February 13, 2024
(Quanta) – Two years ago, in a project called the Beyond the Imitation Game benchmark, or BIG-bench, 450 researchers compiled a list of 204 tasks designed to test the capabilities of large language models, which power chatbots like ChatGPT. On … Read More
February 12, 2024
(NBC News) – Last summer, the Food and Drug Administration denied an application for a new antifungal drug called olorofim, sending it back to the company with a request for more data. If approved, it would have been the first … Read More
February 7, 2024
(ABC News) – A medical journal has retracted two studies claiming to show the harms of the abortion pill mifepristone, citing conflicts of interest by the authors and flaws in their research. Two of the three studies retracted by medical … Read More
February 7, 2024
(Nature) – The trial is not registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, an online repository curated by the US National Institutes of Health. Many universities require that researchers register a trial and its protocol in a public repository of this type before study … Read More
February 5, 2024
(The Guardian) – Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised … Read More
February 5, 2024
February 2, 2024
(Nature) – A row over a building once used by chemist Marie Sk?odowska-Curie has been resolved following negotiations between the French culture ministry and a group of scientists who want to demolish the site to build a leading cancer-research centre. … Read More
February 2, 2024
February 1, 2024
(TIME) – Receiving an implant comes with risks. Some are typical surgical risks—such as excessive bleeding or infection. Others are unique. For example, the brain simulation that BCIs entail can triggerepileptiform activity, a precursor for epilepsy, or epileptic attacks. (Neuralink … Read More
February 1, 2024
(Slate) – After I had had several therapy sessions and practiced a lot of self-care, the guilt, panic attacks, and intrusive images around Alice’s death lessened. It’s been over a decade since that terrible day. But healing isn’t linear. On … Read More
January 31, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – 23andMe went public in 2021 and its valuation briefly topped $6 billion. Forbes anointed Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s chief executive and a Silicon Valley celebrity, as the “newest self-made billionaire.” Now Wojcicki’s self-made billions have vanished. 23andMe’s … Read More
January 31, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Elon Musk wants to augment perfectly healthy people with brain chips so the human race can keep up with artificial intelligence. That’s how he’s described the ultimate aims of his brain-computer interface company, Neuralink. It will … Read More
January 31, 2024
January 30, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Elon Musk said that the first human received a Neuralink brain implant, a potential milestone in the development of “brain-computer interface” technology that could one day help those suffering from debilitating conditions such as paralysis to … Read More
January 30, 2024
January 29, 2024
(Associated Press) – Allegations of research fakery at a leading cancer center have turned a spotlight on scientific integrity and the amateur sleuths uncovering image manipulation in published research. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, announced Jan. 22 … Read More
January 29, 2024
(RAND) – A complex, high-threat landscape is emerging in which future wars might be fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts; the military-industrial base is disturbed by synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues; and the future warfighter goes beyond … Read More
January 26, 2024
(Reuters via Yahoo! News) – Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink was fined for violating U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) rules regarding the movement of hazardous materials, according to records from the federal agency reviewed by Reuters. (Read More)
January 26, 2024
January 25, 2024
(Science) – Over the past decade, a team of scientific sleuths uncovered one of the most extensive known bodies of faked research. They notified 78 journals about almost 300 papers by a pair of Japanese physicians that bore signs of … Read More
January 24, 2024
(Nature) – Moreau and a few other researchers have alerted publishers to 96 papers over the past half-decade, and raised questions about genetic databases that hold data from minority ethnic groups. Ethical concerns are particularly acute in forensic science because … Read More
January 24, 2024
January 23, 2024
(CNN) – Testing a person’s blood for a type of protein called phosphorylated tau, or p-tau, could be used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease with “high accuracy,” even before symptoms begin to show, a new study suggests. The study involved … Read More
January 22, 2024
(NPR) – Back then, says Handley, the elders in the community had made a request that’s almost never demanded of researchers: “They said, ‘We will only allow this if you promise to return and tell us what it is that … Read More
January 22, 2024
(Knowable Magazine) – The fact that warfarin is riskier in some populations than others isn’t a surprise. Different geographic regions tend to host people with slightly different genetic makeups, and sometimes those genetic differences lead to radically different reactions to … Read More
