A recent Nature poll of 1,000 international biomedical researchers showed that while 90 percent of them say research on animals is "essential," 16 percent say they have "misgivings" about using animals, and 33 percent had "ethical concerns" about the role animals play in their research. However, only apparently, only 15% of the respondents claimed to have changed the direction or practice of their research by the actions of animal activists. S. Pelech comments that whenever possible one should find alternative approaches to minimize the use of experimental animals, but acknowledges that it is impossible to eliminate the use of animals in biomedical research. He notes that less than 0.25% of the land animals killed by humans are used for research purposes of any kind and suggests that it would be far more impactful for animal activists to tackle the food industry and the greater than 95% of the world population that are consumers of meat products. Read More...

Tags: Animal Research, Animal activism

Blogger Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress wondered if computing power has improved at an "un-optimally rapid pace" that does not permit people sufficient time to develop better ideas for what to do with all this computing power. Blogger Mike the Mad Biologist thinks that instead of slowing down the pace of technological advancement, we need to speed it up to have enough computing power to handle all the data being generate, as the cost of DNA interpretation rather than DNA sequencing is becoming the bottleneck. S. Pelech suggests that the real problem arises when other supporting areas of science and technology become underfunded or relatively neglected relative to the more outwardly sexier endeavors that suck up the lion's share of funding, and this ultimately severely compromises realization of the true value of the public investment in science and engineering. Read More...

Tags: Data, Moore's law, Research priorities

Blogger Daniel MacArthur in Wired's Genetic Future blog observed that senior biotech executives are making their genomes public in what could be a "pragmatic" move to help their businesses grow by trying to convince the medical establishment (and the public) that genome sequencing will provide health benefits that outweigh the potential privacy risks. S. Pelech comments that these executives are willing to have their genome sequences revealed to the broad research community, because it may promote their business, they really have nothing to loose, and there is a slight possibility to personally benefit with researchers focused on their individual genomes. He argues that if these executives and some prominent scientists are willing to disclose their full medical, life and family histories coupled with a willingness to subject themselves to a wide barrage of medical tests and publicly disclose the results, this might actually be useful in helping to make some sense of our genetic differences. Read More...

Tags: DNA Sequencing, Industry

John Beddington, the UK government's chief scientific advisor, in New Scientist suggested that true progress in science is attained through "criticism, skepticism and debate." He argues that "Great" researchers challenge the status quo, but only if they have the facts and evidence to back themselves up and also remain honest about the uncertainties associated with the work. S. Pelech agrees that scientific progress works best when it is pursued with a mix of healthy skepticism and open-mindedness. It is critical that those scientists that are highly informed on a controversial subject speak out to the general public through the popular media, even if it is revealing of our actual ignorance on that subject. If anything, it justifies the need for further research. Read More...

Tags: Scientific Knowledge

Blogger Cath@VWXYNot argues that a 3-year PhD degree that dispenses with courses and results in few publications is not necessarily inferior to more demanding PhD programs. S. Pelech cautions that in the absence of previous Master's level training, this strategy is not recommended if one is contemplating a serious research career. Ultimately, the ability of a trainee to secure a permanent job in academia or industry will require clear demonstration of research ability through many original scientific publications in which the trainee has played a major role. Read More...

Tags: Career, PhD training

Josh Fischman at The Chronicle of Higher Education observed that a recent series of 10 articles published in Science highlights the problem of "data deluge" and the difficulties in sharing such data due to the diversity of data formats and the lack of "a common language for tagging their data." S. Pelech comments that there remains of wealth of largely ignored genomics and proteomics data available in many open-access repositories on-line that is easily retrievable, and the real problem is the lack of expertise available within the scientific community to interpret this data. More researchers need to markedly expand their biomolecular vocabularies about proteins and their activities to generate actual knowledge from the raw data. Read More...

Tags: Scientific progress, Data

A recent Pew survey reported that more than half of scientists (~55%) consider themselves Democrats, compared to about a third (~35%) of the general public. Blogger Chris Mooney at The Intersection also wondered why about 52 percent of scientists call themselves liberals, whereas only 20 percent of the public does so. S. Pelech outlines several factors that predispose its practitioners of science to be more "liberal" in their outlooks. He also questions generalizations about the differences between "Republicans" and "Liberals" in the US with respect to their perceived value of science, especially since both types of administrations have strongly supported scientific research activities in the past. Read More...

Tags: Politics, Scientific thinking

Andrew Pollack in the New York Times concluded that pharmaceutical companies' interest in RNA interference is waning as other opportunities have higher priorities. The delivery of RNAi still remains a major challenge that is being addressed by a few academics and companies. S. Pelech notes that it took about two decades before the relatively simple process of how to produce monoclonal antibodies ultimately resulted in government-approved drugs for treatment of cancer and other diseases. The application of RNAi to mitigate the actions of specific micro-RNA might ultimately prove to be the best therapeutic use of RNA intereference. Read More...

Tags: Therapeutics, RNAi, µRNA