You might have seen the New York Times article yesterday so delightfully called "Of gay sheep, modern science and bad publicity." In case the article has disappeared into the archive by the time you read this, briefly, it was a rather funny cautionary tale about a scientist who set out to study homosexuality in sheep, made one too many comments about the possible implications in people, and ended up getting skewered by the press and the blogosphere, who thought the point of his research was eventually to alter people's sexuality.

I was particularly struck by a comment that the scientist, Charles Roselli made.

Mentioning human implications, he said, is “in the nature of the way we write our grants” and talk to reporters. Scientists who do basic research find themselves in a bind, he said, adding, “We have been forced to draw connections in a way that we can justify our research.”

As a reporter, I'm guilty of this myself. Drawing human conenctions makes the story more accessible and it's an easy, if cheap, way of drawing the reader in. Even in my previous life as a scientist, I had an American Heart Association grant although my thesis, on lipid transport, was classic cell biology and had little to do with heart disease. That's where the money was, and so that's how we wrote the grant.

But all and said done, it is dishonest, isn't it? Is Roselli right? Is the system so warped now that we have to lie about human implications to justify working on important, but obscure, questions in science? Have you done it?

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

If I smoked cigarettes I think I’d have to grow my own tobacco. There’s nothing inherently evil about the plant itself. The tobacco companies, on the other hand….but wait, I must retain my objectivity.

It’s tough to do that though with the most recent news. Harvard researchers have confirmed reports that the tobacco industry has raised the nicotine content of cigarettes steadily over the last several years—with the aim, of course, to get more people hooked on their product.

The recent study is sure to add fuel to efforts to bring tobacco regulation under the umbrella of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Legislation to do just that failed last year but there are signs it will be reintroduced in the new, Democratic congress. But is it a good idea?

That effort is endorsed by many public health groups, David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner and anti-tobacco gadfly, as well as Phillip Morris itself (some speculate the tobacco giant would keep its industry lead in a clamped down advertising environment). Most recently, the New York Times and the Washington Post added their voices to the call for FDA oversight.

I had heard rumors that at least one leader in the tobacco control area, UC San Francisco professor Stan Glantz, was more skeptical. So I called him up.

Glantz clarified that in principle, FDA regulation is a good thing. He’s just worried about the details.

“I think it’s obscene that the FDA doesn’t have jurisdiction over tobacco,” he told me, “The real question is how you do it.”

He says the law must be written very strictly to make sure tobacco companies can’t manipulate the agency—which doesn’t exactly have an airtight reputation when it comes to resisting political influence (think plan B contraception).

“The real risk is that you will end up with a process that will allow tobacco companies to claim that they have FDA approved cigarettes.” Unlike some tobacco control experts, Glantz is wary of efforts to create a special regulatory category for cigarettes, which he says could create room for a special brand of tobacco company mischief.

But he says there’s a better chance than last year that a good law will emerge, with a new party in charge. If congress does bring up the issue again, let’s hope it is serious about using the FDA to clamp down on cigarette companies.

Meanwhile, if you must smoke—I endorse backyard tobacco agriculture.

Posted by Charlotte Schubert at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By the time you read this, PETA will have held a demonstration today in front of the Cleveland Clinic, protesting the unauthorized killing of a dog during a sales demonstration.

On 10 January, a neurologist at the prestigious clinic induced an aneurysm in an anesthetized dog and then used a new device made by California based Micrus Endovascular Corporation to treat aneurysms. The dog was later sacrificed because of the damage caused by the aneurysm.

PETA says after a whistleblower at the clinic alerted the group about the procedure, it asked the doctor to use a high-tech silicone model instead—to no avail. It is asking the clinic to enforce the use of alternatives to animal testing wherever possible.

The Cleveland Clinic has apparently finished its preliminary investigation and disciplined the doctor, although that didn’t involve sacking him. The clinic has seen some rather trying times lately.

A local television station is reporting today that a USDA official was at the clinic. The agency could fine the clinic up to $3700 per violation and revoke its animal research license.

According to the clinic, the doctor applied to the institutional animal care and use committee for permission to induce the aneurysm, but hadn’t received a response. The clinic says they would have rejected it—and I have to agree. Although the USDA technically allows the use of animals for demonstrating medical devices, I don’t think sacrificing a dog for a sales demonstration falls under acceptable use of animals for research.

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Did you know that although AIDS and TB kill about the same number of people, AIDS research gets roughly 20 times the money given for TB research? I didn't either, until I went to a meeting last week organized by MSF (Doctors without Borders). The theme of the meeting was the urgent need to get some more money--a common cry in science, but in this case, fully warranted.

The numbers are shocking:TB gets about $120 million, less money than even anthrax and smallpox. Of that, only about $20 million goes to clinical trials. That's maybe enough for one large trial, but that's it. Scientists are meanwhile desperate to test combinations of drugs we already have, but just don't have the money.

Who should pay? Europe, which has a rising problem with drug-resistant TB, sets aside a pittance. At the moment, most of the cases are in poor eastern European countries, but If their richer Western neighbors don't take this seriously, they'll soon start to see outbreaks of drug-resistant TB.

Despite the bleak numbers, though, I was really inspired by the meeting. TB researchers, maybe because they're so used to adversity, are an energetic bunch. Unlike in many other scientific fields, most TB researchers get out into the field and see the need for their work first hand. To them, whether to continue doing this important work and push for more money is not really a question.

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mike Rossner, Managing Editor of the Journal of Cell Biology, has published an editorial in which he criticizes the report from a committee convened by Science to investigate their handling of infamous stem cell papers by Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang.

One question that emerged after this instance of fraud was uncovered had to do with the responsibility of scientific journals to screen every image in every figure of the papers they publish in order to ensure that they don't violate standards of data integrity.

The Science committee supported the idea of enforcing these standards, but recommended that special attention be applied to a vaguely defined group of high-profile papers that is most likely to have the largest scientific impact--an idea that Rossner dismisses.

He is also dismissive of the spot checks made by our journals, which randomly select for screening one paper from each issue, referring to the Nature approach as Russian roulette policy.

Rossner concludes by stating that "the progress of science depends on the reliability of the entire published record, and journal editors must do their part to ensure that reliability", and urges editors to "participate in this dialogue with the scientific community, to help devise effective and practical standards that can be applied to the published literature".

I think that Rossner might be worrying a bit too much about the enormous number of papers that are published and no-one will ever read or cite, let alone try to reproduce (which are also part of the entire published record), but he is right to say that "effective and practical standards" to monitor data integrity ought to be devised.

So, let's talk about a couple of practical issues. Checking images in every paper will use human and financial resources, the cost of which will be passed by publishers to subscribers. Is the scientific community ready to foot this bill? And if librarians don't want to pay more money for their journals, can small, society-managed journals afford this extra expense?

What about the "Law of diminishing returns"? If I'm not mistaken, the number of papers that J. Cell Biol. has identified as fraudulent is very small. Of course, it can be argued that it doesn't matter if only one paper per million is the product of misconduct; what matters is that we erradicate this problem once and for all. This may be so, but if we're talking about practical standards, I would also argue that, from the practical perspective, this is not the most effective deployment of a journal's resources. I would very much prefer to have an extra News editor than an image screener.

Don't get me wrong, though. Scientific fraud is a very serious problem that we discussed at length in the journal last May, a lead that Nature followed this week. Our journals have no tolerance for misconduct, and we will continue fighting against it.

At the same time, one wonders whether academic and legal institutions could also do more to counter scientific fraud. In Scandinavia, for example, it is mandatory for PhD students and senior scientists to receive training in good research practice. In the UK, the law protects whistleblowers from victimization or dismissal by an employer. And in Croatia, the science ministry has taken the lead since 1996 by actively teaching topics related to responsible research conduct.

Above and beyond these considerations, I think Rossner's conclusion is correct; there needs to be a dialogue between journals and the community to devise standards for the protection of data integrity. What do you think these standards should be?

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle I was struck by the chemicals researchers routinely tossed away—often down the drain. It seemed paradoxical that the attempt to understand cancer involved the manufacture of some nasty carcinogens.

Of course, in the big scheme of things the amount of chemicals used in cancer research is small. And almost any positive endeavor has its shades of grey.

Take the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its role in public health has been extraordinary—but as a report in the Los Angeles Times reveals, the financial arm of the foundation invests in companies that spew some pretty toxic stuff, and may otherwise undermine the mission of the foundation.

These investments include oil companies that pollute regions of Africa where the foundation operates and a health care company embroiled in lawsuits for allegedly unnecessary surgeries. The Times claims that at least 41% of the foundation’s assets, or $8.7 billion, are in companies that “countered the foundation’s charitable goals or socially concerned philosophy.

Unlike some other philanthropies, such as the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation has apparently set up a firewall between its investment and granting arms—to try to keep the fund as flush as possible.

It may be easy to quibble with some of the standards used by the LA Times to criticize the Gates Foundation. Nonetheless, with an endowment boosted by Warren Buffett to more than $60 billion, it seems that the foundation could wield its substantial investment power in ways more in keeping with its public health mission.

Posted by Charlotte Schubert at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m now a certified East-Coaster and so I did the only right thing for my holiday—went to Florida. But I haven’t quite caught on to the drill—since for beach reading I passed by numerous candy-colored books and Janet Evanovich mysteries.

Instead, I chose a topic I at times found disturbing: “Birth: The surprising history of how we are born,” by Boston Globe reporter Tina Cassidy.

The book, published this fall, introduces the reader to birth methods and fads through the centuries—such as fish bladder vacuum extractors, strange levers, and “twilight sleep,” a drug mixture that made women forget their memories of pain (as well as childbirth). In the middle ages women squatted over incense smoke and consumed fungal extracts to speed delivery. In mid-20th century, many women were routinely tied down during labor, their pubic hair shaved and newborns stashed in nurseries.

Cassidy examines the prestige of midwives in some communities and their persecution in medieval Europe. One witch-hunting guide proclaimed that “No one does more harm to the catholic faith than midwives.” Church leaders believed God intended women to suffer, and for centuries resisted attempts at pain relief.

Chronicling the rise of obstetrics as a medical profession, Cassidy describes harrowing rates of infant and child mortality in unsanitary city maternity wards. Even by 1932, 4.5 percent of women died from childbirth in New York City hospitals. Home delivery by midwives was generally safer; in regions of colonial America maternal death rates were 1 percent or lower.

Now, in the United States and many other countries a woman’s chances of dying in childbirth are less than 20 in 100,000 births.

But all is still not well. In Afghanistan, Angola, Niger and Sierra Leone women lack access to even basic care, and more than 1600 out of 100,000 women die.

Cassidy also questions whether some of today’s practices have a sound scientific basis. It was not until the 1950’s that a researcher even bothered to rigorously document the length of the stages of labor. That researcher laments that doctors often take these averages as a benchmark today, viewing women with longer labors as candidates for cesarean section. Even now, it seems to me that basic questions remain unanswered, such as the exact linkage between premature contractions and premature delivery.

Rates of cesarean section become more disturbing every year. In United States the rate is 29 percent, and it’s above 35 percent in Italy, Mexico and South Korea—soaring above levels regarded as acceptable by the World Health Organization, and above rates in countries with records of safer deliveries.

Cassidy relays these statistics along with breezy anecdotes of women giving birth on the Boston subway, of placentaphagy (eating the placenta), and male involvement in birth—such as tribes where the men flagellate themselves while their partner labors. I might not recommend it for the beach, but I’d give Cassidy’s book a higher page-turning rating than an Evanovich paperback—and I’m still thinking about it days later. I can’t help but be unsettled.

Obstetricians may have eliminated some of the more drastic methods of previous centuries, but it’s clear that something is still seriously amiss with how we are born.

Posted by Charlotte Schubert at 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I'm a big tea drinker. And like most tea drinkers from India (and Britain), I like my tea strong and sweet and with plenty of milk. And I've always thought how great it was that with every cup, I was also becoming healthier. Tea is supposed to have antioxidants and help prevent heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Imagine my dismay when German researchers announced yesterday in the European Heart Journal that adding milk to tea completely wipes out those benefits.

Black tea, such as Darjeeling, on its own relaxes the arteries and helps blood flow, perhaps by producing nitric oxide. But when the same tea has 10% skimmed milk, those effects apaprently disappear. The scientists say this could be because milk proteins block the production of nitric oxide. This may explain why British tea drinkers don't show the same benefits as East Asian ones, who tend to drink green tea without milk.

The study doesn't seem definitive to me--it still needs to be confirmed by other groups--so I think I'm just going to hope, as I sip this milky tea, that it's not so black and white as that.

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hello. I’m the Chief Editor of Nature Medicine and also get to write on our blog. As Charlotte and Apoorva do such a great job writing about science and about politics, I will write mostly about the journal itself and about the editorial world—the kind of things that scientists like to ask journal editors when we visit labs or go to meetings.

To kick things off, I thought I’d write about Web 2.0 and scientific publishing. There is a lot of interest about the impact that a second-generation Internet that emphasizes collaboration and sharing among users may have on scientific journals. We even wrote an editorial about this topic.

One idea is that the community will increasingly do without high-profile journals to decide what an important paper is and what it is not. If many scientists get together to discuss papers in social-networking sites, they may provide visibility to papers published in obscure journals and deprecate articles from more visible titles.

If this becomes the case, and if high-profile journals make enough editorial mistakes while selecting the papers we publish, then the value of those publications will indeed go down. If this happens, then it won’t matter whether you publish in Nature Medicine or in a very specialized journal—if your paper is good, the community will appreciate it.

But wait a minute. First, there are a lot of “if”s in the previous two paragraphs. A lot of events—some more likely than others—need to happen for this scenario to come true. Second, what about the people making decisions about your tenure, about offering you a postdoc position or your first academic job, or about giving you money for your research? Will they be ready to stop looking at the name and impact factor of the journals where you have published and let social-networking sites supply the filtering service that journals currently provide? It’s conceivable, but the fact remains that we don’t really know what the second-generation internet will do to scientific publishing.

What’s your take on this matter? Do you really imagine a time when publishing in Nature or Science will stop being as meaningful as it is now? Or perhaps this question is misplaced and the impact of Web 2.0 on journals will take a totally different form. What kind of Web 2.0–driven changes do you think we need to worry about?

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Happy new year, everyone!

Our former intern, Emily Waltz, alerted me to Edge.org, where 160 scientists and thinkers -- including Nature's own news & features editor Oliver Morton -- have answered the question, "What are you optimistic about?" You'd think that a bunch of scientists would have little to say that's uplifting -- especially in areas such as, say, climate change, cancer or population growth -- and a few live up to that expectation, but some of the answers are downright upbeat.

Here's a small sampling:

"I am optimistic that the ascendance of open access postings of articles to the internet will transform scientific and medical publishing." -- Beatrice Golomb, professor of medicine, University of California San Diego

"I am bullish about the mind's ability to unravel the beliefs contained within it—including beliefs about its own nature." -- Mahzarin Banaji, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Harvard University

"I'm optimistic about the prospects for science to become a much more broadly participatory activity rather than today's largely spectator sport." Neil Gershenfeld, MIT

"The trends in China and India and elsewhere toward educating literally millions of people with scientific, engineering and technical degrees is tremendously positive." -- Nathan Myrhvold, CEO of Intellectual Ventures

"I am optimistic about humanity's coming enlightenment." -- Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia

But would it really be a group of scientists if at least one didn't say something along these lines?

"In short, we should neither be too despondent nor too elated at the trajectory of current events." -- Robert Trivers, evolutionary biologist, Rutgers University.

So tell us -- what are you most optimistic about???

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Liquid condom? Sounds kinky, but it could actually be a clever and much-needed health tool. Scientists have come up with a condom that forms a gel-like coating in the acidic vagina. When it comes into contact with the alkaline pH of semen, it turns into liquid, releasing an antiviral drug against HIV.

This particular product, described in December's Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, is still years from clinical use, but the Chinese are one step ahead. They've got something called the "Nanometer-silver Cryptomorphic Condom" -- a real mood-killer, that name -- which is a spray foam that forms a thin membrane in the vagina.

For the skeptical, there are also several products in the pipeline that would replace condoms. Called microbicides, they're gels or creams that women could use to protect themselves from HIV, in most cases without the knowledge of their partner. There are 16 of these in trials and results on 5 of them are expected next year.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that to fight AIDS, we'll have to come up with ways to protect women -- particularly those who don't have much choice about using condoms, whether it is because they are sex workers at the mercy of a john, or housewives at the whim of their husbands. The more options we can give them to protect themselves, the better.

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)