Science Friday alert: Laura Newman on Warren Buffett's faulty choices about his prostate cancer. XNAs and the future of synthetic genetics: Potential applications for good and otherwise. H5N1 flu virus: The dispute about whether to publish goes on and on and on. Honk honk: Announcing the Golden Goose Awards for scientific achievement. SWINY's Bioethics Boot Camp is now at YouTube.
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Once more, retractions in the news. Was Einstein's wife his unacknowledged co-author? Trashing conventional wisdom about cardiovascular disease. Fish oil may not be a panacea after all. Gum disease may not cause heart disease.
More on the limits of DNA and science writing. Dealing with complex statistical studies. The limits of Twitter as a tool for science writers. The limits of explaining why genes are not destiny. Here come the alien dinosaurs with high IQs. Chemistry lesson on the origins of chirality. The origin of life as a feedback loop: did life come from space, or was it the other way around? Robot news: Robowarriors, Robocops, Robosquirrels, and RoboBeatles
Brain mapping and debating a Connectome Project: the Brainbrawl displays science at its classiest. The Jennifer Anniston Neuron. Those mutant H5N1 flu virus papers will be published revised but not redacted. The FDA will not ban BPA, at least for now. Reading list for evolutionary economics. The Carnival of Evolution: computational trees, evolutionary trees, why humans are not apes, primate cooperation, humans and vultures as scavengers, what that new fossil foot tells us about mothering.
It's the supreme medical issue of them all: What is to become of Obamacare? The US Supreme Court heard legal arguments about the Affordable Care Act this week, and one conclusion is that the pre-hearing rosy forecasts may have been legally sound, but now seem daft. Herewith, a selection of facts and opinions about the three days of SCOTUS arguments and the future of US health care.
Huzzah, aspirin prevents cancer and heart disease! Maybe. These American Lies: Department of Climate Change. These American Lies: Department of Apple, Science Journals, and Science Writing.
Synthetic biology: a critique from 111 organizations and a dose of realism from a synthetic biologist. A year later, Fukushima and the future of nuclear power. More synbio: Engineering Homo sap to cope with climate change.
The new iPad! Sorta. Brain Awareness Week! Critiquing brain imaging studies. Can an MRI predict future performance on new tasks? The last ape genome: Gorilla gorilla gorilla. Is an auditory system gene a gene for speech? Genetics of complex traits. The resurrection of the Solutrean Hypothesis; were the First Americans really Europeans? The complexities of ancient human migrations.
Modern surgery is the result of innovation in techniques, procedures and equipment. However, in the same way that drugs have to be shown to be effective e.g. allowing a cancer patient live longer, new surgical techniques need to demonstrate a clinical benefit over what they are replacing.
Science writers have an important role to play in not sensationalizing new techniques or equipment such as “robotic surgery.”