Clive Thompson (Wired article here) gets it right on why kids generally enjoy learning science: “One of the reasons kids get bored by science is that too many teachers present it as a fusty collection of facts for memorization. This is precisely wrong. Science isn’t about facts. It’s about the quest for facts – the …
A new article in the journal PLoS One (link) clearly shows that there is no association between measles virus vaccine and autism. The growing public concern over vaccination stems in part from the belief that the measles virus vaccine, given together with vaccines for mumps and rubella (MMR vaccine), causes autism. In the late 1990s …
I met with my textbook-writing colleagues at Princeton this past Friday, and of course the topic of the Times article on HPV vaccines came up. See my previous post for details. Three issues came up in our discussion which are worth noting. First, articles such as this contribute to the parental fervor against vaccines. This …
Today the New York Times is complaining about two vaccines against human papillomaviruses, Gardasil from Merck and Cevarix from GlaxoSmithKline. These vaccines were introduced two years ago to prevent infections that are associated with cervical cancer. The article complains that ‘cervical cancer has gone from obscure killer confined mostly to poor nations to the West’s …
Earlier today I was reading President Eisenhower’s farewell speech, in which he warns against control of government by the military-industrial complex. It’s chilling to read, especially in view of its absolute control over the policies of President Bush. In the same speech, Eisenhower warned about the control of science by the government. Here are his words: …
Today I received an email from Clontech Laboratories with the subject line “Titer your virus in under four hours!”. I have little faith in a company that cannot compose a grammatically correct email. Titer is a unit of concentration. It is not a verb, and therefore it is incorrect to write ‘titer your virus’. You …
