Dienstag, 26. April 2011

Donnerstag, 9. Dezember 2010

PR vs. Nature vs. NASA vs. new life forms

The press echo was huge. Catched me by surprise as well. Sounds interesting. A bacteria that can go without phosphor.

Turns out this is only half of the story. Many scientists critizised the paper and the main point of the paper seems to be not well proven. The bacteria most likely used phosphor during the experiments. The used soil was simply contaminated.

But: Nobody knows for sure as long as there are no reproductions.

Derek Lowe writes an excellent article about it: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/12/02/life_with_arsenic_whod_have_thought.php

And Rosie Redfield sums it up:

If this data was presented by a PhD student at their committee meeting, I'd send them back to the bench to do more cleanup and controls.

http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html

The original paper:
Wolfe-Simon F, Blum JS, Kulp TR, Gordon GW, Hoeft SE, Pett-Ridge J, Stolz JF, Webb SM, Weber PK, Davies PC, Anbar AD, & Oremland RS (2010). A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus. Science (New York, N.Y.) PMID: 21127214

Dienstag, 23. November 2010

Egon about failing to aquire a grant

Hum... That's really funny somehow... :D
http://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/2010/11/more-fails-aka-no-vr-grant-awarded.html

On the other hand it's really sad to see that (imho) top scientists with the right attitude (getting things done, open access to data and methods and a great vision for the future) don't get funded. And the reason seems to be something completely different. Arg. @Egon: Happens, but in the long run this one won't matter at all. I guess they just did this to make us laugh.

Montag, 8. November 2010

ACS versus LeadScope - a sad summary

How big companies can easily kill smaller companies. There is something wrong in the legal system I guess:

http://depth-first.com/articles/2010/11/04/acs-versus-leadscope-leadscope-tells-its-story-in-court-document/

Mittwoch, 20. Oktober 2010

Cancer and the modern world

Cancer is really the pest of modern times. Often people tend to believe that the amount of cancer cases has increased. And - of course - in former times there was much less cancer.

True.

But only because people died earlier. Subsequently not many cancer types would occur at those ages. Despite that even the old greek described melanoma.

The other interesting thing is: If people become older. Their peers will be more likely die of cancer. That causes imho a huge bias in the perception of cancer.

Derek Lowe writes about it in detail:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/10/20/is_cancer_a_disease_of_the_modern_world.php

Statistics and the validity of medical literature

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/10/19/trusting_the_medical_literature.php