Great Ape Trust–Flood News

Our sister research institution, The Great Ape Trust, has been greatly affected by the recent catastrophic floods in Iowa. I’ve offered assistance, where that is possible, and urge readers of this blog to help where they can also.

Jim

Tim Russert RIP

This blog is never politically partisan, but it’s impossible living in Washington, not to take notice of the giant who has just passed from the 4th estate, Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet The Press. He will be missed sorely.

Jim

Collegiality in science

One of the most important things in science is to maintain collegiality in the face of a certain tendency among some to view their research as proprietary. This notion of one’s science as one’s “intellectual property” goes against my own grain–it’s at variance with the way my parents practiced neuroscience in their own laboratory at Caltech while I was growing up. So perhaps it’s just my own lack of familiarity with a modern fact-of-life. Perhaps. But it strikes me as very problematic to collaborate and especially exchange ideas with others when one’s body language is a metaphor for a non-disclosure agreement.

Reaching out across disciplines is especially important at an institute for advanced study like Krasnow is. Such exchanges are the crucial catalyst for scientific discovery. And the fuel for such exchanges is collegiality. Without it, one may be successful perhaps to a degree, but one loses the wonderful scientific give-and-take from colleagues who may shy away.

My two cents…

Jim

Thank you Nadine!

Thanks Nadine for introducing yourself. We’re really looking forward to your joining Molecular Neuroscience here at the Institute and especially taking the time to write a bit about yourself to this blog’s loyal readers.

Dr. Kabbani’s arrival at the Institute for Advanced Study will mark the continuation of our growth trajectory across the mind-sciences.
Jim

Nadine Kabbani

Dear Jim,

Thank you for inviting me to this blog. I am enthusiastic to be joining the faculty of the Department of Molecular Neuroscience at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study during the Fall semester. I come to Mason after several years of postdoctoral training at the Institute Pasteur in the lab of Dr. Jean Pierre Changeux, eager to establish a research program in the area of proteomic and functional analysis of nicotinic receptors in the brain. The proteome, now recognized as the next major post-genomic domain of molecular organization in cells, is an increasingly exciting place for neuroscience research! My niche of the neuroproteome encompasses molecular interactions of nicotinic receptors expressed in the cortex and striatum of the mammalian brain. Recently we have published findings on the discovery of novel nicotinic receptor interacting proteins from the mouse brain. In my lab at the Krasnow Institute, we will examine the role of these interactions in the function of nicotinic receptors using various cellular and molecular methods as well as mass spectrometry and bioinformatic techniques. We will also define additional proteomic interactions of central nicotinic receptors, and examine proteomic adaptations in key brain regions of nicotine addiction.
I look forward to valuable collaborations with experimental and theoretical scientists and interactions with students and other faculty in the Neuroscience program.

On a less scientific note, I am just beginning to prepare for my move back to the Washington DC area set for next month. A little sad to be leaving Paris, I have booked a return flight for Thanksgiving!

Best wishes for your summer plans and I look forward to seeing you in August.

Sincerely,

Nadine Kabbani

Back to the grid

Later this afternoon, I’m headed back to DC from Wintergreen. It’s been an incredibly relaxing week (I finished Obama’s book “Dreams from my Father”) and greatly enjoyed the fact that Ken DeJong, our Associate Director, was running the Institute for Advanced Study with a fine steady hand.

I’m pleased to report that there were no bear sightings this time around, just lots of deer and of course the diversity of warblers that makes the Blue Ridge famous.
In the coming week, I’ll be thinking a lot about the Decade of the Mind initiative in the context of what’s now being called Science 2.0–analogous to Web 2.0. What might “mind sciences” accomplish through greater collaborations, better data-sharing and some powerful databases (like NeuroMorpho.org).
Jim

Doctoring images in journal articles

Here’s news of a disturbing trend: scientists are apparently taking to photoshopping their images.

Money quote:

One new check on science images, though, is the blogosphere. As more papers are published in open-access journals, an informal group of watchdogs has emerged online.

“There’s a lot of folks who in their idle moments just take a good look at some figures randomly,” says John E. Dahlberg, director of the division of investigative oversight at the Office of Research Integrity. “We get allegations almost weekly involving people picking up problems with figures in grant applications or papers.”

Such online watchdogs were among those who first identified problems with images and other data in a cloning paper published in Science by Woo Suk Hwang, a South Korean researcher. The research was eventually found to be fraudulent, and the journal retracted the paper.

Katrina L. Kelner, deputy editor of life sciences at Science, argues that the level of fabrication in the Hwang paper was so pervasive that it would not have been detected even if the journal had used the latest image-checking tools.

Since that instance, however, the journal has started spot-checking images in every paper before publication.

Jim