by Heather Zeiger | Jan 28, 2016 | Ethics, Science, Society
The recent issue of Scientific American has an article by Carl Erik Fisher, a psychiatrist and bioethics professor at Columbia University, in which he explores whether behavioral addictions are mental illnesses or just bad habits. His article, “Food, sex, gambling,...
by Heather Zeiger | Oct 1, 2015 | Clinical Trials, Ethics, Technology
Current laws about federally funded human subject research were last updated in 1991. Since then, the Human Genome Project was completed, and an entire field, known as epigenetics, has arisen from this. Just recently, a new robust gene-editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9, blew...
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 | Dec 19, 2014 | Ethics, Science
One of the tricky things about science writing is news cycles move quickly while research moves slowly. Research in the biomedical and health fields rarely involves one, big, “Eureka!” moment. Usually it starts with “hey that’s an interesting correlation we found,”...
