‘Scientist’ jailed for faking results

BBC report about scientist jailed for faking results. Steven Eaton from Cambridgeshire was convicted in March 2013 under the 1999 Good Laboratory Practice Regulations. The court heard that while working at the Edinburgh branch of US based pharmaceutical firm Aptuit in 2009, Mr Eaton manipulated experimental results, so that a drug would proceed to human trails.

Mr Eaton was convicted by Sheriff Michael O’Grady QC, and received the maximum possible sentence of three months, the Sheriff said his powers were inadequate for this case, and a longer sentence would be justified. Mr Eaton’s defence lawyer, claimed his client did not benefit financially from the fraud, as he was only making £35,000 per year.

Mr Eaton was reported by his employers after they became suspicious and reported him to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

Story with generic science pictures can be found also at these sites:

 

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/221777-steven-eaton-faked-research-data-for-experimental-anti-cancer-drug/

http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/top-stories/scientist-jailed-for-faking-research-data-1-2898750

Satellite to crash

Lumps of a US satellite are due to hit somewhere in Nothern Hemisphere. Chance of someone being hit are estimated as 1/3200. The satellite was launched to measure upper atmosphere climate, like the weather balloons used by UK scientists who discoved the Ozone hole. Don’t worry the satellite won’t hit the US, NASA say. They can’t say were it will land, but they can make sure it isn’t USA. It is expected to make reentry on friday night or saturday morning.

The satellite is the biggest “mission to earth” satellite ever launched, or planned to be launched.

Most of the six tonne satellite is aluminium and expected to vaporise on re-entry, but about 1 tonne of the satellite is made from steel and titanium alloys which are expected to survive.

Nasa mission page:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/uars/index.html

Science on trial?

BBC report on Italy scientists on trial over L’Aquila earthquake. Alfredo Biondi the lawyer of Mr Eva, Alfredo Biondi, said the trial was not credible, “This is a trial which opens on very shaky foundations. You cannot put science on trial.

Surely this is exactly wrong, if something can’t be tested/trialled then how can it be science?

Most importantly it isn’t science which is on trial but some scientists.

Who is on trial?

• Franco Barberi, head of Serious Risks Commission
• Enzo Boschi, former president of the National Institute of Geophysics
• Giulio Selvaggi, director of the National Earthquake Centre
• Gian Michele Calvi, director of European Centre for Earthquake Engineering
• Claudio Eva, physicist
• Mauro Dolce, director of the the Civil Protection Agency’s earthquake risk office
• Bernardo De Bernardinis, former vice-president of the Civil Protection Agency’s technical department

It is alleged that statements made by an advisory committee, that small quakes are not necessarily a precursor to a large quake, resulted in people failing to take precautionary action of staying outside, and lead to 309 deaths.

Hawking warns about alien contact

Stephen Hawking says although life almost certainly exists elsewhere, we should not attempt to actively initiate contact with extra–terrestrial life forms. As Jared Diamond has pointed out before, historical evidence of encounters between humans, and biological evidence of contacts of different groups of animals, shows it always goes badly for the native population, often resulting in extinction of species, or subjugation and slavery amongst humans.

Unfortunately for us, at least one group is scientists have taken it up on themselves to try to make earth orders of magnitude more visible in the galaxy. Their rational is that all advanced lifeforms (capable of inter-stellar travel) would be altruistic.

A nice discussion of this topic can be read here:
http://lifeboat.com/ex/shouting.at.the.cosmos

And an editorial in Nature discussed this in 2006:
http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/nature06.pdf

Indian Roads

BBC news is carry a story about the dangerous driving in India. 100,000 people killed on the roads per year (2006).

The BBC is following Prof. Bhadeshia who reported about this after his visit to india in 2007.

Movie 1

Movie 2

Movie 3

Movie 4

Movies of the traffic courtesy of Professor David Matlock, Colorado School of Mines. Hosted by Professor Bhadeshia at link above.