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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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Scienceblogs calls out 'acupuncture quackademic medicine' in PLoS ONE

Scienceblogs calls out 'acupuncture quackademic medicine' in PLoS ONE

Sep 11 2010 | comment(s)

The downside to PLoS One forcing out almost 8000 articles this year will be that a lot of them won't have any legitimate peer review, despite shrill objections to my noting in even the nicest possible way that they can't be doing the same peer review as other PLoS groups, much less print magazines (though likely the same as many other pay-to-publish services, BMC, etc. included) ... they just can't.
What's up with Maui and suicides?

What's up with Maui and suicides?

Sep 09 2010 | comment(s)

I confess I have never been to Maui or any other part of Hawaii.   Part of that is my age - I am still young enough to do fun stuff and so I have had run-ins with Turkish police, the Bulgarian mafia and even set a record at the Escape&Evasion course for officers at Ft. Gordon, GA, but I have never been to Hawaii.

Like the World's Biggest Ball of Yarn, it is something I can do when I am older.  
Asteroid Near-Misses Happen All Of The Time

Asteroid Near-Misses Happen All Of The Time

Sep 09 2010 | comment(s)

In case you do not easily panic, you may have missed the story that two asteroids were passing close to Earth yesterday.  Not to worry, it happens all of the time, but because their existence was only discovered Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey, people were concerned.

The 50-foot 2010 RX30 came within 154,000 miles of Earth, just over halfway from here to the moon (0.6 lunar distances if you want to impress your friends), yesterday morning and then 2010 RF12, about 30 feet in size, came within 50,000 miles of Earth yesterday afternoon.
Blogs and Traditional Press - 10% science content versus 1%

Blogs and Traditional Press - 10% science content versus 1%

Sep 08 2010 | comment(s)

Are blogs valuable?   They must be to science readers.  A Pew Research Center study shows that Old Media doesn't cover science very well, leaving a gap to be filled by bloggers, with 10X the science content.  And leadership.

They cite the "ClimateGate" East Anglia coverage, which was basically ignored by cheerleaders in science journalism until it took off in the blogosphere.   A week later, it gained traction in traditional media.

Blogs and Traditional Press science coverage
Judicial Activism Is The Problem In The Embryonic Stem Cell Injunction

Judicial Activism Is The Problem In The Embryonic Stem Cell Injunction

Sep 08 2010 | comment(s)

I have long told my more progressive brethren who have been happy about overarching judicial decisions they happened to like that activism is a double-edged sword.   Certainly it's reasonable to 'cross that bridge' when society gets to it, but until then the repercussions are substantial.

In the instance of an injunction on embryonic stem cell research being upheld, it's not evil Republicans sticking it to stem cell research, though I have long contended they never did by simply restricting the human embryonic stem cell kind anyway - that law was signed by Clinton.  Instead, it is a court and we have 50 solid years of aggressive judicial good works that has gone well beyond interpreting the Constitution, making it the most powerful branch of government.
Digg V4:

Digg V4: "Chill out," says Kevin Rose, but shows VP of engineering the door

Sep 07 2010 | comment(s)

Digg founder Kevin Rose cheerfully responds to the mountains of criticism around the newly launched Digg 4. His overall theme is that users need to deal with it.