NewsBlog: Bye bye, Donald Kennedy Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 22nd June 2007 05:54 PM GMT] Yesterday (June 21), Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy announced he was retiring from the journal, after seven years at the helm. AAAS president David Baltimore is leading a search committee for a new candidate. Kennedy has steered Science through some tricky waters, to say the least. The journal published, then retracted, one of Woo-Suk Hwang's now-infamous papers on human embryonic stem cell research. In 2002,... Click to continue View comment (1) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Hwang back at work Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 22nd June 2007 03:41 PM GMT] South Korean researcher Woo-suk Hwang has apparently picked up the pieces of his life since he admitted to fabricating key findings in human embryonic stem cell research. According to the Associated Press, he has opened a private lab outside of Seoul, and taken 30 researchers with him. They are now extracting stem cells from cloned animal embryos, such as pigs and cows. "If we had been... Click to continue View comments (4) | Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Good news for pygmy rabbits Posted by Ivan Oransky [Entry posted at 19th June 2007 04:54 PM GMT] Finally, after years of dwindling populations and a deadly outbreak in February and March, there may be some good news for Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits. I traveled out to Washington and Oregon to report on efforts to save the species for our June issue. The Associated Press reported last week that doctoral student Len Zeoli had found a ''female digging a burrow and lining it... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Hwang ghost appears at stem cell conference Posted by Stephen Pincock [Entry posted at 19th June 2007 12:29 PM GMT] The spectre of Hwang Woo-Suk has raised its head a couple of times at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Cairns, Australia. On Monday, incoming ISSCR president George Daley, from Children's Hospital Boston, was describing the potential value of deriving stem cells parthenogenetically when he mentioned the name which pricks up everyone's ears. Daley said that... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Dutch postdocs treated like royalty Posted by Edyta Zielinska [Entry posted at 15th June 2007 04:25 PM GMT] Thanks in part to our Best Places to Work as a Postdoc surveys, 150 postdocs throughout The Netherlands will be spending three days in a four-star hotel in Bergen. That's according to Peter Peters, dean of postdoc affairs at The Netherlands Cancer Institute which just won a 100,000-euro grant from The Association of Dutch Universities to expand its training... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Steve Nissen goes 0 for 2 Posted by Ivan Oransky [Entry posted at 14th June 2007 04:34 PM GMT] An FDA advisory panel has ''unanimously rejected Acomplia, a weight-loss drug from Sanofi-Aventis, on concerns the drug increases the number of psychiatric events like depression and suicidal thinking among users,'' Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. That means it's at least the second time in under a year that Steven Nissen has been wrong about the promise of new drugs. Nissen, of course, is the well-known Cleveland Clinic... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Hwang looking overseas? Posted by Alison McCook [Entry posted at 12th June 2007 05:08 PM GMT] Woo-Suk Hwang, the South Korean scientist who admitted to faking his results on embryonic stem cells, is exploring whether to join an international consortium, according to Korean news reports. According to multiple unnamed sources, Hwang is in Thailand where he is debating whether to work with foreign biotechnology companies, including one "prominent" US company. Once a national hero, Hwang left his post at Seoul... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: How should NIH improve peer review? Posted by Ivan Oransky [Entry posted at 8th June 2007 07:18 PM GMT] Today, the NIH announced that it was establishing two working groups to examine its peer review process. That process has been under increased scrutiny recently, as study sections have needed to read more and more grant applications with every cycle. And with NIH funding flat, it's no longer good enough to be in the top 30% or so to get funded; in some study sections, it's close to 10%. So many scientists may find the examination welcome. In... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: News as a conversation at The Scientist Posted by Simon Frantz [Entry posted at 4th June 2007 10:37 PM GMT] In our latest issue of the magazine you'll find two features that provide a flavor of how our content will be evolving over the coming months to encourage user participation on our website. Regular visitors to our website will already be familiar with the crowdsourcing experiment that we launched in April . We asked readers to help create... Click to continue Comment on this blog NewsBlog: Cat-astrophe averted? Posted by Kerry Grens [Entry posted at 1st June 2007 08:31 PM GMT] Two customers who deposited several thousand dollars for a hypoallergenic cat from a company I investigated earlier this year have written to The Scientist saying they were denied kitties, and got their money back. Lynne Butler, a mathematics professor at Haverford College, received a $5,900 wire transfer from Allerca, Inc after she posted a comment on our website that she had... Click to continue Comment on this blog

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