Science Simplified!

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 15, 2012 at 6:53am

Lessons to a scientist

"If you want to be good in Science, you have to start asking good questions. You cannot ask good questions if you don't have good training. You have to be open to other fields. You have to feel it. Team up with others and remain very motivated to work hard. You have to love and live your Science." - Prof Jules A Hoffmann ( The Nobel Prize winner for discoveries on 'activation of innate immunity'. )

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 13, 2012 at 6:56am

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-to-get-extra-p...

Scientists and academics are to be given extra protection from bullying corporations that use Britain's libel laws to suppress legitimate criticism and debate, the Government has indicated.

Ministers are to look at amending the Defamation Bill, which is currently being debated in the House of Lords, after strident criticism that their plans do not go far enough.

Scientists have warned that under current proposals there nothing to stop companies and the rich and powerful “silencing criticism” even if it is in the public interest.

They point to a string of recent cases where experts have been threatened with hugely expensive legal actions for raising legitimate concerns about medical products and allegedly unscrupulous practices by companies.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 10, 2012 at 5:54am

BEN Goldacre, doctor, columnist and author of the acclaimed bestseller Bad Science - in which he exposed and rubbished the "evidence" behind misleading and dubious claims from journalists, alternative therapists and government reports - is back with a controversial new book, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients (Fourth Estate).

http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2012/10/09/suspect-sc...

Once more, he claims, science has been distorted by the corporations; drug manufacturers run bad trials on their products, which extort and deliberately exaggerate their benefits. When the test results are unflattering, the data is simply buried. Government regulators, too, are at fault, as are doctors and patient groups who are bribed by the $600-billion global pharmaceutical industry.

Early reports on the book suggest that Goldacre has uncovered "a fascinating, terrifying mess".

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 5, 2012 at 6:19am

Other articles related to this topic : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=misconduct-is-the-...

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2012/1...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/opinion/retracted-science-papers....

http://littleofficeofintegrity.org/

Related to t he topic below

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 3, 2012 at 6:47am

http://www.examiner.com/article/fraud-medical-journals-increasing
Fraud in scientific research is increasing!

A study reviewed 2,047 papers retracted from the biomedical literature through May 2012. The journals considered to be the most prestigious retracted tainted papers faster than did more-obscure journals, pointing to the close read these journals get by other researchers. Science is self-correcting, and there's certainly some truth to that- if results can't be replicated by other researchers, if a conclusion is wrong, it will be identified.

"But there's other stuff out there that doesn't come to wrong conclusions. It's just based on fraudulent data. It's in an area that isn't being intensively investigated by others, or people don't confirm those findings but they're not really sure why these are the results that tend to hang around to potentially influence future experiments. The vast majority of the papers retracted for misconduct dealt with biomedical or life-science research. Some, though, involved fields not directly related to life science – fields such as semiconductor research and psychology.

Sadly and perhaps not surprisingly, this is also a case where a few bad apples give the whole field a bad name. Scientific controversies over the last few years are littered with the corpses of multiple papers published by the same author or the same lab.

 
It was found that about 21 percent of the retractions were attributable to error, while 67 percent were due to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43 percent), duplicate publication (14 percent), and plagiarism (10 percent). Miscellaneous or unknown reasons accounted for the remaining 12 percent.

The percentage of scientific articles retracted due to fraud has increased approximately 10-fold since 1975, with a smaller increase in retractions due to error.

The United States, Germany, Japan, and China accounted for three-quarters of retractions due to fraud or suspected fraud, whereas China and India accounted for the majority of retractions due to plagiarism and duplicate publications.

Whether the increase is due to better reporting or to an actual increase in violations, or both, it tarnishes a community's image.

Reasons: Lower rates of funding, higher competition, and the potential for money patents, and perks that publishing in major journals can provide a researcher and of course lure for media stardom(!) are the major reasons for scientific fraud.

Suggestions to check it: Increasing funds for scientific research, especially in developing countries like India with private sponsorships from Industry etc. Scientists should do research for the love of science and finding out something - curiosity driven scientific research- should be encouraged not money driven research. Use plagiarism checkers (http://www.plagtracker.com/ or http://turnitin.com/), but editors of sciences research articles should use plagiarism detection software - Maybe it is the way to prevent these 10% of plagiarism.

Encouraging solutions like the Office of Research Integrity and regular courses on ethics and data presentation. Researchers, journal editors and referees need to be taught both the value and the methodology of honest research from day one of their careers.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 2, 2012 at 7:09am

http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/linking-huma...
Science and human rights

http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/linking-huma...

http://www.scidev.net/en/science-and-innovation-policy/linking-huma...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2012 at 6:54am

Parasite Linked to Personality Changes :

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=common-parasite-li...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 22, 2012 at 7:10am

How to Increase Intelligence

Scientists have long held that fluid intelligence—reflected not by what you know but rather how well you solve novel problems—is largely inherited and relatively impervious to improvement.
A raft of recent investigations, though, shows that some types of brain training—specifically those that exercise working memory and other so-called executive functions—can raise an individual's fluid intelligence.
Working memory training appears to boost fluid intelligence in children and adults alike. As training progresses, the brain regions taxed by working memory become less active when called on and more active at rest. This pattern suggests that certain training programs leave the brain better primed to perform a wide array of tasks.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-design-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 21, 2012 at 12:30pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/sep/1...
Science more beautiful than art?

And here is a reply most probably from an artist who says scinece can't replace art:

http://www.elezea.com/2012/09/science-cant-replace-art/

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 19, 2012 at 6:13am

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