The German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has confirmed on 1 October that the University of Constance was within its rights to revoke the PhD thesis of physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, who was dismissed in 2002 from Bell laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, for falsifying research results. Read more
Carlos Moedas, the man designated to be the European Union’s next research commissioner, got his three-hour hearing by the European Parliament today, giving the continent’s scientists their first opportunity to learn about him. Read more
Portughese economist Carlos Moedas has been nominated as new European Union commissioner for research, science and innovation. Spain’s Miguel Arias Cañete, a lawyer, has been nominated as commissioner for energy and climate change. Read more
Plant ecologist G. David Tilman from the University of Minnesota in Saint Paul and mathematician Dennis Sullivan from the City University of New York are among the four winners of this year’s prestigious Balzan Prize. The announcement was made on 8 September. Read more
Cautious efforts to restore unity to the billion-euro Human Brain Project have begun. Both the European Commission and the project’s leaders have now responded to a scorching open letter in which angry neuroscientists condemn the flagship project, and pledge to boycott it. Read more
Patients do not have an automatic right to a compassionate therapy for which there is no scientific evidence of efficacy, according to a landmark ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Read more
The European Commission has, as predicted, turned down a request from more than 1.7 million citizens for new legislation to ban the funding of research using human embryonic stem cells, including those which do not involve destruction of new embryos. Read more
A timid silence often follows public attacks on scientists who use animals in their research. But today a group of ten heavyweight academic organisations in Germany shed its habitual reserve and raised a stern collective voice against animal-rights activists whose recent advertising campaign targeted an individual neuroscientist. Read more
The scientific community has long been skeptical of claims made by German cardiologist Bodo-Eckehard Strauer that stem cells derived from bone-marrow cells can repair damage in diseased hearts, and critical of his clinical trials. Read more
Following the leak last month of a treatment protocol for a controversial stem-cell therapy earmarked for a clinical trial to be sponsored by the Italian government, further leaks from police investigations and other revelations are emerging daily about the activities of the trial’s sponsor, the Stamina Foundation. Read more
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