Canada moves to protect coral reef that scientists say ‘shouldn’t exist’; The Guardian, March 15, 2024

Leyland Cecco, The Guardian; Canada moves to protect coral reef that scientists say ‘shouldn’t exist’

"For generations, members of the Kitasoo Xai’xais and Heiltsuk First Nations, two communities off the Central Coast region of British Columbia, had noticed large groups of rockfish congregating in a fjord system.

In 2021, researchers and the First Nations, in collaboration with the Canadian government, deployed a remote-controlled submersible to probe the depths of the Finlayson Channel, about 300 miles north-west of Vancouver.

On the last of nearly 20 dives, the team made a startling discovery – one that has only recently been made public...

The discovery marks the latest in a string of instances in which Indigenous knowledge has directed researchers to areas of scientific or historic importance. More than a decade ago, Inuk oral historian Louie Kamookak compared Inuit stories with explorers’ logbooks and journals to help locate Sir John Franklin’s lost ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. In 2014, divers located the wreck of the Erebus in a spot Kamookak suggested they search, and using his directions found the Terror two years later."

How scientists are using facial-recognition AI to track humpback whales; NPR, February 29, 2024

 Lauren Sommer, NPR; How scientists are using facial-recognition AI to track humpback whales

"Photographs are key for counting whales. As they dive deep, humpbacks raise their tails out of the water, revealing markings and patterns unique to each individual. Scientists typically identify whales photo by photo, matching the tails in a painstaking process.

Cheeseman figured that technology could do that more quickly. He started Happy Whale, which uses artificial intelligence-powered image recognition to identify whales. The project pulled together about 200,000 photos of humpback whales. Many came from scientists who had built large image catalogs over the years. Others came from whale watching groups and citizen scientists, since the website is designed to share the identity of a whale and where it's been seen."

He Hunts Sloppy Scientists. He’s Finding Lots of Prey.; The New York Times, February 2, 2024

Matt Richtel, The New York Times ; He Hunts Sloppy Scientists. He’s Finding Lots of Prey.

"Sholto David, 32, has a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from Newcastle University in England. He is also developing an expertise in spotting errors in scientific papers. Most recently, and notably, he discovered flawed or manipulated data in studies conducted by top executives at the Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The institute said that it was requesting retraction of six manuscripts and had found 31 other manuscripts that required corrections.

From his home in Wales, Dr. David scours new research publications for images that are mislabeled and manipulated, and he regularly finds mistakes, or malfeasance, in some of the most prominent scientific journals. Accuracy is vital, as peer-reviewed papers often provide the evidence for drug trials or further lines of research. Dr. David said that the frequency of such errors suggests an underlying problem for science.

His interview with The New York Times has been edited and condensed...

Does this call into question the peer-review process?

I think that’s something that people need to think about. These are top scientific journals with errors that escaped peer review. Maybe the peer reviewers are looking for other things. Maybe they like to look at the methods or the conclusions more carefully than the results. But, yeah, it does make me think that people should question how effective the peer-review process has been."

USM tapped to develop ethics training in age of artificial intelligence; Portland Press Herald, September 5, 2023

LANA COHEN, Portland Press Herald; USM tapped to develop ethics training in age of artificial intelligence

"Thompson and other researchers at the Portland-based regulatory training and ethics center hope to better understand what is behind individuals’ tendencies to cut corners ethically and use that information to create training programs for businesses, nonprofits and colleges – including those in the UMaine System – that could help prevent cheating or other unethical conduct in research."

RFK Jr. is building a presidential campaign around conspiracy theories; NPR, July 13, 2023

 Shannon Bond, NPR; RFK Jr. is building a presidential campaign around conspiracy theories

"What's not up for debate for scientists, researchers and public health officials is Kennedy's long track record of undermining science and spreading dubious claims.

"He has an enormous platform. He is going to, over the next many months, do a series of town hall meetings where he will continue to put bad information out there that will cause people to make bad decisions for themselves and their families, again putting children at risk and causing children to suffer," Offit said. "Because it's always the most vulnerable among us who suffer our ignorance.""

Column: Can scientists moonlight as activists — or does that violate an important ethical code?; Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2022

OPINION COLUMNIST, Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times; Column: Can scientists moonlight as activists — or does that violate an important ethical code?

Kalmus, Chornak and their colleagues believe it is their moral responsibility as scientists to help awaken society to the dangers of climate change, which include not just more of the raging storms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves we’re already experiencing, but very possibly famine, mass migration, collapsing economies and war.

I think they’re right. 

But as more and more scientists have become engaged in climate activism over the years, they have faced pushback from traditionalists who insist that scientists should be disinterested, impartial “seekers of truth” who keep their opinions to themselves, thank you very much."

Top prize in Bioethics Cartooning Contest considers substance and style in publishing; Morgridge Institute for Research, April 11, 2022

Mariel Mohns , Morgridge Institute for Research ; Top prize in Bioethics Cartooning Contest considers substance and style in publishing

"Five prizes were awarded in the fifth annual Morgridge Institute for Research Ethics Cartooning Competition, which invites participants to make a cartoon on any ethical issue related to biomedical research.

This year’s competition drew 61 entrants from 41 different departments and programs at UW-Madison and affiliated research institutions.

A panel of judges applied the following criteria to the competition: depiction and analysis of a research ethics issue, humor, and artistry. A popular vote by the public also contributed to the results. The following winners were selected:

• First Prize: Logan Keding, School of Medicine and Public Health, Endocrinology and Reproductive Physiology Program
• Second Prize: William Mayner, School of Medicine and Public Health, Neuroscience Training Program
• Third Prize: Natalie Schudrowitz, School of Medicine and Public Health
• Honorable Mentions: Sydney Hoel, School of Medicine and Public Health, Infectious Disease; Mikaela Seemann, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Biochemistry
• Logan Keding, a graduate student in the Ted Golos Laboratory at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison, took the top prize.

Keding works with rhesus macaques as a non-human primate model, and hopes to better understand fetal growth restriction during pregnancy.

“I love illustrating and frequently create figures for Golos Lab publications,” Keding says. “I have no formal training, but I have always loved creating all types of art.”

His winning cartoon addresses the balance of substance and style that researchers must often consider when publishing their researching findings.

“If your research is great and sexy, you are more likely to successfully publish in a high impact journal,” he explains. “Creating relevant, engaging, visually pleasing work is not necessarily a bad thing—but it does create an accessory incentive, outside the quality of the work at hand, for scientists to consider when pursuing research or publication.”

As a first-year PhD candidate, Keding says his laboratory colleagues are invaluable in shaping his perspective on research and ethics.

“I often turn to more senior graduate students, colleagues, or mentors to discuss questions I have about research philosophy or bioethical issues,” he says. “I often get good, candid feedback this way.”

The Morgridge Ethics Cartooning Competition, developed by Morgridge Bioethics Scholar in Residence Pilar Ossorio, encourages scientists to shed light on timely or recurring issues that arise in scientific research.

“I love seeing when our artists get to talk to others about ethical issues and what their intentions were, and the experience of making their cartoons,” says Ossorio. “I think it’s another way for them to have an impact on the world and to bring their scientific knowledge to the broader public. It’s been really great.”

The top five winning cartoons are depicted below. Ossorio’s team thanks all the contest entrants for their creative works that addressed important ethical issues in biomedical research."

NASA Administrator and Panel of 7 Astronauts Talk Leadership and Ethics; University of Central Florida, April 1, 2022

Zenaida Gonzalez Kotala, University of Central Florida ; NASA Administrator and Panel of 7 Astronauts Talk Leadership and Ethics

"It will take more than astronauts, engineers, and scientist to live in space. It will take clothes designers, food managers, communicators, artists, and a lot more.

That was one of the messages NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and several fellow former astronauts delivered Friday during a 90-minute presentation about leadership and ethics at the Plaza Live near downtown Orlando.

About 50 students from the University of Central Florida joined others from Bethune-Cookman, UF, USF and several local high schools for the free panel discussion, which was part of the Nelson Initiative on Ethics and Leadership based at the University of Florida. Nelson, a former U.S. Senator who flew on a space shuttle mission in 1986, moderated the discussion. The speakers included:

• Charlie Bowden, pilot, and former NASA Administrator
• Robert Lee “Hoot” Gibson, who flew with Nelson and served as chief of the Astronaut Office from 1992 to 1994
• Rhea Seddon, retired astronaut and a surgeon
• George Pinky Nelson, who is also a physicist and astronomer
• Brewster Shaw, retired astronaut and former Boeing executive
• Jim Weatherbee, retired U.S. Navy officer and former test pilot and aerospace engineer

The speakers talked about what it takes to be a leader, the courage needed to do the right thing and the many challenges they faced. For example, Bowden who is African American, couldn’t get any of his state representatives to appoint him to the Naval Academy. He eventually became an astronaut. Gibson first became a surgeon because the astronaut program was closed to women until the late 70s. She was among the first six women to join the NASA corp.

“Don’t listen to people who say you can’t do something,” Bolden said at the event. “You will always find people who don’t like you for one reason or another. Don’t waste your time explaining why you are there. Just do your job.”

Bolden also said people need to think about space in broader terms, as in STEAM, not just STEM.

“Of all the 18,000 people at NASA a very, very small percentage are engineers, scientists and payload specialists,” he said. “It takes everyone in a lot of different roles.”

All the astronauts encouraged students to pursue their passion and to be leaders in their own lives.

Weatherbee said the best leaders in extreme industries share three traits, which can be adopted into any field. These leaders have an intense commitment to a mission. They care about their people as people, not for what they can give the mission, but because you are interested in their individual success. And lastly, leaders are highly competent in their technical field and know how to communicate."

The Manhattan Project Shows Scientists’ Moral and Ethical Responsibilities; Scientific American, March 2, 2022

George Iskander,  Scientific American; The Manhattan Project Shows Scientists’ Moral and Ethical Responsibilities

"Collective action has power, but it starts with the individual."

How to protect the first ‘CRISPR babies’ prompts ethical debate; Nature, February 25, 2022

Smriti Mallapaty, Nature; How to protect the first ‘CRISPR babies’ prompts ethical debate

"Two prominent bioethicists in China are calling on the government to set up a research centre dedicated to ensuring the well-being of the first children born with edited genomes. Scientists have welcomed the discussion, but many are concerned that the pair’s approach would lead to unnecessary surveillance of the children.

The proposal comes ahead of the possibly imminent release from prison of He Jiankui, the researcher who in 2018 shocked the world by announcing that he had created babies with altered genomes. He’s actions were widely condemned by scientists around the world, who called for a global moratorium on editing embryos destined for implantation. Several ethics committees have since concluded that the technology should not be used to make changes that can be passed on."

Vote now in the 2022 Morgridge Ethics Cartooning Competition; Morgridge Institute for Research, February 11, 2022

Morgridge Institute for Research ; Vote now in the 2022 Morgridge Ethics Cartooning Competition

"Sixteen cartoons have been selected as finalists in the 2022 Ethics Cartooning Competition, an annual contest sponsored by the Morgridge Institute. 

The competition encourages ethics conversations and deliberation among scientists conducting biomedical research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and affiliated biomedical research centers or institutes.

A panel of judges has chosen the following cartoons for display to the public. You can vote below and help determine the 2022 winners! 

This year’s cartoons depict a variety of research ethics topics, such as the ethics of scientific funding and publishing, the moral status of brain organoids, the ethics of experimenting on animals, environmental and social impacts of science, and problems of communication between scientists and non-scientists."

The government dropped its case against Gang Chen. Scientists still see damage done; WBUR, February 16, 2022

Max Larkin, WBUR ; The government dropped its case against Gang Chen. Scientists still see damage done

"When federal prosecutors dropped all charges against MIT professor Gang Chen in late January, many researchers rejoiced in Greater Boston and beyond.

Chen had spent the previous year fighting charges that he had lied and omitted information on U.S. federal grant applications. His vindication was a setback for the "China Initiative," a controversial Trump-era legal campaign aimed at cracking down on the theft of American research and intellectual property by the Chinese government.

Researchers working in the United States say the China Initiative has harmed both their fellow scientists and science itself — as a global cooperative endeavor. But as U.S.-China tensions remain high, the initiative remains in place." 

Covid News: Pope Warns Against ‘Infodemic’; The New York Times, January 28, 2022

The New York Times ; Covid News: Pope Warns Against ‘Infodemic’ 

The Catholic leader is urging journalists, scientists and others to build bridges with those who believe misinformation. The world has topped 10 billion vaccine doses but distribution has been unequal.

"Pope Francis says access to truthful information on vaccines is a ‘human right.’"

Scientific Publishing Is a Joke; The Atlantic, May 6, 2021

 BENJAMIN MAZER, The Atlantic; Scientific Publishing Is a Joke

An XKCD comic—and its many remixes—perfectly captures the absurdity of academic research.

"“The meme hits the right nerve,” says Vinay Prasad, an associate epidemiology professor and a prominent critic of medical research. “Many papers serve no purpose, advance no agenda, may not be correct, make no sense, and are poorly read. But they are required for promotion.” The scholarly literature in many fields is riddled with extraneous work; indeed, I’ve always been intrigued by the idea that this sorry outcome was more or less inevitable, given the incentives at play. Take a bunch of clever, ambitious people and tell them to get as many papers published as possible while still technically passing muster through peer review … and what do you think is going to happen? Of course the system gets gamed: The results from one experiment get sliced up into a dozen papers, statistics are massaged to produce more interesting results, and conclusions become exaggerated. The most prolific authors have found a way to publish more than one scientific paper a week. Those who can’t keep up might hire a paper mill to do (or fake) the work on their behalf...

A staggering 200,000 COVID-19 papers have already been published, of which just a tiny proportion will ever be read or put into practice. To be fair, it’s hard to know in advance which data will prove most useful during an unprecedented health crisis. But pandemic publishing has only served to exacerbate some well-established bad habits, Michael Johansen, a family-medicine physician and researcher who has criticized many studies as being of minimal value, told me. “COVID publications appear to be representative of the literature at large: a few really important papers and a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t or shouldn’t be read,” he said."

The Anonymous Professor Who Wasn’t; The New York Times, August 4, 2020

Jonah Engel Bromwich and Ezra Marcus, The New York Times; The Anonymous Professor Who Wasn’t

A professor at Arizona State University does not exist.

"Among scientists and academics, the shock of mourning was already laced with suspicion. Enough of them had unpleasant interactions with the combative account and were troubled by its inconsistencies and seeming about-turns.

“You have these internal alarms that are like, ‘Oh, I don’t trust you,’” said Julie Libarkin, the head of the Geocognition Research Laboratory at Michigan State University. “Kind of the same as when I worked with BethAnn.”"

With an Internet of Animals, Scientists Aim to Track and Save Wildlife; The New York Times, June 9, 2020

Jim Robbins, The New York Times; With an Internet of Animals, Scientists Aim to Track and Save Wildlife

Using tiny sensors and equipment aboard the space station, a project called ICARUS seeks to revolutionize animal tracking.

"The International Space Station, orbiting some 240 miles above the planet, is about to join the effort to monitor the world’s wildlife — and to revolutionize the science of animal tracking.

A large antenna and other equipment aboard the orbiting outpost, installed by spacewalking Russian astronauts in 2018, are being tested and will become fully operational this summer. The system will relay a much wider range of data than previous tracking technologies, logging not just an animal’s location but also its physiology and environment. This will assist scientists, conservationists and others whose work requires close monitoring of wildlife on the move, and provide much more detailed information on the health of the world’s ecosystems.

The new approach, known as ICARUS — short for International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space — will also be able to track animals across far larger areas than other technologies. At the same time, ICARUS has shrunk the size of the transmitters that the animals wear and made them far cheaper to boot...

The science of wildlife tracking, known as bio-logging, has come a long way in recent years."

Open Access, Open Source, and the Battle to Defeat COVID-19; JD Supra, April 22, 2020

PerkinsCoie, JD Supra; Open Access, Open Source, and the Battle to Defeat COVID-19

"No legal development over the past decades has had a greater impact on the free flow of information and technology than the rise of the open access and open source movements. We recently looked at how AI, machine learning, blockchain, 3D printing, and other disruptive technologies are being employed in response to the coronavirus pandemic; we now turn to how two disruptive legal innovations, open access and open source, are being used to fight COVID-19. Although the pandemic is far from over, there are already promising signs that open access and open source solutions are allowing large groups of scientists, healthcare professionals, software developers, and innovators across many countries to mobilize quickly and effectively to combat and, hopefully, mitigate the impact of the coronavirus."

The Open COVID Pledge: What Is It and Is It Right for You?; The National Law Review, April 14, 2020

Theresa Rakocy, The National Law Review; The Open COVID Pledge: What Is It and Is It Right for You?

"Enter one possible solution: The Open COVID Pledge. A group of scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs developed the Open COVID Pledge to encourage businesses and research facilities to make their intellectual property available for use in the fight against COVID-19. The idea behind the Open COVID Pledge is to allow open sharing of intellectual property and technology to end the pandemic without the need for timely and costly licenses or royalty agreements. The initiative comes at a time when researchers and companies alike are surging ahead with ways to combat and end COVID-19. In its Press Release, the individuals behind the Open COVID Pledge explain that the license is needed because “enabling individuals and organizations across the world to work on solutions together, without impediments, is the quickest way to end this pandemic.”...

As COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, with the number of new cases each day still increasing in most countries, research and the development of new technologies to combat and eradicate COVID-19 has blossomed. As discussed in an earlier post, countries and companies are looking for ways to contribute, with many now making available and expanding access to their intellectual property. The balance between access and protection of intellectual property, however, is delicate."

How false hope spread about hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19 — and the consequences that followed; The Washington Post, April 13, 2020

Elyse Samuels and Meg Kelly , The Washington Post; How false hope spread about hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19 — and the consequences that followed

"The science 

As attention on the drugs became even more prolific — online, in the media and from the president — scientists say there is only “anecdotal evidence” on the drugs. To a layperson, that may not sound bad, but it’s actually an insult in the scientific community.

Anecdotal evidence refers to people’s personal stories about taking the drugs and has no basis in scientific data. It’s akin to a Yelp review."

U.S. lab chimps were dumped on Liberia’s Monkey Island and left to starve. He saved them.; The Washington Post, December 12, 2019

Danielle Paquette, The Washington Post; U.S. lab chimps were dumped on Liberia’s Monkey Island and left to starve. He saved them.

 

"Animal testing has existed since doctors in ancient Greece studied the anatomy of rodents — an estimated 115 million creatures are still used each year in research worldwide — but rarely is the aftermath so visible. Rarely is it so hungry.

 

This colony of 66 chimpanzees, which never learned to survive in the wild, eats roughly 500 pounds of produce each day, plus a weekly batch of hard-boiled eggs for protein. They rely on money from a charity abroad and the devotion of men who’ve known them since they lived in steel cages."