Things That Hold My Interest

Is some research just too dangerous to publish, or even do?

A few years ago, some bird flu experts decided to test the proposition that H5N1 was a potential human scourge. They would tinker with it to see if it could be transmitted from mammal to mammal, instead of bird to mammal. They might be able to see some warning signs for how this transition could happen in nature. The scientists applied for money from the National Institutes of Health, which considered their idea important enough to sink millions of dollars into it.

Two teams of scientists–one in the Netherlands and the other at the University of Wisconsin–got good results. They could infect ferrets with modified H5N1, and the ferrets could cough up droplets that could infect healthy ferrets. They submitted their findings to the world’s biggest scientific journals, Science and Nature, to let the world know of their discovery.

It occurred to persons unknown that publishing these results might not be such a great idea. What if individuals bent on destruction got the idea of unleashing a pandemic. Maybe they could use the scientific papers–in particular the description of the experimental methods–to replicate the results. Just knowing the mutations might be enough information for a talented virologist to tweak a bird flu virus into a biological weapon.

Last year set a record for retractions from the scientific literature, with some 400 in recognized scientific journals. This year looks on pace to meet or possibly even exceed that mark. In fact, an anesthesiologist in Japan may set a new individual record, with 193 papers under suspicion for bad data.

So, are scientists getting less honest?  Peer reviewers lazier?  Or are journals getting better at detecting and calling out fakes?

One theory:

Two prominent journal editors in chief — Ferric Fang, of Infection and Immunity, and Arturo Casadevall, of the microbiology journal mBio — told a National Academy of Sciences committee last month that science has become dysfunctional. They argued that scientists may feel forced to cut corners, or worse, as funding levels decline and the pressure to win grants increases. It’s tempting to make this link, but it’s impossible to prove.

Another possibility:

The outsized increase in retractions is partly due to greater transparency, rather than more fraud; the introduction in recent years of software that efficiently detects plagiarism is responsible for many of the retractions we’re seeing, and retractions remain an infinitesimal fraction of the 1.4 million papers published every year.

Whatever the cause, it’s bad.  So how to fix it?

Wasserman, Milton and colleagues studied the diets of mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei) and red colobus monkeys (Procolobus rufomitratus) in a national park in Uganda. They found that 10.6 per cent of plants in the colobus diet and 8.8 per cent of those in the gorilla diet contained phyto-oestrogens (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22045).

IIRC, non-human primates do not have menopause.  Still, it would be interesting to see if the percentage-consumption of these hormonally active plants varies between the sexes and/or among age groups. 

Fog blankets the coast of central California each summer, hydrating the region’s majestic redwood trees and chilling beachgoers. New research out of the University of California, Santa Cruz shows that the moist air also carries methylmercury, an especially toxic form of the heavy metal mercury.

The good news is that it’s not present at high enough levels to harm people by breathing on a foggy day, but it can be taken up by micro-organisms and bio-accumulate up the food chain.

Particles of insecticides used as seed treatments may deliver a fatal blow to honeybees in cornfields, researchers have found. The scientists say exposure of bees to the insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, may cause honeybee colony losses. But pesticide manufacturers contend that, under normal conditions, the treated seeds don’t pose a serious risk.

Wonder what they consider “normal conditions”?

Farmers use pneumatic machines that suck seeds out of a bin and blow them toward the ground. In the process, bits of the seed coating break off and can become airborne. The team reports that measurements of air particulates and residue on dead bees at the time of planting indicated the bees’ levels of exposure to neonicotinoids were high and could explain colony losses

And how many Americans actually care?

Of the 1005 likely voters polled, 47% said they thought the United States would lead the world in health care by 2020…. Only 42% said they thought the United States would retain its position as the world leader in science and technology by 2020, while 26% predicted China would assume that mantle, and 23% chose India.

The Q about health care is something of a trick, as the U.S. is not a world leader in health care by most definitions — except for cost.

At a panel discussion at the conference, a number of scientists and science policymakers said these poll figures reveal a startling degree of public skepticism toward the United States’s ability to compete globally in scientific research. They blamed the public’s perception of the United States as a dwindling science powerhouse on a lack of long-term thinking by lawmakers tasked with funding national science endeavors. While China and the European Union have taken steps to increase their research budgets, the United States more recently has struggled to keep its research budget from declining, said National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins.

It’s not just dwindling research budgets, but also the concerted attack on public education at all levels. 

The journal “Nature” reports:

The proposed cut would come from the part of the agency’s budget that is controlled by Congress and pays for the core operations of the CDC, based in Atlanta, Georgia. These include grants to local, county and state public-health departments to monitor infectious diseases or track food-borne outbreaks. Core funding is also used to maintain the Strategic National Stockpile, a repository of drugs reserved for fighting epidemics and bioterrorism. If Obama’s plan is enacted, the CDC’s congressionally controlled funding will have fallen by roughly 20% since 2010

…

Cuts to the CDC have already contributed to the loss of nearly 50,000 jobs in state and local health departments since 2008. This year, the administration argues that “efficiencies” will make possible the specific cuts it has proposed in areas such as adult-immunization funding and epidemiological support. But CDC advocates and public-health officials are sceptical. A proposed $47-million cut to the Strategic National Stockpile “is a lot more than just efficiency. It’s going to cut capability as well,”…

Yeah, who needs public health anyway?