Category: Scientific Research (Page 1 of 11)

Illusion-schmillusion, if I fits, I sits.

Engaged in a cupboard reorganization spree, we never anticipated it. Sujayita, my wife, was folding her purple woollen cardigan in order to stash it in a drawer. The cardigan has a woollen belt that runs through a solitary buckle at the back of the waist. The belt was on the bed, and I happened to lay it out in form of a closed circle. Whoosh! Our cat baby Widget Greything (a.k.a. Baghum, the bitty hauspanther), who seems adept at Disapparating and Apparating at will, appeared right at the center of the circle, nonchalant, in a statuesque manner.

“Whoa! It’s true, what they say about cats and geometric shapes,” I exclaimed.

“Of course. There are studies that show this too,” Sujayita said. “But not all cats, though, you know. . .”

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Methods Section of a Research Paper: What is it good for? Absolutely Everything.

I love a well-written methods section in a research communication. There, I said it. And as a peer reviewer, I often go to the methods in the manuscript under review in order to understand both the experiments that authors have designed and performed, and the rationale behind the flow and organization of different experiments, each yielding a separate piece of the overall puzzle in form of data. But I didn’t start out this way; this is the story of my evolution, as well as the woeful tale of a long-held (and recently re-encountered, in a high impact journal, no less) annoyance—poorly or inadequately written, incomplete methods.

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Nature Publishing Group dabbling in Homeopathy is a loss of opportunity for good pharmacognostic research

This morning, I was alerted to the latest homeopathy shenanigan via the Forbes column of Dr. Steven Salzberg. (COI statement: I don’t know Dr. Salzberg personally, but I follow his columns, and he is a faculty member at my institution—albeit in a discipline not directly related to mine.) At the heart of it is yet another bog-standard ridiculous “study” purporting to show “clinical effect” of homeopathy, despite the preponderant evidence that homeopathy does not work. What makes this instance special enough for me to take time out from my over-burdened work schedule? The fact that it was published in Scientific Reports from the—wait for it!—Nature Publishing Group. Yes, THAT Nature.

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In Which I Discover My First Homeopathic Remedy

It has been a while since I last posted on homeopathy. Frankly speaking, having written about it quite a bit, I have grown kinda tired of the utterly unscientific, nonsensical nature of homeopathy, and foolishness of its relentless proponents. However, a few days ago on Twitter, my attention was brought to a whole new level of ridiculousness in this quackery modality, and I found it concerning anew because of what it implies for the hapless, gullible and vulnerable patients desperately seeking medical care. Today’s short post touches on this.

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Arnica Extract Changes Gene Expression in Extracellular Matrix? Probably. Does Homeopathic Arnica? Haha, No!

ResearchBlogging.org

A paper published last month in PLOS One by a group of investigators from the University of Verona in Italy states that Arnica montana Stimulates Extracellular Matrix Gene Expression in a Macrophage Cell Line Differentiated to Wound-Healing Phenotype. Given my abiding interest in pharmacognosy and ethnobotany, I was suitably intrigued because the extract derived from Arnica montana, a European flowering plant of the sunflower family, is likely to be biologically active due to the presence of certain sesquiterpene lactones (same class of substances as present in the plant-derived anti-malarial Artemisinin), the plant metabolite flavonoids (substances with some in vitro anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory activity), and derivatives of thymol (phenolic substance with antimicrobial action). Like many bioactive phytopharmaceutical substances, Helenalins, the sesquiterpene lactones and their fatty acyl esters in Arnica montana, are toxic in high concentrations, but have anti-inflammatory properties via its inhibition of the transcription factor NFkB.

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I Love Panera Bread, But Yikes! Must They Peddle This Daft Chemophobia?

I love the café/bakery eatery chain Panera Bread. Ever since I was introduced to them in 2003, my wife and I have frequented this establishment in many different cities of the US, finding with delight that our trust in their food quality and quantity has not been misplaced. We love their menu items, soups and sandwiches – even some of their seasonal salad offerings (and that’s saying something, because neither of us is a very salad-y person). My wife is particularly keen on their Chai Tea Latté. Their bakery is excellent, not to mention the delicious breads they make, which can be bought separately. So imagine my consternation, when on a recent visit, I discovered that they appear to be peddling some weapons-grade bullshit about chemicals and additives in food.

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Random Musings on ‘Personal Genomics’, Inspired

A quick post today, inspired by a fabulous essay by the redoubtable science communicator duo, Tara Haelle and Dr. Emily Willingham, on the possibilities and pitfalls of genetic testing and personal genomics in the Undark Magazine. It spawned a few, relatively random musings on this topic, admittedly a topic I have not hithertofore explored much. I wrote my thoughts as a comment after the magazine essay, but I don’t know if or when it would appear. So here they are, as a blog post.

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Homeopathy: Is It Really Effective In Upper Respiratory Tract Infections With Fever In Children? Not Quite

ResearchBlogging.org

A recently published paper, with the outcomes of a collaborative European Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) undertaken in Germany and Ukraine, is making waves amongst jubilant homeopaths as yet another evidence supporting their long-held belief in the clinical effectiveness of homeopathy. Naturally, this 2016 paper in the Journal Global Pediatric Health by van Haselen et al. piqued my curiosity and I dove in to see what the hullabaloo was all about.

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Of Serious Concern: Drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in Treated Wastewater

Currently one of the most common disease-causing bacterium in the world, Acinetobacter baumannii, for sure, is a nasty bug — an emerging nosocomial (hospital-associated) pathogen, being increasingly observed in serious conditions requiring intensive care (including ventilator-associated pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis, wound infection and urinary tract infection). Unfortunately for patients, particularly immune-suppressed ones, this bug is now known to be extensively drug resistant (XDR; resistant to most antibiotics including carbapenems, with the exception of two drugs of last resort, colistin and tigecycline), with a smaller proportion resistant to even these two (known as pan-drug resistant, PDR, which are therefore virtually untreatable with the current crop of FDA-approved medications).

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PLOS ONE Meta-analysis on Acupuncture in Pain Management Spins Out Undue Recommendations

Science communicators are no strangers to spin in the reporting of scientific studies, especially in Press Releases. This is a favorite tactic of aficionados and researchers alike in the so-called ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM), which includes acupuncture — a pre-scientific therapeutic modality originating in ancient China with roots in medical astrology and ignorance of human anatomy and physiology. I have earlier written several times on an issue that I continue to find rather perplexing: when it comes to publishing studies on CAM research, the usually-high publication standards of the premier open access journal PLOS ONE appear to be ignored, in the context of both primary research and systemic, quantitative and analytical reviews.

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