There’s a Disney theme in today’s dose — from whistling at work to sugar helping with medicine.

— Whistle while you work — but whistle blow with caution: A survey of 26 people who spoke out against fraud in the pharmaceutical companies where they worked reveals that this noble act can take a serious personal toll. On average, whistleblowers received $3 million as part of settlements, but the cases lasted almost five years. (Pharmalot)

— Speaking of five years, that’s the amount of time University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gary Splitter will have to wait before he can step foot in his laboratory again. Splitter’s lab privileges were reportedly revoked after it was discovered that he was conducting unauthorized experiments involving antibiotic-resistant strains of brucellosis, which can cause flu-like illness. According to news reports, he has denied awareness of the experiments, which he said were run by graduate students. (Wisconsin State Journal)

— Pacific Biosciences is riding the sea change in genetics toward appreciating that chemical tags on DNA are perhaps as important as the sequence itself. The company has developed a means of reading both base pairs and associated methyl groups simultaneously (Nature News).

— It’s a scientific finding of which even Mary Poppins would approve: A review of 14 randomized controlled trials found that giving infants a droplet of sugar solution before an immunization shot reduced the frequency and duration of crying. (BBC)

Image by Fuzzy Gerdes via Flickr Creative Commons