Archive for December, 2009
It was a banner year for scientific progress and progressive science policy. But sadly, it was also the year for the rebirth of what is now a wide-ranging war on science.
Eleven of the Bush-era human embryonic stem cell lines are of European origin. Of the 40 lines newly approved by the National Institutes of Health, at least 22 are of European origin. Five of the Bush lines are from two gamete donors, and six of the new Harvard University lines are from three donors.
A team [...]
The vaccine, while safe and effective, has provided a vehicle for the anti-vaccine movement to launch attacks on some of our most vital tools for protecting public health.
The Obama administration’s push for innovation to boost economic competitiveness requires better strategic links between federal agencies and universities.
Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously suggested that science and religion deal with non-overlapping areas of knowledge. The idea is useful for quelling debates about creationism, but it’s a mistake when developing public policy for the life sciences.
The National Institutes of Health have added 27 more human embryonic stem cell lines to the 13 approved two weeks ago. These new lines come from Harvard University and have some interesting stipulations attached to them that illustrate the diligence and ethical seriousness that the NIH has brought to the approval process.
Harvard submitted 28 lines [...]
An analysis of the warming in store, and the warming we can hope to prevent, shows that proposed policies will have to stretch to put us in a climate “safe zone”— especially for developing nations.
Early-stage investors in innovation companies—angel investors—and the founders of start-up companies they support financially, warrant investment support. Here’s one intriguing idea.
Jonathan Sallet, co-author of the report, “The Geography of Innovation: The Federal Government and the Growth of Regional Innovation Clusters,” testifies today before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation. He explains in his written testimony that Congress should support the Economic Development Administration, which can build effective collaborations between businesses, universities, and local [...]
By Chris Mooney
Back in 2006, the year of the release of An Inconvenient Truth, it felt as though serious and irreversible progress had finally been made on the climate issue. The feeling continued in 2007, when Al Gore won the Nobel and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that global warming was “unequivocal” [...]
Although the numbers of young Americans studying science, technology, engineering, or math in high school and college are as strong as ever, the very best of those students are less likely than in decades past to stay in STEM fields when they leave college.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial section, Daniel Henninger took exaggeration of the scandal over emails stolen from scientists at the University of East Anglia to new heights, arguing that the incident undermines the entire centuries-old scientific enterprise. But the column ignores both the current observable impact of climate change and scientific history, and is [...]
Yesterday, the National Institutes of Health approved 13 new embryonic stem cell lines according to the rigorous ethical guidelines that went into effect July 7th. The lines will now be eligible for use in federally funded research. The 15-point rules include requirements that cells must be derived with private funds from embryos created solely for [...]
Chris Mooney contributes this post.
And now, the climate change deniers will claim a scalp.
Yesterday, climate researcher Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the UK—which is responsible for one of three important datasets tracking global temperature trends—announced he would be stepping aside pending an independent review [...]
Researchers with families need more than childcare. They need a culture of professional assessment that looks for their contributions as teachers, scholars, and citizens—not just an unrelenting rate of work.
