Common Paradox Tech Blog

Mobile phones, Computers, Macs, apps, news, reviews, tech tips

Entries Tagged ‘Peer Review’

Hacked Climate Emails Stoke Debate

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a series of hacked emails and documents that were recently posted on Wikileaks are causing quite a stir in the scientific community. All told, more than 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents were stolen from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia University in the U.K. “The emails include discussions of apparent efforts to make sure that reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that monitors climate science, include their own views and exclude others. In addition, emails show that climate scientists declined to make their data available to scientists whose views they disagreed with. [] Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We ‘will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!’ Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Seasonal Flu Shots Double Risk of Getting Swine Flu, Says New Study

krou writes “A Canadian study currently under peer review apparently suggests that individuals given seasonal flu shots are twice as likely to get swine flu. The ‘perplexing’ study has thrown influenza health plans into disarray, with Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia all suspending seasonal flu shots for anyone under 65 years of age. The study appears to be confined to Canada; the US, Britain, and Australia have not reported the same problem, so some are suggesting that the research has ’study bias.’ However, the research appears to be ’solid’ according to Dr. Ethan Rubinstein, head of adult infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba. ‘There are a large number of authors, all of them excellent and credible researchers. And the sample size is very large — 12 or 13 million people taken from the central reporting systems in three provinces.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.