The n-Category Café

Thanks for the link to The origin of Life. Thermodynamics and life science is a proud tradition dating back to D’Arcy Thompson (On Growth and Form) and Schrodinger (What is Life?). I’ve done some work here you might find interesting. link

RNA world is a hypothesis with working experiments that actualy make RNA molecules reproduce, evolve and compete, with evolving strategies, for resources like living life. See tha works of Gerald F. Joyce and collaborators, some summaries of their recent research 1,2, 3, 4 The article on RNA species evolving competing strategies can be freely accessed at PNAS.

Does the methabolic origin for life model have also a nice working experimental model?

Via Peter Suber comes word that Elsevier published fourteen other dubious Australasian Journals in various medical fields.

The story of science publishing sometimes sounds like the Abridged History of Russia: “Somehow, it got worse.”

Doctor not told about Vioxx ‘role’

From the article:

PHARMACEUTICAL giant Merck & Co named an Australian arthritis expert as an editorial board member of the phoney medical journal it used to promote its drug Vioxx without even telling him.

The Federal Court yesterday heard James Bertouch, a chairman of rheumatology at Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital and Merck’s first witness called to defend a class action, was shocked to see his name on the Merck-sponsored journal, which the company tried to pass off as an independent publication.

Thanks for the link to Ben Goldacre’s post, Blake and Tom.

Merck sounds bloody awful:

The first fun thing to come out in the Australian one is email documentation showing that staff at Merck made a “hit list” of doctors who were critical of the company, or of the drug. This list had words like “neutralise”, “neutralised” and “discredit” next to the names of various doctors. “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,” said one email, from a Merck employee.

I was lucky enough to go to a few lectures by Eric Smith at a school on complex systems. He’s an excellent speaker and the subject is fascinating. Interestingly he started his career in high energy physics and worked on string theory for a while. See his CV. He’s well worth looking out for.

Would a publisher accept a completely nonsensical manuscript if the authors were willing to pay Open Access publication charges? Philip Davis decided to find out.

There are Physics Foibles. Can you name some?

Numbers are the Supreme Court of science. However Godel proved that we may not prove everything using numbers. Physics needs numbers. There must be Physics Foibles. Always more to prove.