Image Manipulation=Bad

While the vast majority (99%) of science articles are honest, sometimes, as in the case of the recent human stem cell controversy in South Korea, fraudulent data sees the light of day. The peer review system, in which articles submitted to scientific journal are read by other scientists prior to publication, works very well, but sometimes researchers can inappropriately manipulate image data with Adobe Photoshop. As anyone who ever "photoshopped" their friend into a group picture knows, it is pretty easy to change a picture. Scientists are allowed to change, for example, the brightness and contrast of an image, so long as the entire image is changed equally. However, sometimes even scientists can get a little carried away and change pictures in inappropriate ways, either inadvertently or advertently. This article has a nice explanation of the issue, and certainly raised my eyebrows a little bit.

Journal of Cell Biology link

Stem Cell Researcher Interview

As you may know, the federal government has banned the use of federal funds to support human embryonic stem cell research. There is an interesting article in today's New York Times about the practical issues surrounding the boundary between publicly and privately supported research. The reporter interviewed Dr. Douglas Melton, Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. The article also raises interesting personal issues, as Dr. Melton has children who may benefit someday from stem cell therapies.

Link to Harvard Stem Cell Institute

Dogs can smell cancer

Dogs can smell 10,000-100,000 times better than we can, a feature that can be of great use (police dogs that can find explosives) or not, as when taking a dog for a walk. Researchers have known for many years that cancer cells emit volatile compunds that normal cells do not, and anecdotal evidence suggested that dogs can detect skin cancer. To test this idea, researchers trained dogs to sit next to breath samples from patients with lung or breast cancer, but ignore breath samples from unaffected patients. The dogs make the correct choice 99% of the time using samples from lung cancer patients, and 88% of the time using breast cancer patient breath. Previous studies showed that dogs may be able to detect specific compounds in the urine of patients with prostate cancer. These detection rates are much greater than currently available technologies. This finding, if developed further, may lead to new early detection strategies.
NYTimes (free subscription required)
National Geographic
CBS News

Welcome to Cell Bio in the News @ the University of Richmond

Hi. This is the blog posting site for Biology 205, Cell and Molecular Biology, Spring 2006. I'm the faculty member teaching this section of the course. Students and I will post brief descriptions of interesting science articles related to cell biology. Please feel free to post comments. Thanks.