I first spotted this as a small advert on Nature. "Help Reduce the Placebo Effect in Clinical Drug Trials" I smiled cynically and just had to check it out - and I was right!

"Placebo responses in as many as 60% of the placebo-receiving patients often mask the efficacy of drugs in clinical trials. Biomarkers predictive of placebo responders or new methods of trial design and trial procedure are desired. The biomarker, trial design, or procedure would allow individuals likely to show a placebo-response to be identified and excluded from trials during the patient selection process."

I recently wrote about research on people's beliefs using fMRI technology to see how different parts of the brain were activated. Near the end of their paper, the researchers commented that such results could be useful as a lie detection technique. The differences in brain activity between perceptions of truth and falsehood seemed significant enough to warrant putting these results into practical real-world use. Indeed, there are already two companies, No Lie MRI and Cephos, promoting their services to screen customers who need to prove they are telling the truth. The difficulty is that lying appears to be a complex activity.

A Mailman School of Public Health study examining the effects of institutional discrimination on the psychiatric health of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals found an increase in psychiatric disorders among the LGB population living in US states that instituted bans on same-sex marriage. The study is published in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The Royal Mail has launched a Special issue commemorating the 350th Anniversary of The Royal Society. Ten specially-commissioned stamps have been issued showing some of the most famous scientist in the Royal Society's long history.

Jack of Kent updated his blog at the weekend to highlight one aspect of the BCA v Singh case: what is evidence?

Both science and law rely on evidence and yet they use the same word in subtly different ways. For a scientist to state that "there is no evidence" doesn't necessarily mean that no evidence was presented, but rather that it was thought to be unconvincing.