Interesting

A Crisis in the Humanities: The norms governing scholarship now often serve to protect a rigid orthodoxy on certain politically charged issues—with ideological tests substituted for proper academic standards

We begin from what ought to be a platitude: The humanities and the social sciences are academic disciplines aimed at understanding the human world and the larger reality of which it is a part. There is room for debate about what it means to “understand” a historical episode, or a literary text, or a social phenomenon. But it should not be controversial that, like all academic research, scholarship in these disciplines is in the business of asking questions; that these questions have answers (when they are well-posed); that these answers are not simply evident and can therefore only be arrived at indirectly, by appeal to evidence and argument; and that it is the role of academic disciplines to cultivate methods for collecting the evidence relevant to their questions and for assessing scholarly proposals on the basis of it.

Hmmm...while the information is public, I'd have least liked to be asked if it was okay to use

I'm not sure if my profile and information made it into the dataset, but I agree that there are ethical considerations and rules that were violated in taking this sort of (even public) information through data scraping and publishing it without informed consent, a concept drilled into the lowest-ranks of researchers, as one of the basic tenets of post-Nuremburg Code research.

Researchers Publish Data Set of 70,000 OKCupid Users

"Yesterday morning I woke up to a Twitter friend pointing me to a release of OKCupid data, by Kirkegaard. Having now spent some time exploring the data, and reading both public statements on the work and the associated paper: this is without a doubt one of the most grossly unprofessional, unethical and reprehensible data releases I have ever seen," wrote Oliver Keyes, a research analyst at the Wikimedia Foundation, in a blog post.

"A fundamental underpinning of ethical and principled research - which is not just an ideal but a requirement in many nations and in many fields - is informed consent. The people you are studying or using as a source should know that you are doing so and why you are doing so," he added later.

It is also, of course, a reminder to users that we put a lot of our private information out on such sites (including this one, I agree I probably overshare), and that we should consider whether we'd like that information to be out there before posting.

Oh, my

University of Kentucky researcher accused of falsifying data for a decade

A former high-ranking researcher at the University of Kentucky has been penalized by federal investigators in a scientific misconduct case that spanned a decade and included allegations that he falsified data in at least 10 papers and numerous grant applications.

Eric J. Smart, who was an associate professor and vice-chairman of the UK Department of Pediatrics and the Barnstable-Brown Chair in Diabetes Research, resigned from UK in May.

Smart is now a chemistry teacher at a local high school.

Did you see this?

This is your brain on sugar: UCLA study shows high-fructose diet sabotages learning, memory: Eating more omega-3 fatty acids can offset damage, researchers say

"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a professor of integrative biology and physiology in the UCLA College of Letters and Science. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.

Sources of fructose in the Western diet include cane sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid sweetener. The syrup is widely added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, applesauce and baby food. The average American consumes roughly 47 pounds of cane sugar and 35 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This has been my experience

Dreams 'can help with learning'

Napping after learning something new could help you commit it to memory - as long as you dream, scientists say.

They found people who dream about a new task perform it better on waking than those who do not sleep or do not dream.

Volunteers were asked to learn the layout of a 3D computer maze so they could find their way within the virtual space several hours later.

Those allowed to take a nap and who also remembered dreaming of the task, found their way to a landmark quicker.

Support public access to research we fund

Nobel Prize-winning scientists support online access to federally funded research results to spur innovation

Last week, 41 Nobel-Prize winning scientists issued an open letter to Congress, calling on lawmakers to ensure that the results of scientific research conducted using taxpayer dollars be put online, and made accessible to and useable by the public. As extraordinary as it seems, at a time when you can get information on just about anything on the Internet, the results of our substantial national investment in science – over $60 billion per year – are not readily accessible to those who paid for it.

Here's the text of the letter itself. There's more on the Federal Research Access Act (S. 1373) from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, too.

There's really something wrong when publishers can make megamillions or even billions on research funded by our own taxes. Public access through depositories such as PubMed Central are an important step to making that research available.

Thanks, Steven.

True

If research papers had a comment section...

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd052709s.gif

Okay, some of the published ones do, these days, but think if you handed one of these in to your professor. :)

Hmmm...an interesting move

Amazon Starts Renting Out the Human Genome (via the Jedi Librarian)...

Forget books, MP3 players or vacuums. Amazon.com wants to offer you a copy of the human genome this holiday season.

Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, has started offering access to large collections of data. Business customers and scientists can take the information, which ranges from census databases to three-dimensional chemical structures and the genome, and use it as the basis for computing jobs. By gathering and storing the information, Amazon says that it can save businesses the step of assembling and managing data on their own.

An odd finding

B&W TV Generation Has Monochrome Dreams

I've always dreamt in vivid colour. But when I was a kid, I thought things that happened before I was born were in black and white because of the popular technique of filming flashbacks to the past that way.

Just to prove you can't believe what you see in print

Research ghostwriting common, insiders say

Researchers are lending their names to reports written by ghostwriters hired by pharmaceutical companies to promote their product. This happened with Merck and Vioxx, but some say it's fairly common.

It's a disservice to real researchers, a disservice to science, and most of all, a disservice to patients whose doctors rely on studies to know whether and how to prescribe medications.

I hope some change comes out of this.

Hmmm...wonder why your results vary?

Researchers Find a Bias Toward Upbeat Findings on Antidepressants

Basically, unfavourable studies are less likely to get published than favourable ones. When the authors of this study researched unpublished ones as well, they found that although antidepressants do work better than placebo, it's by a fairly small percentage, and nothing like the percentages reported by the drug companies.

Surprising? Not really.

I did have good results with Paxil, although my mood, I now realise, was flat. Now I'm technically not on antidepressants, but rather an anti-seizure medicine that acts as a mood stabiliser (Lamictal), and an anticonvulsant that helps with bipolar disorder (Abilify). I don't know if these classes of drugs were included in the study. I know they've certainly helped me. But this may explain why people often have to try several kinds of antidepressants before they find one that helps them.

Something related to libraries and librarians!--A 'Librarian to the Stars'

(Haven't had that in awhile. Sorry!)

The Library’s Helpful Sage of the Stacks (Again, you might have to go through a free registration).

See, libraries aren't dead--they're just evolving to meet needs

Generation Y biggest user of U.S. libraries-survey

Well, that makes sense, since many of them are in college. I noticed they quoted all the figures except the one from Generation X, my generation (ages 31-42). Figures.

Pew: Internet satiates but also creates "information hunger"

Not surprisingly, most people who need information turn to the the Internet before they go to a librarian. On the other hand, people who have the Internet at home--especially broadband--are more likely to use a library to supplement their research than people who have no Internet access.

Wow

Scientists Cure Mice Of Sickle Cell Using Stem Cell Technique: New Approach Is From Skin, Not Embryos

Making stem cells from skin cells from diseased mice, the researchers used viruses to change the cell and replace the sickle-cell DNA with healthy DNA, then transplanted the cells back into the mouse, curing the disease. This could mean amazing things in the future.

Sometimes science fails

AIDS trial subjects react to news

Those involved in a study with a potential AIDS vaccine made by Merck were told that the study was being halted because of indications that the vaccine did not protect against HIV infection--in fact, it seems to have increased the likelihood. In South Africa's testing, which had just gotten underway, the decision was made to unblind the study so participants would know whether they received the vaccine or a placebo. That decision hasn't been made yet here in the US (most of the participants were in the Seattle area), as scientists weigh the greater good of the participants against the loss of data and the fact that any damage to the data would make what happened be for naught.

It's a terrible step backward in the fight against AIDS, and it underscores the perils of medical research as well as the potential it has.

Glad to be a (for the most part) non-drinker

I'm still premenopausal, and I drink maybe one alcoholic drink every 3-5 years (and usually drink those silly fruity drinks because I don't like the taste of alcohol, although the only beer I can stomach is stout.) But if you do drink regularly, and you're a woman, take note:

Frequent Alcohol Consumption Increases Cancer Risk In Older Women

Postmenopausal women consuming two or more alcoholic beverages a day may double their risk of endometrial cancer, suggests a study led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC).

Research: Drinking May Lead to Increased Risk of Endometrial Cancer

Got a Playstation 3? Donate some of your computational time to further biomedical research

Stanford Helps Fight Alzheimer's with PS3

Like Seti@home, the Folding@home project (so named because it runs protein folding simulations) has been running on computers, but with the addition of the powerful game systems, studies that used to take two years could take about a month, if enough PS3 owners participate.

The projects include studies on

• Alzheimer's Disease
  
• Cancer
  
• Huntington's Disease
  
• Osteogenesis Imperfecta
  
• Parkinson's Disease
  
• Ribosome & antibiotics