Author: engeladmin

What should be done to tackle ghostwriting in the medical literature?

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Author: Gotzsche, PC; Kassirer, JP; Woolley, KL; Wager, E; Jacobs, A; Gertel, A; Hamilton, C Description: Ghostwriting occurs when someone makes substantial contributions to a manuscript without attribution or disclosure. It is considered bad publication practice in the medical sciences, and some argue it is scientific misconduct. At its extreme, medical ghostwriting involves pharmaceutical companies hiring professional writers to produce papers promoting their products but hiding those contributions and instead naming academic physicians or scientists as the authors. To improve transparency, many editors’ associations and journals allow professional medical writers…

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Cleaning the scientific house: Rebuilding trust in science requires confronting the harms of ghostwriting

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Author: Oreskes, N Description: “Consider the problem of ghostwriting in science. Recently, a colleague and I published a paper analyzing the impacts of a peer-reviewed paper, published in 2000, that purported to be an independent, objective, and comprehensive review of the safety of the pesticide, glyphosate. The paper found no convincing evidence for toxicity, genotoxicity, carcinogenicity, or endocrine disruption. However, documents made public through legal proceedings in 2017 showed that the paper was not, in fact, independent, but had been conceptualized and largely written by Monsanto employees. We wanted to…

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Good habits, bad habits

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Author: Graybiel, AM; Smith, KS Description: Every day we all engage in a surprising number of habitual behaviors. Many of them, from brushing our teeth to driving a familiar route, simply allow us to do certain things on autopilot so that our brains are not overtaxed by concentrating on each brushstroke and countless tiny adjustments of the steering wheel. Other habits, such as jogging, may help keep us healthy. Regularly popping treats from the candy dish may not. And habits that wander into the territory of compulsions or addictions, such…

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Is artificial intelligence a good servant but a bad master?

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Author: Lakhtakia, Akhlesh; Lakhtakia, Natalya S. Description: Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly moving from a specialized research topic into a widely deployed general-purpose technology, driven by advances in transformer-based architectures, convincing enough productivity gains, large private investment, geopolitical competition, and expanding educational adoption. AI comprises two distinct sets of methodologies: (i) predictive AI, which is grounded in statistical inference and aims to model measurable physical reality, and (ii) generative AI, which produces plausible synthetic content without intrinsic verification against physical reality. Whereas predictive AI can strengthen human decision-making through rigorously…

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The Dark Side of AI: A Human and Societal Perspective

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Author: Shafik, Wasswa Description: This book addresses how the growth of AI could undermine fundamental human values such as privacy, security, employment, and democracy. It emphasizes the critical challenges that arise when artificial intelligence technologies operate without proper ethical oversight or regulation. Key topics include AI’s potential for surveillance, the manipulation of media through deepfakes, autonomous weapons, and job displacement, as well as the growing concerns around algorithmic biases that may perpetuate social inequalities and harm marginalized communities. It offers insights into how AI can be integrated into society responsibly,…

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A Comparison of Frugivory and Scatter-Hoarding Seed-Dispersal Syndromes

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Author: Vander Wall, Stephen B.; Beck, Maurie J. Description: Frugivory (animals ingest all or part of fleshy-fruits and defecate or regurgitate seeds) and scatter-hoarding (animals store seeds in small caches in soil) are two important vertebrate-mediated seed dispersal syndromes. In both instances, there is an exchange of food for seed transport, but there are many important differences. For example, the seeds of frugivore-dispersed plants are often clumped in feces or under roosts and the microsite of depostion is often unsuitable for seedling establishment. However, frugivores can transport seeds long distances…

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Community-level assisted migration for climate-appropriate prairie restoration

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Author: McKone, Mark J.; Hernandez, Daniel L. Description: Climate change threatens the long-term survival of highly fragmented habitats such as North American tallgrass prairie. De novo plantings into former agricultural sites can contribute to efforts to conserve prairie biodiversity, but past planting practice (including our own) has focused on the use of local species and genotypes. Climate change makes this “local-only” practice obsolete because of rapidly shifting species’ ranges. We propose that new prairie plantings incorporate assisted migration at the community level; all species and genotypes that are viable in…

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Predicting species’ maximum dispersal distances from simple plant traits

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Author: Tamme, R; Gotzenberger, L; Zobel, M; Bullock, JM; Hooftman, DA; Kaasik, A; Partel, M Description: Many studies have shown plant species’ dispersal distances to be strongly related to life-history traits, but how well different traits can predict dispersal distances is not yet known. We used cross-validation techniques and a global data set (576 plant species) to measure the predictive power of simple plant traits to estimate species’ maximum dispersal distances. Including dispersal syndrome (wind, animal, ant, ballistic, and no special syndrome), growth form (tree, shrub, herb), seed mass, seed…

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A review of oxycodone’s clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics

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Author: Poyhia, R; Vainio, A; Kalso, E Description: Oxycodone (14-hydroxy-7,8-dihydrocodeinone) is a strong opioid agonist that is available alone or in combination with mild analgesics. It is suitable for oral administration due to high bioavailability (60%), and may also be given intramuscularly, intravenously, subcutaneously, and rectally; it is not recommended for spinal administration. In analgesic potency, oxycodone is comparable to morphine. With the exception of hallucinations, which may occur more rarely after oxycodone than after morphine, the side effects of these drugs are closely related. The abuse potential of oxycodone…

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Pair-housing of male and female rats during chronic stress exposure results in gender-specific behavioral responses

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Author: Westenbroek, C; Snijders, TA; den Boer, JA; Gerrits, M; Fokkema, DS; Ter Horst, GJ Description: Social support has a positive influence on the course of a depression and social housing of rats could provide an animal model for studying the neurobiological mechanisms of social support. Male and female rats were subjected to chronic footshock stress for 3 weeks and pair-housing of rats was used to mimic social support. Rats were isolated or housed with a partner of the opposite sex. A plastic tube was placed in each cage and…

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