Should bioethicists just "get out of the way" of research on gene editing? Or should there be a moratorium on such research? Tabitha M. Powledge weighs in: "Discussing ethics might not slow progress, but the halt to gene-editing research demanded by several high-level scientists, whether temporary or permanent, surely would. And even if instituted, a moratorium would affect at most the U.S. and maybe some other Western countries." Also: the bard probably wasn't a pothead.
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HitchBOT safely crossed Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, but met its demise outside of Philadelphia, having barely started traversing the U.S. Tabitha M. Powledge wonders why the hitch-hiking robot ran into trouble: "I suppose it’s possible that this is the work of Luddites reborn. Someone feeling threatened by the Rise of the Machines? Perhaps even someone egged on by the high-profile call by high-profile persons for a halt to development of autonomous weapons?"
Alzheimer’s is already the most expensive disease in the United States, and its cost is growing steadily, so it's no great surprise that news of promising results from two monoclonal antibody drugs got a lot of attention last week, Tabitha M. Powledge writes. Too bad it wasn't right: "There are plenty of hard-nosed critiques out there, so it’s difficult to understand the media huzzahs. Unless so-called reporters are just swallowing press releases whole. Oh, wait …"
Tabitha M. Powledge reviews coverage of two new papers from competing labs on the First Americans migration, one paper in Nature and the other in Science: "In fact, although you wouldn’t know it from the media, which loves a fight, the papers are in broad agreement about the data and even about its implications for theories of migration." Also, what motivated Stephen Hawking to give his endorsement to Yuri Milner’s $100 million project to search for alien life?
Tabitha M. Powledge rounds up coverage of the New Horizons mission's flyby this week of Pluto and its moon Charon: "It had never occurred to me that there would be confusion over how to pronounce the name of Pluto’s largest moon, which is surely SHARE-on. But apparently there is confusion, even among the New Horizons scientists." Also, what else is there to see in the Kuiper belt? And is NASA's public affairs office doing good work or bad on the New Horizons mission?
Tabitha M. Powledge writes about the overly credulous coverage of a questionable claim that signs of life have been found on the comet where Philae landed: "This claim of cometary aliens is one of the finer examples of the story that’s too good to check. So most of the persons who wrote the initial reports failed to look even briefly into the recent activities of one of the claimants." Also, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his big plans for brain-to-brain communication.
Did last Tuesday seem like a long day? It wasn't your imagination. Tabitha M. Powledge explains why an extra second was added to that day, and others from time to time: "Leap seconds have been inserted into our timekeeping 25 times, at first nearly annually. But, also for reasons not completely understood yet, it’s happened much less frequently since 1999." Also, New York Times science writer Gina Kolata wins praise for a series on new developments in cardio medicine.
In the wake of the Supreme Court's latest Obamacare ruling, Tabitha M. Powledge discusses what's likely to happen now: "President Obama and others, Sarah Kliff at Vox for one, say the ruling means the ACA is here to stay. At Kaiser Health News, Jay Hancock is not entirely sure that’s so. Several suits against the law are still pending, and Congress will go on trying to change the law." Also, reviewing PBS's First Peoples, and its tie-in to the Kennewick Man story.
As the Supreme Court prepares its King v. Burwell decision, Tabitha M. Powledge notes that Obamacare opponents are taking a new approach: "So there is talk of finding legal ways to extend those subsidies after all. Which raises the question of why bring suit in the first place, but keep in mind that this is politics, where the only logic is the strategy for winning." Also, the comet lander Philae finally wakes up, and does "the female Viagra" rely on the placebo effect?
Conservative commentators are taking aim at the whole field of social science in the aftermath of that fabricated gay-marriage study, but Tabitha M. Powledge writes that their allegations of a broad liberal conspiracy in science are misplaced: "The social sciences do possess a liberal bias. But it’s not a conspiracy. It’s human nature, a byproduct of liberal leanings. And, I would add, a political leaning not only among social scientists, but among all scientists."