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Theology

The science market bubble

Wikipedia describes the last year’ financial crisis as “an economic bubble (sometimes referred to as a speculative bubble, a market bubble, a price bubble, a financial bubble, or a speculative mania) as a “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”. A new and excellent Embo Report (thanks to WK) arrives at the same description of current science, a

dangerous cocktail of short-term gains prevailing over long-term interests, herding, increasing pressure to deliver results, the absence of effective oversight, and blind trust that the system would regulate itself Continue reading The science market bubble →

 

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Allergy, Genetics

liesdamnedlies.com

… quoting Nature Medicine this week

All of this is well and good, but it will hardly be news to those who have pondered these issues. At the Nature journals, for example, data sharing has long been a requirement for publication, and we have gone as far as directly urging authors to fulfill their commitment to sharing when other researchers have requested our involvement.

Ok, I would like to get this full dataset …

 

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Philosophy

Blind alleys

From Slashdot today:

Scientific discovery is fraught with false starts and blind alleys. As a result, labs accumulate vast amounts of valuable knowledge on what not to do, and what does not work. Trouble is, this knowledge is not shared using the usual method of scientific communication: the peer-reviewed article. It remains within the lab, or at the most shared informally among close colleagues. As it stands, the scientific culture discourages sharing negative results. Continue reading Blind alleys →

 

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Philosophy

Lab violence

From a recent email that I received

In theory, science research laboratories are always peaceful places, where pure knowledge is being pursued. However, in recent years some tragic episodes of workplace violence have disturbed this tranquility. Continue reading Lab violence →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 18.01.2026
Genetics

10:1 for the Victorian method

We had Aulchenko here a year a go or so – now here comes his new paper Predicting human height by Victorian and genomic methods

In a population-based study of 5748 people, we find that a 54-loci genomic profile explained 4–6% of the sex- and age-adjusted height variance, and had limited ability to discriminate tall/short people, as characterized by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC). In a family-based study of 550 people, with both parents having height measurements, we find that the Galtonian mid-parental prediction method explained 40% of the sex- and age-adjusted height variance.

yea, yea.

 

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Allergy, Genetics

Spitalfriedhof Basel, Roopkund Lake, Catacombes de Paris, Central Yakuts

What do all these places share? Spitalfriedhof Basel, Roopkund Lake, Catacombes de Paris and Central Yakuts are all examples where remains are available for genetic studies (even Tutankhamun was undergoing a paternity test recently).
More relevant will certainly be an empirical investigation if reduced selection is leading now to immune disease.

 

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Joke, Vitamins

Collison forces during distance running

Finally, a really important paper (at least for me ;-)

Here we show that habitually barefoot endurance runners often land on the fore-foot (fore-foot strike) before bringing down the heel, but they sometimes land with a flat foot (mid-foot strike) or, less often, on the heel (rear-foot strike).

The forefoot has lower collision forces! while the forces are excessive according to an earlier study. These new studies support the recent development of a running shoes (currently under development in Magdeburg) with no heel Continue reading Collison forces during distance running →

 

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Allergy, Genetics

True, false, true, false, true, false, false

While some of my earlier co-workers continue to praise the achievements of GWAs, some other earlier co-authors now show that the common variants thrown on the current GWA chips are leading to false associations (politely called “synthetic” associations)

We propose as an alternative explanation that variants much less common than the associated one may create “synthetic associations” by occurring, stochastically, more often in association with one of the alleles at the common site versus the other allele. Although synthetic associations are an obvious theoretical possibility, they have never been systematically explored as a possible explanation for GWAS findings. Here, we use simple computer simulations to show the conditions under which such synthetic associations will arise and how they may be recognized. We show that they are not only possible, but inevitable…

The proof comes with a sickle cell anemia study Continue reading True, false, true, false, true, false, false →

 

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Joke, Software, Vitamins

Tear Down the Walls

What happens when looking at that video?

The neuroanatomy view this week in Nature

we predict[…] a macroscopic signal visible to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans. We then looked for this signal as participants explored a virtual reality environment, mimicking the rats’ foraging task: fMRI activation and adaptation showing a speed-modulated six-fold rotational symmetry in running direction. The signal was found in a network of entorhinal/subicular, posterior and medial parietal, lateral temporal and medial prefrontal areas. Continue reading Tear Down the Walls →

 

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Genetics

There is something wrong in this world

or should I write “there is no absolute barrier between good and evil”?

One has to realize that there’s no absolute barrier between good and evil. There’s no absolute polarization between the wonderfully good and the horribly evil, and that people who see themselves as trying to do good can inadvertently enter into evil.

I had the opportunity yesterday to watch a documentation about the Lifton interviews of the Nazi doctors by Wolfgang Richter “Wenn Ärzte töten” (SZ , trailer). Richter was accompanied by Christiane Clemm who did all the translations more than 30 years ago. There were moving moments both during the calm narration of the documentation but also afterwards when we could ask Richter and Clemm for more details. Continue reading There is something wrong in this world →

 

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Genetics

How to mod your blog to a seminar website

Obviously we want an uncluttered view of our seminar website, so we start by

creating a new page template from the standard page by commenting out headers, footers and sidebars.

We then assign this template to the main seminar page and add some text. By using the ICS calendar plugin lecture dates can be directly imported from iCal by including the

[show-ics-events

command. Next we will create some more subpages in WordPress under the hierarchy of the main seminar page like

— seminar
|—- pdfs
|—- videos
|—- etc…

All subpages need to be set to “private”.

In addition the same hierarchy is produced on the file system while each directory needs an appropriate .htccess file to limit site access. Links to subpages will point towards the file system only. Given appropriate credentials Apache will redirect to the appropriate WordPress page. This trick will secure both content of a directory and access to the mirror WordPress page.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 18.01.2026
Allergy, Vitamins

Allergic sensitization by a food fortifier?

This week the journal “Allergy” printed a report of three cases where allergic sensitization in preterm infants is attributed to the human milk fortifier Similac.

The product contains: Nonfat milk, corn syrup solids, whey protein concentrate, and MCT oil (fractionated coconut or palm kernel oil) as sources of proteins, fat, and carbohydrate (Abbott Laboratories Pediatric Nutritional Products Guide, DIR/98A08, 2008, Mississauga, Canada).

Not listed above but in the Products Guide are 120 IU/100 ml D3 which may indeed function as a sensitizer.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 18.01.2026
Genetics

One mutation every day

At least some people believe that once it’s published in Nature, it must be superior science – even when it’s rather trivial (or even wrong). There is a category “Brief Communications Arising” but when you are trying to get your comments there you will get this message by email:

In the present case, while we appreciate the interest of your comments to the community, we do not feel that they challenge key data or conclusions of the papers by Pleasance et al., and therefore we cannot offer to consider your paper for publication in our Brief Communications Arising section.

Pleasance et al. is a recent paper accompanied by a press release that tells you Continue reading One mutation every day →

 

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