Dec 2011
Nothing Is Sacred
22/12/11 13:16 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky at Nature, Retraction Watch wrote that the increase in retractions of scientific papers isn't necessarily a bad thing, and that journal editors and researchers should embrace the idea of post-publication peer review. They stated that "in the new system, a fleshed-out addendum, or correction, could suffice if the paper included some of the post-publication discussion." S. Pelech comments that with around a million scientific papers published annually, the overall numbers of flagged publications are still relatively miniscule. He agrees that needs to be the wide spread implementation of post-publication peer review that is directly linked to the original scientific work. Read More...
Investment in China
13/12/11 13:19 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Hao Xin in ScienceInsider wrote that Merck plans to spend about $1.5 billion on R&D in China over the next five years, starting with a staff of 260 in a Beijing facility to be expanded to ultimately 600. S. Pelech comments that Merck's increased investment in research in China will most likely be accompanied by further reductions in R&D spending in Europe and North America. The Chinese government's policy of restricting the export of clinical material out of China has made it necessary for pharmaceutical companies to undertake the evaluations of their clinical trials within that country. Read More...
It Lives!
09/12/11 17:07 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Jennifer Viegas in Discovery News predicts that within five years woolly mammoths may roam the Earth once again based on the work of researchers in Russia and Japan to try to clone the extinct species from a recently found mammoth thigh bone with well-preserved bone marrow. S. Pelech comments that this may not only be too technological challenging and too expensive to be economically justifiable in the face of the pending extinction of current endangered species, but with the global warming resulting in the rapid melting of glaciers and the thawing of frozen mammoths, time may be running out to retrieve high quality specimens from enough diverse mammoths to enable their successful cloning. Read More...
NHGRI's Early Independents
01/12/11 17:28 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The National Human Genome Research Institute profiled four of its intramural postdoctoral fellows and three extramural researchers that it funds, all of whom recently received National Institutes of Health Pathway to Independence Awards. S. Pelech comments that it's interesting that two of the seven awardees of the NIH Pathway to Independence Awards are or were post-doctoral fellows with the Director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins. Read More...