Tag Archives: science

On “Leaving Science”

I follow news about the science job market pretty closely, but perhaps the most reliable indicator I have of it isn’t in my RSS folder or Twitter feed. It’s my inbox. When graduate students and postdocs start to think their … Continue reading

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Threading the NEIDL

After two long days of shooting and hundreds of hours of editing, the American Society for Microbiology and This Week in Virology are proud to release the documentary “Threading the NEIDL.” This video provides an unprecedented (and probably never-to-be-duplicated) look … Continue reading

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Betrayals of Trust

I wish I’d been wrong about polio eradication. Really, I do. Against the ever-extending deadlines, outbreaks of vaccine-associated poliomyelitis, and deadly violence, there’s no comfort in having anticipated failure. Way back in 1997, when Vincent Racaniello and I penned the … Continue reading

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Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad ORF?

A recent paper in the journal GM Crops and Food has generated an outsized splash in the press, particularly in biotechnology-averse Europe. I won’t reward a muckraking tabloid with a link, but here’s a screenshot that shows the basic theme: … Continue reading

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Do These Stripes Make My Nanoparticles Look Weird?

There’s something interesting happening in the staid world of peer review these days, and a recent set of posts on another site renewed my hope that it could be a positive trend. Raphaël Lévy at the University of Liverpool starts … Continue reading

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High Fructose Corn Syrup: Hard Questions, Easy Answer

If you’ve read anything about obesity and nutrition in the past few years, or paid any attention to food packages in the supermarket, you’re aware that there’s a bit of a controversy surrounding a sweetener called high fructose corn syrup, … Continue reading

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Single Molecule Determines Complex Behavior, Say Scientists

In a groundbreaking new study, scientists at Some University have discovered that a single molecule may drive people to perform that complex behavior we’ve all observed. Though other researchers consider the results of the small, poorly structured experiment misleading, a … Continue reading

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Political Science

As the shoutfest The Onion fittingly dubbed “The War for the White House” staggers towards its storm-soaked climax next Tuesday, there’s one fundamental question that I don’t think has really been answered yet: Why are scientists such raving liberals? We … Continue reading

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From Immuno-PCR to Peptoids: Why Great Ideas Sometimes Aren’t

From the inbox last month: Dear Dr. Dove: Just curious. Do you really think Kodadek’s Cell paper is a good piece of work? The response of the science community to this seemingly amazing news is silence. This usually means that … Continue reading

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Making Your Experiments Easier to Digest

One of the great things about being a science journalist is being among the first to hear about technologies that are cool, useful, and/or downright weird. Today, for example, I learned that the world’s leading manufacturer of artificial laboratory stomachs … Continue reading

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