Friday, November 2, 2007
Taxpayers say they paid for the research and shouldn't have to pay again
to see the results. Even the libraries are strapped by subscription
costs. NIH director Zerhouni urges researchers to publish in open-access
journals, but they don't. They publish in expensive high-prestige
journals. So both the House and Senate put language in HHS appropriations
requiring open access. Scientific societies and commercial publishers
opposed it. It was also opposed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) who tried to
gut it. Why, you ask? One of his top contributors is Elsevier, which
spends about $4M a year buying members of Congress. Bush is threatening
to veto the bill anyway, to save money for wars.
It seemed to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works that
climate-change was something it should pay attention to, so Committee
chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) called Dr. Julie Geberding, director of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to testify. As required, she
submitted her written testimony, which goes into the record, to the White
House 24 hours in advance. John Marburger, head of the White House
science office, realized that the situation she described was serious;
decisive action was needed at once - so he deleted half the report. The
testimony, Marburger explained in Nature, failed to point out that in
agriculture the effect might be beneficial. Perhaps Jack has been in
touch with Arthur Robinson
(WN 8 Aug 03) .
A B-52 flies from Minot AFB, North Dakota, to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana,
with six nuclear armed cruise missiles under its wing and no one knows how
it happened? The Air Force "disciplined" 65 airmen and fired a munitions
officer. Case closed? I was an Air Force Officer in the early 50s and
know the nuclear routine. An amazing safety record was set. B-36s from
Minot, crammed with hydrogen bombs, were in the air 7-24 ready to deliver
their load to the USSR - and not a single serious mistake.
By R. Barker Bausell (Oxford, 2007), is now in book stores. A "research
methodologist" at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, Bausell was
Research Director of an NIH-funded CAM Research Center. He explains how
the placebo effect is packaged and sold to a gullible public and a
frightening number of health professionals, with particular emphasis on
acupuncture.
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