Ethical Thought

Just because your country supports the human rights iniatives dos not mean that you will be healthier.  Take a look at this blog about it and the link to the lancet article.

Here is an interesting link to an article about researchers looking at human behavior in an unexpected virtual epidemic in the online game World of Warcraft.  It leads to questions about the suitability of using these worlds for future planned research.

Click here to learn more about how the online plague happened by accident.

Corruption appears to be rampant in the education area according to a Unesco report. (BBC article) Millions of dollars are lost to fraud each year.  They call for more regulatory oversight to improve the situation.

Wow, almost a year.   Thank you to all of you who have remained devoted followers of this Blog.  I am open to suggestions and commets drop me a line if you have a comment or suggestion!

I do not know if this kind of problem is more prevalent know or if the public is simply more conscious now and we are looking more closely on these relationships.  I believe it is the latter.  I believe this because I do not think that we are any more unethical now than in the past and in fact a significant amount of approved research has been done with public private partnerships.  I cannot speak to the specifics of the particular cases mentioned but here they are anyway.

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are the committees in Hospitals and Medical Centers that review research for ethics considerations. NEJM has reported that in a number of these committees there may be a financial connection between the reviewers and the companies sponsoring research. They called for the composition of the committees to be reviewed. This is good advice. Membership on these committees should continually be reviewed for many different reasons. Financial relationships, personal relationships and just time commitments. The financial ties discussed might, or might not, be significant but keeping an eye on research ethics is always a good idea.

NASA the US space agency has announced plans for a moon base by 2020! This is an interesting development that I will be following closely. i wonder if they will be wearing anything knitted?

Are you interested in the Culture of Obesity? Have you always wanted to major in an unusual field? Here is your Chance according to a New York Times Article.

( I am stealing this from Janna  – and MLA, the other one, is my organization too)

Janna says:

Scott Eric Kaufman is conducting research to be presented at a conference (MLA — coincidentally, my professional organization is a different MLA). Anyway, Scott is trying to measure the speed of a meme. Here’s how we can all do our part from meme/blog science:

• Write a post linking to Scott in which you explain the experiment. (All blogs count, be they TypePad, Blogger, MySpace, Facebook, etc.)

• Ask your readers to do the same. Beg them. Relate sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances.

• Ping Technorati. (For all those wondering how to ping Technorati, if you follow the link, this will take you to a form where you can enter your home page URL, which will have the effect of causing Technorati to come have a look at what you’ve been up to…)

It’s easy! You can copy my post! And knitbloggers will be a part of academic research!

Ancient Computer or Ancient Computer
These are the remains of an ancient computer that was on board a ship that sank in the first century BCE.  It was a hand cranked object that tracked astronomical events.  The amazing parts of this are the accuracy of the machine, within an hour over a period of years, and the intricacy of the machinery used in crafting this piece.  It reminds us that we might not be as advanced as we think