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Articles to 2015-01-30

January 30th, 2015

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

As often happens, Ling et al. become honest towards the end of their article. Contrary to what the title and abstract imply, they do not expect their new antibiotic to prevent resistance, but only for it to take longer to establish itself. Not quite the same thing, is it? Of course what all this does not address Read the rest of this entry »

Articles to 2015-01-24

January 24th, 2015

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This month’s J. Arch. Science contains two glaring examples of Cargo Cult, the imitation of the outward appearance of the scientific method without any real sense and understanding of it’s purpose and substance. Pretending to describe the tool used for cutting her sample teeth Burt only names the maker of its electric drive. Even if that were at all relevant, which it isn’t, Read the rest of this entry »

Articles to 2015-01-17

January 17th, 2015

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I think Lesk is conflating two totally unrelated problems. There is wrong, fraudulent, or irreplicable research and there are authors, who submit their own identical results several times to more than one journal. These two things have no bearing on each other, except perhaps Read the rest of this entry »

Articles to 2015-01-08

January 8th, 2015

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I don’t understand the article by Couzin-Frankel at all. She’s been an experienced science journalist for years and ought to be at home in quantitative thinking. Personally I am grossly overweight, have hated and eschewed all kinds of physical exercise at least since age three, and run a partly treated high blood pressure. All those are large and well known risk factors. Other people smoke, drink, or engage in sports (to my observation the highest risk factor by far for all kinds of accidents and injury). Are any of those Read the rest of this entry »

Die Lügenpresse lügt (I)

January 7th, 2015

Nachdem längere Zeit für die Berichterstattung unserer Medien, deren Abonnenten schon lange mit den Füßen abstimmen und deren Vertrauenswerte mit jeder neuen Umfrage in neue, ungeahnte Tiefen fallen, die verschiedensten pejorativen Benennungen im Umlauf waren, scheint sich jetzt das klare und griffige Lügenpresse allgemein durchzusetzen. Der Begriff ist neu, das Phänomen nicht. Auch auf meiner damals neuen Website waren Read the rest of this entry »

Articles to 2015-01-04

January 4th, 2015

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Nearly all of the total methane emission from abandoned wells comes from very few highly emitting cases, according to Kang et al., suggesting that little effort might make a big difference here. On the other hand their total sample size is a mere 19 wells, so before acting a much more comprehensive look is in order.

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Articles to 2014-12-23

December 23rd, 2014

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The Journal of Human Evolution comes out with a special issue about becoming human and food resources with many nods towards the Aquatic Ape hypothesis.

Articles to 2014-12-13

December 13th, 2014

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Freeman’s argument about water not being fractionated through plant transpiration sounds quite convincing, but is contradicted by the results of Kahmen et al. 2011 (PNAS 108, 1981–1986). So to the extent it relies on this non-fractionation the model by Winnick et al. has to be seen as questionable.

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Articles to 2014-12-07

December 7th, 2014

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I’m not much impressed by the editorial quality of Elsevier’s journal Applied Energy, and with Elsevier it’s not the only one. There are several jarring occurrences of “MW/h” in Pearre et al. interspersed with the correct “MWh”. (I grudgingly accept the American convention of two fraction bars in one term, as in “$/MW/h”, but it has to be done consistently.) Is it not time to strike Elsevier off the list of reputable publishers?

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Articles to 2014-11-30

November 30th, 2014

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

Liu et al. have found an extremely common gene variant with a slight influence on personality traits – big deal. According to the yellow press though, the “partnership gene” has been found.

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