As I write this, British multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is conducting a study in my backyard. No, there are no lab-coat-clad scientists bagging petunias in my garden. I don’t have a garden, much less a backyard. (And, for what it’s worth, I think “Bagging Petunias” would be an awesome band name) By backyard, I mean … Continue reading
As medical research pushes back the veil on the causes of certain well-known diseases, we are sometimes surprised at the unlikely culprits. It sounds obvious today, for instance, that cigarette smoking can cause lung cancer: one can easily picture the smoke snaking down to the lungs and leaving a nasty deposit. Sometimes, however, the connection … Continue reading
-omics: this bugger is tough to adequately describe. In short, it represents all the fields of study in biology that concern themselves with every molecule of a certain type. For instance, the field of “genomics” will look at the entire genome and not at individual genes. The field of “proteomics” will study every protein in, … Continue reading
Dr. Ioannidis is a hero of mine. In fact, he’s a hero of many a scientist who has found him- or herself shaking their heads upon finding out how the contemporary scientific establishment functions. He came to Montreal in October to give a public science talk on the lack of reproducibility in the scientific literature. … Continue reading
Imagine doing a science experiment in an interrogation room while facing a two-way mirror. The people on the other side know who you are, but you have no idea who is judging you. This, in a nutshell, is how scientific articles have traditionally been reviewed in the fields of molecular biology and genetics prior to … Continue reading
If you are wide awake as I post this, you may enjoy watching this short 2-minute news report on a compound that seems to help influence fish’s circadian clocks. The video is available here. What are they calling this molecule? Yes. Scientists are human, too. Maybe the person who named it was jet-lagged…. (This video … Continue reading
Molecular Biology: a field of science concerned with the way in which the molecules of life (DNA, RNA, and proteins for the most part) interact, regulate each other, and are modified within a cell. Not merely a subject but also a toolkit of techniques to gather information about biomolecules: the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), blotting, … Continue reading
So, I’ve been experiencing gay thoughts for the past few months, but I’ve heard of this thing called “conversion therapy”. Does it really work? Can they make me straight again? “Conversion therapy”, also known as “reparative therapy”, does not work and is certainly not science. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association condemns treatments of the … Continue reading
Warning: Not for the general public. I make an exception to my usual rule of writing to the curious lay public for this supplement. I recently wrote about the use of mitochondrial DNA (or mtDNA) in identifying bodies more than a decade old. While researching the topic, I found a lot of seemingly contradictory information … Continue reading
I was going to write about how World-War-II-era soldiers that went missing in action can be identified today using DNA technology. Since I am waiting on a bit of fact checking to come through, and since an interesting article landed in my mailbox today, I thought I’d take the opportunity to fill the void with … Continue reading
Cracked Science 
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