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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The Chicago Tribune’s Julie Deardorff and the mercury militia: Do newspapers have a responsibility for policing their blogs?

One development that will increasingly pose an interesting and perhaps uncomfortable question for newspapers is the increasing addition of blogs run under the banner of newspapers. I’m not sure if it’s cluelessness about the blogosphere leading newspapers to think that they can have bloggers write whatever they want under the newspaper’s banner and not have […]

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Biology Medicine Science

The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

No IgNobels here, the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies for a technique that is so incredibly important to modern biomedical research that it’s a wonder they didn’t get the prize before: This year’s Nobel Laureates have made a series of […]

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Humor Medicine Science

The IgNobels winners have been announced

Ah, yes, it’s that time of year again. The winners of the 2007 IgNobel Prize have been announced. There have been several “worthy” winners, for example: Mayu Yamamoto from Japan won the Ig Nobel prize in chemistry for her development of a novel way to extract vanillin, the main component in vanilla bean extract, from […]

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Biology News of the Weird Science

Cephalopod Awareness Day?

I know I’ve said before that I don’t really “get” the whole cephalopod thing that P. Z. has, but I wonder if he’s heard of this little thing: Monday, October 8 is Unofficial International Cephalopod Awareness Day. Certainly, I hadn’t.

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Humor Medicine News of the Weird Science

How can I get a research project like this one going? (Or Saturday strange and fun science)

Science and medicine are beautiful things. The range of knowledge and research that can be encompassed under their rubric is truly astounding. Indeed, some scientists have all the luck. Some scientists seem to have all the luck. Some scientists seem able to latch onto the best projects: London, England (CNS) – There is one scientist […]