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1. Get it in writing! 2. If you didn't get it in writing, be stubborn!
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"Not a bad idea actually; screw those automated patch systems, gimme an army of squirrel monkeys and an old warehouse, and I'll screen your chemical library right quick! It'd be like the nut shelling squirrels in Willy Wonka."
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Oh boy, I remember demoing fancy instrumentation! (Plus convincing the boss we needed to spend money on equipment for the lab.) But service plans were beyond my pay grade.
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"Seems to me that if you want to be a major research university… don’t get carried away with the technology before you take care of the basics."
Is drug research on humans who are addicted to drugs ethical?
DrugMonkey responds to the outgoing Drug Czar’s deep concerns about research with illegal drugs conducted with subjects who are addicted to those drugs, those concerns reported in an article in the Washington Examiner. From that article:
The federal government is giving crack and powder cocaine, morphine, and other hard-core drugs to taxpayer-funded researchers for testing on addicts, The Examiner has learned.
For decades, the government has authorized, funded and lobbied for studies in which otherwise illegal drugs were given to addicts in cities such as Washington, Bethesda, Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis and San Antonio. The studies continue today and have an array of aims, from documenting the ways cocaine warps the brain to the intensity of pain from morphine withdrawal. …
John Walters, drug czar during both terms of George W. Bush’s administration, said he learned about the studies near the end of Bush’s term. “It’s not only questionable ethically, but probably — given the science — it may not be able to be defended at all,” Walters told The Examiner recently. …
“Most people see the things that people will do to themselves when they’re addicted — what they’ll do to themselves, to their families, to their loved ones,” Walters told The Examiner. “I think that when you bring someone in and say, ‘Well, they’re not seeking treatment yet and therefore it’s OK to use them as an experimental subject’ — that’s not the understanding that the current science gives us about this disease.” …
“The question is whether the results justify using these individuals as disposable subjects,” Walters said.
Walters seems to be saying that the use of people who are addicted to drug in research on those drugs cannot be ethical under any circumstances. (His claim that “it may not be able to be defended at all” at least strongly suggests that this is his position.) Is he right?
Book review: Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science.
Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American Romantics
by Renée Bergland
Boston: Beacon Press
2008
What is it like to be a woman scientist? In a society where being a woman is somehow a distinct experience from being an ordinary human being, the answer to this question can be complicated. And, in a time and place where being a scientist, being a professional — indeed, even being American — was still being worked out, the complexities of the answer can add up to a biography of that time, that place, that swirl of intellectual and cultural ferment, as well as of that woman scientist.
The astronomer Maria Mitchell was not only a pioneering woman scientist in the early history of the United States, but she was one of the nation’s first professional scientists. Renée Bergland’s biography of Mitchell illuminates a confluence of circumstances that made it possible for Mitchell to make her scientific contributions — to be a scientist at all. At the same time, it tracks a retrograde cultural swing of which Mitchell herself was aware: a loss, during Mitchell’s lifetime, of educational and career opportunities for women in the sciences.
A tremendous Luddite celebrates Ada Lovelace Day.
Today is Ada Lovelace Day.
Regular readers of this blog may recall that I am a tremendous Luddite. Obviously, this should not be taken to mean I am against all technological advances across the board (as here I am, typing on a computer, preparing a post that will be published using blogging software on the internet). Rather, I am suspicious of technological advances that seem to arise without much thought about how they influence the experience of the humans interacting with them, and of “improvements” that would require me to sink a bunch of time into learning new commands or operating instructions while producing at best a marginal improvement over the outcome I get from the technology I already know.
That is to say, my own inclination is to view technologies not as ends in themselves but as tools which, depending on how they are deployed, can enhance our lives or can make them harder.
The original Luddites were part of a workers’ movement in England in the early 19th century. The technologies these Luddites were against included the mechanical knitting machines and looms that shifted textile production from the hands of skilled knitters and weavers to a relatively unskilled labor force tending to the machines. In the current economic climate, it’s not too hard to see what the Luddites were worried about: even if the Industrial Revolution technologies didn’t result in an overall decrease in jobs (since you’d need workers to tend the machines), there would be no reason to assume that the owners of textile factories would be interested in retraining the skilled knitters and weavers already in existence to be the machine-tenders. And net stability (even increase) in the number of jobs can be cold comfort when your job goes away.
links for 2009-03-24
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How big a protocol breach is "too big"? And what kind of "expectations" should a physician-scientist entertain before a clinical trial commences?
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The traditional media still makes an impact in a world where most people are opportunistic (rather than directed) consumers of information.
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The challenges of trying to force a neat definition into existence when the real phenomenon being defined is not neat.
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How does lack of transparency — or a gag rule — help address a researcher's failure to disclose a conflict of interest?
Circumstances under which it is OK for scientists to pull numbers out of thin air?
Some commenters on my last post seem to be of the view that it is perfectly fine for scientists to pull numbers out of thin air to bolster their claims, at least under some circumstances.
I think it’s a fair question to ask: In which circumstances are you comfortable giving scientists the go-ahead to make up their numbers?
A habit that never ceases to amaze me.
When scientists make claims with numbers they have clearly pulled out of thin air. For example:
Spring starts springing.
As Friday was the first day of spring (for my hemisphere, anyway), I went out to the back yard to survey the local level of springiness.
I didn’t make a quantitative measure of the spring constant, but qualitatively, things seem to be on their way.
Science Saturday: Alternative Medicine Edition at Bloggingheads.
This week at Bloggingheads.tv, PalMD and I have a chat about science, ethics, and alternative medicine. Plus, we have a little disagreement about what constitutes paternalism.
Go watch!