Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains the most common form of dementia, particularly the late-onset version which typically develops in patients aged over 65. Although there is believed to be a strong genetic basis to the disease, the only gene previously identified as a susceptibility factor in all version of the disease was APOE, coding for Apolipoprotein [...]
How widespread is scientific misconduct?
From time to time examples of scientific fraud come to light and raise questions about the integrity of scientific endeavour. The most well-known example of recent years must surely be South Korean stem cell biologist Hwang Woo-Suk, whose ground-breaking discoveries in the field of therapeutic cloning were exposed as bogus (In addition to his science [...]
Science on the Telly: “And the winner would be…”
At the risk of sounding like a Carlsberg advert, “The Journal of the Left-handed Biochemist doesn’t do award ceremonies, but if we did…” – what would be the winner of “Best Science programme” during the last 12 months?
In truth, I think it has been a bumper year for science programmes. There has been a tangible return [...]
Add something “sciencey” to improve your plausability
There are many reasons why I am grateful to have spent some of my summer reading Ben Goldacre’s excellent book Bad Science, including the fact that it brought to my attention a paper The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations. The article is an account of experiments conducted by Deena Weisberg and colleagues at Yale University, [...]
Making the best of “Bad Science” (Review)
If you have not yet read Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science, then I thoroughly recommend that you do. As readers of his regular Guardian column or his website will already know, Goldacre has embarked on a campaign to root out example of pseudoscience and shoddy science whereever they may be found.
All the usual villians are [...]
“Will this be in the test?”
Amongst the major science research journals, Science magazine has consistently been the most prominent in flying the flag for science education. I was very interested, therefore, in an Editorial by Carl Wieman in the September 4th 2009 issue of the magazine. In his piece Galvanising Science Departments, Wieman describes some fairly radical innovations in Science Education [...]
Are you good at multi-tasking? Are you sure?
I was intrigued by a recent paper Cognitive control in media multitaskers in the highly-regarded journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study looked at the information processing styles of self-reported media multitaskers, defined as users of two or more content streams simultaneously, compared with those who do not multitask in this way. (I [...]
Promoting the ethical conduct of science
Back in 2004, Sir David King (at the time, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser) initiated a discussion about generating a Code of Conduct for Scientists. The consultation process led, in 2006, to the publication of Rigour, respect and responsibility: a universal ethical code for scientists. None of the contents was particularly surprising or radical but [...]
Educational Research: Reflections of Biopractitioners
The Higher Education Academy Centre for Bioscience Pedagogic Research in the Biosciences day conference brought together about thirty academics, for the most part Bioscience specialists, who have been involved to educational research. The day turned out to be highly informative and thought provoking. Some on the hoof reflections were collated via Twitter – click this [...]
