Back in July, Science ran an interesting news article about an on again, off again clinical trial of chelation therapy in the treatment of autistic children. I found the story fascinating because it highlights some of the challenges in setting up ethical research with human subjects — not to mention some of the challenges inherent in trying to help humans to make good decisions grounded in the best available scientific knowledge.
From the Science article:
OK, I don’t actually believe in earthquake weather, but it was really hot today and the house just shook. (I could see the shaking as well as feel it.)
I’m going to check what others are reporting to the USGS. Be right back.
UPDATE: So far, it seems to be a magnitude 4 or so — a wee temblor. Here’s hoping letting off stress like this keeps the ginormous killer earthquakes at bay.
In a comment on another post, Blatnoi asks for my take on a recent news item in Nature:
An Italian-led research group’s closely held data have been outed by paparazzi physicists, who photographed conference slides and then used the data in their own publications.
For weeks, the physics community has been buzzing with the latest results on ‘dark matter’ from a European satellite mission known as PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics). Team members have talked about their latest results at several recent conferences … but beyond a quick flash of a slide, the collaboration has not shared the data. Many high-profile journals, including Nature, have strict rules about authors publicizing data before publication.
It now seems that some physicists have taken matters into their own hands. At least two papers recently appeared on the preprint server arXiv.org showing representations of PAMELA’s latest findings (M. Cirelli et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3867; 2008, and L. Bergstrom et al. http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3725; 2008). Both have recreated data from photos taken of a PAMELA presentation on 20 August at the Identification of Dark Matter conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
I’d say this is a situation that bears closer examination.
In which we become acquainted with one aspect of the classroom culture in the younger Free-Ride offspring’s second grade.
Younger offspring: In my class, we earn ten play cents for coming to school on time, and I earned sixty play cents for bringing back those signed forms, and for bringing in my emergency card, and for bringing all my school supplies.
Dr. Free-Ride: You get paid a bonus just for being on time?
Younger offspring: It’s not real money.
Elder offspring: So what do you do with it? What can you use it for?
Today is “Twin Day” on the last day of daycamp before the new school year.
Of course, the younger Free-Ride offspring was very enthusiastic about the idea of dressing like twins with the elder Free-Ride offspring. The elder Free-Ride offspring, on the other hand …
Yesterday, the Free-Ride family visited Circus World. It was a full day, and we’re still working on digesting the experience, but there were some animal performers that made an impression, including dogs, a pony, a camel, and an elephant.
This put us in mind of our visit with Bora last July to the Circus exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science.
The nature walk in question happened mere hours ago, at Kettle Moraine State Forest (Southern Unit), where we had occasion to notice that the local conditions support a much larger population of flying (and biting) insects than the Free-Ride family is accustomed to.
Younger offspring: What happens if a mosquito bites your eye?
The Free-Ride family is spending a week communing with Free-Ride forebears on neutral turf in Wisconsin. Internet access is spotty, so while I have access to the tubes, a few quick observations:
Thanks to longtime friend of the Free-Rides LO, the elder Free-Ride offspring will be participating in Kids Day @ SLAC, 2008 today.
Of course, the younger Free-Ride offspring is chagrined to be two years too young to participate as well. “You know, I’m about to start second grade, and I’m going to need to know a lot of science!”
It might have been a persuasive argument … except for the fact that we’ve already seen the district’s second grade science curriculum.
In any event, in preparation for today’s activities, we took some time yesterday evening to review the carefully compiled safety information: