If you’re looking for a plenary speaker, pick a Pulitzer Prize winner. That was one of the corollary lessons to be had from the talk of Columbia University’s Siddhartha Mukherjee at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Annual Meeting on…
Author Archives: Anette Breindl
Evolution: Survival of the Fittest, and Some Others
March 14, 2013 – 1:51 pm
If you believe in evolution at all, you probably think of it as a good thing for the evolving organism, enabling it to keep up with its environment as that environment changes. I sure do.
DNA Donor Anonymity: for the Lucky Few?
January 17, 2013 – 3:39 pm
Privacy concerns related to DNA sequencing got yet another airing today when a team from the Whitehead Institute reported in Science that using only publicly available information, they have been able to identify about 50 men who had anonymously donated…
What’s 10 minus Four? Not Six, Apparently
November 30, 2012 – 2:51 pm
Dec. 1 is World AIDS Day, and when I reflect on AIDS, I generally do it with a sense of amazement about how far we have come in the treatment of HIV since AIDS first came to the attention of…
A Modest Proposal to the IgNobel Committee
September 26, 2012 – 3:27 pm
I always love reading about the IgNobel Prizes. The stated goal of the prize is to reward research that “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.” And this year’s crop of winners once again succeeds at those tasks.
‘Final Chapter’ on XMRV? Good Luck With That One
September 24, 2012 – 11:42 am
Viruses are on the border between living and dead. So are the theories about what some of them cause.
@ASCO12: Invisible Gorillas, IgNobel Prizes and What it All Means for Drug Discovery
June 5, 2012 – 9:45 am
As I may have mentioned before, I love the IgNobel Prizes. So imagine my delight when I found myself in a session at ASCO’s 2012 annual meeting earlier this week listening to the speaker, Anthony Tolcher, talking about The Invisible…
In Vaccines and Autism Debates, the Truth is That it’s Trust or Consequences
April 24, 2012 – 3:43 pm
Editor’s note: Since Dr. Breindl first wrote about vaccines and autism in 2008, the paper linking the MMR vaccine to autism has been retracted by the journal that published it, and its author Andrew Wakefield has lost his medical license….
Want Better Data? Align Professional Incentives
April 2, 2012 – 1:57 pm
This week, researchers are presenting their latest and greatest at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research. The excitement of all those novel findings, though, received something of an advance puncturing last week by a commentary in…
Sinners, Repent? No. Scientists, Relent!
March 12, 2012 – 2:43 pm
Reading last weekend’s Wall Street Journal review of “The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It” I was struck by an anecdote. It’s about an interview the reviewer did with a scientist who works in the field…
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