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It's been done in the Arctic Ocean, Nature reported recently.

"The results are unexpected. Not only did the Arctic heat up to an extent that is inexplicable by current climate models, say the researchers, it also seems that the North Pole began to cool at about the same time as the Antarctic. This timing suggests that climate was being driven by a global factor, such as atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, rather than something more local, such as geological upheaval."

Actually you are not quite correct with regard to neural stem cells. See Hypography or Nature among other researches.

I noticed in your URL that you're in BU's CNS department. How do you like it there? I almost decided to go there myself for grad school.

It is quite likely that the BOLD signal and neural spiking are related. Everybody believes it, myself included. But there is still not that much evidence of the connection.

What are your thoughts on the experiments by Nikos Logothetis where he did electrophysiological recordings of neurons and fMRI simultaneously (certainly not an easy feat). In his study he showed that the BOLD signal (at least in V1) is actually related more to dendritic inputs and intracortical processing than axonal spikes. Here's the abstract:

Neurophysiological investigation of the basis of the fMRI signal

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is widely used to study the operational organization of the human brain, but the exact relationship between the measured fMRI signal and the underlying neural activity is unclear. Here we present simultaneous intracortical recordings of neural signals and fMRI responses. We compared local field potentials (LFPs), single- and multi-unit spiking activity with highly spatio-temporally resolved blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI responses from the visual cortex of monkeys. The largest magnitude changes were observed in LFPs, which at recording sites characterized by transient responses were the only signal that significantly correlated with the haemodynamic response. Linear systems analysis on a trial-by-trial basis showed that the impulse response of the neurovascular system is both animal- and site-specific, and that LFPs yield a better estimate of BOLD responses than the multi-unit responses. These findings suggest that the BOLD contrast mechanism reflects the input and intracortical processing of a given area rather than its spiking output.

I noticed in your URL that you're in BU's CNS department. How do you like it there? I almost decided to go there myself for grad school.

It is quite likely that the BOLD signal and neural spiking are related. Everybody believes it, myself included. But there is still not that much evidence of the connection.

What are your thoughts on the experiments by Nikos Logothetis where he did electrophysiological recordings of neurons and fMRI simultaneously (certainly not an easy feat). In his study he showed that the BOLD signal (at least in V1) is actually related more to dendritic inputs and intracortical processing than axonal spikes. Here's the abstract:

Neurophysiological investigation of the basis of the fMRI signal

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is widely used to study the operational organization of the human brain, but the exact relationship between the measured fMRI signal and the underlying neural activity is unclear. Here we present simultaneous intracortical recordings of neural signals and fMRI responses. We compared local field potentials (LFPs), single- and multi-unit spiking activity with highly spatio-temporally resolved blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI responses from the visual cortex of monkeys. The largest magnitude changes were observed in LFPs, which at recording sites characterized by transient responses were the only signal that significantly correlated with the haemodynamic response. Linear systems analysis on a trial-by-trial basis showed that the impulse response of the neurovascular system is both animal- and site-specific, and that LFPs yield a better estimate of BOLD responses than the multi-unit responses. These findings suggest that the BOLD contrast mechanism reflects the input and intracortical processing of a given area rather than its spiking output.

I do research on Staph. It's frustrating to everyone doing this work that in 50 years, we have really just a handful of targets in bacteria to attack. Here are our targets and some examples of the antibiotics we use

1) DNA replication/Gyrase (cipro)
2) RNA synthesis (rifampin)
3) folate metabolism (sulfa drugs)
4) Protein synthesis (erythromycin, chloramphenicol, linezolid)
5) cell wall (penicillin, vancomycin)

What's great about this this new drug from Merck is that it's target isn't on the list above. It's a new target (fatty acid metabolism) and it's well tolerated by mammals.

But it's not the only new one out there. Check out these papers on:

a) targeting the proteolytic machinery of bacteria, i.e. clp proteases
Brötz-Oesterhelt, H. et al. Dysregulation of bacterial proteolytic machinery by a new class of antibiotics. Nature Med. 11, 1082-1087 (2005)
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v11/n10/abs/nm130 6.html

and

b) targeting Holliday junctions, i.e. how DNA recombines
Gunderson Carl and Segall Anca, 2006. DNA repair, a novel antibacterial target: Holliday junction-trapping peptides induce DNA damage and chromosome segregation defects. Mol. Micro. 59 (4), 1129-1148.
http://segall-lab.com/PDF/Gunderson2006.pdf

And don't forget to wash your hands! Make a researcher happy and save the drugs for another day!

The thing to bear in mind is that your sample set is probably taken from common English usage. The soft-hyphen bug was brought to my attention by a web developer friend who works for Nature Publishing, which publishes a large number of scientific journals online. As a result, he habitually has to deal with much longer words than you usually get when working in English. If you look at the comments on my blog entry and in the Bugzilla bug, those who need the bug fixed for their day to day work are dealing with languages that often have 20-30 letter words. And while "web content" may not care if it's justified, the layout designers who are working with it often do. (If you get one really short line in the middle of a paragraph, it just looks shit.)

One, here's the link to the Nature article abstract (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7091/a bs/nature04784.html). Submittors of scientific stories, please go through the trouble of at least finding a link to the primary source. I beg you...

Two, Vancomycin does not interfere with protein synthesis. It inhibits cell wall formation by binding to the D-ala D-ala portion of the cell wall precursor peptides (it physically gets in the way). Resistance to vanco typically comes from staph picking up the resistance phage from enterococci, which have been resistant for years. This change causes the bacteria to produce D-ala D-lac, thus giving vanco nothing to bind to. This causes VRSA, which is completely resistant to vanco, as opposed to VISA, which is caused by a thickening of the cell wall in an attempt to keep vanco out of the cell and leads to partial resistance.

its (TTAGGG)n... No, seriously...

If you want better sources, try the original Nature article, cited in this Nature news summary.

One point is that there's very little variation between individuals in terms of coding sequence - in this chromosome from the article there's only just over 1 base where there are known single base changes per gene. The most common type of variation is in the number of times repeated streaches of DNA are repeated, this generally (though not always) has no effect on an individual. The numbers of such repeats in the draft sequence are not meaningful in the published sequence.

Databases of variation in the human genome are maintained. The paper accompanying the release of the finished sequence does discuss variation - and notes that in some areas of chromosome people have different numbers of copies of a large region which includes genes.

Nature has made the Full text of the article announcing the completion of the chromosome one finished sequence available online. While this is good, it's still not the open publishing which ought be demanded by those spending public money on scientific endevours such as this.

I checked the Nature website for the paper, here's the free link:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7091/fu ll/nature04727.html

The standard big bang theory says the universe began with a massive explosion, but the new theory suggests it is a cyclic event that consists of repeating big bangs and big crunches - where every particle of matter collapses together.

With each bang, the theory predicts that matter keeps on expanding and dissipating into infinite space before another horrendous blast of radiation and matter replenishes it.

Actually, left-handed materials are reality for microwave and terahertz frequencies today. Recent research in plasmonics show possible pathways for creating materials that are left-handed at optical frequencies. For example, see "Nanofabricated media with negative permeability at visible frequencies" by A.N. Grigorenko et al. Vol. 438, pp. 335-338, Nature, 2005. You can pick up a copy at your local library, or read the abstract here. Basically, the advent of nanoscale control of metallic surface features allows us to control the way a surface interacts with incident time-varying electric fields (light). Although at visible frequencies no known material is magnetic, we can engineer the surface in such a way that its electric resonance creates a magnetic response as required by Maxwell's equations.

Condensed Matter, abstract cond-mat/0502336: Achieving Transparency with Plasmonic Coatings

There is not enough information in the Guardian article to judge whether the approaches to transparency are similar or not. It is definitely interesting to note that there are at least these two fairly mature theoretical research/engineering projects underway.

Who has not had a dream of having the power of invisibility? Such a power could be fun, useful, and dangerous. If it were invented, how would people use it? How would governments use it? Although the research is early stage and there are practical bugs for implementation, the science and general engineering are good and it is only a matter of time before such a device is demonstrated.

Here are additional references on the nanoplasmonic research:

• Nature 28 February 2005: Engineers Devise Invisibility Shield

  PDF: Nanofocusing_in_Tapered_Plasmonic_Waveguides

You can only trivially compute the source of an EEG signal: it is the whole head. For the rest, it is unsolvable (it's known as Helmholtz's inverse problem). Where I work (http://www.fcdonders.nl/), much EEG related research makes an attempt to estimate the source of the *difference* of two signals. That's probably what you saw in Aachen. And even that is very problematic. It basically just works under rather heavy assumptions about the nature of the source and the fact that there is only one source. And even that requires hours of computation on modern PCs and doesn't always give a satisfactory result even when the data of 20 to 30 subjects over one hour of measuring are used. Individual data is much, much noisier, so I would say that localization of an EEG component is impossible. That, plus the fact that these simple devices don't have an eye or jaw electrode to filter out the effect of muscle activity (which makes the signal really noisy).

MEG signals are much easier to localize, but I don't think that that will become mainstream any time soon, given the fact that it requires supercooling...

The other Brain-Computer-Interfaces rely on very simple signal processing. E.g., if you relax, the EEG signal will show a change in the power around 10Hz (called the alpha frequency). But that doesn't provide enough information for controlling an interface.

And "whole-cell patch clamping" and fMRI are definitely *not* an alternative. For the first, someone needs to open up your head and attempt to locate a suitable neuron (which requires you to be conscious, by the way), and the temporal resolution of fMRI is not really great and the machines are huge and expensive and require supercooling and at least a 1.5T magnetic field (which might be a bit too strong). But if you don't mind a game with the responsiveness of an oil tanker, you can play "pong" with fMRI: http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040823/full/040823 -18.html.

Well, maybe, dunno 'bout that.

Here is the link to Nature

Moreover let's scrutinize all this Chernobyl 'material' because disinformation rulz.

Sept. 2005: the Chernobyl Forum (IAEA, in fact), during a press conference, publishes an abstract of its draft report stating that 4000 people have and will die. But the name of the authors abstract and report was not known, it did not state that those 4000 people are from a small subset of the human beings concerned, the report did not contain the key sentence of the abstract, the report was presented as an UN report albeit it was not (it is published by agencies, and not published by UN), it was only a draft...

The abstract (''4,000 people will die from the effects of the 1986 accident at Chernobyl'') was largely propagated (see for example this BBC's account). It was not definitive nor adopted by the UN, albeit presented as such.

April 2006; the very same Chernobyl Forum discreetly publishes the definitive version of the report, where this 4000 figure was replaced (see page 106) by ''9000'', which was stated only for a subset of the Soviet population and for solid cancers (numerous other illnesses are radiation-induced). It was then accepted by the UN. See http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060417/full/440982 a.html, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4922508.stm

Therefore those guys induced the whole media into spreading the ''Chernobyl: 4000 people will die globally'' during 7 months, albeit their ''best'' minimization is ''9000 people will die from from solids cancers amongst the approx 7 million who were in the vicinity''

Lies, damn lies... and the Atomic Guys

Well, of course. The hypothesis cited would be meaningless if it was just mentioning one year. What makes it interesting is the long term correlation they present:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7051/im ages/nature03906-f1.2.jpg

One line is sea surface temperatures. The other is hurricane intensity (more or less). The matching of the squiggles does appear persuasive, but it can still be a conincidence.

"Britannica said Nature cited passages not in the encyclopedia and criticised it for refusing to publish the referees' reports."

from Nature's response: (not mentioned above)

"The company has, for example, claimed that in one case we sent a reviewer material that did not come from any Britannica publication. When the company made this point to us in private we asked for details, but it provided none. Now Britannica has identified the review in question as being on ethanol. We have checked the original e-mail that we sent to the reviewer who looked at the Britannica article on ethanol, and it is clear to us that all the reviewer's comments refer to specific paragraphs from Britannica."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/fu ll/440582b.html

No where did Nature claim they were reviewing material strictly from Britannica encyclopedia, but rather material published in print or online by Britannica. Additionaly, Nature did actually release a lot of the information on the details of the study, including each error identified,etc and that can be viewed online as well:
http://www.nature.com/nature/britannica/index.html

Don't just listen to what some Guardian article, or what I tell you for that matter. Go look for yourselves and decide. All of the information to the claims by both Britannica and Nature can be found from the link above.

Keith

"Britannica said Nature cited passages not in the encyclopedia and criticised it for refusing to publish the referees' reports."

from Nature's response: (not mentioned above)

"The company has, for example, claimed that in one case we sent a reviewer material that did not come from any Britannica publication. When the company made this point to us in private we asked for details, but it provided none. Now Britannica has identified the review in question as being on ethanol. We have checked the original e-mail that we sent to the reviewer who looked at the Britannica article on ethanol, and it is clear to us that all the reviewer's comments refer to specific paragraphs from Britannica."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/fu ll/440582b.html

No where did Nature claim they were reviewing material strictly from Britannica encyclopedia, but rather material published in print or online by Britannica. Additionaly, Nature did actually release a lot of the information on the details of the study, including each error identified,etc and that can be viewed online as well:
http://www.nature.com/nature/britannica/index.html

Don't just listen to what some Guardian article, or what I tell you for that matter. Go look for yourselves and decide. All of the information to the claims by both Britannica and Nature can be found from the link above.

Keith

if you post a link, you might want to make sure the url is correct.

the correct link is here

Here's your missing link.

Try this (mplayer barfs unless you download it first)

movie

Direct link to video:

Link

It's certainly not the language they used in the paper they actually wrote. Journalists are adept at asking leading quesions to make a more dramatic story, basically scripting the quotes they want "Would you agree, professor that you have proved..." It's almost impossible for a non-PR professional to keep control of your message once the press get hold of it.

Pointless, repetitive, off-topic flamebait is why we come here, dumbass. You want substantive debate, locate your nearest university.

Anyway, TFA is useless. There are however numerous references below to the *actual* paper; read it yourself at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/fu ll/nature04629.html

"* When they say they found fossils of eight individual primitive hominids, what exactly did they find? How complete are the fossils in terms of percentage?"

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/fu ll/nature04629.html

You should just read the article. It gives answers that are far more robust and interesting than just percentages.

"Would you explain to me how an anthropologist can classify a whole animal and infer its evolutionary stage, given a few small pieces of bone fragments?'

Sure. It's because of the nested, branching heirarchy of life, with each line having a unique stock of features that are unique past certain branchings (since the genetic material of animals is not passed laterally: only down through reproduction). Animals are all remarkably similar in a gross overview, and all quite distinctively different in the fine details. And from these distinctive, otherwise unique traits branch out more variations, and then variations from those variations, and so on... but what makes each original grouping distinct usually remains distinct. For instance, humans are still primates. We're still Haplorhini (the scientific version of the slightly more confusing word "monkeys"), because we have twin pectoral mammae, binocular vision, pendulous penises, and a whole other host of traits that distinguish Haplorhini from all other primates. We have developed quite a lot, but any alien xenobiologist that looked at a human being would still instantly recognize the distinctive features that distinguish us as, for instance, mammals. That's what paleontologists are doing with these fossils, just on a smaller scale.

It's often asked how just a tooth can be known to be an ape tooth. Well, it's because no other known form of life has a molar like an ape molar. It's distinctive: a Y shape with five radiating grooves. All apes have such a molar, and only apes have such a molar. As it so happens, if you are unsure what such a molar looks like from my limited description, there is an easy solution: look at your molars in a mirror. That's what an ape molar looks like.

The same is true for all sorts of different traits, and particular COLLECTIONS of certain traits make things even more identifiable. For instance, no other creatures but apes have the very particular shoulder structure that apes have. Put together a shoulder and a molar and a particular skull shape and some distinctive traces of muscle attachments and.... hopefuly you get the picture.

Of course, if it were only teeth or fragments, that would be one thing. But all these confirmations, are pieced together from tons of evidence and the testing of weak assumptions or inferences. It's a pretty good guess that if you think there is some seemingly unjustified inference being made, you are just unaware of previous knowledge being worked off of or tests that were done to rule out certain alternatives. If you listen to conferences on these subjects, that's mostly what scientists spend their time doing: grilling each other on as yet untested alternative explanations, demanding justification for this or that. Scientists are remarkably hostile to each other's work, and very competative in terms of trying to catch the errors or weak assumptions of competitors.

The Nature article is available online complete with figures and pictures.

This paper said in the summary that this process leads to "realignment of chromosomes at themetaphase plate." So, they do not merge back into one.

What the scientists were mostly concerned with is the fact that this supported the theory that a particular protein directed cell division, at least during a certain phase. The partial reversal of mitosis was just an interesting side effect. The medical and other biological research interest comes in place because now that we have identified this protein and proven that it is indeed the one that regulates mitosis, we can prevent further mitosis by the use of an inhibitor chemical. While this may seem to be a possible cure for cancer, such a discovery would be extremely difficult to put into practice as a pill you take or shot you take. This inhibitor would likely suspend mitosis of ALL cells, breaking down the functioning of many biological processes. Unless a compound is found that preferentially affects cancer cells, which may be possible due to the high division rate in some forms of cancer. This would have little to no effect on cancers caused by a failure in apoptosis. Then again "Cancer" is just a blanket term for a large number of different disorders in which a group of cells grows and divides without control, causing detriment to the rest of the body. Making cancer study mroe difficult is that it often takes failures in several different control systems for a cell to become carcinogenic, as there is a fair bit of redundancy built into these sytems. A "predisposition" to a certain type of cancer often means that one of the inherited genes controlling one arm of the control system is already flawed, so less somatic mutations are required before carcinogenesis. Inherited failure in too many of the control pathways would probably result in termination or developmental failure at a very early stage of embryonic development.

did anyone notice that the chromosomes eventually organize themselves into four groups? see the video again.

* Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. [...]
* Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms, (see for example [...]here). Large scale dust storms change the atmospheric opacity and convection; as always when comparing mean temperatures, the altitude at which the measurement is made matters, but to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970's, when Viking made measurements, compared to current temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of storminess now.[...]
* The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.

And here is the video of cell division. only its played in reverse.

WhatsAPro.com

Uh, where did he show this?

You know, that could be because regulators have their heads up their collective asses about the true scope of the threat. It has happened before. I bet half of the chemicals on this list are more poisonous than they are given credit for, and the other half are far more useful than poisonous. Unfortunately, they all get painted with the same brush when anti-competitive industry interests and lobbyists get in bed with the regulators.

More links:

Another drawing, significantly different from the one at BBC site (see parent post).

A "News" article in Nature, featuring the mentioned picture. Disclaimer: by the content and style, Nature News did not go far beyond BBC News.

And finally, the couple of articles that should have been referenced in the top message in the first place.

The only excuse the samzenpus has is that he probably did not have access to those articles or decided not to give the links out of fear of being called "exclusive snob". :-) Well, the academy scientists and subscribers will see the links.

I have to confess that my assessment that was based on the picture of the fossil in BBC was wrong. I jumped the gun out of my personal bias against macroevolutionary hypothesis. I apologize. I wrongfully assumed that fossil does not indicate to the elevated nose or the jawline. Indeed, the scull has a remarkable similarity to a crocodile scull.

More links:

Another drawing, significantly different from the one at BBC site (see parent post).

A "News" article in Nature, featuring the mentioned picture. Disclaimer: by the content and style, Nature News did not go far beyond BBC News.

And finally, the couple of articles that should have been referenced in the top message in the first place.

The only excuse the samzenpus has is that he probably did not have access to those articles or decided not to give the links out of fear of being called "exclusive snob". :-) Well, the academy scientists and subscribers will see the links.

I have to confess that my assessment that was based on the picture of the fossil in BBC was wrong. I jumped the gun out of my personal bias against macroevolutionary hypothesis. I apologize. I wrongfully assumed that fossil does not indicate to the elevated nose or the jawline. Indeed, the scull has a remarkable similarity to a crocodile scull.

More links:

Another drawing, significantly different from the one at BBC site (see parent post).

A "News" article in Nature, featuring the mentioned picture. Disclaimer: by the content and style, Nature News did not go far beyond BBC News.

And finally, the couple of articles that should have been referenced in the top message in the first place.

The only excuse the samzenpus has is that he probably did not have access to those articles or decided not to give the links out of fear of being called "exclusive snob". :-) Well, the academy scientists and subscribers will see the links.

I have to confess that my assessment that was based on the picture of the fossil in BBC was wrong. I jumped the gun out of my personal bias against macroevolutionary hypothesis. I apologize. I wrongfully assumed that fossil does not indicate to the elevated nose or the jawline. Indeed, the scull has a remarkable similarity to a crocodile scull.

More links:

Another drawing, significantly different from the one at BBC site (see parent post).

A "News" article in Nature, featuring the mentioned picture. Disclaimer: by the content and style, Nature News did not go far beyond BBC News.

And finally, the couple of articles that should have been referenced in the top message in the first place.

The only excuse the samzenpus has is that he probably did not have access to those articles or decided not to give the links out of fear of being called "exclusive snob". :-) Well, the academy scientists and subscribers will see the links.

I have to confess that my assessment that was based on the picture of the fossil in BBC was wrong. I jumped the gun out of my personal bias against macroevolutionary hypothesis. I apologize. I wrongfully assumed that fossil does not indicate to the elevated nose or the jawline. Indeed, the scull has a remarkable similarity to a crocodile scull.

The fish that crawled out of the water

Well, here's the "thumbnail":

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060403/full/060403 -7.html

The cited article does mention that the paper is in Nature. If you subscribe to it, or the institution where you work does, you can get the full paper.

Dang, even from the thumbnail-sized picture it is a rather fishy-looking tetrapod, or a tetrapod-looking fish. Either way, it is a beautiful fossil specimen that looks as "transitional" as fossils already known, such as Acanthostega .

Where is the science behind this article? How does it differ from a common alligator found in LA, or MS or any other southern state. This article http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060403/full/060403 -7.html in Nature makes to many assumptions.

The beast has bony scales and fins, but the front fins are on their way to becoming limbs; they have the internal skeletal structure of an arm, including elbows and wrists, but with fins instead of clear fingers.

How are they on thier way to becoming limbs when the animal is dead. That's like me watching a gator saying any day it's gonna walk on it's hind legs. That picture they have looks like the bones of an alligator gar, or an alligator. I can go get those on the weekend if I choose to.

Where's the evidence? When I can go get animals today that look just like that one in the image.

And that is the problem with evolution vs ID.. The evidence for ID is the fact that there is no evidence for evolution. Yes there are mutations and differences among species that evolve over time. But that is evident in the human race itself. It's why Americans are usually taller than Hispanicsand it's why there are black people, white people and every other color in between. But they are still human. There will always be differences within species, no one is the exact same as the other.

There will always be differences or mutations within species, but I highly doubt evolution is the reason because there are so many difference in animals, insects etc. If evolution were true then all life would evolve along the same paths, and there would be lots less diversity in creatures today.

Doesn't look very tasty.

Now that's a very different statement than the one they brought out in response to Britannia's allegations that talks about 'chosen excerpts'. I don't think most people would have a problem with the amalgamation of articles, but the arbitrary cutting of articles is a very different story. And could be used by an editor or journalist (i say 'could be' rather than 'were') to promote their own agenda on the subject.

I'd like to point out something even more disturbing. When Nature was originally questioned they released a MS WORD file. In the file they claimed that they chose articles of same length:

  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/ex tref/438900a-s1.doc
  "Only entries that were approximately the same length in both encyclopaedias were selected."

But when Britannica disputed this, nature replied:

  http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_re sponse.pdf
  "In a small number of cases, to ensure comparable lengths,
    we provided reviewers with chosen excerpts, not full
    articles"

That's the smoking gun, they were not truthful about this.

But this is absolutely devastating:

One Nature reviewer was sent only the 350-word introduction to Encyclopædia Britannica's
6,000-word article on lipids. For Nature to have represented Britannica's extensive coverage of
the subject with this short squib was absurd, and it invalidated the findings of omissions
alleged by the reviewer, since those matters were covered in sections of the article he or she
never saw.

As much as I love wikipedia, Nature should save it's integrity and retract the article!

I'd like to point out something even more disturbing. When Nature was originally questioned they released a MS WORD file. In the file they claimed that they chose articles of same length:

  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/ex tref/438900a-s1.doc
  "Only entries that were approximately the same length in both encyclopaedias were selected."

But when Britannica disputed this, nature replied:

  http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_re sponse.pdf
  "In a small number of cases, to ensure comparable lengths,
    we provided reviewers with chosen excerpts, not full
    articles"

That's the smoking gun, they were not truthful about this.

But this is absolutely devastating:

One Nature reviewer was sent only the 350-word introduction to Encyclopædia Britannica's
6,000-word article on lipids. For Nature to have represented Britannica's extensive coverage of
the subject with this short squib was absurd, and it invalidated the findings of omissions
alleged by the reviewer, since those matters were covered in sections of the article he or she
never saw.

As much as I love wikipedia, Nature should save it's integrity and retract the article!

In one of the case's, the encyclopedia britannica claims that Nature used a 350 word introduction rather than the full 6000 word article on Lipids. If this is true I would say they have good reason to criticise Nature's article on the relevant merits of both encyclopedias.

Nature has been remarkably reticent in allowing anyone to see the unabridged reviewer reports to enable readers to make their own judgements, part of their own response to Britannica's allegations states that they 'provided reviewers with chosen excerpts, not full articles; this was done with entries from both Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia. www.nature.com Making such arbritary decisions, and not detailing this in the original article is not what is expected of such a respectable publication

but I think this is a valid complaint by Britannica! They're being attacked for inaccuracies in text they didn't write?

Looking at Nature's formal reply:

"In one instance Britannica alleges that we provided a reviewer with material that was
not from the Britannica website. We have checked and are confident that this was not
the case."

So, its something Brittanica are alleging & Nature are denying - considering Nature were fairly open about this being a blind test, I'm going to believe them.

Original Nature article comparing Britannica and Wikipedia

The third link should be http://www.nature.com/eye/journal/v20/n3/full/6701 883a.html Richard

This is Richard Eastgate, the researcher interviewed by the BBC in the original article published on the BBC website. To answer ScuttleMonkey's original posting - there are two peer reviewed papers in the latest edition of the journal Eye ( http://www.nature.com/eye/index.html ). They can be found as follows - http://www.nature.com/eye/journal/v20/n3/full/6701 882a.html http://www.nature.com/eye/journal/v20/n3/full/6701 882a.html I think the links work for non subscribers, but I can't be sure. Richard