"caveat emptor"

Editors have printed a formal statement of concern regarding the methodology and conclusions of a paper after receiving multiple letters from their readers. This is one step short of retraction - and it doesn't appear any misconduct is alleged. Just sloppy science. If "probably flawed" papers need a disclaimer... then I bet 90% of them do!

Journal Research paper probably flawed

Fingering fraud takes toll on students

It's hard to teach professional integrity when it is not practiced by professors, and when whistleblowers become victims.

Fingering fraud takes toll on students

OT: Big, sad pachyderms

This marks a sad, sad day for the endangered Asian elephant. Entertainment has been given greater priority than conservation and animal well-being. It makes me sick.

Thai elephants begin controversial journey to Australia

Baboons Make Trouble for Construction Team

See what happens when the exploited organize and stand up for their own rights?

"Zoo officials installed an electric fence around a construction site to protect workers from 120 primate hecklers, an animal park in northern England said Friday. A band of baboons began screeching and chattering when a team of construction workers commenced work to renovate the primate enclosure at Knowsley Safari Park, close to the city of Liverpool, about 210 miles north of London."

Baboons Make Trouble for Construction Team

Teaching moral indifference instead of science

"Photos of students pretending to put pig intestines in their mouths and posing playfully with pig fetuses raised 'serious ethical concerns' about the course called "Blood and Guts," the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine said in a letter."

Inside Bay Area - Associated Press content

Teaching science without teaching ethics is plain old rotten teaching. With these approaches, we have to wonder what other outdated and bogus lessons await the "lucky" teens that get to participate in this program.

Primate experimentation on the rise in Asia: The Korea Times : Korea to Build Primate Experiment Center

The Korea Times : Korea to Build Primate Experiment Center: "Korea to Begin Primate Research

By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter

The South Korean government plans to build a primate experiment center soon inside Seoul National University (SNU) Hospital located in the country's capital.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare on Tuesday said the facility will take various clinical tests on interspecies organ transplantation from monkeys to humans after its completion early next year.

"The government and SNU Hospital seek to funnel 2.3 billion won ($2.4 million) to set up the primate center equipped with high-tech medical gears," said Kim Sung-su, deputy director at the ministry. "The 130-pyong (429 square meters) center will house roughly 50 monkeys for experiments on interspecies organ transplantation and will be expanded by 100 pyong in 2008," he added.

On the sideline of the clinical tests, Kim added the center will also work on stem cell research with the 50 monkeys, which will come from the state-backed Korea National Primate Research Center.

Drug trial rules 'should change'

BBC NEWS Health Drug trial rules 'should change'

"In the light of the TGN 1412 incident, there is a need to look at the future safety of clinical trials involving novel and potentially higher risk drugs "

Sure...but are we to think that the earliest human trials are the best and only place to institute change? Or that registering clinical trials once they are underway will solve our problems? Or that forcing financial disclosure statements of authors who publish trial results in medical journals will make us all safe? Our current system is broken in several places, and there is no band-aid large enough to fix it.

Safety requires change *upstream* as well. What happens before drugs get to clinical trials and is current practice effective?

Monkey brains give language clues | Metro.co.uk

Monkey brains give language clues Metro.co.uk

"When the primates call out to each other they make use of the brain regions used by humans for language processing, the research revealed. "

The first thing to note here is that humans are primates, too. The second thing to note is that an evolutionary perspective requires us to think in terms of continuity...not dramatic differences and bright lines...especially when it comes to such closely related species.

Given how evolution works and the way we do science, the natural place to start would be to say there were no significant differences, i.e. the null hypothesis. For the language centers of the brain to emerge from structures and systems that had nothing to do with processing meaning or sound would be very strange indeed.

The public does not want to fund animal experiments

Despite a recent report from the UK Home office showing that the number of animal tests and the numbers of animals used in experiments is growing, most Britons do not believe that tax payer money should be used to build or fund vivisection laboratories.

"A total of 57% of respondents said they did not want public money spent on building laboratories, while 40% thought it was right that taxpayers' money be spent in this way. "

There is real debate on this issue in the UK, and serious media coverage. If the same people expressed their opinions here, they'd be on some big brother-ish watch list.

BBC NEWS Programmes Newsnight Home Half 'against funding animal labs'

After the Bell Curve - New York Times

Given all we know about early childhood experience, and the risk and protective effects tied to socioeconomic status and eudcation, why, then, do we spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year on maternal deprivation experiments in monkeys, rats and other animals?

When the variables with the most predictive value are entirely absent from a model system, shouldn't that model be abandoned?

After the Bell Curve - New York Times

3 Rs - the difference between theory and practice

Replacing animal experiments with non-animal methods, and reducing the numbers of animals used in authorized experiments are supposed to be embraced by governments and scientists. In theory at least. A new report out of the UK shows this is not happening in practice.

Replacement and reduction are de-incentivized for people who make thier living from government grants to conduct animal experiments. The more experiments, the more money, and thus we see more proposals rather than fewer.

Commentary on non-human primate experimentation under 86/609 will be reviewed in the near future. The public comment period is open until Aug. 19th.

BBC NEWS Science/Nature Continued rise for animal tests

Ape Meat Sold in U.S., European Black Markets

If our customs folks can't keep tabs on the dead animals, how is it that we are supposed to believe they can monitor living ones?

Ape Meat Sold in U.S., European Black Markets

On a need-to-know basis - and we all need to know

WHO The World Health Organization announces new standards for registration of all human medical research

A great step in the right direction and long overdue.

For those very early "healthy volunteers" or trial participants, why not include the pre-clinical studies that lead up to those trials? Don't they deserve the hard facts on the risks they are facing?

AIDS: No vaccine after 25 years

Note: Desrosiers is the head of the New England National Primate Research Center

Note: The use of non-human primate models is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Please see post earlier today regarding Jane Goodall on this very subject.


"AIDS: No vaccine after 25 years"

After 25 years and billions of research dollars, the world's scientists have been unable to develop a vaccine that provides immunity against AIDS.

Although there have been successes in developing medications to treat people infected with HIV/AIDS, there's been no progress in creating a vaccine, the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger reported Monday.

"It's seriously questionable whether there will ever be an effective vaccine for HIV," Ronald Desrosiers, an AIDS researcher affiliated with Harvard University, told the newspaper. "It would be the greatest good we could do for mankind, and we should try like hell (but) we are going to need to solve some fundamental science questions to lead us to a vaccine."

It was June 5, 1981, when five gay men were admitted to Los Angeles hospitals with a mysterious illness, the Star-Ledger said, noting it took another year before the disease was given a name: acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

HIV/AIDS has since infected approximately 65 million people and killed nearly 25 million.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International "

Mother-infant separation

Last Friday, the 14th of July, I spoke with John Pranger of CRFO radio in British Columbia. We discussed the experiments of the infamous Harry Harlow, and the maternal deprivation studies that continue even today at institutions like Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University. ( I erroneously referred to it as Yerkes University at one point in the interview)

An MP3 version of the interview can be found on the show's website, along with those for other dates and many other interesting topics. My interview begins at time marker 20:39.

Life is full of surprises (and dead rats)

The Future is Unwritten. In the Pipeline:

"I had a project once where adding a single methyl group to the a molecule changed it from being an infallible overnight rodent-killer to something that could be given for two weeks straight at ten times the normal dose. Clearly we managed to slip out of whatever protein target it was dealing death, but these things can't be modeled or predicted."

And the fun doesn't start or stop there. First you have the surprises of mice and maybe dogs.

And after the rats you might get something really jaw-droppingly unexpected, like say dead monkeys. That's something that will really make you slap your forehead or stroke your chin in confusion.

Then, after all of that is said and done...you can get the really unexpected "eureka" of something like a TGN1412. Sometimes you have to wait a while...for something like a Vioxx.

The *real* monkey maven speaks out about mangabeys, conservation and the future

Thank you, Jane.


The Chimp's Champion - New York Times

Baboon fist shaking

Like people don't have hand gestures that carry a general message? OK? Flipping someone the middle finger?

Is this really a "discovery?" Seems pretty obvious to me.

Discovery Channel :: News - Animals :: Study: Baboons Talk With Hands