Scientists caught cheating
This year’s annual report of the Committee on Publishing Ethics was released this week. It documents the cases of misconduct in scientific research from a number of medical journals during 2003, 29 in total. Scientists were caught copying other people’s work, lying about their numbers, bribing journal editors, and carrying out unethical practices. Researchers of one study on secondhand smoke failed to report that they had received funding from tobacco companies. Several medical researchers didn’t get ethical clearance for their studies, including one experiment that involved drawing blood from babies. The committee wants to formalize a code of conduct for all these journals to sign.
-Zoe Cormier
Source: Nature
DNA enriched sunscreen
Researchers are developing a new sunscreen containing DNA fragments that could help fight skin cancer. The DNA fragments code for the proteins that the cell uses to repair DNA. When the DNA gets into skin cells, these proteins are made from the DNA and the cell checks its own DNA for any errors. This could prevent cancer, because skin tumours grow when a cell’s DNA is damaged by UV light. Studies on mice with the sunscreen have so far shown “surprising” effectiveness.
-ZC
Source: Nature
Evolution of the penis
A new study may shed some light on the evolution-and perfection-of the penis. In armadillos, the penis has two sheaths of fibrous tissue-one that runs along the penis and one that wraps around the penis perpendicularly. When the penis is full of blood, these two sheaths can’t stretch past a certain level, giving the penis its ideal rigidity. Turtles have instead multiple layers of fibers, like plywood. This makes the reptile penis even stronger than the mammalian one, for unknown reasons. The penises of mammals and reptiles evolved independently, but they still arrived at the same basic structure, suggesting that the organ is pretty much ideally designed.
-ZC
Source: Biology Letters
