Category Archives: Current events

Unpacking Nature’s ‘Where are they now?’

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Abi at nanopolitan nudged me to have a look at Nature‘s recent article on what has become of targets of recent scientific fraud investigations. He notes that, interspersed with a whole bunch of poster boys for how not to do science, there are at least a couple folks who were cleared of wrongdoing (or whose investigations are still ongoing) which seems, to put it mildly, not the nicest way for Nature to package their stories.

So, I’m going to repackage them slightly and add my own comments. (All direct quotations are from the Nature article.)

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Loyalty to the hands that feed you.

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There was an interesting story today on Morning Edition about new research on potential bias in nutrition studies funded by industry. Dr. David Ludwig of Children’s Hospital in Boston led a team that analyzed 206 nutritional studies published between 1999 and 2003. More than half of these studies were at least partially industry-funded (in particular, funded by purveyors of milk, fruit juices, and soft drinks).

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Bush administration’s State Department thinks it’s A-OK for Libya to execute innocent health care providers.

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Only a few days out from the 19 December verdict in the Tripoli 6 case, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the Bush administration honestly couldn’t be bothered that Libya shows every sign of being ready to execute foreign healthcare workers who the scientific evidence indicates did not commit the crime with which they have been charged. Otherwise, you’d figure that the State Department spokesman, once questioned about the case, would bother to do his homework and figure out at least the bare facts of the situation. He did not.
So the lives of healthcare workers who went to Libya to help Libyans are dispensible? If saving them from an unjust sentence scores no political points, it’s not worth even considering? May I suggest, then, that the president’s draping himself in the mantle of the “culture of life” is so ironic that it may be raising the president’s risk of heart attack.
Absolutely appalling.
Revere has more.

Last push to help the Tripoli Six.

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You may remember the plight of the Tripoli Six (also known as the Benghazi Six), the physician and five nurses on trial in Libya for infecting 400 children in the hospital where they were working with HIV even though there is overwhelming evidence that the most likely route of infection was poor hospital hygeine, probably before any of these six health care workers even set foot in Libya. (Nature provides details of the scientific analysis of the evidence in this PDF.)
While the public outcry from the scientific community in support of the Tripoli Six has been great, those watching the trial still anticipate a guilty verdict — which could bring a death sentence — on December 19. So once again, I’m asking you to stand up and add your voice to the call for justice here:

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A finding in need of an explanation

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On the way home, I heard a story on NPR about a study done at UC Berkeley about the “performance gap” between black kids and white kids in the public schools. I can’t say much about the details of the report — it comes out tomorrow — but one of the people interviewed for the story, Ross Wiener of The Education Trust, noted a finding in this general area of research that screams out for an explanation.
The finding: while white students tend to lose ground during summer vacation (at least with respect to the sorts of performance easily measured with standardized tests and similar assessment methods, one assumes), black kids actually gain ground over the summer. (The text in the webpage for the NPR story says “minority kids lose less ground when they are away from school”, but listen to the sound file linked at the top of that page — Wiener really does say they gain ground.)
So, what could explain this unequal benefit from summer vacation? (For bonus points, how would you test the potential explanations?) And, is this a finding that will play any role at all in the decisions of districts considering eliminating summer vacation in favor of year-round instruction?