taking risks in science is necessary, but is there a wise way to take the risks you do? Science and medicine need a certain amount of risk and risk-takers to make transformative leaps forward. The risks in biomedical science can be conceptual …
Some thoughts on taking risks in science & medicine Read More »
Time for some science humor. For past attempts at humor on this blog see here. Today, I’m asking: if science was more like sports such as football, soccer, basketball, etc., what penalties and fouls would us scientists get? Here is a humorous look at the things we mess up in small or mondo ways as …
Science humor: penalties we’d get if research was like sports Read More »
Science hype is one of the more troublesome issues in our field today especially at its interface with the media, and unfortunately a ‘great’ example of that came this past week in a headline from the Daily Mail on the new CRISPR of human embryos paper from Kathy Niakan’s group in the UK. Although Niakan’s …