Author Archives: admin

Watch what you say about my university!

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The problem with having eyes and ears everywhere is that sometimes they deliver sensory data that make you want to rip them out of your head or stuff them with cotton, respectively.
An eagle-eyed reader pointed me toward some eyebrow-raising comments on another blog, which would not be of much interest except they purport to transmit information obtained from one of the fine science departments at my university. So, to uphold the honor of my university, I have to wade into this.
First, a representative sampling of the comments from the poster in question. He writes:

I will leave this site with a comment a chemistry professor made. It is simple but for this site it will speak volumes. Can 2 parrots mate and have a crow.
This is the premise of evolution, like it or not. This is it.

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Overzealous spam filter gobbles legitimate comments, posts.

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So, because of assorted commenting issues across the ScienceBlogs galaxy, our tech gurus installed a new spam filter. And apparently, it’s quite the enthusiastic little spam filter. Word is that it has swallowed a number of legitimate comments (known with some certainty to be legitimate because they were composed by the blog owners). And blog posts (which I would have thought, as an outsider to the wonderful world of software architecture, were presumptively not spam).
Possibly, particular words are triggering the activation of the spam filter’s voracious jaws. I can’t type them here (because then this post goes POOF!), but for the Pig Latin scholars in the audience, the suspected triggers are ostitution-pray and ambling-gay. Grab a thesaurus and find good synonyms if you need them.
In any case, should you attempt to post a comment here that seems not ever to appear, send me an email to let me know and I’ll try to extract it from the spam filter’s jaws. (On the other blogs, emailing the blogger about missing comments is probably fine.)

If private firms fund research at universities, who do you think will control access to the knowledge?

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Just one more follow up on the matter of how research universities will make do as federal funds for research dry up. Some have suggested that the answer will come from more collaboration between university labs and researchers in private industry.
Perhaps it will. But, a recent article in the Boston Globe about conflicts within the Broad Institute is suggestive of the kinds of clashes of philosophy that might make university-industry collaborations challenging. From the article:

Just over a year ago, Cambridge’s prestigious Broad Institute started an idealistic medical-research project, fueled by millions of dollars from drug companies, to create powerful new molecules and make them cheaply available to lab researchers around the world.
Called the RNAi Consortium , the program runs on donations from Novartis AG , Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. , and Eli Lilly & Co. , among others. It has designed a huge collection of molecules to block the workings of each human gene — a new and increasingly important technique for scientists and drug makers. The project embodies the ambitious goals of the three-year-old Broad Institute, which united the czars of top science labs at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to turn genetic research into real treatments for diseases.
But now the altruistic RNAi project has run into the shoals of commerce. The Broad relies on two for-profit companies to produce and distribute the new molecules to researchers, and one of those companies is suing the other to stop it from sending them out.
Sigma-Aldrich Corp. , a global lab supply company based in St. Louis, filed suit against Open Biosystems Inc. of Alabama, a private firm specializing in supplying genetic material, charging that it infringes two key scientific patents.
Although the Broad Institute invents the RNAi molecules, it can’t produce them in the volume needed for research experiments. So it has licensed the two suppliers to keep a ready stock of Broad-invented material in their warehouse freezers to sell to customers. The companies make a profit, but because the Broad Institute absorbs the high cost of the original research, they can keep prices down for their customers.
If the lawsuit succeeds in shutting down Open Biosystems, it would give Sigma an effective monopoly, leading scientists to worry that a resource built with philanthropic money and intended for public access would become unaffordable.
“Our goal is easy access to the world research community,” said David Root , the Broad Institute scientist who manages the RNAi Consortium. “We went to two distributors with the idea of trying to make sure it’s widely available.”

(Bold emphasis added.)

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Federal money comes with strings.

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Yesterday I blogged a bit about how the rollback of NIH research funding may impact scientists at research universities. In light of those comments, here’s another news item worth your attention.
The Boston Globe reports that Yale University may be in some amount of trouble for accepting lots of federal research funds but then not accounting for its use in ways that satisfied the funders:

Federal authorities are investigating how Yale accounts for millions of dollars in government research grants, school officials said Monday.
Yale received three subpoenas last week from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Defense Department and National Science Foundation seeking grant documents dating back as much as 10 years.
Authorities also have been interviewing university employees about accounting issues.
The school has acknowledged problems with its accounting procedures. In an e-mail to faculty and staff on Friday, Yale President Richard Levin urged employees to cooperate with investigators.
“Regardless of the outcome of the current investigation, we must get all our processes right and make sure that we are good stewards of the funds entrusted to us by the federal government,” Levin said in a statement released Monday. “We know that we have more work to do.”

This sounds like tons of fun for the Yale faculty and staff. Who doesn’t like taking time out of his or her day to cooperate with federal investigators?

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Friday Sprog Blogging: fragments of conversations about dinosaurs.

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Younger offspring: If we lived near a stegosaurus’s house and a tyrannosaurus’s house —
Dr. Free-Ride: Did they really live in houses?
Younger offspring: If they lived in houses, their houses would be really big, and if we lived near them, they would be so big that they would scare us to another house!

* * * * *
Elder offspring: There was one that’s a meat-eater that was the size of a modern chicken. Also, parasaurolophus was a plant-eater who ate pine needles.
Younger offspring: Do you know the biggest meat-eater of all was tyrannosaurus rex?
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: I thought it was allosaurus.
Younger offspring: They’re the same size. They’re both the biggest.
* * * * *

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Hey, where’d that gravy train go?

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From Inside Higer Ed, there are reports that the end of regular increases in NIH funding (such that there will soon be a double-digit decline in the purchasing power of the NIH budget) are stressing out university researchers and administrators:

At Case Western Reserve University, a decline in NIH funds contributed to a budget shortfall of $17 million below projections for the 2006 fiscal year. NIH funds are key at Case — and at many institutions the NIH is the largest outside source of research support.
While NIH officials have touted the fact that the number of new competitive grants will increase next year, they are slower to point out that a decline in the number of renewals for existing projects more than offsets the increases. Some projects that researchers thought were shoe-ins for refunding, such as the university Alzheimer’s Center that had been supported by NIH since 1988, are among those that lost NIH funding.

Why are officials always slower to point out the bad news?

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Philosophers’ Carnival #32

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Welcome to Philosophers’ Carnival #32, a monthly blogospheric showcase of philosophical musings.
As you wander through the exhibit tents, experience the wonders created by minds with time to ponder (and keyboards with which to capture that pondering). Please remember that unused game tickets are not subject to refund, and that the carnies are independent contractors, not employees of Philosophers’ Carnival Industries LLC.
Also, a quick administrative note: Due to some unpleasantness with the 4-H goats, the Epistemology tent was, er, eaten. Thus, epistemology exhibits have been moved to the Mentalists Mainstage.

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Sb/DonorsChoose fundraiser preliminary result.

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Between the moment the drive kicked off on June 15 and the moment it closed last night, here’s what generous ScienceBlogs readers accomplished:

  • 195 of you made donations.
  • Together, those donations added up to $16,097.27.
  • You also helped 4 of the 19 challenges meet their goals, securing an additional 10% of the totals raised in those challenges ($841.53) from DonorsChoose.
  • Thus, with the $10,000 match from SEED, you’ve raised $26,938.80 to help students and teachers get what they need to make education happen.

That’s pretty awesome! We thank you and the teachers and kids thank you.
Don’t forget: If you want to be in the drawing for the fabulous prizes, forward your email confirmation from DonorsChoose it to: sb.donorschoose.bonanza@gmail.com This is your contest entry. Starting July 5, we’ll select random entries and keep going till we’ve given away all the prizes.