Monthly Archives: February 2006

Lab Life in Books and Pix

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Now for something compltetely different! The Grouch combs the often dreary and unappealing terrain of the web in search of good stories for LibraryLink, but sometimes the best ones are those that just drop into the lap…the prepared lap, to paraphrase Bernard, or was it Pasteur? By accident, the BG found a fun web site called LabLit, which is dedicated to examining how laboratory scientists are portrayed in fiction, movies, TV and the Theatah. There are also occasional pieces on lablife and culture (no pun). The editor is Jennifer Rohn, who claims fifteen years of experience in various laboratory environments working in virology and molecular biology. The site is appealing, with a nice mix of color, photos and text. Contributions from working scientists on how they feel their work is portrayed in the non-specialist media are welcome. LabLit aims for the funny bone and not the jugular, so contributors should try to keep it light. But that doesn’t mean you can’t punch, hard even, ( see the review of and comments on the Fox network’s hit medical drama, HOUSE) if you feel it’s necessary.
Lablit
House gets a proper British drubbing

Back to the Battery?

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The Blogging Grouch is always pleased when old ideas get a fresh review, resulting in an improved way of doing things. Take the humble battery. Not too long ago, it was widely assumed that this gadget’s capabilities had been pushed to the theoretical limit, or just about, and that not too much more could be reasonably expected, battery-wise. Not so, it seems, and for a couple of reasons. Cordless tool manufacturers tried to meet the consumer demand for more zip, and this caused some re-thinking of the battery problem, including the design of new batteries using different materials. The proliferation of Web-related products, toys, pagers and other similar items has contributed to the impetus for better battery performance. And, the push for improvements in powering motor vehicles as part of the drive to kick the petroleum habit is causing reappraisals of some old warhorses, including the lead-acid battery. Technology Review has a short summary of trends in looking at the venerable black box in new ways, making it lighter, cheaper, more poweful. Many a slip, and all that, but it’s a little bit of good news, which the BG is eager to share. Read about it at:
Batteries

PeerReview; What is It Good For?

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Recent science scandals, such as the faking of the Korean cloning studies, published in Science and some equally creative pieces of composition in The Lancet, by a Norwegian epidemiologist who made up the identities and life histories of over 900 “people” have caused some to echo Elaine on Seinfeld and ask: “Peer Review, what is it good for?” Peer review is often paraded as one of the hallmarks of quality in scientific writing, so to find that first-class journals, with (presumably) first class reviewers, have accepted makey-uppy work is a cause for serious embarassment. A common response is to say that bad science will be discovered and the fakery exposed, as part of the self-correcting process which is inherent in research, so, in a sense, No Big Deal. Yeah? Really? The Grouch can understand the puzzled, or outraged, layman who wonders what all the preening over peer review is in aid of. If reviewers can’t be expected to detect cases of outright faking, or identify a ghost-written article that’s part of a drug company marketing scheme that won’t mature for some years yet, or spot self-plagiarism, in which authors “recycle” their previously published material, what, of substance, is left for them to do, apart from some kind of high-end and very expensive form of copy editing? Hand-wringing and head-shaking about how laypeople just don’t understand the way science works won’t cut it. Lay people understand fakery just fine. From sunup to sunset, some sharper is always trying to rip them off. So, should we add scientists to the ranks of would-be fleecers and scam artists? We’re not talking about honest mistakes, or imperfect understanding or faulty equipment or even carlessness and sloppiness. We’re talking about plain ole honest to goodness lying and cheating. And there’s nothing hard to grasp about that. Read some stories and reactions:

Nature, on standards for submitted papers
Standards

Nature, again, reporting on outside scrutiny of the peer review process at 3 major journals
Scrutiny

Science on the Norwegian fairy tales