How many times have you seen a commercial for some medication to alleviate some pesky condition, and the bulk of the ad spot is someone droning on about all of the side effects?And what's up with that print at the bottom that always says, "See our ad in GOLF magazine"?  GOLF magazine must have the sickest readers on planet Earth.  And then those print ads are even scarier than TV commercials.Writing at PLoS Blogs, Steve Silberman discusses a new report that says side effects may actually be increased by full disclosure of all the side effects.  

Psychologist Roel Verheul and Psychiatrist John Livesley have resigned from the DSM-5 Personality Disorders Work Group, citing "major concerns about the Work Group's mode of working" and lack of a "coherent, evidence-based classification that would help to advance the field and facilitate patient care."DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.They explained in an email to Psychology Today's Allen Frances, M.D.:

While gullible anti-science progressives are against genetically modified foods because they don't understand what 'natural' means, it isn't just advocacy groups who need new things to fundraise about that are up in arms, it is also growers themselves.Okanagan Specialty Fruits has created an apple that doesn't get brownish so fast after you cut into it.  That's it.  Terrific, right?The U.S. Apple Association, which represents the American apple industry, is against this Arctic Apple, not because they believe that genetic engineering is dangerous, but because opponents will claim apples are not a 'natural' food.

New work at the John Innes Centre in Norwich is hoped to benefit African farmers who cannot afford fertilizer.Fertilizer is essential, it has made it possible to feed billions, but it brings pollution and farmers in poor countries who can't afford seed and lots of fertilizer might be able to afford seed that needs no chemicals to turn into food.

Think too much of ol' Sol won't age you prematurely?Here's an unintentional science experiment on the effects of sun exposure.  It's like a before and after picture, except it's the same face. A 69-year-old man showed a 25-year history of gradual, asymptomatic thickening and wrinkling of the skin on the left side of his face, the authors in NEJM write.  The circumstances were about three decades of truck driving where one side of his face got a lot more sun exposure. 

The date for domesticated kitchenware has just gotten pushed back. While it was believed that pottery dated back to 10,000 years ago, when humans changed from being hunter-gathers to farmers, the new archaeological findings push pottery well into the last Ice Age.  Archeology may have brought a new anthropology puzzle, like why in Asia pottery is so far out of sync with agriculture.The fragments were discovered in the Xianrendong cave in south China's Jiangxi province. The team was able to determine the sediments in the cave were accumulated gradually, without disruption that might have altered the time sequence, so their radiocarbon dating is accurate, they believe.

Social Psychologist Dave Nussbaum at the University of Chicago is one of the good guys; in the criticisms heaped on social psychology this year, the one silver lining is that it has been insiders tripping up the frauds like Diederik Stapel and Dirk Smeesters.

Dr. Yoshitaka Fujii, formerly an anesthesiologist at Toho University's medical school, has a record no published researcher can match.  He is 209 and 3.  The problem is the 3 are papers of his that are known not to be fraudulent between 1993 and 2011. 

If you have a Kinect and Goggles and an augmented reality program, what would you create?Apparently a Japanese anime singer girlfriend, so you could bop her on the head.  I can't figure out any of this, but Hackaday gives it a shot so give them a read.  I just know that, weird dynamic with the virtual girlfriend aside, this is darn cool.Dance, Hatsune Miku, dance!

In a Science editorial, actor, playwright and science advocate Alan Alda challenged scientists to answer a simple-sounding question in a way that would capture the imagination of an 11-year-old.“What is a flame? What’s going on in there? What will you tell me?”Basically, he would like to find the next Carl Sagan. And he was inspired because he asked that question as an 11-year-old and got a nondescript answer of 'oxidation'.