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Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, has published a comment piece in the journal Nature, where he argues that it's unlikely mankind will ever produce another Einstein, Newton, Darwin, etc. This is because, he says, we've already discovered all the most basic ideas that describe how the natural world works. Any new work, will involve little more than adding to our knowledge base.
Simonton's comments are likely to draw a strong reaction, both in and out of the science world. It's been the geniuses among us that have driven science forward for thousands of years, after all. If no more geniuses appear to offer an entirely new way of looking at things, how will the human race ever reach new heights? Simonton has been studying geniuses and their contributions to science for more than 30 years and has even written books on them. He also writes that he hopes he is wrong in his assessment, even as he clearly doesn't think he is. Sadly, the past several decades only offer proof. Since the time of Einstein, he says, no one has really come up with anything that would mark them as a giant in the field, to be looked up to hundreds, if not thousands of years from now. Worse perhaps, he details how the way modern science is conducted is only adding to the problem. Rather than fostering lone wolves pondering the universe in isolation, the new paradigm has researchers working together as teams, efficiently going about their way, marching towards incremental increases in knowledge. That doesn't leave much room for true insight, which is of course, a necessary ingredient for genius level discoveries.
Simonton could be wrong of course – there might yet be some person that looks at all that has been discovered and compares it with his or her own observations, and finds that what we think we know, is completely wrong, and offers evidence of something truly groundbreaking as an alternative. The study of astrophysics, for example, appears ripe for a new approach. Scientists are becoming increasingly frustrated in trying to explain why the universe is not just expanding, but is doing so at an increasing rate. Perhaps most of the theories put forth over the past half-century or so, are completely off base. Modern science can't even explain gravity, after all. Isn't it possible that there is something at work that will need the intelligence, insight and courage of an Einstein to figure out? It appears we as a species are counting on it, even as we wonder if it's even possible.
This epic year for science saw the discovery of the Higgs boson and Curiosity’s arrival on Mars, but researchers also felt the sting of austerity.
Some scientific research can't be completed in days or months — projects can take years, or even decades or centuries. This poses a challenge for scientists who must make plans for experiments that often outlive the experimenter. A biologist who has been watching a dozen bottles of bacteria evolve for nearly a quarter of a century is hoping he can find someone to keep his lab experiment going long after he dies. Meanwhile, just by coincidence, a botanist who works across campus is carefully tending an experiment that started before he was born, all the way back in 1879. These two researchers, both at Michigan State University in East Lansing, represent different sides of an unusual phenomenon in science: experiments that outlive the people who started them. Most researchers design studies to churn out results as quickly as possible. But because nature can work on vast time scales, some questions can take longer to answer than any one scientist's career. Richard Lenski began his evolution experiment in 1988 with a simple question: Does evolution always lead to the same end point? If he started with 12 identical flasks, full of identical bacteria, would they all change over time in the same way? Or would random mutations send each bottle's population spinning off in a different direction? For the first decade of his experiment, the bacteria in each flask mostly changed in similar ways. For example, they all were producing larger cells. Then things got kind of boring for a while because the changes started coming more slowly. Lenski had other projects going on in his lab, and figured that maybe he'd learned all he could from this one. "And so I was sort of thinking, 'OK, maybe it's time to stop the experiment,' " he says, recalling that he asked a few colleagues what they thought of that idea. "And they basically said, 'Nope, you can't stop it, it's gone on too long.' " So he stuck with it. And a few years later, in 2003, something happened. The liquid in one flask looked strange. "This flask was considerably more cloudy," says Lenski. "I was suspicious that we had a contaminant." It turns out that the bacteria in that one flask had actually changed in a dramatic way. After 30,000 generations, they had suddenly gained the ability to consume citrate, a chemical that had always been in the flasks — but that was never intended to be a food, since laboratory E. coli normally can't eat it. What's more, Lenski was able to trace exactly how that new trait emerged. Over the years, he's been freezing samples of his bacteria, so he was able to go back and track every little genetic change that's taken place through the generations, using technologies that didn't even exist when he first started this study.
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So many scientific studies are making incorrect claims that a new service has sprung up to fact-check reported findings by repeating the experiments. A year-old Palo Alto, California, company, Science Exchange, announced on Tuesday its "Reproducibility Initiative," aimed at improving the trustworthiness of published papers. Scientists who want to validate their findings will be able to apply to the initiative, which will choose a lab to redo the study and determine whether the results match. The project sprang from the growing realization that the scientific literature - from social psychology to basic cancer biology - is riddled with false findings and erroneous conclusions, raising questions about whether such studies can be trusted. Not only are erroneous studies a waste of money, often taxpayers', but they also can cause companies to misspend time and resources as they try to invent drugs based on false discoveries. Last year, Bayer Healthcare reported that its scientists could not reproduce some 75 percent of published findings in cardiovascular disease, cancer and women's health. In March, Lee Ellis of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and C. Glenn Begley, the former head of global cancer research at Amgen, reported that when the company's scientists tried to replicate 53 prominent studies in basic cancer biology, hoping to build on them for drug discovery, they were able to confirm the results of only six. The new initiative's 10-member board of prominent scientists will match investigators with a lab qualified to test their results, said Elizabeth Iorns, Science Exchange's co-founder and chief executive officer. The original lab would pay the second for its work. How much depends on the experiment's complexity and the cost of study materials, but should not exceed 20 percent of the original research study's costs. Iorns hopes government and private funding agencies will eventually fund replication to improve the integrity of scientific literature.
The World Science Festival is a production of the Science Festival Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in New York City. The Foundation’s mission is to cultivate a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future. The World Science Festival’s signature event is an annual celebration and exploration of science that launched in 2008. Hailed a “new cultural institution,” by the New York Times, the Festival has featured such luminaries as: Stephen Hawking, E.O. Wilson, Sir Paul Nurse, Harold Varmus, Daniel Dennett, Eric Lander, Steven Chu, Richard Leakey, Sylvia Earle, Yo-Yo Ma, Oliver Sacks, Mary-Claire King, Chuck Close, Philip Glass, Charlie Kaufman, Glenn Close, Anna Deavere Smith, Bobby McFerrin, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Liev Schreiber, John Lithgow, Bill T. Jones, Charlie Rose, John Hockenberry, Elizabeth Vargas and Walter Isaacson.
From China to the Congo, a new wave of volunteer projects aims to make amateur participants actively conduct research that benefits their communities.
The Royal Society just uploaded every article older than 70 years, and the entire collection is searchable online. Along with Newton’s first research paper, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society contain roughly 69,000 articles, including original research by Robert Boyle, William Herschel, Joseph Lister, Michael Faraday and others; Benjamin Franklin’s famous kite-lightning experiment; bizarre accounts of students hit by lightning; and ruminations on what Moon Citizens would glimpse as they looked at Earth, among many other tales. http://tinyurl.com/43xev56
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A multimedia feature published this week in the New York Times, “Pushing Science’s Limits in Sign Language Lexicon,” outlines efforts in the United States and Europe to develop sign language versions of specialized terms used in science, technology, engineering and mathematics
Via Sakis Koukouvis
One image can change the way we see the world, especially in science. From photographs of movement that's too fast for the human eye to perceive, to atomic force microscope images of atomic bonds, pictures created by new technologies have often catalyzed scientific discovery. More than tools of discovery, though, images can help scientists communicate the reality of what they study to each other and the public. One poignant image can change not just the course of science, but also ordinary people's perception of their place in the cosmos. Here are ten powerful images that did just that.
his collection aims to highlight PLOS ONE's role in the emerging interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology. The collection has its roots in PLOS ONE's very first issue, which included two publications from the field and since then, the number of synthetic biology articles published by the journal has grown steadily. As the field continues to develop, this collection will be updated to include new publications, thereby tracking the evolution of this dynamic research area. Synthetic biology occurs at the intersection of a number of traditional disciplines, including biology, chemistry, and engineering. It aims to create biological systems that can be programmed to do useful things such as producing drugs and biofuel. The interdisciplinary nature of synthetic biology can make it difficult to publish in traditional journals. PLOS ONE's broad scope, however, allows for the publication of work crossing many traditional research boundaries, making it an ideal venue for many different types of synthetic biology publications. In addition, the journal's focus on rigorous peer review without considering impact has made it possible to publish a body of articles that truly reflects the multifaceted nature of this research area. One overarching theme of synthetic biology is standardization, which can only be achieved through concerted community effort. To this end, each article published in PLOS ONE can be the start of a lively conversation. The ability to comment on articles provides the community with a means to engage in a dialogue focused on specific articles, and the "Share this Article" feature allows readers to quickly send an article they find interesting to their entire networks, because all the content is openly accessible.
An 18-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has discovered melt-glass material in a thin layer of sedimentary rock in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Syria. According to the researchers, the material -- which dates back nearly 13,000 years -- was formed at temperatures of 1,700 to 2,200 degrees Celsius (3,100 to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit), and is the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth. These new data are the latest to strongly support the controversial Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis, which proposes that a cosmic impact occurred 12,900 years ago at the onset of an unusual cold climatic period called the Younger Dryas. This episode occurred at or close to the time of major extinction of the North American megafauna, including mammoths and giant ground sloths; and the disappearance of the prehistoric and widely distributed Clovis culture.
2011 was an amazing year of accelerating developments in science and technology. These articles offer a good summary. - Ed.
Via Frederic Emam-Zade Gerardino
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