Tabitha M. Powledge covers the latest volleys over credit for the CRISPR gene-editing technique, including whether a recent Eric Lander paper shortchanged the contributions of female scientists: "It seems to me the issue with the Lander paper goes way beyond simple disclosure of his institution’s stake in the CRISPR origin story. Why do you suppose Cell’s editors convinced themselves that it was a good idea to publish CRISPR history as written by one of the principals?"
Science blogs
Tabitha M. Powledge examines the multiple controversies over new federal dietary guidelines and suggests that one of the nation's biggest nutrition issues may be devilishly difficult to solve: "A consistent complaint about nutrition science is that one of its most important research tools, what people tell investigators about what they eat, is inherently untrustworthy. That’s because self-reports of any kind are inherently untrustworthy. People forget. And people lie."
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama tasked Vice President Biden with leading an effort to end cancer. Tabitha M. Powledge writes about what happened then: "The next day, Biden outlined his plan at Medium. At the same time, Gina Kolata and Gardiner Harris pointed out at Well that the moonshot analogy doesn’t fit with reality because it implies, erroneously, that cancer is a single disease with a single cure. That simplistic view was long ago abandoned."
NASA may have stuffed the ballot box on behalf of its Pluto mission, but Tabitha M. Powledge writes that the CRISPR technology was nevertheless selected as Science magazine's Breakthrough of the Year. Powledge also discusses other lists of the year's top science stories from Science News, the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal Watch, LiveScience, and other publications or web sites. Also, the top retractions of 2015 and the year's best science images.
After the Human Gene Editing Summit, Tabitha M. Powledge discusses the state of human gene editing under the current web of political and legal restrictions: "In the U.S., that will mean no taxpayer funding can go to gene editing studies on human embryos, even the preliminary kind … That rule collides with [the summit's] recommendations, which encourage gene editing experiments on human eggs and sperm and embryos as long as they are not aimed at producing real babies."
Tabitha M. Powledge discusses the week's other major scientific conference (the one that isn't focused on climate change), the International Summit on Human Gene Editing, where scientists debated the ethics of their work: "At its conclusion, the scientists who organized the gene-editing summit came out against germline editing — editing human eggs and sperm — if its intent is to produce a gene-altered baby. But what they propose is really only a temporary prohibition."
Tabitha M. Powledge reports on the latest research showing a correlation between coffee consumption and reduced mortality: "Previous conflicting results were apparently due to the fact that coffee and cigarettes have so frequently been consumed together. So in some previous studies, the ill effects of smoking have been masking the good effects of coffee." Also, new discoveries at a Chilean archaeological site suggest there were really two migrations of early Americans.
Tabitha M. Powledge analyzes the analysis of terrorism, and asks whether support for Paris on social media is meaningful: "How relevant to terrorism activity is what happens openly on Twitter? What the authorities have been wringing their hands over is the amount of hidden terrorism planning and coordination taking place via encryption apps." Also, why this strange presidential campaign confounds political scientists, and uterus transplants as a route to male pregnancy.
A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that, contrary to the boilerplate assertions in many news stories, extreme weather events often do have roots in global climate change, Tabitha M. Powledge writes: "This news is going to be a help to many, including science journalists who are under pressure to answer this question every time they must write about exceptional hurricanes, record rains and mudslides, and even severe cold snaps."
Tabitha M. Powledge discusses a report on escalating death rates among middle-aged white Americans, including the paper's circuitous route toward publication: "The paper that has grabbed so much attention has a noteworthy history: it was rejected by what are arguably the world’s two top journals: the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine." It was finally published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.