Posted by rpg on 2 November, 2009
As you might know, there’s a bit of an ongoing furore over government policy and the role of advisors. In brief, Professor David Nutt has been fired for advising HM Government according to scientific research, rather than (as far as I understand it) according to political dogma. Two other advisors have quit in sympathy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more follow.
We’re keeping an eye on this at f1000 because Professor Nutt is one of our Section Heads, responsible for the organization and oversight of the Section (in this case Substance Abuse at f1000 Medicine). Our take in the office is that David Nutt is 100% right and the government is 100% wrong in this case, and things are going to get very interesting because of a growing breach between government policies and scientific evidence. We’re not getting party political here, but recent US history shows us how bad things can get when policy gets out of step with evidence.
I could say a lot more, but I’m about to go and prepare to get on a ‘plane for a conference in South Carolina. Fortunately two of my favourite haunts already have excellent commentary on the matter: Erika Cule at Nature Network has some core links and background, and Bill Hanage froths at the mouth in a funny and intelligent way over at the LabLit blog.
And now, I must fly. Be good!
Posted in FMs | Tagged: David Nutt, policy | 1 Comment »
Posted by stevepog on 2 November, 2009
Richard has previously mentioned some of the conferences he attends and speaks at to spread the word about F1000. One of the upcoming events on the calendar that we’re excited about is ScienceOnline2010.
If you were one of the 226 people who signed up before registration closed, there’s an amazing program now up on the website and and some great-looking workshops. It’s a shame the organisers couldn’t fit more people into the attendance list: a cross-section of the speakers includes a who’s who of Twittering scientists and some online pioneers .
On a different note, anyone who has looked at our Youtube channel lately will have noticed the abundance of videos from the Society for Neuroscience and also the varying quality of the more recently added films. Adobe Premiere Pro was working fine for our video editing guru but then decided to churn out video formats that Youtube can’t handle and switching to the less favourable 3gp format was the only option for a few of the clips.
So if you watch Svenja Caspars’ discussion of her research into the “connectivity pattern of the human inferior parietal lobule by means of diffusion tensor imaging” on anything bigger than an iPhone screen, the quality will be disappointing. We’re working on this and hope to have formatting issues sorted for when Richard and Tom return next week with fresh footage in hand from the 29th Annual Charleston Conference in South Carolina. See, the Carolinas gets two visits from us in three months!
*Just because we like you, here’s a sneak preview of a F1000 Medicine Report on a new, less-invasive technique for abdominal surgery:
Michael Shaefer’s report on NOTES
Posted in Conferences | Tagged: conference, scienceonline | 1 Comment »
rpg
stevepog
Callum Anderson
