December 2011 Archives
December 29, 2011 4:48 PM
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Updated: NSF Picks Lockheed for Huge Antarctic Support Contract
Lockheed Martin has won a contract worth up to $2 billion to support U.S. science in Antarctica. The National Science Foundation (NSF) selected the
Maryland-based aerospace giant yesterday in...
December 29, 2011 1:01 PM
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Penn Institute Sues Prominent Researcher Over Discoveries, Seeking $1 Billion
The president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City—Craig Thompson—has received an unpleasant holiday package: A $1 billion lawsuit filed by the cancer center he used to...
December 28, 2011 2:40 PM
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Authors Pull the Plug on Second Paper Supporting Viral Link to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Just days after Science fully retracted the controversial 2009 paper suggesting that a virus called XMRV plays a role in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), the only other paper supporting...
December 27, 2011 12:57 PM
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A Present for NIH: President Signs Law Creating New Translational Center
A year after advisers made the proposal and following months of controversy, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has secured a new translational research center. The final step came...
December 23, 2011 1:10 PM
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U.S. Biosecurity Panel May Call for Asilomar-Style Moratorium on H5N1 Papers
The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which has asked scientists and journals to redact key details in two explosive influenza papers, is also considering a call...
December 22, 2011 11:16 AM
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UPDATED: In a Rare Move, Science Without Authors' Consent Retracts Paper That Tied Mouse Virus to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
After enduring more than 2 years of criticism that included evidence of contamination and misrepresentation of data, a Science paper that linked a mouse retrovirus to chronic fatigue syndrome...
December 21, 2011 2:03 PM
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Berkeley Issues Plan to Improve Diversity in Engineering
Promising "disruptive progress," the engineering college at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, has named an associate dean for equity and inclusion to help it increase the number of...
December 20, 2011 4:30 PM
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UPDATED: Civil Court Rules Against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Researcher
Embattled researcher Judy Mikovits lost an important round in court yesterday in a civil suit that her former employer filed against her over alleged "misappropriation" of laboratory notebooks and...
December 20, 2011 4:22 PM
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With New Law, France Revamps Drug Approval
PARIS— Triggered by the scandal over the diabetes drug Mediator, a law to reform how drugs are approved and regulated in France was adopted by the parliament here yesterday....
December 20, 2011 2:38 PM
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Grudgingly, Virologists Agree to Redact Details in Sensitive Flu Papers
Two groups of scientists who carried out highly controversial studies with the avian influenza virus H5N1 have reluctantly agreed to strike certain details from manuscripts describing their work after...
December 19, 2011 4:15 PM
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NIH Director Jumps the Gun With Memo Announcing New Center
In an embarrassing misstep, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins sent his staff a triumphant memo this weekend heralding Congress's sign-off on a controversial new center aimed...
December 19, 2011 2:03 PM
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Updated: Egypt Institute Burns; Scholars Scramble to Rescue Manuscripts
Egypt's oldest research institute caught fire during demonstrations in central Cairo on 18 December, destroying an unknown number of precious books and manuscripts. Shocked Egyptologists call the destruction a...
December 16, 2011 6:10 PM
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EPA Ordered to Do Outside Reviews of Toxicology Database
When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) crafts a regulatory standard—how much arsenic is safe in drinking water, for example—its staff members rely on scientific assessments of the chemical's toxicity....
December 16, 2011 5:28 PM
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Smithsonian Scuppers Shipwreck Exhibit, Plans to Re-Excavate
Smithsonian Institution officials have taken a remarkable 180-degree turn and decided to cancel a controversial exhibit of shipwreck artifacts due to ethical concerns about how the artifacts were salvaged....
December 16, 2011 3:12 PM
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U.K. Police Seize Computers in Climate E-mails Investigation, U.S. Joins In
Blasted by media and scientists alike for their slow investigation into the hacker who stole a trove of e-mails from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in...
Funding Snag Delays Italy's SuperB Collider
The start of construction of the €650 million SuperB particle collider in Italy has been delayed at least a year following difficulties in releasing project funding. Work on the...
December 16, 2011 2:36 PM
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Nobel Prize for Immunologists Provokes Yet Another Debate
Once again, the 2011 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine is the subject of controversy. This time, the contribution of French immunologist Jules Hoffmann has been called into question...
December 15, 2011 5:52 PM
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NIH Curtails Chimpanzee Research in Wake of IOM Report
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has accepted recommendations from an outside review committee to curtail the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research. "NIH will not issue any...
December 15, 2011 12:55 PM
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Dublin Science Gallery to Take Vision Global
DUBLIN—An edgy Irish center that seeks to merge art and science and get young people hooked on discovery and technology will get a chance to export its model globally....
December 15, 2011 12:21 PM
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NIH, DOE Appear Headed For Small Budget Increases in 2012
A fit of Congressional pique is giving researchers their first solid look at 2012 spending levels for two major science agencies—and the news appears to be relatively good for...
December 15, 2011 12:01 AM
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Panel Calls for Closer Tracking of U.S.-Funded Human Research, Proposes Compensation Fund
People who volunteer for federally funded research both in this country and abroad are well-protected by federal ethics rules, a high-level expert panel has found. But there is room...
December 14, 2011 5:08 PM
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14 Senators Protest HHS's Plan B Decision
Thirteen Democrats and one independent in the U.S. Senate are questioning last week's announcement by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius that she would not allow over-the-counter...
December 14, 2011 2:03 PM
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Ralph Hall Speaks Out on Climate Change
The chair of the House of Representatives science committee doesn't think much of the investigations exonerating the scientists involved in the 2009 Climategate e-mail scandal. He also believes that...
Conferees Strike a Deal on Programs for High-Tech Startups
After 5 years of tough negotiations, Congress has agreed to increase funding for two programs that try to turn scientific discoveries into profitable businesses by increasing how much 11...
December 13, 2011 5:35 PM
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NIH's Stimulus Money Created at Least 21,000 Jobs
As expected, the $8.2 billion for extramural research that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received from the 2009 stimulus act put many scientists and their staffs to work....
December 13, 2011 4:05 PM
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Francis Collins on Partnering With India
While in India last week to sign an agreement on diabetes research, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spoke with ScienceInsider about his visit. Collins...
Ireland's Science Budget Avoids the Ax
Ireland's science budget for 2012 has largely been protected from the €1.4 billion in cuts to hospitals, schools, and other public expenditures announced last week. Full details have yet...
December 13, 2011 12:53 PM
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Report: World Malaria Deaths and Funding Both Trending Downward
World health officials had hoped to reduce the number of deaths due to malaria by 50% between 2000 and 2010. They got halfway there, according to the latest estimates...
December 12, 2011 7:01 PM
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Courtroom Neuroscience Not Ready for Prime Time
LONDON—The tantalizing prospect of using a brain scanner to determine whether a witness is lying, or a genetic analysis to determine whether a murder suspect is predisposed to commit...
December 12, 2011 11:43 AM
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Beijing Lands $1.5 Billion Merck Research Commitment
Merck may be a latecomer among the giant pharmaceutical companies setting up research shops in China, but it has made by far the largest single research investment to date....
Business, Science, Fashion Meet at Flashy E.U. Innovation Show
BRUSSELS—To get into the spirit of innovation at the European Commission's Innovation Convention here this week, one needed look no further than orange-haired punk fashion designer Vivienne Westwood quizzing Chinese...
December 9, 2011 4:22 PM
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Controversial Turkish Internet Censorship Program Targets Evolution Sites
Evolution, apparently, ranks alongside pornography and terrorism as topics that the Turkish government's controversial new Internet filtering scheme keeps out of the hands of children. Internet users in Turkey were...
December 9, 2011 3:56 PM
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Dates, Judges Set in Appeal of Stem Cell Suit
A law suit threatening to block government-funded research on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) is moving forward in a federal appeals court. And the makeup of the three-judge panel assigned...
December 9, 2011 3:42 PM
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Europe's Extremely Large Telescope on Its Way
Today, the council of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) fired the starting gun for the construction of what will be, by a big margin, the largest optical-infrared telescope ever built....
December 8, 2011 4:04 PM
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Plan B Ruling Ignores Solid Science, Says FDA Head
The Obama Administration took power with the promise that politics wouldn't trump science, but many now argue that it has not always lived up to that pledge. Fallout continued today...
December 8, 2011 3:30 PM
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Witness Questions Experts' Analysis in Trial of Italian Quake Scientists
An Italian geophysicist who attended a meeting at the center of a trial alleging scientific negligence in connection with the deadly 2009 L'Aquila earthquake told a court that he had...
December 8, 2011 2:47 PM
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ARPA-E's Majumdar Takes First Step Toward No. 3 Post at Energy
Arun Majumdar appears to be on a fast track toward becoming undersecretary of energy. That means Energy Secretary Steven Chu may soon have to decide whether to let Majumdar retain...
Gulf Restoration Bill Gets House Hearing, But Obstacles Remain
Legislation that would steer billions of dollars in fines from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to ecological and economic restoration projects along the Gulf of Mexico got a...
December 7, 2011 5:23 PM
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Controversial Changes to Forest Law Pass Brazilian Senate
Brazilian senators yesterday approved major changes to a law governing forest conservation. The version is less drastic than one passed by the other chamber of Congress in May, but...
December 7, 2011 5:13 PM
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New Chief for HHS's Research Misconduct Office
The federal office that guards against scientific misdeeds in biomedical research has a new director. David E. Wright, a historian of science at Michigan State University in East Lansing,...
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