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what do these journals offer the scientific community that they can't get for free on the Internet?

Right now I'm trying to figure out which journal to send my manuscript to. I was talking with a colleague, I mentioned PLoS one. She said that she wouldn't see that as favorably on a CV as she would for a journal that rejects more papers. This is not an old scientist who works for one of the "top tier" journals either and has a vested interest in keeping things how they are, she's a grad student.

I don't want to contribute to Elsevier, but it's a competitive field. I wouldn't want to miss out on getting funded to do research that I thought was important just because I went to a journal with a worse reputation but slightly better ethics.

No-one is going to read 329 warnings, but no-one is going to read sine tables either. Biomedical Informatics - and indeed any form of information clearing - is useful to the extent that we can avoid information saturation and filter down to what is actually important in some specific case.

There, of course, is the crunch. Services like PubMed are highly restricted, so the number of people with the skills to write data digestion software AND who have access to the data AND who have an interest (even a contractual one) to write such software is also going to be highly restricted. This limits the number of algorithms out there for analyzing the data and, in turn, limits the capacity of medical experts to make use of what is out there.

Has the full table of drug interactions been publicly published, in a machine-processable format? My suspicion is no. Given that repeat studies don't get published, as a matter of policy by journals, refutations of this analysis won't get documented and therefore any errors will be perpetuated. It doesn't help that medical journals are expensive to publish in and are biased in favour of sponsors. Further, because this is a meta-study, it is subject to the problem that 2% of scientists are guilty of misconduct and that patients are now so hyped up about side-effects that mis-reporting as a form of hypochondria may distort the results. It's not like doctors conduct tests to analyze these reports. There may not be any errors in this study, but if there are then neither we nor any doctor will know of it. The only obvious way to avoid that is to make analysis of the analysis a public affair.

And what if the table is fully accurate? Given that a tiny fraction of the publications ever get read, how many doctors will have a copy of that table? In paper or electronic form? Given the current economic climate and the tight budgetary constraints, it might take months if not years for the smaller doctor's offices to have databases containing the information. And longer for those databases to be usable in any practical fashion.

or the fact that a 320 slice CT generates so many layers of images that they can't all be carefully reviewed (and an abnormality may be so small it only appears in a couple of them)

That is so very, very true. And the problem is getting worse, not better. Scanners are improving all the time, the human brain is not, and the software used to convey data from the scanners to the brain is all that stands between the doctor and information overload. MRI scanners are up to 13T* - it's not altogether clear why as the 9.1T ones could see individual neurons, but there ya go - but since the bulk of hospitals use 2.5-3T MRIs and software is invariably written for the market, informatics on the BIG systems is primitive in comparison to the volume of data involved. Not that it's terribly good even for the smaller units.

*Yes, I know, 7.3T is the maximum that is authorized in the US for non-research purposes, but research scanners for living patients are much more powerful than that. And research is where you want the BEST informatics, particularly in this case because repeatability is going to be a serious problem.

If the product is being sold in the US, at least, there may be quite specific reasons why it is 'homeopathic' and why it is sold as such.

Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which established the FDA and its regulatory authority, Homeopathic drugs are a distinct regulatory class. Further(presumably because so much homeopathy is conducted with concentrations indistinguishable from water) the regulations are significantly looser than for conventional drugs. You have to follow some basic accuracy in labelling stuff, and meet strength and purity standards(though per "Section 211.165 (Testing and release for distribution): In the Federal Register of April 1, 1983 (48 FR 14003), the Agency proposed to amend 21 CFR 211.165 to exempt homeopathic drug products from the requirement for laboratory determination of identity and strength of each active ingredient prior to release for distribution.Pending a final rule on this exemption, this testing requirement will not be enforced for homeopathic drug products." you don't actually have to verify the strength and purity before sale).

For this reason, if you want to sell something that is listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States and its supplements(there are lots of things listed in here...), at a concentration that can be expressed in one of the traditional homeopathic dilution levels(nX, nD, nC, nM, etc.) you can more or less knock yourself out with only the slightest of scrutiny.

In many cases, this does result in the classic overpriced distilled water scenario. It doesn't take many 1:100 or 1:1000 dilutions before even an analytical chemist with an unlimited budget would despair of determining what you were originally diluting(in the case of things like homeopathic plutonium, this is good.) However, "1X", a fairly stiff 10%, is also a perfectly legitimate homeopathic dilution, albeit not one that true homeopathy enthusiasts would tend to view as potent.

The most notorious case of this being Bad is probably 'Zicam', where intranasal administration of 10% zinc gluconate turned out to occassionally destroy the unlucky user's sense of smell. Oops.

In this case, stripped of the 'homeopathic' wording, the spray looks like a fairly plausible, and likely safe, mixture of dilute capsaicin and Eucalyptol in an isotonic carrier. Sensible enough. Whether the function of the 'homeopathic' label is regulatory exclusively or also for marketing purposes is harder to say; but it may be some of both.

You will probably find the real article more informative.

It's actually addressed meaningfully in the journal article. I won't quote the section at you since that would be spam, I've already done it, and I'm just compulsively replying to people because people being wrong on the Internet is clearly the noblest cause ever, but there you go: it is, in fact, the rate of change in environmental conditions, not merely that it's occurring.

It says the following in the journal article:

Nevertheless, even though such phenotypic plasticity possibly evolved across millennia, it may well be challenged by the unprecedented rate of environmental change imposed by current global climate change [55], including temperature increase and ocean acidification, and recent anthropogenic pressure on coastal areas resulting in changes in water quality, eutrophication, and nutrient load, particularly in seagrass meadows [56].

Please spend the rest of the day in silent introspection.

The real deal is publicly accessible (I think.) You might find it more engaging!

No, it's like saying you're 80,000 years old because a Neanderthal with the amazing ability to grow back both halves when cut up like a sea star/starfish has left you behind.

But don't take the Telegraph article too seriously: they couldn't even get the species name correct. (There's an 'a' on the end that's missing.) Here's the journal article in PLoS ONE.

[citation needed]

Because some the reports that I've seen say agriculture production had already fallen due to negative climate change effects. For instance, this report says that many of California's tree crops may die off because the "winter chill" which protects the trees from some pests will no longer consistently occur. As I understand it, the reason that actual output hasn't fallen is because technological advancements are (so far) outpacing the negative climate related effects.

A warmer climate means you get a longer growing season in the northern areas that are already the most productive. This is good for places like the US.

I can't find it right now, but there was an article that said over 50% of the U.S. mainland was afflicted by either flooding or droughts this year. As the average temperature increases, the average amount of area covered by those conditions will increase. Neither condition is good for growing crops. It doesn't take much land area consumed by drought to negate all changes from a "longer growing season".

Near the equator in areas where it's already too hot for most cereal crops, additional CO2 will make tree farming much more profitable - trees grow better due to additional CO2 fertilization.

As far as I'm aware, additional CO2 has a negligible effect on plant growth, few plants are struggling to get more carbon, they tend to be limited by competition, pests, water, and sunlight first. Even in perfect greenhouse conditions, additional carbon dioxide seems to only boost growth by a few percent (~3%).

Further Reading.

Sorry, I should've linked to the actual paper of course.

High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison

These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0028983

The paper doesn't say what you think it says. It shows that there are wide variations in ocean acidity in the short term. The issue of the effect of long term changes in average acidity is not addressed. After all, we have daily and yearly temperature cycles -- but the polar caps are melting and the glaciers are retreating as a result of longer term average changes.

Sorry, I should've linked to the actual paper of course.

High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison

These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0028983

For #1, there was The Journal of Earth Science Phenomena (hasn't had anything new in over a year), where they'd publish what they called 'micro-articles', which was mostly just a picture and a short description. Unlike a tweet, it actually had some peer-review, and enough information to make the item useful in its own regard. In solar physics, it's not a journal, but there's the Heliophysics Event Registry, where scientists can submit events/features/phenomena, but it's not peer reviewed. (and some are submitted via pipeline processing, so there might not've been any human involved in the detection other than writing the software)

For the negative results, there are plenty of dedicated journals in various fields, and if there isn't, there's always PLoS ONE. It's possible that they might take the irreproducable stuff, too. In their description, they say they'll take anything that's 'technically sound'. They do use a model that's different from other peer-reviewed journals, and go with the author-pays approach, which many of the other journals claim makes them invalid (yet, those same journals charge even more to make your article 'open access' if it gets accepted)

For #1, there was The Journal of Earth Science Phenomena (hasn't had anything new in over a year), where they'd publish what they called 'micro-articles', which was mostly just a picture and a short description. Unlike a tweet, it actually had some peer-review, and enough information to make the item useful in its own regard. In solar physics, it's not a journal, but there's the Heliophysics Event Registry, where scientists can submit events/features/phenomena, but it's not peer reviewed. (and some are submitted via pipeline processing, so there might not've been any human involved in the detection other than writing the software)

For the negative results, there are plenty of dedicated journals in various fields, and if there isn't, there's always PLoS ONE. It's possible that they might take the irreproducable stuff, too. In their description, they say they'll take anything that's 'technically sound'. They do use a model that's different from other peer-reviewed journals, and go with the author-pays approach, which many of the other journals claim makes them invalid (yet, those same journals charge even more to make your article 'open access' if it gets accepted)

"...and harvest data suggest that African countries and U.S. states with the highest intensity of sport hunting have shown the steepest population declines in African lions and cougars over the past 25 yrs."

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005941

"A November 2004 study by the University of Port Elizabeth estimated that eco-tourism on private game
reserves generated "more than 15 times the income of livestock or game rearing or
overseas hunting". (1) Eco-tourism lodges in Eastern Cape Province produce almost 2000 rand
(£180) per hectare. Researchers also noted that more jobs were created and staff received "extensive
skills training". (2)
The reasons for this are obvious. Although hunters pay large sums, ordinary tourists are much more
numerous. Hunters shoot an animal once, but photographic tourists can shoot it a thousand times and
the animal is still there. In 1982, it was estimated that a maned male lion earned Kenya National Parks
$50,000 (£26,500) a year through photographic tourism.(3) In comparison, in neighbouring Tanzania,
hunters currently pay a $2000 (£1060) trophy fee and the lion is gone forever.(4)"
Hunting safaris are seasonal and are open for a maximum of six months a year. They use very basic
camps and staff rarely learn any other skills to support themselves during the rest of the year. In
contrast, photographic safaris run all year. They use well-established, often luxurious, camps or hotels.
Staff are trained in management and other useful professional qualifications which advance their
careers

http://www.animalrightsafrica.org/Archive/Hunting/The_%20Myth_of_Trophy_Hunting_as_Conservation.pdf

Exactly, especially on the scale we're talking here (14-20% growth of the hippocampus). That's major remodeling. Most tests prior to the popularization of MRI would have been subjective simply because patients don't generally like doctors to saw their brains open. Even with MRI becoming widely available, it's not cheap - particularly at adequate resolution - and it's time-intensive, which limits the projects that can use it. The methodology can also be a bit slipshod at times and the popular practice of not actually doing original work but merely doing analysis on a compilation of previous studies means that errors in methods can be magnified.

It doesn't help that in 2009, 33.7% of scientists who responded admitted questionable practices with almost 2% admitting outright fraud and falsification of results. That's a lot, especially as the majority of those carrying out fraud are unlikely to have admitted it. That means that one-off, unrepeated studies should not be trusted over a third of the time merely for scientific malpractice. That's ignoring misinterpreted results, errors in the experiment, errors resulting from the statistical nature of science, or any other such innocent factor. The innocent reasons are significant enough that nobody should trust unrepeated/unrepeatable experiments, the malpractice wallops the number of studies needed and the rigour of those studies right up. Which means even where there appears to be good evidence of brain redesign, you have to be a lot more wary until there's solid confirmation from others.

Worried about these GMO crops cross-pollinating regular crops? The researchers referred to a study indicating 'a very low frequency (0.04-0.80%) of pollen-mediated gene flow between genetically modified (GM) rice and adjacent non-GM plants.'

Hmmm. You may find the following news story and its associated paper interesting:
'Escaped' Genetically Engineered Canola Growing Outside of Established Cultivation Regions Across North Dakota


The Establishment of Genetically Engineered Canola Populations in the U.S.

A Glucose BioFuel Cell Implanted in Rats

Cinquin P, Gondran C, Giroud F, Mazabrard S, Pellissier A, et al. (2010) A Glucose BioFuel Cell Implanted in Rats. PLoS ONE 5(5): e10476. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010476

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010476

Abstract
Powering future generations of implanted medical devices will require cumbersome transcutaneous energy transfer or harvesting energy from the human body. No functional solution that harvests power from the body is currently available, despite attempts to use the Seebeck thermoelectric effect, vibrations or body movements. Glucose fuel cells appear more promising, since they produce electrical energy from glucose and dioxygen, two substrates present in physiological fluids. The most powerful ones, Glucose BioFuel Cells (GBFCs), are based on enzymes electrically wired by redox mediators. However, GBFCs cannot be implanted in animals, mainly because the enzymes they rely on either require low pH or are inhibited by chloride or urate anions, present in the Extra Cellular Fluid (ECF). Here we present the first functional implantable GBFC, working in the retroperitoneal space of freely moving rats. The breakthrough relies on the design of a new family of GBFCs, characterized by an innovative and simple mechanical confinement of various enzymes and redox mediators: enzymes are no longer covalently bound to the surface of the electron collectors, which enables use of a wide variety of enzymes and redox mediators, augments the quantity of active enzymes, and simplifies GBFC construction. Our most efficient GBFC was based on composite graphite discs containing glucose oxidase and ubiquinone at the anode, polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and quinone at the cathode. PPO reduces dioxygen into water, at pH 7 and in the presence of chloride ions and urates at physiological concentrations. This GBFC, with electrodes of 0.133 mL, produced a peak specific power of 24.4 microwatt/ mL, which is better than pacemakers' requirements and paves the way for the development of a new generation of implantable artificial organs, covering a wide range of medical applications.

For example, PLoS ONE charges $1350: http://www.plosone.org/static/guidelines.action#about. Other Open Access journals in the neurosciences are comparable, if not a little more. For a more thorough review of fees in various fields, see: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Publication_fees.

Yes, you are a geologist who is obviously ignorant of the state of the debate in a field not your own which continues even today.

2009, energy and mechanics analysis of 14 dinosaurs indicates possibility of warm-blooded: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007783

The Caltech isotope analysis of teeth indicating warm-bloodedness for sauropods was announced this year. http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/06/General-Science-Analytical-Instrumentation-Biology-Dinosaur-body-temperature-measured-for-first-time/

There is much more, but since you are wilfully ignorant you can just go back to twiddling your rocks.

Nephila has been used to make cloth:
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/spidersilk/

Here is the original article:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021833

Yes, this article is clearly bunk. But still, it's quite possible that light has more of an impact on the human body than has been traditionally accepted. Human skin might even be mildly photosynthetic -- not kidding. Fungi have been found at Chernobyl using ionizing radiation as an energy source -- and it appears that it's melanin that they've been using to capture the energy. Ionization of melanin can enhance NADH/NAD+ conversion, which is the last step before ATP production. UV was shown to be effective in causing this effect.

In other words, you're too lazy to even look at the article? :) The abstract explains in fairly plain English the tests they've done.
From the paper:

We have created DRACOs and shown that they are nontoxic in 11 mammalian cell types and effective against 15 different viruses.....We have also demonstrated that DRACOs can rescue mice challenged with H1N1 influenza.

So they've tested on a number of different tissue types, and tested in mice and found no problem. Whether it will cause problems in humans or not is still unknown, but it looks promising.

In the MIT press release they have some nice pictures that demonstrate little damage (at least, visibly) to healthy cells.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572

There are no conclusions but there are patent apps everywhere in the name of the main author Todd H Rider who is no slouch as a researcher.
If it proves out it could lead to social upheaval if Sci-fi proportions far beyond cheesy movie fearmongering :)

To all the people posting about ultra-resistant super MRSA mega death bacteria forming because I crack open a bottle of Dawn occasionally, haven't you ever heard of defense in depth? Also, what about this study which suggests that a combination of antibiotics may be more effective against resistant bugs? This shit happens all the time on /. Whatever trendy counter-intuitive "wisdom" there is on a subject is repeated and subsequently shit on ad nauseum. Isn't this the home of RTFA?

There already some intriguing early results in optical networking with living brains...

This is so much more tasteful than the old cat with a Cannon plug on its head.

There already some intriguing early results in optical networking with living brains...

meh. Men die of prostate cancer when they are in their 60s and 70s. Women get hit with breast cancer as early as their 20s.

From a public health perspective, I think it's more important that we treat young women because we can add 40+ productive years to their life. For prostate cancer, you're typically adding 5-10 years to the lives of people who are on the edge of retirement. It's a worthy goal, but it's not where I would concentrate scarce resources.

"Number of links" has always struck me as an odd metric (see also PageRank). The greatest work from the PoV of scientific advancement isn't necessarily the most cited. The greatest determinant will be how fashionable a particular field is - a few leading researchers in a particular field are likely to have a huge number of cites, especially if they constitently reach the well-known publications, but it doesn't necessarily mean the field is very scientifically interesting.

Then, even if great progress has been made, you get the effect that people don't necessarily cite the seminal investigations so much as the pioneering refiners.

Another interesting effect, of course, is the difference between provenance of researcher and location of publication. The US and the UK are particularly good at draining other countries of already well-educated people, but this doesn't mean that the US or the UK have performed the academic preparation necessary to produce excellent researchers.

I have science for you, and it does quite the opposite of population control.

Tell it to these researchers.

Hate to break it to you and apparently everybody else responding, but there is evidence for a genetic component to homosexual preferences. The fundamental concept is that the gene(s) which when expressed lead to an increased sexual attraction to men work the same way in both genders, so because not all men who carry the gene express it (or do so exclusively), it leads to some female children being born with higher fertility rates, which is why the gene keeps being reproduced. Women with the gene end up having more children than those without it, and their male children are not guaranteed to express the gene, so over human history the net effect has been positive.

I for one find it awesome that many people are trying Science, Nature, or PNAS, then, if rejected, go for PLoS ONE. Here's a case of an, IMO, awesome paper that was originally submitted to PNAS (may have to google the url to get through) but ended up in PLoS ONE. This is the sort of paper that shows the power of computer science applied to social science.

I think you're right on the mark. This paper, ""Positive" Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences", seems to show that people in, say, Physics or Chemistry have been publishing negative results, while Social Scientists haven't. Truly the time to open up those closet drawers.

You don't have to take the word of the magazine as to what is in the article - you can read it for yourself

Conveniently enough the P in PLoS stands for Public - as in you can download the articles from anywhere without paying for a subscription.

From the actual study, the wording used to present the placebos to the patients seems to have been very carefully chosen to be utterly truthful, yet implicitly deceptive:

...open-label placebo pills presented as “placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in IBS symptoms through mind-body self-healing processes”

Do you really want your tax dollars going toward research for Soccer (Football everywhere else in the world) and video game sounds?

As one might expect, the characterization you allude to from the YouCut project page isn't quite accurate. First off, here's links to actual research info on the so-called "soccer research" (actually research into a means of quantifying individual contributions to team performance) and the sound rendering for physically based simulation project. Here's some snippets from a news article regarding the projects:

But the researchers behind these projects say Smith has misrepresented their work and the amount of money spent on the projects.
"This was not $750,000 given by NSF for us to develop an algorithm to look at the performance of soccer players," Northwestern University engineering professor Luis Amaral told LiveScience. Amaral, who was the lead investigator on the soccer study cited by Smith, called the congressman's portrayal of his work "not only incorrect, but misleading."
"This was $750,000 that was given to a larger team of researchers to study a very broad range of questions related to creating provocative, efficient teams of researchers who innovate," Amaral said. ...
Amaral's soccer study, published in June in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, was supported by two NSF grants. The first was a $450,000 award to develop efficient methods to evaluate the productivity of researchers and research institutions. The second was a $300,000 grant to study how teams collaborate. By quantifying researchers' contributions to their fields, Amaral and his colleagues hope to help funding agencies like the NSF allocate money more effectively.
How do those grants translate to studying soccer? According to Amaral, an M.D./Ph.D. student was rotating through Amaral's lab to learn the computer software Amaral and his colleagues use to model complex systems such as to explore how creativity and innovation arise from networks of researchers. The researchers decided to train the young scientist using easily available data from the World Cup. Soccer was particularly appealing, because team performance is difficult to rank using regular statistical methods, Amaral said. ...
Smith's second target, research to model the sound of breaking objects, is supported by an ongoing $1.2 million grant given to three researchers over four years. The goal of the research is to create advanced simulation technology for virtual environments, Cornell's James told LiveScience. ...
"Just think of the impact of computer-graphics rendering, and now imagine the combined potential for realistic computer-sound rendering," he said, citing possible uses of realistic simulations for engineering cars, aircraft and even spacecraft. The results may also be useful in designing rehabilitation and training simulations like those used in the military. Even robots could become better at navigating their environments with higher-level sound processing, James said.

Do you really want your tax dollars going toward research for Soccer (Football everywhere else in the world) and video game sounds?

As one might expect, the characterization you allude to from the YouCut project page isn't quite accurate. First off, here's links to actual research info on the so-called "soccer research" (actually research into a means of quantifying individual contributions to team performance) and the sound rendering for physically based simulation project. Here's some snippets from a news article regarding the projects:

But the researchers behind these projects say Smith has misrepresented their work and the amount of money spent on the projects.
"This was not $750,000 given by NSF for us to develop an algorithm to look at the performance of soccer players," Northwestern University engineering professor Luis Amaral told LiveScience. Amaral, who was the lead investigator on the soccer study cited by Smith, called the congressman's portrayal of his work "not only incorrect, but misleading."
"This was $750,000 that was given to a larger team of researchers to study a very broad range of questions related to creating provocative, efficient teams of researchers who innovate," Amaral said. ...
Amaral's soccer study, published in June in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, was supported by two NSF grants. The first was a $450,000 award to develop efficient methods to evaluate the productivity of researchers and research institutions. The second was a $300,000 grant to study how teams collaborate. By quantifying researchers' contributions to their fields, Amaral and his colleagues hope to help funding agencies like the NSF allocate money more effectively.
How do those grants translate to studying soccer? According to Amaral, an M.D./Ph.D. student was rotating through Amaral's lab to learn the computer software Amaral and his colleagues use to model complex systems such as to explore how creativity and innovation arise from networks of researchers. The researchers decided to train the young scientist using easily available data from the World Cup. Soccer was particularly appealing, because team performance is difficult to rank using regular statistical methods, Amaral said. ...
Smith's second target, research to model the sound of breaking objects, is supported by an ongoing $1.2 million grant given to three researchers over four years. The goal of the research is to create advanced simulation technology for virtual environments, Cornell's James told LiveScience. ...
"Just think of the impact of computer-graphics rendering, and now imagine the combined potential for realistic computer-sound rendering," he said, citing possible uses of realistic simulations for engineering cars, aircraft and even spacecraft. The results may also be useful in designing rehabilitation and training simulations like those used in the military. Even robots could become better at navigating their environments with higher-level sound processing, James said.

The media does not understand basic research. In this case, we see its obsession of finding genes for behaviors; it almost never works that way.

Genes aren't smartphone apps; you can't just say "there's a gene for that."

Genes are more akin to code than to building blocks. A gene is more like a function than it is like a brick or mortar, and we have very little understanding of how genes interact with each other.

I'd like to give a "bravo!" to the authors for making the paper an open-access journal article. I know that's a hard sell to publishers. The full paper is available to all without registration.

The paper itself explains the high chance that this is overblown:

It is also important to sound several notes of caution. First, a consistent challenge in genetic association studies are that of third variable confounds, or unmeasured variables that are causally responsible for the observed finding but are associated with the measured variables thus generating a spurious association. ...

Too bad 'group selection' is a largely discredited idea in evolutionary biology. If the individual doesn't reproduce their genes die with them no matter how cool it might have been to the others around it to have around. However there is a more evidence-based conception of the evolutionary utility to individuals of homosexuality: sexually antagonistic selection.

...are trying to figure out what has happened and how stuff works...

...and, sometimes, are defending their pet paradigm, or protecting their tenure, or claiming whatever results will get their company's product past the FDA...

It's dangerous to make such absolute categorical statements regarding anything involving human beings.

And, I should note, most "creationists" are looking for synthesis of science and their theological views.

I'm in the process of building a multiphoton microscope (donated axiovert 135 body and Hamamatsu detectors). Of course, I have nowhere near the amount of money to buy a Ti:Sapphire and would much rather spend the money on good IR lenses and upgraded optics.

I've been looking at "alternatives" in the form of Ytterbium based lasers for the reasons you describe: small 2 box footprint (with a pulse picker), integrated solid-state pump and no cavity tuning (or so the manufacturer says). Other advantage is the reduced photodamage with a two photon excitation around the 1030nm mark, but I am still waiting for an answer on the expected second harmonic / third harmonic signal generation efficiency (probably something I won't find out for certain until the entire microscope is built). 1-5% for THG seems frighteningly low, but fortunately, the detectors I'll be using have low dark count.

Also the 5nJ per pulse spec from the manufacturer worries me slightly. One thing I haven't quite worked out from the available literature is the discrepancy between the available energy (say 60-100nJ per pulse from a Yb:KGW laser) and the energy deposited on the sample (around 1nJ per pulse, when mentioned). I hope the loss comes from using a neutral density filter and not from losses due to the microscope optics...

With the right skills of course, the whole process of building your own microscope seems easy enough :-)

Because humans have annoyingly long generation times, and the technology for producing areas of high radiation is relatively new(never mind the ethics...) I don't think that we've had the chance to find out, nor are we likely to in under a few centuries. Humans just don't reproduce that fast.

There are some species that(usually as a side effect of adaptations to resist either dessication or extreme heat) exhibit impressive radiation resistance and we have been able to study those.

D. radiodurans will shrug off 1,000 times the lethal dose for a human without ill effects that it is incapable of repairing. Even 3,000 times the lethal human dose will leave ~1/3 of a colony alive.

T. gammatolerans does pretty much what it says on the tin, in addition to growing at alarmingly high temperatures.

Then you have radiotrophic fungi, which can do something analogous to photosynthesis; but with gamma radiation. Populations of the stuff have been seen sliming up the walls inside the ruins of reactor 4...

None of this is immediately applicable to humans; but all these organisms depend on DNA, just like us, so observing their defense and repair mechanisms may tell us something.

You haven't provided a cite or quote for that 80's stuff

Sorry, but much of that particular one was Lovins himself talking at the University of Illinois in the late 80s. I'd love to give you video, but streaming and cellphone cams were a dream at that time. I doubt you'll consider my memory credible, regardless that it is eyewitness testimony.

As to the quote on a cheap clean source of power : The Mother Earth-Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p.22

"If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."

I did take a bit more time to look at his more detailed paper (from RMI, not published in peer review as it wouldn't bear up under that) Four Nuclear Myths. For starts, the papers he references come to the exact opposite conclusion to what he says about the relative land use. But he uses the numbers selectively comparing a result from one paper to another. The original paers each come to different conclusions than Lovins. That's hardly good scientific procedure there. And this is from just with a quick perusal round the net. Hardly the kind of work that one would expect in a quality study. (Disclaimer: That comes from a pro-nuke site. Unfortunately, unlike Lovins, I don't do this for a living so I'm limited in the depth I can research "on the spot".)

For one possible comparison: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0006802
That's done for the Nature Conservancy, not some pro-nuke group. It comes to the opposite conclusion from Lovins.

Secondly, the Atlantic article you cite talks about savings from efficiency. That's hardly something to dispute. But Lovins wasn't the main driver for that. Money and the California State Government were. I'm quite happy to exploit effiency for all that's economical, but it's not the panacea that he claims.

This particular horse is happy to drink the water of real energy efficiency. But claiming that nuclear uses less land than wind or solar comes closer to koolaid, IMHO.

Given a choice between Lovins and Stewart Brand, I'll go with Brand in a minute.

One other disclaimer, I'm still kind of boggled that Foresight Institute put Lovins on its board of advisors. I don't consider him to rate up with people like Larry Lessig, Marvin Minsky or Ray Kurzweil, but YMMV. So, it's reasonable to consider me a bit less than neutral source on him.

I don't think you understand how science works. You seem to think that some scientist comes up with something, and then it's the law.

No. Science doesn't work that way. Scientists publish their results, and then other scientists look at their data, try to reproduce the results, and generally try to find problems. You know how you become a famous scientist? By disproving something every other scientist believes. This gets you the nobel price. This is the incentive. Find errors. Be smarter than everybody else. Have better data, a better explanation, a better way of predicting things.

There is no incentive at all for thousands of scientists to be part of some kind of insane global conspiracy that misleads everybody else.

How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data

The actual link to the actual article.

Could we please stop submitting blurbs like this, at least without the real articles. TFA in this case was two pictures, or else there was more behind a registration wall, and the -actual journal article- was on plosone, a completely free and open online publication, you don't even have to give them your e-mail address. I understand many of us don't like paywalls, but even when there is one, a link to it would be nice for the details, and again, this one didn't have a paywall. /rant

Anyway, the conclusion summary is "Our results indicate this device as a useful tool to assist in the identification of early neoplastic changes in epithelial tissues. This portable, inexpensive unit may be particularly appropriate for use at the point-of-care in low-resource settings." I'm not a doctor, nor am I a cancer biologist, but I don't think the language is just not wanting to overstate things. I think the authors would say this should never be taken as the first or last screening method for identifying cancers. I think the goal here is if your doctor thinks you might have a cancerous growth in your mouth, he might pull out a camera, this fiber optic device, and some proflavine, and see if he thought a biopsy would be justified. He looks at the cells under this thing, sees completely normal looking cells, and he suggests not doing the biopsy. He sees abnormal cells, and he orders a biopsy, they take some tissue from it the pathology lab stains it and makes a call as to whether you need it removed or not.

Could also be used in surgery, your doctor detects a growth on your prostate/ovaries/whatever, is concerned enough to do exploratory surgery. They put you under, open you up, get to the growth... in at least some circumstances, they do a biopsy, send it down to the pathology department for staining to see if it's cancerous or not, the path lab calls up and says cancer or not, and based on that, they'll remove it or not. A friend of mine, for example, had surgery to remove one ovary after it developed a tumor of some type, biopsies from the other were sent to the lab so they could tell whether they needed to remove that one too. Seems like this method of being able to image it right there could save some time.

Again, I really don't know, have no experience with surgery, and might be misremembering the secondhand account there, so take that with several grains of salt.

It seems to me though that measuring the effectiveness of this procedure is outside the scope. The authors are from a bioengineering lab. Their goal was developing a tool, this is a few steps away from testing the positive vs negative, nobody is getting ahead of themselves.

As long as your paper passes peer review and you pay the publishing fee the paper will be published. The journal does not try to judge the relative merits of your work with regards to similar work. The results will be an open access paper which anyone and everyone can read. http://www.plosone.org/

PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.

PLoS is not free. It just shifts the costs from the readers to the authors, who must pay substantial fees ($1350 for PLoS One, for instance) to get their articles published. I think that's a better system overall- it lets anyone who's interested read the articles, it's relatively straightforward for authors to include publication costs in their grants, and it encourages authors to concentrate on quality over quantity- but it's not free.

Still, each story about a scientist gone astray increases the visibility of scientific fraud. Each story reinforces a negative view held by the public and destroys their trust in the scientific system. The potential implications are dire if the public--and therefore those who fund research--regard every scientist as a potential charlatan. Every scientist should therefore reinforce his or her commitment to avoid ignoring any data that do not fit the hypothesis. Honesty is the only weapon against fraud and against public mistrust, and it is available to everyone from technician to professor. We all need to make sure that it remains the dominant ethos in our laboratories.

In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91-19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices.

As quoted from How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005738

Or it could just be carried down the female line. Also, if it is X-linked, gay men who reproduced due to social pressures wouldn't pass it along to their sons. Here's a more nuanced summary of the idea:

A large set of models were examined by the researchers and excluded individually if they implied that alleles would go extinct too easily or overtake the population. The paper concluded that the only model that fit the empirical data was based on sexually antagonistic selection, based in particular on two genes, at least one of which must be on the X chromosome, which determines the maternal genes in male babies. This model implies that there is an interaction between male homosexuality and increased female fertility. This complex dynamic results in the maintenance of male homosexuality at a stable but low frequency, as well as a hereditary effect on male homosexuality through the female line.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/111843.php
http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002282

The title of this article suggests that it is the fat in these foods that causes the addictive response, however, this study did not isolate foods as merely high-fat. The diet included many foods, such as cheesecake, which included high levels of sugar. Sugar has been found to be more addictive than cocaine on its own. It is likely that the fat+sugar combination has a synergistic addictive effect, however, anyone who has been on a low carbohydrate diet can tell you that fat on its own actually suppresses appetite and does not cause cravings. Sugar addiction study: http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000698