Research Issues
Call for top UK geneticist to resign over a decade of research fraud
February 5th, 2020 A row over scientific fraud at the highest level of British academia has led to calls for one of the country’s leading geneticists and highest-paid university chiefs to leave his posts, reports The Guardian . David Latchman, professor of...
Curb chronic inflammation to reduce risk of chronic disease mortality
December 11th, 2019 The group of international experts, which also includes scientists from the National Institutes of Health, Stanford University, Harvard Medical School, Columbia University Medical Centre and University College London, point to inflammation-related...
South Africa shines in global overview of HIV/Aids research excellence
November 27th, 2019 A global analysis of four years of HIV/Aids research identifies the US as research leader in the field, followed by the UK and South Africa, writes MedicalBrief. The University of Cape Town is named as the most influential research institution in...
Chinese organ donation statistics may have been falsified
November 20th, 2019 The Chinese government may have been systematically falsifying its organ donation numbers, raising renewed concerns over the use of executed prisoners and other forced donors for transplants, an Australian study found. The Guardian reports that...
UK scientists damn EU clinical trials directive for 'killing academic research'
October 23rd, 2019 A UK report has criticised the EU’s Clinical Trial Directive saying it has “killed academic research” by making trials so “horrendously expensive” that only the largest pharmaceutical companies can afford to get new...
African resistance to genetically modified mosquitoes
October 16th, 2019 A not-for-profit research group has developed a mosquito that can kill off its own species by spreading a faulty gene. In Burkina Faso, the move towards genetic modification has unleashed unprecedented opposition. At the start of the rainy...Turkish academic jailed over study linking toxic pollution and cancer
A Turkish food safety engineer has been jailed after releasing to a newspaper details of a study that he had done for the health ministry, which linked toxic pollution to a high incidence of cancer in the west of the country. Science Mag...
Study investigates 'spin' in psychology and psychiatry journals
August 14th, 2019 More than half of papers in published over five years in six leading psychiatry and psychology journals — including JAMA Psychiatry, the American Journal of Psychiatry and the British Journal of Psychiatry — showed evidence of 'spin' to...
The challenge of studying paradoxical lucidity in dementia
July 10th, 2019 It happens unexpectedly: a person long thought lost to the ravages of dementia, unable to recall the events of their lives or even recognise those closest to them, will suddenly wake up and exhibit surprisingly normal behaviour, only to pass away...
US crackdown on foetal tissue use shuts some research
June 12th, 2019 The Trump crackdown on foetal tissue research, with new hurdles for government-funded scientists around the country who call the special cells vital for fighting a range of health threats. Stat News reports that already, the administration has shut...
NHS assesses studies on mortality risk of ultra-processed foods
June 5th, 2019 Two recent widely-publicised international studies, which found people who ate the most ‘ultra-processed’ food were more likely to have a heart attack or stroke, or to die sooner, are assessed by the UK's NHS in its Behind the Headlines...
Top medical journals are failing — and both they and authors are full of excuses
February 27th, 2019 It’s a well-known problem with clinical trials: Researchers start out saying they will look for a particular outcome – heart attacks, for example – but then report something else when they publish their results. That practice can make a drug...
Side-effects of health interventions not properly reported in 35% of studies
February 20th, 2019 The potential side-effects of health interventions — either a drug reaction or an effect of a procedure, such as surgery — were not fully reported in more than a third of published reviews, a University of York study of 187 sytematic reviews...
Japanese stem cell research 'dangerous and unwise'
January 30th, 2019 There is real hope for treating spinal cord injury with stem cell-based therapies in the future. However, writes Paul Knoepfler on the Knoepfler Lab Stem Cell blog, unfortunately regulators in Japan have taken a major misstep in approving a...
Leading research centre bars execs from serving on corporate boards
January 16th, 2019 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, one of the world’s leading research institutions, has announced that it would bar its top executives from serving on corporate boards of drug and health care companies that, in some cases, had paid them...