Discussing the public perspective on science is fine. It's waning, why? That's a good question. But that's not the point here.

Talking about how scientists get "good" data is also a great topic, statistics, error bars, how we come by those numbers. Great points. But also not what's important here.

What is being highlighted, and has been since Ioannidis' publication, is that the overall CONCLUSIONS of these works are just wrong. The data is good. We collect great data, we put it out there, it's within reasonable error and is a true and observed phenomenon. The major problem is that we tend to do the WRONG experiments, or we direct our research toward answering a specific question, instead of gathering data comprehensively and looking to that data exclusively to find appropriate questions.

This bad rigor is prevalent, at least in biological science publications. I can't speak with any authority to any other discipline. Data taken out of context, and worse still, ignoring "inconvenient" observations that debunk proposed models is where a lot of this "bad" science comes from. Scientists will proclaim until they are blue in the face that they'd "never do this" - but I see it happen every single day, from major researchers. I fight with myself every day to not act this way, and it's still very hard, because I'd like to move forward in my career - and some crappy piece of data that shoots holes in my hypothesis is staring me in the face. The easy route is to just ignore that. "Oh, yes, this is a caveat we don't want to get into as it muddies the publication. We'll approach this problem in the next article". That's crap. You can't observe something and then ignore it and publish to the contrary of what that data says just to have a neat little story.

What I've outlined above is the underlying problem. Most of what is published, the conclusions being made, are flat out WRONG. The data is right. But what researchers are saying that data means based on their myopic and "I need to publish this" drive causes tunnel vision and bad conclusions.

I have no idea what the answer is, but I think it's important we recognize what the problem is and what the question is, if we have any hope of getting to an answer.

The cord blood racket is a joke. The current stem cell research already allows scientists to either revert your differentiated cells into stem cells - or to harvest and propagate native stem cells. People are spending abhorrent amount of money on an unproven storage technology that is unlikely to be useful.

This study is a joke. The highlight of the article shouldn't be that the word "Computer Programmer" was used. Anyone with half a mind for statistics can see that this hand-waving study is some horribly contrived sociology survey. There is, for any reasonable metric of error, a significant difference between these survey-based data points. New article title: "New York Times will publish any study of any quality if it applies to a broad base of people that might open the link". Bad science in the news is a disease.

You don't understand what you're talking about. Read the actual articles. No one is being infected with HIV.

I concur. Just posted something to this effect. Blizzard is not citing piracy as the primary reason for the always-on model. For the most part it's to stop the rampant abuse of bots and third-party programs that abuse the provided game software. It's a logical step, and one that will provide exceptional game security. It's an online game. Anyone playing it offline is doing it wrong. It's like playing WoW on a private server all by yourself. You can do it, but is it really fun, or meant to be played that way? I think Diablo III is simply being designed as an MMO Action Game. Makes sense. Always has been for the most part.

In general, during infections, the T-cell count spikes within your body. Your immune system is engineered to manufacture the ones successful at fighting a given infection. This is why white blood cell count is a good marker of latent infections. The technique applied by these researchers simulates that propagation- though artificially, driving production of T-cells that they have designed to be good fighters of your "cancer infection". Additionally, while multiplied by 1000, the amount originally injected into the patients is fairly low with respect to the total number of T-cells in your body. As the patients are surviving a year after treatment, and the levels of these particular modified T-cells are maintained, not exponentially accumulating out of control, I think they've shown this is a reasonably safe move.

I concur. I'm dissapointed with the title of this summary. Retroviral expression of genetic therapy is novel, but not the highlight. I think a more appropriate title might have been "Novel cancer therapy gives life to two terminal leukemia patients, 1 year into remission". The data is remarkable. The tissue sample images are just amazing, never seen anything work that effectively without damaging surrounding tissue.

HIV is being used here in a way similar to how lentiviruses are used to routinely introduce synthetic DNA constructs to human cell cultures. In summation it is a version of HIV where the actual viral DNA has been gutted and replaced with the chimeric construct providing these white blood cells with the ability to both rapidly divide and DETECT CANCER inside LIVING PATIENTS. The individuals citing their low patient count as "statistically insignificant" do not have a firm grasp on the field of oncology. The results published in the PRIMARY RESEARCH ARTICLE are astounding. The volume of highly specific cell death observed therein is unprecedented. Chemotherapy, radiation, and all other cancer treatments are non-specific. They kill healthy cells and tumorgenic cells alike. This is the first SUCCESSFUL application of an innate immune system targeting strategy for sustained destruction of cancer cells. It's revolutionary. It was a gutsy, bold move by the researchers. Their executed project combined some of the most advanced approaches in virology, cell biology, and biochemistry. I mean, give credit where credit is due. These guys just hit the nail on the head and you're all blabbering about nonsense.

It has been stated by Blizzard, though infrequently cited by anyone on either side of the always on arguement, that MANY of the Diablo III resources will be hosted exclusively server-side. I assume this is being done to limit access of important game code from third-party program designers. Diablo II and World of Warcraft did not sufficiently shield the coding and packet-transfer mechanics to completely eliminate "botting" and software assisted gameplay. While the "OMG DRM, MUST BE FOR STOPPING PIRATING!" argument is being thrown around, the official commentary from Blizzard has never indicated this was the primary reason for the always-online game design choice. In sum, I think the OA design choice was to limit abuse and automation of the game system - not to inhibit illegal copy use. For the incredible minority of vocal anonymous individuals indicating (or fabricating) their perpetual lack of internet access via online forums; sorry? Individuals with computers below the minimum specs to play certain games, via your logic, should be able to establish a similar argument. My laptop can't play Crisis. The developers need to regear their approach to game design to allow my 1.5GHz processor with stock graphics card to play this game. I find that claim unreasonable. I find the "no internet" claim also unreasonable - especially when I read it online.