If a species is defined by the DNA- then that frozen liquid has a very special description of an individual in it.
It's not defined that way, only the genome is. Even at a molecular level, the genome doesn't tell the whole story. More specific to people, the complete lack of anything resembling a nervous system, to me, indicates that there's no dehumanization going on as there isn't a human.
So if the sample turned out to have some deadly disease in it, you'd be required to not notify the patient?
Yes. That is one potential downside, but I think it's a reasonable tradeoff to make sure insurance companies don't get ahold of it.
Anyway, there are few diseases that would turn up in analysis of ESC that you'd be able to do anything about, and you wouldn't be looking in the first place.
Secondly, why the hell shouldn't donors be paid for essentially providing their family's information?
I think there are legal restrictions against compensation for medical tissue, I guess because of fears of a black market, but I don't know if there are or not. A bigger issue (for the researcher) with compensation is leverage, if you use one stem cell line extensively, they implement this retroactive buisiness, and the donor says "give me half your funds or you can't use it," then you're starting over from scratch. Seems like you also might be facing a lawsuit over past research, though IANAL.
In fact, if I understand it correctly, it should be labeled "Embyronic Stem Cells harvested from Jane Smith and Joe McDonald's unused embryo from fertility treatment", not an aborted embryo at all.
Ack! I can't believe I messed that up! You're absolutely right, I've corrected other people about that very thing before... damn them and their attempts to spread misinformation, they've even gotten to me!
Seriously though, you're absolutely right, aborted tissue cannot be used for ESC because by the time the embryo is implanted and the mother knows she is pregnant, the embryo has no more ESC.
There's a third option: - Go around NIH's new requirements by simply going back to the donating couple and asking them if they'd like to sign a new contract.
Seems nearly impossible. Most of the researchers who are actually trying to use the stem cell lines probably have no access to the identifying information. If you're working on stem cell culture, you don't know and don't care who the cells were from, you respect their privacy. Until legalese gets arbitrarily in your way that is. It's not like the cells are labeled "Embryonic stem cells harvested from Jane Smith and Joe McDonald's aborted embryo."
Plus, if you did get the identifying information, contacted them, and they didn't tell you to go to hell, how would that conversation go
Researcher: "Would you sign this new form saying we can use your ESC?" Donor: "You do research on this stem cell line? Researcher:"Yes" Donor: "Well since we're renegotiating contracts, I want to get paid this time, plus royalties on any grants you got with it."
The convention is to write in the 5' to 3' direction and usually the sense strand. Unless I'm getting things backwards again (and I often am, can't keep left and right straight either) 3-TAC-5 in the antisense strand is what is actually used to copy the mRNA transcript, which is 5-AUG-3, the same as the sense strand 5-ATG-3. The t-RNA has UAC which corresponds to it.
So, unless I'm once again confused, that would be two types of backward.
Anyway, there is no message in any frame, nor on the complementary strand.
and reversing the sequence, in case it was written 3-5 also had nothing
TCA GAG TTA TAT GAT TAC ACG CTA CAT AAG
5'3' Frame 1
SELYDYTLHK
5'3' Frame 2
QSYMITRYI
5'3' Frame 3
RVI-LHAT-
3'5' Frame 1
LM-RVII-L-
3'5' Frame 2
LCSV-SYNS
3'5' Frame 3
YVACNHITL
I also did a quick blast search of the human genome and came up with no hits. I started trying to set the parameters to allow for mismatches (I don't use it all that often) when I realized that I'm probably completely missing the joke.
Combine that idea with artificial, hereditary traits (designer kids etc.), and you have people who need permission from their friendly gene provider to reproduce. Bring on the GIAA lawsuits! Can't have people passing on copyrighted genetic material without authorization!
I'd like to point out that we're worrying about copyright abuses of not-yet-invented technology here.
They're patenting the sequence of amino acids. They say this is patentable because it excludes the introns and is after the post-transcription modifications. Patent law excludes naturally occurring phenomenon. The sequence is a naturally occurring phenomenon after the excision of the introns (don't ask about the language, we know it's goofy) and post-transcription modifications. It all occurs in nature and is thus unpatentable. However, the USPTO has decided that whatever happens after translation is patentable, which makes no sense from either a legal or scientific standpoint
That's really amazing. I'm assuming the patent office in setting that standard asked only "scientists" who monsanto paid to visit them.
Anyway, if they're patenting the amino acid sequence, how exactly are they charging a fee for testing if you are at greater risk because of those two genes? Is the screen for Brca1 and 2 done on proteins? I would have assumed it's a PCR screen that doesn't involve proteins, and therefore anything post-translational, at all.
In theory that would be great. Of course, in theory, the voters should already do this themselves...
Anyway, I have confidence in the corrupting influence of political power that all that would happen is that instead of the worst politicians being very effective at apologizing and convincing the electorate that they're reformed, we'd just have bad politicians that were more effective at covering up and obfuscating their misdeeds. Or just a very fast turnover of politicians, which means the same level of corruption, but more incompetence and mismanagement than we have now.
Hmm... Why shouldn't either of these impose restrictions on how you use THEIR resources?
That's not what I was talking about. A google search for "Fired for facebook" or "Suspended for facebook" (and probably other non-facebook related searches) came up with numerous examples of schools and employers penalizing their students and employees for online activity which was not using their resources or company time.
My apologies, but I am always shocked when people make the claim that potentially nefarious activities are somehow "more evil" when performed by private actors as opposed by government. What is the basis for your argument?
I guess I was being vague when I said "bad" and there are multiple interpretations. Sorry for shocking you with that, here I was talking about numbers of those affected. I was also vague about where I was referring to, I meant the US which the AC was talking about.
What I meant was far, FAR more people in the US have been affected by employers and schools imposing and enforcing their own restrictions on citizens' online activities. The government isn't going to care if you post pictures of yourself drinking beer to your facebook profile, your school or employer might though.
I realize that when the government steps in, it's much bigger penalties than getting fired. But that's not the only way to measure impact of electronic policing, and I'd argue that typically, the restrictions your employer or school places on your online behavior is a lot more arbitrary and vague than the government's. Generally.
You can change schools, jobs, whatever, but there are pretty significant consequences to that. They do pale in comparison to what your government can do to you, but you are more likely to get fired, lose your house and career because of something your boss saw you posted online than the government, plus the government is usually better about telling you what they won't tolerate.
Perhaps you feel like losing your job or getting kicked out of school is insignificant because it's not the government executing you? I guess that's one way of looking at things.
Because hoards of Microsoft lawyers now have jobs with the Obama administration.
Former MS lawyers? Are these a special breed of lawyers who actually have loyalty to people who aren't currently giving them money?
I agree it's not ideal to have lawyers who have ever worked for MS, but it's not like they're definitely going to still do all they can for MS, and while we're wishing, why not wish the administration had no need to hire ANY lawyers?
RapeLay â" an obscure title by a Japanese publisher that focuses on forced sex situations. There is something special about sexual crimes that make them even worse than murder in the United States. I don't know why, but Hot Coffee in GTA3 drew far more criticism than the normal killing rampage in that game and games before it. This same phenomena occurs at parties where they play games that a murderer is at the party. Yet, if a rapist was at the party, people would probably be mortified. While the sentencing isn't as harsh, sex offenders are registered and tracked for the rest of their lives while murderers can be released or paroled under good behavior.
I think there are a few points here that often get muddled by gamers, leading to confusion and outrage. I don't feel like american parents are more okay with violence than sex. I think parents are more concerned about sex than violence because they think their kids are more likely to engage in sexual behavior that is risky and/or morally repugnant to them. And they're right, they're much more likely to get pregnant than shoot their school up.
It's still misguided in my opinion. Sex on games isn't going to make your teenager want to have sex, his hormones are. But that's a seperate point, it's not so dumb as "I'm okay with my teen murdering, as long as they don't have premarital sex." At least in most cases.
There's also a bit of going along with the group. Other parents are more concerned with sheltering their kids from learning about sex than is reasonable or realistic, so those who may start out reasonable start thinking this might be an actual problem. Again, irrational, but hey, we ALL follow the crowd more than we'd like to admit.
Lastly, the sex offender issue is oversimplifed and muddled to the point of ridiculousness. It again isn't that americans are okay with murder but deathly afraid of sex, we're overly paranoid about both. There's a belief that certain sex offenders have far more recidivism than some violent criminals. That's one of the main rationales for the tracking. I'm not going to say whether or not it's true or justified, only that that is the thinking behind it. The opinion of many lawmakers and groups is that a child molester will always be a child molester and evil, wheras a murderer sent to jail might not do it again. It's also easier to understand and sympathize with the motivations behind some murders than sex offenses. We've all had the urge, to varying degrees, to commit violence. For me, it's whenever someone suggests that censorship works, is needed, and should be done to videogames. (Also whenever Rush gets jacked up on painkillers and starts ranting about potheads, or whenever corporate suits try to put on a hypocritical PR campaign, but that's neither here nor there.)
So again, it's not that most americans live in fear of sex but are cool with the odd murder. And, not for nothing, even if we were, pointing that out is not going to prevent some moral conservatives with the urge to censor from coming after our games.
Sarcasm aside:-p I more realistically forsee a banning of baby monitors actually happening as the 2.4ghz airspace continues to clutter
I was going to say, I foresee a massive, uninformed, ridiculous protest against wifi on the part of parents and family advocacy groups, on the grounds that this is somehow endangering babies. Although one could easily head that off at the pass by selling an overpriced baby monitor which uses your wifi hotspot to alert the authorities if they sense some type of danger, like terrorism.
I also ignore my voicemail. Big problem though: Mom.
Hearing "Hello you have reached 'Mother, please, we've been over this, do NOT leave a message, I'll call you back without checking my voice mail anyway, and voicemail is annoying'..." only makes her leave upset messages on my voice mail. Failure to set up my voice mail so that she can't leave any message only leads to that being the sole topic of conversation every time we actually DO talk on the phone.
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying "Please, let voice mail die faster so my mother can't leave extremely long rambling messages which I have to listen to or face the penalty."
Skeptics have throwing out a variety of reasons that open-access journals like PLoS will never work. One of those reasons is that traditional print journals have a lot of prestige, just based on their centuries of momentum. Scientists won't want to publish in upstart open-access journals, according to this argument, because nobody will take their publications seriously. Well, this scandal would seem to show that you can't trust a journal just because it comes from a centuries-old publishing house.
In my experience, the prestige is based on journal titles, not publisher. No one respects publications because they're carried by elsevier, they respect them because of the journal title. Not sure if nature is elsevier, but if it came out that 90% of elsevier's publications were fraud like this, researchers would still reguard Nature highly and want to publish in it.
So no, this doesn't elevate open-access journals because it doesn't knock down the established journals.
Science is like an Easter egg hunt where there are too many kids and not enough eggs. Everybody is trying to pad their c.v. with as many papers as possible, in order to land one of those prized research jobs. Because of this, there's been a huge proliferation of small, specialized, low-quality, expensive journals, and that's been creating a lot of problems for librarians.
Well, I feel a little sorry for those librarians, but the other thing, the padding the CV, is one reason why employers, tenure comittees, and researchers value the higher-impact journals, and why open-access journals are going to take a while. The researchers who run the academic research system aren't yet used to thinking of open-access journals as being just as respectable as the older journals, the value system to sort out someone who has published all fluff based on journals published in will continue for at least another generation of scientists.
Schools should also eliminate their weaker graduate programs, e.g., if Cal State Fresno (hypothetically) has a graduate program in Italian, but it's not in the top 100 Italian programs in the U.S., maybe they should just cut it; it's not doing anyone any good for them to be handing out some tiny number of master's degrees and pretending that their faculty are doing high-powered research.
What would that solve? It might cut down on the education creep (ie a graduate degree is becoming the equivalent of a college degree a decade ago) but that's not a huge problem, and closing a program means any good researchers in the program have problems. There is actually good research coming out of graduate programs that on average are pretty mediocre.
I have a bad feeling that, as people start poking around, even more stories like this are going to be uncovered. Sure, Elsevier is admitting to six fake journals. What's the over/under for it being 20?
Noticing a pattern here, I'd doubt, at a minimum, anything elsevier publishes with "Australasian" in the title
Australasian Journal of General Practice, the Australasian Journal of Neurology, the Australasian Journal of Cardiology, the Australasian Journal of Clinical Pharmacy, the Australasian Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, and the Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint [Medicine]
Which is of course not to say that it's a codeword for "this journal is crap" and that every crap journal has it, just that's where I'd start.
Reminds me of The Princess Bride "Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."
I can't count the number of people complaining about lost exclusives and lack of obtaining them
Can't count them but I'd estimate their number to be less than 5% of people who are annoyed by exclusives. You have to be REALLY into the pointless console wars to crow that people like you who bought console A get to play a game before people who bought console B. Most gamers actually aren't.
The problem is that those people who are dumb enough to like it when they can play it and the other console cant, are also people who don't know when to shut up, or actually don't care but are trolling. People who don't like exclusives on the other hand generally realize most people feel the same.
For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.
Considering she got a settlement out of it (as opposed to just a burned lap) to cover her medical expenses, not really a bad idea, is it? You might feel it's undeserved, but the case itself wasn't a bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point about "the professionals". For one thing, Wikileaks is smart enough not to go to Slashdot for legal advice.
The fools, where else can you get expert IANAL legal advice? I mean besides Jack Thompson?
Basic math hasn't changed in a hundred years
Of course, that's using the "Year counting 2.0" formula invented last month.
If a species is defined by the DNA- then that frozen liquid has a very special description of an individual in it.
It's not defined that way, only the genome is. Even at a molecular level, the genome doesn't tell the whole story. More specific to people, the complete lack of anything resembling a nervous system, to me, indicates that there's no dehumanization going on as there isn't a human.
So if the sample turned out to have some deadly disease in it, you'd be required to not notify the patient?
Yes. That is one potential downside, but I think it's a reasonable tradeoff to make sure insurance companies don't get ahold of it.
Anyway, there are few diseases that would turn up in analysis of ESC that you'd be able to do anything about, and you wouldn't be looking in the first place.
Secondly, why the hell shouldn't donors be paid for essentially providing their family's information?
I think there are legal restrictions against compensation for medical tissue, I guess because of fears of a black market, but I don't know if there are or not. A bigger issue (for the researcher) with compensation is leverage, if you use one stem cell line extensively, they implement this retroactive buisiness, and the donor says "give me half your funds or you can't use it," then you're starting over from scratch. Seems like you also might be facing a lawsuit over past research, though IANAL.
In fact, if I understand it correctly, it should be labeled "Embyronic Stem Cells harvested from Jane Smith and Joe McDonald's unused embryo from fertility treatment", not an aborted embryo at all.
Ack! I can't believe I messed that up! You're absolutely right, I've corrected other people about that very thing before... damn them and their attempts to spread misinformation, they've even gotten to me!
Seriously though, you're absolutely right, aborted tissue cannot be used for ESC because by the time the embryo is implanted and the mother knows she is pregnant, the embryo has no more ESC.
There's a third option:
- Go around NIH's new requirements by simply going back to the donating couple and asking them if they'd like to sign a new contract.
Seems nearly impossible. Most of the researchers who are actually trying to use the stem cell lines probably have no access to the identifying information. If you're working on stem cell culture, you don't know and don't care who the cells were from, you respect their privacy. Until legalese gets arbitrarily in your way that is. It's not like the cells are labeled "Embryonic stem cells harvested from Jane Smith and Joe McDonald's aborted embryo."
Plus, if you did get the identifying information, contacted them, and they didn't tell you to go to hell, how would that conversation go
Researcher: "Would you sign this new form saying we can use your ESC?"
Donor: "You do research on this stem cell line?
Researcher:"Yes"
Donor: "Well since we're renegotiating contracts, I want to get paid this time, plus royalties on any grants you got with it."
The t-RNA has UAC which corresponds to it.
"You are about to transcribe a gene."
[Continue] [Cancel]
Whole bunch of people not earning biology nerd badges today: t-RNAs are involved in TRANSLATION, not transcription!
The convention is to write in the 5' to 3' direction and usually the sense strand. Unless I'm getting things backwards again (and I often am, can't keep left and right straight either) 3-TAC-5 in the antisense strand is what is actually used to copy the mRNA transcript, which is 5-AUG-3, the same as the sense strand 5-ATG-3. The t-RNA has UAC which corresponds to it.
So, unless I'm once again confused, that would be two types of backward.
Anyway, there is no message in any frame, nor on the complementary strand.
http://www.expasy.ch/tools/dna.html
5'3' Frame 1
EYIAH-YIET
5'3' Frame 2
NTSHISILR
5'3' Frame 3
IHRTLVY-D
3'5' Frame 1
SLNILMCDVF
3'5' Frame 2
VSIY-CAMY
3'5' Frame 3
SQYTNVRCI
and reversing the sequence, in case it was written 3-5 also had nothing
TCA GAG TTA TAT GAT TAC ACG CTA CAT AAG
5'3' Frame 1
SELYDYTLHK
5'3' Frame 2
QSYMITRYI
5'3' Frame 3
RVI-LHAT-
3'5' Frame 1
LM-RVII-L-
3'5' Frame 2
LCSV-SYNS
3'5' Frame 3
YVACNHITL
I also did a quick blast search of the human genome and came up with no hits. I started trying to set the parameters to allow for mismatches (I don't use it all that often) when I realized that I'm probably completely missing the joke.
EYIAH*YIET? I don't get it. Anyway, there was no start codon there.
Combine that idea with artificial, hereditary traits (designer kids etc.), and you have people who need permission from their friendly gene provider to reproduce. Bring on the GIAA lawsuits! Can't have people passing on copyrighted genetic material without authorization!
I'd like to point out that we're worrying about copyright abuses of not-yet-invented technology here.
They're patenting the sequence of amino acids. They say this is patentable because it excludes the introns and is after the post-transcription modifications. Patent law excludes naturally occurring phenomenon. The sequence is a naturally occurring phenomenon after the excision of the introns (don't ask about the language, we know it's goofy) and post-transcription modifications. It all occurs in nature and is thus unpatentable. However, the USPTO has decided that whatever happens after translation is patentable, which makes no sense from either a legal or scientific standpoint
That's really amazing. I'm assuming the patent office in setting that standard asked only "scientists" who monsanto paid to visit them.
Anyway, if they're patenting the amino acid sequence, how exactly are they charging a fee for testing if you are at greater risk because of those two genes? Is the screen for Brca1 and 2 done on proteins? I would have assumed it's a PCR screen that doesn't involve proteins, and therefore anything post-translational, at all.
In theory that would be great. Of course, in theory, the voters should already do this themselves...
Anyway, I have confidence in the corrupting influence of political power that all that would happen is that instead of the worst politicians being very effective at apologizing and convincing the electorate that they're reformed, we'd just have bad politicians that were more effective at covering up and obfuscating their misdeeds. Or just a very fast turnover of politicians, which means the same level of corruption, but more incompetence and mismanagement than we have now.
Hmm... Why shouldn't either of these impose restrictions on how you use THEIR resources?
That's not what I was talking about. A google search for "Fired for facebook" or "Suspended for facebook" (and probably other non-facebook related searches) came up with numerous examples of schools and employers penalizing their students and employees for online activity which was not using their resources or company time.
think we see ghosts or Virgin Maries or even Jesus on the asses of dogs
So... I see you too are religious and spend a lot of time checking out dogs as well. There's a club you know, we meet on friday.
One key aspect of the monument was its permanence and impenetratibility. By replicating the shape in glass, the monument loses both aspects.
Well then, a key aspect of remaking it out of glass will be a reflection of the fact that the old man was, in fact, NOT permanent.
I mean its like they think you are borrowing their computers?
Even when you aren't, I know, crazy!
My apologies, but I am always shocked when people make the claim that potentially nefarious activities are somehow "more evil" when performed by private actors as opposed by government. What is the basis for your argument?
I guess I was being vague when I said "bad" and there are multiple interpretations. Sorry for shocking you with that, here I was talking about numbers of those affected. I was also vague about where I was referring to, I meant the US which the AC was talking about.
What I meant was far, FAR more people in the US have been affected by employers and schools imposing and enforcing their own restrictions on citizens' online activities. The government isn't going to care if you post pictures of yourself drinking beer to your facebook profile, your school or employer might though.
I realize that when the government steps in, it's much bigger penalties than getting fired. But that's not the only way to measure impact of electronic policing, and I'd argue that typically, the restrictions your employer or school places on your online behavior is a lot more arbitrary and vague than the government's. Generally.
You can change schools, jobs, whatever, but there are pretty significant consequences to that. They do pale in comparison to what your government can do to you, but you are more likely to get fired, lose your house and career because of something your boss saw you posted online than the government, plus the government is usually better about telling you what they won't tolerate.
Perhaps you feel like losing your job or getting kicked out of school is insignificant because it's not the government executing you? I guess that's one way of looking at things.
Because hoards of Microsoft lawyers now have jobs with the Obama administration.
Former MS lawyers? Are these a special breed of lawyers who actually have loyalty to people who aren't currently giving them money?
I agree it's not ideal to have lawyers who have ever worked for MS, but it's not like they're definitely going to still do all they can for MS, and while we're wishing, why not wish the administration had no need to hire ANY lawyers?
Being from the USA I can tell you I feel like we should be first on the list as far as government inspection of our online activities.
The government inspection is not nearly as bad as employer/school policing of your online activities.
RapeLay â" an obscure title by a Japanese publisher that focuses on forced sex situations. There is something special about sexual crimes that make them even worse than murder in the United States. I don't know why, but Hot Coffee in GTA3 drew far more criticism than the normal killing rampage in that game and games before it. This same phenomena occurs at parties where they play games that a murderer is at the party. Yet, if a rapist was at the party, people would probably be mortified. While the sentencing isn't as harsh, sex offenders are registered and tracked for the rest of their lives while murderers can be released or paroled under good behavior.
I think there are a few points here that often get muddled by gamers, leading to confusion and outrage. I don't feel like american parents are more okay with violence than sex. I think parents are more concerned about sex than violence because they think their kids are more likely to engage in sexual behavior that is risky and/or morally repugnant to them. And they're right, they're much more likely to get pregnant than shoot their school up.
It's still misguided in my opinion. Sex on games isn't going to make your teenager want to have sex, his hormones are. But that's a seperate point, it's not so dumb as "I'm okay with my teen murdering, as long as they don't have premarital sex." At least in most cases.
There's also a bit of going along with the group. Other parents are more concerned with sheltering their kids from learning about sex than is reasonable or realistic, so those who may start out reasonable start thinking this might be an actual problem. Again, irrational, but hey, we ALL follow the crowd more than we'd like to admit.
Lastly, the sex offender issue is oversimplifed and muddled to the point of ridiculousness. It again isn't that americans are okay with murder but deathly afraid of sex, we're overly paranoid about both. There's a belief that certain sex offenders have far more recidivism than some violent criminals. That's one of the main rationales for the tracking. I'm not going to say whether or not it's true or justified, only that that is the thinking behind it. The opinion of many lawmakers and groups is that a child molester will always be a child molester and evil, wheras a murderer sent to jail might not do it again. It's also easier to understand and sympathize with the motivations behind some murders than sex offenses. We've all had the urge, to varying degrees, to commit violence. For me, it's whenever someone suggests that censorship works, is needed, and should be done to videogames. (Also whenever Rush gets jacked up on painkillers and starts ranting about potheads, or whenever corporate suits try to put on a hypocritical PR campaign, but that's neither here nor there.)
So again, it's not that most americans live in fear of sex but are cool with the odd murder. And, not for nothing, even if we were, pointing that out is not going to prevent some moral conservatives with the urge to censor from coming after our games.
Sarcasm aside :-p I more realistically forsee a banning of baby monitors actually happening as the 2.4ghz airspace continues to clutter
I was going to say, I foresee a massive, uninformed, ridiculous protest against wifi on the part of parents and family advocacy groups, on the grounds that this is somehow endangering babies. Although one could easily head that off at the pass by selling an overpriced baby monitor which uses your wifi hotspot to alert the authorities if they sense some type of danger, like terrorism.
can we retire the "fixed that for you" meme already? to me, it smacks of arrogance
That's the point!
I also ignore my voicemail. Big problem though: Mom.
Hearing "Hello you have reached 'Mother, please, we've been over this, do NOT leave a message, I'll call you back without checking my voice mail anyway, and voicemail is annoying'..." only makes her leave upset messages on my voice mail. Failure to set up my voice mail so that she can't leave any message only leads to that being the sole topic of conversation every time we actually DO talk on the phone.
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying "Please, let voice mail die faster so my mother can't leave extremely long rambling messages which I have to listen to or face the penalty."
Skeptics have throwing out a variety of reasons that open-access journals like PLoS will never work. One of those reasons is that traditional print journals have a lot of prestige, just based on their centuries of momentum. Scientists won't want to publish in upstart open-access journals, according to this argument, because nobody will take their publications seriously. Well, this scandal would seem to show that you can't trust a journal just because it comes from a centuries-old publishing house.
In my experience, the prestige is based on journal titles, not publisher. No one respects publications because they're carried by elsevier, they respect them because of the journal title. Not sure if nature is elsevier, but if it came out that 90% of elsevier's publications were fraud like this, researchers would still reguard Nature highly and want to publish in it.
So no, this doesn't elevate open-access journals because it doesn't knock down the established journals.
Science is like an Easter egg hunt where there are too many kids and not enough eggs. Everybody is trying to pad their c.v. with as many papers as possible, in order to land one of those prized research jobs. Because of this, there's been a huge proliferation of small, specialized, low-quality, expensive journals, and that's been creating a lot of problems for librarians.
Well, I feel a little sorry for those librarians, but the other thing, the padding the CV, is one reason why employers, tenure comittees, and researchers value the higher-impact journals, and why open-access journals are going to take a while. The researchers who run the academic research system aren't yet used to thinking of open-access journals as being just as respectable as the older journals, the value system to sort out someone who has published all fluff based on journals published in will continue for at least another generation of scientists.
Schools should also eliminate their weaker graduate programs, e.g., if Cal State Fresno (hypothetically) has a graduate program in Italian, but it's not in the top 100 Italian programs in the U.S., maybe they should just cut it; it's not doing anyone any good for them to be handing out some tiny number of master's degrees and pretending that their faculty are doing high-powered research.
What would that solve? It might cut down on the education creep (ie a graduate degree is becoming the equivalent of a college degree a decade ago) but that's not a huge problem, and closing a program means any good researchers in the program have problems. There is actually good research coming out of graduate programs that on average are pretty mediocre.
I have a bad feeling that, as people start poking around, even more stories like this are going to be uncovered. Sure, Elsevier is admitting to six fake journals. What's the over/under for it being 20?
Noticing a pattern here, I'd doubt, at a minimum, anything elsevier publishes with "Australasian" in the title
Which is of course not to say that it's a codeword for "this journal is crap" and that every crap journal has it, just that's where I'd start.
Reminds me of The Princess Bride
"Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you."
I can't count the number of people complaining about lost exclusives and lack of obtaining them
Can't count them but I'd estimate their number to be less than 5% of people who are annoyed by exclusives. You have to be REALLY into the pointless console wars to crow that people like you who bought console A get to play a game before people who bought console B. Most gamers actually aren't.
The problem is that those people who are dumb enough to like it when they can play it and the other console cant, are also people who don't know when to shut up, or actually don't care but are trolling. People who don't like exclusives on the other hand generally realize most people feel the same.
For 150 dollars an hour, a lawyer will never tell you any idea of yours is bad, even if it's suing McDonalds because your hot coffee is (gasp!) HOT, and should not have been poured all over your crotch.
Considering she got a settlement out of it (as opposed to just a burned lap) to cover her medical expenses, not really a bad idea, is it? You might feel it's undeserved, but the case itself wasn't a bad idea.