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Do new research misconduct rules go far enough?
Stanford’s former president Marc Tessier-Lavigne is just one of the hundreds of researchers who have been accused of research misconduct in the last few years.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — which houses the National Institutes of Health — last week updated its guidance on how universities and other institutions investigate such claims, a move that experts say is in the right direction, but not tough enough.
In fact, advocates were disappointed that the final rule didn’t include a stipulation that universities would have to start investigations within 30 days of an allegation, saying that more cases may get swept under the rug. “[The Office of Research Integrity] could have more teeth,” Bik says. “They should have more of a policing role, if you will, rather than just looking at what an institution says.”
Read more from STAT’s Anil Oza here.
Obesity drugs, DNA-sensing enzymes, and an HIV-prevention power couple
Yesterday, the winners of the Lasker Prize — or “America’s Nobel” — were announced. Recipients include:
- Svetlana Mojsov and Joel Habener, who identified and characterized the GLP-1 hormone in the 1980s while at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Lotte Knudsen of the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, who led the team that created the first GLP-1-mimicking drug approved for obesity. Read more in Megan Molteni and Elaine Chen’s story about how this prize finally honors Mosjov, whom a STAT investigation showed has been pushed out of GLP-1’s history.
- The husband-and-wife HIV research team of Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Salim S. Abdool Karim of Columbia University in New York and the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), which the duo helped to establish in 2002. You can read a fantastic JAMA Q&A with them here.
- Zhijan “James” Chen of the UT Southwestern Medical Center, who unraveled a key signaling mechanism of the innate immune system. This breakthrough provides key insights for better treating infectious diseases and cancer and for managing autoimmune diseases, the foundation said.
A big week for rats
It’s been an exciting week in rat news. First, the journal Science published a special issue dedicated to “our perennial rodent companion.”
“Humans are responsible for the cosmopolitan nature of commensal rat species, and they are likely to remain our companions. A better understanding of this, and their nature, will help us minimize their negative impacts and appreciate what they still have to teach us,” several Science editors wrote in an introduction to the special issue, which explored rats’ evolution, our understanding of rodent-borne diseases, and how we might better care for lab rats.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, New York City kicked off its first National Urban Rat Summit, convening experts from around the country on mitigating rodent populations. “Rats are a social justice and health equity issue,” Kaylee Byers, a senior scientist with the Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, said at the summit. Large rat populations, she added, are often “symbols about a lack of resources in your community,” Byers said — which Anil has previously written about here.
— Anil Oza, STAT’s Sharon Begley Fellow and resident rodent reporter
A study looks at intermittent fasting for obese teens
In 2012, British journalist Michael Mosley sparked a global trend with his BBC documentary, Eat, Fast & Live Longer, which was “intermittent fasting.” A new trial in Australia where dieticians, psychologists, and pediatricians guided obese adolescents through diet plans tested whether intermittent fasting — three days of 600-700 calories, followed by four days of unrestricted eating — works.
As STAT’s Isabella Cueto and Theresa Gaffney tell us, making sure teens got the right support was key in monitoring their mental health and making sure they didn’t develop eating disorders. For more on the study results, check out the story here.
The future of thought-enabled movement
Onward Medical announced Thursday that surgeons had implanted a brain-computer interface into a person with a spinal cord injury so they will perhaps be able to walk again. This implant is the Swiss company’s third test of the system, which uses AI to translate a person’s neural signals into spinal cord stimulation that aids movement. The company is eager to build on the success of its first implant and its ongoing experiment with its second participant, which targets the arms.
Earlier this year, the FDA designated Onward’s system as a “breakthrough device” and placed it in a new agency program that accelerates the development of devices “critical to public health.” While CEO Dave Marver cautions that any device is at least a decade away, he said the company’s focus on movement, rather than computer control, will set it apart from competitors such as Neuralink and Synchron.
— Timmy Broderick, STAT’s disability reporting fellow
Picky eating may be genetic, says study
In the latest research taking advantage of the fact that twins are the perfect experiment and control for nature-vs.-nurture questions, UK scientists followed identical and fraternal twin pairs’ eating habits to figure out what affects fussy eating.
Parents filled in questionnaires about their children’s eating behaviors when the children were 16 months, then at three, five, seven, and 13 years old. Fraternal twins were more likely to be different in their fussy eating habits than identical twins, indicating a large genetic influence. The identical twin pairs also increasingly diverged in their picky eating habits as they got older, suggesting environmental factors, such as having different experiences and friends, is a bigger factor in eating habits as children age.
“Although fussy eating has a strong genetic component and can extend beyond early childhood, this doesn’t mean it is fixed. Parents can continue to support their children to eat a wide variety of foods throughout childhood and into adolescence, but peers and friends might become a more important influence on children’s diets as they reach their teens,” said Alison Fildes, lead author of the study, in a press release.
What we’re reading
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EPA scientists said they were pressured to downplay harms from chemicals. A watchdog found they were retaliated against, ProPublica
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R&D for long COVID is collapsing, Chemical & Engineering News
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Are we thinking about obesity all wrong?, New York Times Opinion
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Senate panel votes to hold Steward Health Care CEO in contempt, STAT
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NHS junior doctors to be known as resident doctors after job title change, BBC
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How I fought Big Pharma on insulin prices — and won, STAT