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This week’s news includes postdoc protests, evidence that cell phones affect the brain, Japanese university unrest, thoughts on the limited half-life of scientific findings, questionable Novartis promotions, and microworms that monitor blood sugar.

Protest supports fired postdoc

Last Wednesday, more than thirty protestors gathered outside the office of University of California, San Diego, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox to show their support for recently fired postdoc Wilda Helen. Specifically, the protestors were asking Fox to expedite the appeal process to which Helen is entitled, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Because Helen is a citizen of Indonesia, her visa will be expire as a result of her termination — the reason for which is unclear — and she was required to leave the country by yesterday (27th February). Thus, she will not be able to directly participate in the appeal. “She will be at a significant disadvantage in terms of reviewing documents, conferring with us and facing her accusers,” Christine Petit, a UAW representative, told the newspaper. (Hat tip to ScienceInsider)

Cell phones affect the brain

A word of warning to those creepy, mobile phone-wielding babies in the TV ads for an online investment service: Radiation from cell phones really can affect your brain, though whether or not it causes brain damage remains to be seen. According to a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, brain regions near a phone’s antenna use 7 percent more energy than normal, likely a result of the ultra-high-frequency radio waves necessary to send and receive signals. “We have no idea what this means yet or how it works,” neuroscientist Nora Volkow of the National Institutes of Health told Wired. “But this is the first reliable study showing the brain is activated by exposure to cellphone radio frequencies.”

Japanese university unrest

Faculty at Tohoku University in Japan are unhappy with the school’s handling of an investigation into papers authored by the university’s president, materials scientist Akihisa Inoue. The inquiry was sparked more than 3 years ago when several researchers pointed out inconsistencies in the results reported in four papers on metallic glass substances published throughout the 1990s. A university committee evaluated the claims and concluded that there were “no rational grounds” for a full investigation, and that perhaps the criticisms of the papers were motivated by “malice,” according to Nature. But many faculty members were left unsatisfied by the initial investigation, and have since questioned committee’s decision, as well as its composition, bringing the university’s policies for handling such allegations under scrutiny.

Dwindling results and unpublished findings

Many scientific findings seem to lose their robustness the more times they are tested. Known as the “decline effect,” the phenomenon’s root causes may lie in the countless numbers of negative results that go unpublished because they don’t show any interesting correlations or effects. While he cannot be sure until such negative results are made public, Jonathan Schooler of the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that an open-access repository for such findings, along with the published positive ones, “would reveal how published studies fit into the larger set of conducted studies, and would help to answer many questions about the decline effect,” he wrote in Nature.

Novartis paid for positive blog reviews

After Novartis released WheresFlu, a smartphone app that tracks the spread of the flu, dozens of blogs about home and family (known as mommy blogs) started posting glowing reviews of its functionality and utility despite the fact that “the data on it was plainly contradictory and the thing had virtually no functionality after you inputted your zip code,” according to online business magazine BNET. It turns out that the praising blogs are sponsored by the pharmaceutical company, and each review finishes with a small disclaimer about its sponsorship. While pharma-sponsored promotions may seem unethical to some, founder of MomTrends blogs Nicole Feliciano disagrees. “Some may view sponsored posts as selling out,” she responded to BNET. “We don’t. We think well-executed posts have a place in our community.”

Monitoring microworms

Measuring such things as sodium or glucose levels in the blood in real-time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, could soon become a reality thanks to new technology. Known as “microworms,” the tube-like particles stay in close contact with blood or tissue to accurately monitor nearby chemical changes and provide a readout by fluorescing a color through the skin, according to MIT News. The worms may one day prove useful to diabetics, for example, by monitoring their blood sugar without having to prick their fingers or tote around bulky monitoring equipment. (Hat tip to FierceBiotech)

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