sb admin
Posts by this author
March 9, 2007
By Jennifer Sass and Sarah Janssen
As described in earlier posts (here and here), the NIHâs National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has contracted the work of the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) out to the consulting company Sciences…
March 9, 2007
By David Michaels
Since my post on privatizing federal science, I have learned more about Sciences International and owe them an apology. I said in my post, âSciences International is not a hack company; it employs some very respected scientists who do excellent work.â But that was buried in the…
March 9, 2007
One of the great things about the blogosphere is that even when several bloggers are writing about the same story, theyâre covering different angles. Here are a couple of examples of posts that complement our posts from the past week:
As a complement to Revereâs post on the FDAâs cefquinome…
March 9, 2007
CBS News correspodent Bob Simon traveled to eastern Kentucky to investigate the hazards faced by underground coal miners. His conversation with women who lost their husbands in the May 2006 Darby Mine disaster will air on this Sunday, March 11 at 7:00 PM (EST).
Melissa Lee, whose husband Jimmy…
March 8, 2007
This post was copied and slightly edited from a post I made a year or so ago at my blog's former location.
More bullshit has been written about entropy than about any other physical quantity.
—Prof. Dave Beeman, 1988
There is a popular-level understanding of entropy that is "randomness" or "…
March 8, 2007
by Les Boden
For the past several years, Nevada employers and insurers could avoid paying workersâ compensation benefits to workers who had positive drug tests. According to an article in Occupational Hazards, this led to the denial of 10%-12% of claims filed in Nevada. But thereâs a loophole that…
March 8, 2007
by Liz BorkowskiÂ
Itâs International Womenâs Day, and the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is holding its 51st session with the theme of âthe elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child.â Elisha Dunn-Georgiou at RH Reality Check reports that this…
March 8, 2007
This is my meager contribution to the "Basic Concepts" series that is going on around here. (I hope to do more later, but for right now I want to start with this one.) I've written about this before at my blog's old location, but I'm writing this now without looking back at that; we can compare…
March 8, 2007
A friend (Deepto Chakrabarty, former housemate, and as such one who would understand) pointed me to this comic.
To first order, that is a complete description of my behavior.
March 7, 2007
by Liz BorkowskiÂ
On Sunday, Marla Cone of the LA Times wrote about a federal health center contracting out the work of assessing potentially dangerous chemicals to a company with chemical-industry ties (see David Michaelsâs post for reasons to be wary of this particular contractor). Her story in…
March 7, 2007
Worker issues were in the spotlight on Capitol Hill this past week.
Senator Patty Murray of Washington state introduced legislation to ban asbestos, and the hearing on the bill featured testimony from John Thayer, head of a crew that works in the tunnels running beneath the U.S. Capitol. He…
March 6, 2007
by Revere, cross-posted from Effect Measure
While finishing drafting a series of posts on how Tamiflu resistant virus might spread as a result of intense use for influenza control, Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway posted this to remind us that drug resistant organisms spread for reasons much…
March 5, 2007
An article in yesterday's Financial Times reveals that prior to the deadly explosion at its Texas City refinery, BP successfully lobbied against environmental regulations that could have mitigated-- if not prevented-- the catastrophe from having taken place in the first place.
BP's own report…
March 5, 2007
In continuation of the tradition begun at Jordan Barabâs Confined Space blog, Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 81 workplace deaths, including the following:
Eric Jones, a 34-year-old Burlington,…
March 4, 2007
By David Michaels
Marla Cone, in the Los Angeles Times, reports on a complaint raised by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) that the National Toxicology Programâs Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) is being run not by federal scientists but by a consulting firm that…
March 3, 2007
By David Michaels
The state of Pennsylvania has filed lawsuits against three drug manufacturers, claiming the firms fraudulently marketed antipsychotic drugs. According to Bloomberg News, the state alleges that Eli Lilly & Co. âhid the risks and exaggerated the benefits of its antipsychotic…
March 2, 2007
It looks like we're not the only ones scrutinizing the FDA. Merrill Goozner at GoozNews takes on the agency's prescription drug user fees, conflicted advisory committee members, and guidance for manufacturers, while Revere examines food safety and an experimental bird flu vaccine.
Also on the topic…
March 2, 2007
This is face-on spiral galaxy IC 342, taken with the Mosaic-1 Camera on the 4m Kitt Peak telescope by Travis Rector and Heidi Schweiker. (Image credit: T.A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage, H. Schweiker/WIYN, and NOAO/AURA/NSF).
It was released by NOAO a week ago at a symposium in…
March 1, 2007
Check this out: National ID Card Regulations Issued (27B Stroke 6 Blog, via BoingBoing).
Would somebody please remind me again when it will no longer be considered unhinged paranoid raving to sound the alarm that the US is rapidly degenerating into an authoritarian police state, and that we'd all…
March 1, 2007
At today's Senate hearing on Senator Patty Murray's (D-WA) proposal to ban asbestos in the U.S., Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) said some very interesting things. (Audio here) His opening statement began predictably:
There is no debate that certain forms of asbestos are toxic and deadly. (Oh…
March 1, 2007
It's coming-out-of-the-closet time. I was a Republican once. Now, saying you're a Republican around scienceblogs.com is a little bit like saying that you're gay in the middle of a Southern Baptist church service. You're just asking for trouble. Then again, I know at least one out gay Southern…
February 28, 2007
As long as the U.S. system has employers bearing the brunt of soaring health insurance costs (or avoiding them by not offering coverage at all), workers, companies, and even charities will be trying out different approaches to affording healthcare. Here are a few approaches that have made the news…
February 28, 2007
By David Michaels
This is how it always works. A leading medical journal publishes a study saying a commercial product may be dangerous, perhaps even killing people. The trade association representing the manufacturers quickly attacks the study (preferably in the same news cycle), accusing the…
February 28, 2007
By Liz Borkowski
Last week, the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) held a panel discussion on the FDA featuring four former FDA Commissioners. While all of the panelists made a point of saying that there are a lot of wonderful people working at the FDA, they also…
February 27, 2007
Mike Hendricks from the Kansas City Star notes in a recent article that all-too-often, trench collapses happen when "work crews take shortcuts because they're in a hurry or think a trench box interferes with the job they're doing."
While it may be true that workers are "cutting corners" to finish…
February 27, 2007
A day or two ago, I posted my nomination for the greatest mystery in all of physics: why is it that the "gravitational charge" (i.e. how strongly you couple to the gravitational field) is identically equal to your inertial mass (i.e. how strongly you resist being pushed around by any kind of force…
February 27, 2007
The House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by George Miller (D-CA), issued a progress report on MSHA's implementation of the MINER Act of 2006. The report says implementation by the agency and mining industry of certain provisions of the new law are "proceeding too slowly," including…
February 27, 2007
By David Michaels
The handcuffs President Bush recently imposed on regulatory agencies continue to be the focus of public attention. (Weâve compiled a listing of posts on the Executive Order and its nefarious implications). Members of Congress, along with public health and environmental advocates,…
February 26, 2007
I don't know if it was intended for me, but somebody printed out and stacked with my airline reservations a scan of a letter by Smith & Smith (from Arlington, Virginia), from the 2006 issue of Physics Today (letters to the editor). The scan also included a number of penned comments written by…
February 26, 2007
Because this is me, I must start with a lot of disclaimers. First, the title is catchy, but many would disagree with the mystery I've identified. Even I might. So, please try to avoid flaming me for my choice. Second, very shortly I will post "The Most Elegant Solution In All Of Physics," a…