While I was traveling in Australia — where most hotels do not seem to have heard of the internet — I missed this rather heartwarming press release from the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The center is launching an effort to "recruit, retain, and develop women faculty", led by Elizabeth Travis, the center's first associate vice president for women faculty programs.

About half of medical school students and graduate students are women but a 2006 study by the American Association of Medical Colleges easily shows the "leaky pipeline": women account for 15% of assistant professors, 6% of associate professors and only 4% of full professors. Women also make up just 10% of deans, department and division chairs.

The press release also cites research by Wayne State University linguists in 2003, which showed that the same resume gets a lower evaluation score when attached to a woman's name than when attached to a man's name.

The new program at Anderson aims to recognize those who support women faculty; help women build leadership skills and continue to collect data.

I must say it all sounds promising. I particularly like Travis' comments that all past efforts focused on helping women navigate the system. Rather than "fixing the women," she says, "we need to focus on fixing the academic environment instead."

Hear, hear!

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I've just returned from a two-week trip to Australia to scout out stories on the state of research in the country. We're planning to run a special issue about Australia science early next year so you can read about it in detail then, but one thing I can tell you is I have never met a bunch of people who take more pride in their country.

Almost every scientist I spoke to had trained abroad and they all said they couldn't imagine living anywhere else. They could go on — and do — for hours about the marvelous lifestyle. Despite the lack of jobs for young scientists, postdocs come back to Australia for the 9-to-5 days, the slower pace, the lack of intense competition all around them.

There's no doubt that despite this lack of intensity, Australia does produce some world-class science. But here's my question for you: Is it possible for scientists to lead this kind of laidback lifestyle and still stay competitive? Or would Australia be a much bigger contender in science if its researchers burned the midnight oil like their American and European counterparts do?

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Talk about chipping away at human rights: lawmakers in Papua, an Indonesian province, want to implant microchips in HIV-positive people.

Yep, you read right. Apparently, the government is fed up with its inability to control the country's AIDS epidemic so the parliament's health committee came up with this scheme to track those who are infected and stop them from transmitting the virus to others. Oh, and they're also calling for mandatory testing of the general population — about 2.4% of whom are believed to be HIV-positive.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and the bill was turned down, but no doubt the parliamentarians will come up with more boneheaded schemes.

At one point, they also apparently dicussed tattooing those infected. What would the tattoos say, I wonder? Something along the lines of: "I live in a fascist state"?

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

South African president Thabo Mbeki, famous for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS, has dismissed Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, the health minister who seemed to be making a real difference to the country's fight against AIDS.

Madlala-Routledge had replaced previous health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang — often called simply "Manto" — who likes to offer beetroot, lemon juice and garlic as remedies for AIDS. After that particular brand of denialism, Madlala-Routledge's tenure was particularly welcome, as I wrote last November.

After her arrival, South Africa announced a comprehensive prevention program and openly acknowledged the gravity of its epidemic. Only a few days ago, the government announced that for the first time in years, its HIV prevalence had fallen — albeit not by much.

It's a shame that the president has so quickly undone the small progress the country had made. No more beetroot and garlic, please!

Posted by Apoorva Mandavilli at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The article on Lesch-Nyhan syndrome in this week's The New Yorker (An Error in the Code) caught my attention. It's a shame the magazine didn't publish it online, as it's worthwhile reading.

Its subtitle is "What can a rare disorder tell us about human behavior?" Not a lot, I'm afraid.

In a nutshell, people with Lesch-Nyhan lack the enzyme HRPT, which is important for purine metabolism. Patients experience damage to their kidneys, joints and other organs. But the most evident feature of the disease is the patients' drive to inflict physical damage on themselves -- what somewhere in the article is referred to as "the imp of the perverse" in reference to a phrase by Edgar Allan Poe.

It won't come as a surprise that, whereas the kidney and joint damage can be managed in people with the condition, the behavioral problems cannot, at least not very effectively -- as Lesch-Nyhan patients tend to bite their fingers and lips off, restraining their hands and removing their teeth are among the most commonly used ways to keep them from doing so.

What can this grim phenotype tell us about human behavior? A scientist who studies the disorder is quoted as saying that "We all do things that are bad for us... Many people bite their fingernails... There are people who chew their lips nervously. Now let's turn up the volume a little: some people bite their cuticles". And if you keep on "turning up the volume", he argues, you end up with people who bite their fingers to the bone. Surely this is an oversimplification. And even if it's not an oversimplification, it certainly doesn't go too far towards helping us understand what's wrong with these patients.

Another thing that captured my attention was the fact that doctors in Japan and France have managed to eliminate self-mutilation in some of these patients by using deep brain stimulation (DBS), a technique that has yet to be approved for this disease in the U.S. Considering the recent report from American scientists of the man who "woke up" as a result of DBS after spending six years in minimally conscious state, I wonder what's keeping a trial with Lesch-Nyhan patients from starting.

The last thing that caught my attention was the fact that, even though we know what gene is mutated in the disease (HRPT), what part of the brain seems to be affected (the globus pallidus and other parts of the basal ganglia), and what neurotransmitter is reduced (dopamine), there are very few people studying Lesch-Nyhan. During my tenure at Nature Medicine, for example, I don't recall reading a single submission on this topic. So, for those young scientists who are looking for a niche to get their career started (and for those who are tired of drowning in the swamp of Alzheimer or Parkinson disease), Lesch-Nyhan does not look like a bad possibility at all.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Have you had a chance to read our News Feature on the link between vaccination and autism? I encourage you to read it.

When we first discussed the idea of running this story, I didn't think there was much in it. After all, the main articles claiming the existence of such a link had been debunked some time ago. What was news to me, though, was how violent the parents of kids with autism have become. This is quite reminiscent of the strategy that animal activists have taken in the UK to make their point.

In the past, we have written editorials on how important it is for researchers to communicate science to the public, trying to help them distinguish between good and bad science. But cases like this make me wonder: would starting a serious dialogue with the concerned parents really make a difference? I sincerely doubt it. Once your emotional reactions take control of your intellect, arguments aren't likely to make any difference to your point of view.

Being the father of a child with a serious genetic disorder, I have had the opportunity to meet parents of similar kids and see in person how strongly their emotions can cloud their objectivity, particularly at the beginning of their ordeal, when they first get the news that their son or daughter is ill.

There is, however, a clear difference between these parents and the parents of kids with autism; whereas people like me cannot really channel our frustration against anyone other than our own genes, the parents of autistic kids have an easy target in advocates of vaccination schemes to protect kids from diseases that have been eradicated and in scientists who have worked to debunk the vaccine-autism link.

This irony makes their violence even more meaningless than that of animal activists.

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I’m typing this on a glorious sunny Saturday; the chances are that a few of you are also working in the weekend sunshine, reviewing that manuscript for Cell, or Science, or The Journal of Virology, or perhaps even Nature Medicine.

Unlike your counterparts in other professions, however, you’ll be giving your expert advice for free. In our August editorial, we asked what motivates reviewers to spend large portions of their valuable time critiquing other people’s work. It’s a topic close to our hearts. The number of journals is increasing steadily, and scientists simply do not have the time to review every manuscript they are asked to look at.

What makes you decide which papers to review, and for which journals? Which factors are paramount; is it purely the potential importance of the paper that grabs your interest, its relevance to your specific area of research, or does the journal itself weigh into your decision? And if the latter, what are the factors that make you review for particular journals?

Are there any steps that we can take to encourage you to review for us? At Nature Medicine we recently started sending feedback to our reviewers (the other reviewer reports plus an indication of our decision). Are there any other incentives that might predispose you towards one journal or another?

As we discussed in our editorial, good reviewers for our journal know what is required of a Nature Medicine paper. They are fair, objective and can judge the suitability of an advance for a broad vs. specialised readership. We are lucky to have a large pool of trusted experts upon whom we rely. But we are keen to involve less established principal investigators in the reviewing process. This can benefit both sides; the journal gains exposure to the diversity of ideas in a particular field, and the newer investigators, by receiving reviewer feedback, can gauge what their community expects of a paper in a high-profile journal. So please do recommend your colleagues if you must decline a request to review.

On a closely related topic, good reviewers don’t materialize automatically. Can we as a journal participate in the training process? And if so how? Please do comment and tell us your thoughts.

And now that I’ve finished this, I’m off to get an ice-cream. I hope that you too have nearly finished with that paper you’re reviewing and you can get out and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts…

Uploaded on behalf of Clare Thomas, Senior Editor, Nature Medicine

Posted by Juan Carlos Lopez at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)