by Heather Zeiger | Jul 21, 2015 | Ethics, Science
Watchdog websites like Retraction Watch are not going out of business any time soon. It seems like there has been an uptick in the number of retractions in the peer-reviewed literature recently. Some have been high profile blunders, like the STAP stem cells case,...
by Heather Zeiger | Jun 4, 2015 | Salvo, Science, Technology
In my latest blog post at Salvo’s Signs of the Times I comment on the recently published research out of Nature that says scientists are very close to making a yeast strain that will convert glucose into morphine.
by Heather Zeiger | May 18, 2015 | Book Review, Ethics, Human Dignity, Science, Society
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Broadway Books, 2010 It was a time when donated blood was labeled “colored.” Hospitals were segregated. Consent laws were in flux, and cellular biology was a growing field. It was during this time that...
by Heather Zeiger | May 2, 2015 | Ethics, Human Dignity, Science, Technology, Uncategorized
Genetically modifying adult cells is one thing. Genetically modifying an embryo is another. Why the difference? This fundamental difference is what has many scientists in an uproar over research out of China in which scientists genetically edited a human embryo....
by Heather Zeiger | Apr 3, 2015 | Science, Society, Technology
What is artificial intelligence? It turns out there is a bit of a debate over what exactly defines “intelligence” and how we can know if something is artificially intelligent. There are some people who think that we have already achieved AI, citing Google’s algorithms...
by Heather Zeiger | Feb 24, 2015 | Science
Last week’s Nature was devoted to the results of the NIH’s Roadmap Epigenetics Project, marking the conclusion of this eight-year endeavor to investigate the “stuff” around (i.e., epi-) DNA that tells the genome what to do. I have used the analogy in the past that...
