Category Archives: science

Um, Nature – not all flies are Drosophila

By Michael Eisen | Published: June 22, 2009

Nature Method‘s June 2009 issue focuses on “Tools for Drosophila“, complete with a cute little fly on the cover. Unfortunately, it’s not a Drosophila. Instead, it’s a stock photo of a housefly they got from some online database. You’d figure Nature, of all places, would have some Drosophila images lying around?

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2009 Grand Prize Winner for most egregious use of “junk DNA”

By Michael Eisen | Published: May 20, 2009

Research team finds important role for junk DNA by Kitta MacPherson Scientists have called it “junk DNA.” They have long been perplexed by these extensive strands of genetic material that dominate the genome but seem to lack specific functions. Why would nature force the genome to carry so much excess baggage? […] http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/index.xml?section=topstories

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Unfortunate lack of links in the NY Times

By Michael Eisen | Published: May 19, 2009

I get very frustrated every time I see an article about a PLoS article in the popular press that doesn’t include a link to the article. One of our motivations for starting PLoS was to give the public access to the primary research literature, and readers of popular news accounts of one of our articles […]

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Ban the phrase “spatio-temporal”

By Michael Eisen | Published: May 1, 2009

Every time I read, hear or write the phrase “spatio-temporal” I cringe. It’s used frequently in developmental biology to convey the idea of measuring or studying something over both space and time. But it is an unusually awkward phrase, being an ugly sounding and looking hyphenation of a prefix “spatio” and adjective “temporal” that are […]

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[WARNING – BSG SPOILER] PopGen’s teachable moment – Hera, mtEve and the fate of the BSG survivors

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 21, 2009

I just finished watching the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. You could see for a while that it was going to turn out that we were all descendants of the survivors, but I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t see the Hera – mitochondrial eve connection until the raptor swooped over the plains of east […]

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NIH public access policy made “permanent”

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 13, 2009

The consolidated appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed into law on Wednesday has a provision that makes the NIH public access policy permanent: [Via THOMAS] Sec. 217. The Director of the National Institutes of Health (`NIH’) shall require in the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or […]

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Why I hate bioethicists

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 9, 2009

Yuval Levin, former Executive Director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has an op-ed in Tuesday’s Washington Post arguing that Obama’s new stem cell policy is dangerous. Levin does not argue that stem cell research is bad. Rather he is upset that Obama did not dictate which uses of stem cells are appropriate, but rather asked […]

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Regulatin’ Genes

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 9, 2009

Via John Tierney, this video about development is awesome:

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Response to Conyers on Huff Po Front Page

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 9, 2009

I tightened up my earlier response to John Conyers’ letter, and it’s now on the Huffington Post front page.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-eisen/john-conyers-tries-and-fa_b_172944.html

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John Conyers Tries [and Fails] to Explain His Position

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 7, 2009

Lawrence Lessig and I have been writing about the link between publisher contributions to members of the House Judiciary committee and their support for H.R. 801 – a bill that would end the newly implemented NIH public access policy that makes all works published as part of NIH funded research freely available to the public online. On Friday, […]

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