Update: July 30, 2018 This letter inaccurately explained the issues with the PLoS One study. Specifically, when I wrote it I misunderstood which analyses had and hadn’t been done. The letter was e-mailed to PloS One long ago, so I can’t correct what has already been sent. But the following three paragraphs should have replaced …
Science publishing has a problem. I agree with Nobel Laureate Randy Schekman, who wrote that prestigious science journals like Cell, Nature, and Science – which he calls ‘luxury journals’ – are damaging science. The succession of articles on Zika virus nicely illustrates this problem. The big three in science publishing – Science, Nature, and Cell …
I am convinced that Zika virus causes microcephaly in humans, but it would be valuable to have an animal model to study how the virus crosses the placenta and damages the fetus. As with many questions about Zika virus, answers are coming very rapidly, and three different groups have now provided substantial insight into this problem. When a …
Zika virus crosses the placenta and causes microcephaly in mice Read More »
Not long after the appearance of an outbreak of viral disease, first scientists, and then newswriters, blame it all on mutation of the virus. It happened during the Ebolavirus outbreak in West Africa, and now it’s happening with Zika virus. The latest example is by parasitologist Peter Hotez, who writes in the New York Times: There …
I was asked to write a commentary for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to accompany an article entitled SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence. I’d like to explain why I wrote it and why I spent the last five paragraphs railing against regulating gain-of-function experiments. Towards the end of 2014 the US government announced …
Moving beyond metagenomics to find the next pandemic virus Read More »
On November 13th, five colleagues and I released an open letter to The Lancet and editor Richard Horton about the PACE trial, which the journal published in 2011. The study’s reported findings–that cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy are effective treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome–have had enormous influence on clinical guidelines for the illness. Last October, Virology …
