At Error Statistics Philosophy, D. G. Mayo has an interesting discussion of changes that just went into effect to Transportation Security Administration rules about what air travelers can bring in their carry-on bags. Here’s how the TSA Blog describes the changes: TSA established a committee to review the prohibited items list based on an overall [...]

Lately I’ve been pondering the practice of responding to bad behavior by calling public attention to it. The most recent impetus for my thinking about it was this tech blogger’s response to behavior that felt unwelcoming at a conference (behavior that seems, in fact, to have run afoul of that conference’s official written policies)*, but [...]

Remember some months ago when we were talking about how Jonah Lehrer was making stuff up in his “non-fiction” pop science books? This was as big enough deal that his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, recalled print copies of Lehrer’s book Imagine, and that the media outlets for which Lehrer wrote went back through his writing [...]

By now, you may have seen the recently published study by Ross-Macusin et al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled “Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students”, or the nice discussion by Ilana Yurkiewicz of why these findings matter. Briefly, the study involved having science faculty from research-focused universities rate [...]

At the very end of August, Slate posted an essay by Daniel Lametti taking up, yet again, what the value of a science Ph.D. is in a world where the pool of careers for science Ph.D.s in academia and industry is (maybe) shrinking. Lametti, who is finishing up a Ph.D. in neuroscience, expresses optimism that [...]

As part of my day-job as a philosophy professor, I regularly teach a semester-long “Ethics in Science” course at my university. Among other things, the course is intended to help science majors figure out why being ethical might matter to them if they continue on their path to becoming working scientists and devote their careers [...]

At the tail-end of a three-week vacation from all things online (something that I badly needed at the end of teaching an intensive five-week online course), the BBC news reader on the radio pulled me back in. I was driving my kid home from the end-of-season swim team banquet, engaged in a conversation about the [...]

Owing to summer-session teaching and a sprained ankle, I have been less attentive to the churn of online happenings than I usually am, but an email from SciCurious brought to my attention a recent controversy about a blogger’s “self-plagiarism” of his own earlier writing in his blog posts (and in one of his books). SciCurious [...]

There’s scientific knowledge. There are the dedicated scientists who make it, whether laboring in laboratories or in the fields, fretting over data analysis, refereeing each other’s manuscripts or second-guessing themselves. And, well, there are some crackpots. I’m not talking dancing-on-the-edge-of-the-paradigm folks, nor cheaters who seem to be on a quest for fame or profit. I [...]

Plagiarism — presenting the words or ideas (among other things) of someone else as one’s own rather than properly citing their source — is one of the banes of my professorial existence. One of my dearest hopes at the beginning of each academic term is that this will be the term with no instances of [...]

Great posts have been written about the “end of antibiotics” and superbugs in a variety of flavors. Yesterday, the CDC⁠ issued an alarming warning about Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae, aka CRE. The enzyme that  produces the antibiotic resistance, was first identified in 2001 from an isolate of  Klebsiella. According to the new CDC report, in a 2012 [...]

I had the wonderful opportunity to co-moderate two sessions at this past week’s Science Online “unconference” in Raleigh, affectionately known as #scio13. Sessions are proposed and moderated by volunteers, and there is a broad range of attendees, leading to rich discussion…and lots of fun.   There were three sessions devoted to different aspects of Citizen [...]

I continue on break from the UMN Markingson story as I try to make sense—although there appears none to be had—of the tragic death of Aaron Swartz. I am haunted and infuriated by the senselessness of his death and his persecution by overzealous prosecutors. I am also reminded of other witch hunts that were equally [...]

This post is in honor of Aaron Swartz. I had long considered posting my book as open access but had hesitated in doing so, even though I have long been an enthusiast about OLPC and Creative Commons.  Aaron’s tragic death prompted my urgent reconsideration and offering.   For me, it is the pictures of Aaron, [...]

Having looked at the rampant conflicts of interest surrounding the anthrax vaccine and a bit at the logistics of the proposed pediatric vaccine trial let’s look at the trial in the context of ethical principles. Ethical context The need for ethical guidelines came to vivid attention during World War II, when the Nazis tortured many [...]

JZ,

Lance Armstrong’s confession to Oprah Winfrey earlier this week that he’s been a drug cheat throughout his illustrious career was a mixed blessing for the sports world. On one hand, key questions have been answered and a perpetrator has been caught. We now know that cycling’s preeminent athlete over the past two decades managed to [...]

Cigarette maker Philip Morris spent years studying whether additives, such as menthol, added to the toxicity of their smokes. And several published studies—conducted by the company—have claimed that the additives had no impact on the danger of their products.  But thanks to lawsuits against the tobacco industry, a trove of previously secret scientific and corporate [...]

It’s no secret that many doctors get paid by pharmaceutical companies to talk to other docs—about general conditions, research trends or specific drugs—or to provide expertise for company research. But what has long been undisclosed is the amount of money that these drugmakers were giving physicians for their time. Thanks in part to some high-profile [...]

The U.S. government apologized Friday for a previously unreported experiment that infected hundreds of un-consenting Guatemalans with syphilis in the 1940s. The research was "clearly unethical," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a joint statement. "Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we [...]

As speculation swirls around the status of possible investigations into research by the prolific Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser, a new study drills down to figure out the true cost of scientific misconduct. Neither Harvard nor the federal government, which has funded some of Hauser’s work that has been retracted or amended, has come forward with [...]

An intoxicated co-worker in many workplaces might be more of a nuisance than a threat. But an impaired or incompetent physician can present a real risk to patients. The American Medical Association (AMA) asserts that all doctors have an "ethical obligation to report" colleagues who are suspected of being unable to safely fulfill their duties, [...]

A nonprofit group that promotes animal rights in medical research has taken issue with a NASA grant funding an assessment of the long-term effects of radiation on monkeys. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), based in Washington, D.C., sent an appeal Thursday to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, urging that the radiobiology study, intended to [...]

As long as there have been political dictators, psychologists have been fascinated with them. While many psychologists try to understand what happens in normal, rational people that leads them to follow such clearly dangerous leaders, some psychologists have been more interested in characterizing the personality profiles of dictators themselves. After all, who hasn’t attempted an [...]