Science Outreach and Framing Science
10.21.09 by Daniel Gaddy
Yesterday I wrote about influenza and the influenza vaccines. In this post, I referenced two articles demonstrating how popular talk show hosts, on both sides of the political aisle, are irresponsibly promoting irrational fears of the influenza vaccines. I believe this is, at least in part, due to some issues that FundScience was founded to address. Throughout human history, it seems that science has been demonized. Over the past few decades, this has become particularly relevant. As science attempts to address important problems that affect all of us, from climate change to influenza pandemics, science is met by stubborn yet impassioned resistance from people who have no idea what they are talking about!
While writing yesterday’s post, I was reminded of two important articles I read a couple of years ago. The first was written in 2007 by Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, entitled When Did Science Become the Enemy? In this article, Dr. Shostak attempts to trace the origins of the “mad scientist” perception of scientists. While these perceptions have likely been around throughout recorded history, they have become particularly prevalent over the past few decades due largely to Hollywood.
The peculiar thing is that American heroes aren’t often very good at science. Indeed, in much popular culture, it’s only the villains who’re conversant with Maxwell or Einstein. The “mad scientist” has become such a cultural icon that the Royal Society held a special lecture on the subject. Some of the mad men of science (and they are, overwhelmingly, men) are just evil characters intent on destroying the world, taking over the world, or simply rearranging the world according to their personal predilections. Dr. No and Dr. Evil come to mind, as do Lex Luthor, Dr. Octopus, the overly Teutonic Dr. Strangelove, and the Green Goblin.
Fear the Flu More than the Flu Vaccine
10.20.09 by Daniel Gaddy
I have previously written on this site about the Influenza A(H1N1) virus and the possibility, however unlikely, of this virus becoming a catastrophic pandemic. In my first post, I was concerned that the general public was being driven toward unnecessary panic by a “media firestorm” of negative “swine flu” news coverage. Now, however, I have fears of the exact opposite. It seems that people may not be taking this virus seriously enough! As I said in my first article, we really do not know how deadly this virus will be, and the truth is that there is nothing about this virus, particularly its genome, that suggests it will be a catastrophic killer. However, influenza is always deadly and it needs to be taken seriously.
It seems that these days people are more terrified of vaccines than the diseases they are designed to prevent. This is, at least partially, due to a massive campaign to convince people that vaccines cause autism. However, there has been absolutely no scientific evidence of a vaccine-autism link. None. In relation to influenza vaccines, people are worried about a variety of issues, not the least of which is the speed at which the vaccine was produced and made available. An article in the NY Times last week by Paul Offit, a professor and expert on infectious diseases and vaccines at the University of Pennsylvania, addressed this and several other myths about the H1N1 vaccine.
…Here are some of those myths, and why they’re wrong:
Measuring the Treatment of Evolution in Science Classes
08.13.09 by Daniel Gaddy
I recently wrote an Introduction to Evolution on this site outlining the basics of evolution and exploring the disconnect between the scientific community and the education system of the United States when it comes to the teaching of evolution. A new study by Louise Mead and Anton Mates, published in Evolution: Education and Outreach has performed a very thorough analysis of the teaching of evolution in science curricula, comparing each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The authors compare their results to results of a similar analysis in 2000, which was referenced in my previous article. Essentially, 9 states (California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina) and the District of Columbia received grades of A, meaning the treatment of evolution in science classes was particularly good, while 5 states (Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia) received grades of F, meaning treatment of evolution was particularly poor. Kansas, in particular, is cited as a major success story. After several years of battling over standards for teaching evolution and intelligent design, Kansas “standards have improved immensely.”
While several states, including Kansas and Florida, improved their standards, several states, including Hawaii and Texas, actually regressed, often by the incorporation of creationist jargon. Overall conclusions from the study suggest that standards of teaching science in the United States public school system include more about evolution than in 2000. The authors also offer some advice on how to address science education standards in your state:
The Importance of Animal Research
08.7.09 by Daniel Gaddy
As a biomedical researcher, I firmly believe that the importance of animal research cannot be overstated. As eloquently expressed on the website of the Foundation for Biomedical Research:
Animal research has played a vital role in virtually every major medical advance of the last century – for both human and animal health. From antibiotics to blood transfusions, from dialysis to organ transplantation, from vaccinations to chemotherapy, bypass surgery and joint replacement, practically every present day protocol for the prevention, treatment, cure and control of disease, pain and suffering is based on knowledge attained through animal research.
Physicians and researchers overwhelmingly agree that animal systems provide invaluable and irreplaceable insights into human systems. The essential need for animal research is recognized and supported by medical societies and health agencies around the world.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets this point. Animal rights activists have fought for many years to end the legal and moral use of animals in research, or what they deem animal cruelty. The truth is, treatment of research animals in the United States is far from cruel. In fact, every institution in the United States that conducts animal research must establish an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which oversees the use of animals in research and establishes guidelines that guarantee safe and ethical treatment of research animals.
As for the activists, they do not simply protest and voice their opinions. Animal rights activists are becoming increasingly violent. The video below describes a recent attack against Novartis:
A vacation home belonging to Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella was burned in a suspected arson, a week after his mother’s grave was vandalized by animal rights protesters. The words “Drop HLS Now” were spray painted on the grave, CNBC reports. The protesters want Novartis to sever its ties to Huntingdon Life Sciences, a contract company that does animal testing for drug companies.
The Obesity Epidemic
08.2.09 by Daniel Gaddy
The following is from an article in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describing the obesity epidemic in the United States and the repercussions on our current attempts at health care reform.
This article is very effective at stating the obvious: obesity is a growing problem in this country, and increasingly a problem around much of the developed world, but no one has any ideas of how to adequately address the issues. Just how bad is the problem?
The CDC estimates nearly 40 percent of American adults are considered obese based on their body mass index, a mathematical formula that considers a person’s height and weight. That extra weight frequently leads to additional health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and pulmonary difficulties.
A RTI study estimates $1,429 a year is added to the nation’s health care costs for each obese patient. The overall cost is about 42 percent more annually for obese people and even higher for obese patients on Medicare. Obesity adds 9.1 percent to the annual cost of health care.
The truth is, far too many parties have too much invested in keeping America unhealthy. From the food industry to the health care industry, big profits are made when we are sick. The food is cheap, but poisoned by mass-production and cheap chemicals like high fructose corn syrup, which induces leptin resistance and leads directly to overeating.
The most expensive form of health care is treatment, while the most effective and inexpensive form is prevention. If the country wants to save money here, more effort needs to be placed on education and the prevention of obesity at an early age. Unfortunately, until fresh, healthy foods are cheaper than the unhealthy crap, far too many of us are going to continue to consume the poisons. If the poisons are all you can afford, at least they fill your belly! One part of the solution is to ban high fructose corn syrup or eliminate government corn subsidies, which would make the cost of high fructose corn syrup more than that of natural sugar. Another option on the table now is to tax soft drinks.
Science Exhibitions: Dissiminating Science to the Public
07.31.09 by Daniel Gaddy
The following information was brought to our attention, and FundScience would like to invite our community to collaborate on this book exploring science exhibitions and mechanisms by which to effectively disseminate science to wide audiences.
CALL FOR PAPERS
THE SCIENCE EXHIBITION: CURATION, DESIGN, COMMUNICATION
We invite papers for a forthcoming book which will explore three related themes in relation to science exhibitions in museums:
* the processes involved in developing new science exhibitions in and for museums;
* the issues involved in transforming scientific ideas or events into exhibitions;
* the challenges faced by museums in communicating science to a wide audience.We are particularly interested in new, innovative and successful initiatives in this field.
Much has been written about the difficulties of disseminating science to the public through a variety of new and traditional media. It is, indeed, a complex subject to tackle in the exhibition space, yet a challenging and multidimensional one.
How best to understand the process of working from scientific data to the ideas-based exhibition? What exactly is lost during the transformation of factual information into an exhibition environment? And more importantly, how can the exhibition work most effectively as a tool for narrating science, its past and present?
We welcome a range of submissions including, but not limited to, the following issues/themes:
* both theoretical perspectives and case studies relating to science exhibitions
* exhibition design for science: problems and opportunities
* successful design techniques and approaches in relation to science displays
* science communication in the museum: interpretation issues
* learning activities and science collections
* developing learning resources for science exhibitions
* object stories and science learning
* exhibitions interpreting the history of scienceDeadline for abstracts and bio: 30 September 2009
Selection for inclusion: 30 October 2009
The Future of Brain Tumor Therapy
06.14.09 by Daniel Gaddy
A little over a year ago, the announcement that Senator Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor brought a lot of attention to brain cancer research. Brain cancers are among the most perplexing types of cancers. Indeed, until now, it was not even known how brain cancers form. It was believed for many years that brain tumor metastasis, or the process whereby cancerous cells move from the location where a tumor has initially grown and spreads to other parts of the body, was the product of “brain-specific homing” of metastatic cancer cells from other areas of the body, followed by direct interactions of the cancer cells with neural tissues. However, recent research from Oxford University, published in the journal PLOS One, demonstrated that metastatic cancer cells in mouse and human tissue utilized “vascular cooption” for seeding brain tumors rather than invading and growing within the neural tissue. What this means is that cancer cells enter blood vessels, where they can then be transported throughout the body. This information is not new. What the Oxford researchers, led by Professor Ruth Muschel, showed is that once in the blood vessels, cancer cells can establish residence and begin to grow along the blood vessel walls. By thus co-opting blood vessels in the brain, tumors can utilize readily available nutrients and oxygen from the blood without having to grow their own blood vessels, which occurs via processes known as neovascularization and angiogenesis.
Spreading Science to the Masses
05.29.09 by Daniel Gaddy
One of the key goals of FundScience is to provide a fun, interactive method to educate the public regarding the science that directly affects their lives. Interestingly enough, a lot of other people are now attempting to do the same thing. I was listening to NPR’s Science Friday just now and host Ira Flatow was discussing DNA Art with two artists who incorporate DNA and genetics into their artwork. Furthermore, yesterday The Scientist had an article about GQ magazine’s “Rock Stars of Science” spread, which organizers “hope will help heighten the public’s awareness of these biologists and their work while showcasing the need for greater science funding.” In addition, last week Nature News profiled SciFlies, an organization very similar to FundScience. Their website has the following to say:
At SciFlies.org, we envision a world in which people have a better awareness of how science supports them sustains their well being. Our mission is to create a movement that connects people from all walks of life with scientists and researchers, and provides a vehicle for them to fund micro-research projects that expedite the discovery of new breakthroughs and advance scientific progress in labs across the globe.
Using social networks, video, new media, and other online tools, we want to broaden the experience of discovery for everyone, especially young people. Getting kids excited about careers in science, technology, engineering and math is a great way to ensure the competitiveness of our nation and improve the quality of life for people everywhere.
We believe scientists are heroes. If you do too, please investigate the work of the scientists and researchers showcased on this web site and support them with a donation.
Challenge Grant Applications and General Government News
05.21.09 by Daniel Gaddy
Predictably, the National Institutes of Health is reportedly overwhelmed by the submission of approximately 20,000 Challenge Grant applications, which is more than double the amount typically received in a normal review period. NIH is supposed to award the grants by the end of September. In order to review this number of grants in such a short time period, it has recruited more than 15,000 extra reviewers and will take an editorial board-style approach. One obvious issue with so many applications and reviewers is that the pool of reviewers comes from the same pool of applicants. This creates potentially serious conflicts of interest, and unprecedented headaches for the NIH staff to find reviewers with expertise in a particular field, but who did not submit grant applications to the NIH branch that represents their field of interest!
Furthermore, grants are primarily submitted through the website Grants.gov, which accepts grant applications from 26 federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, and National Science Foundation. The system is already inundated with around 20,000 submissions, causing countless submission problems ranging from generally sluggish performance to system crashes. With the application deadline of May 29th looming, many more applications are expected, along with additional problems. As alternatives to Grants.gov, DoE is accepting applications through their e-Center portal, NSF is accepting applications through Fastlane, and other agencies have established alternative mechanisms of grant submission. However, it would not be terribly surprising if the grant awards were delayed due to the unprecedented number of submissions.
In related news, NIH is examining its financial conflict of interest policies following a number of high-profile incidents involving extramural researchers. Comments are due by July 7.
Finally, in accordance with President Obama’s Open Government Initiative, the federal website Data.gov has been created. The website has the following to say:
New Embryonic Stem Cell Policy
05.15.09 by Daniel Gaddy
New guidelines for the use of embryonic stem cells have been proposed by the National Institutes of Health. Many scientists were excited when President Barack Obama announced on March 9th that restrictions enforced by the Bush administration would be overturned. Under the Bush administration policy, only 21 embryonic stem cell lines that had been established prior to August 2001 qualified for federal funding. The new policy draft was released April 18th and, after much scrutiny from the science community, has been deemed by many scientists to be even more restrictive than the Bush administration policy.
The new policy requires consent forms that specifically mention human embryonic stem cell research, forbid donating eggs for the benefit of a specific person, and contain multiple other stipulations that were generally mentioned on older consent forms, but not specifically defined. The new rules are to be applied retroactively to existing embryonic stem cell lines, and therefore could have a serious impact on existing and proposed research. In fact, the vast majority of the 700+ existing embryonic stem cell lines would be ineligible for federal funding under the new policy.
The NIH has issued a Request for Comment in regards to the proposed “Draft National Institutes of Health Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research Notice”. Prior to enacting these changes, the NIH must obtain public comment. These comments are taken seriously in determining whether the proposed changes will be enacted.
Stem cell research has been a hotly debated issue and responding to the request for comment is a way for individuals, scientists and lay-persons, to have a say in the discussion. We encourage you to make your voice heard.
The deadline for a response is May 26, 2009. The notice can be found at: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/E9-9313.htm. You may submit a comment through the following website: http://nihoerextra.nih.gov/stem_cells/add.htm.
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