I thought it was clear. The case is closed. UCL released their official statement.
But strangely, I’m being bombarded with claims that the statement was ambiguous
, that it didn’t say what it seems to say, that I’ve misquoted it. Really? What’s ambiguous about:
Council unanimously supports the decision taken by UCL’s executive to accept the resignation.
and
Council acknowledges that all parties agree that reinstatement would be inappropriate.
Probably not, if you’re one of those people whose response to the Tim Hunt situation is to see conspiracies and witch hunts and a desire to destroy a scientist’s career. But the truth is that critics of Hunt have not been baying for anyone’s blood, but have been saying that sexist jokes at a women’s science meeting speak to a kind of arrogance that is not appropriate for an ambassador for equality. University College London has released a plain-spoken statement, confirming that the council unanimously found his comments entirely inappropriate for an honorary professor, and they have affirmed that his position is retracted.
That story about an arrogant surgeon? It’s gone. Totally deleted.
Of note, “Hope” has since deleted her blog and Twitter account.
After consideration of your feedback on Twitter, consultation with the MedPage Today editorial team, and analysis by “Orac” at Respectful Insolance, and Peter Lipson and Janet D. Stemwedel at Forbes, I have removed the story from the website.
Whoa. That’s not a good response to what ought to be a “teaching moment”.
He’s toast. Cancel the campaign.
My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.
Rich guy tells the working class that our problem is that they aren’t working hard enough? What next, end the 40 hour work week, make everyone work on Saturdays (but not Sundays — that’s sacred!), and bring back workhouses and sweatshops? What a winner.
There is an important research facility in Florida that studies exotic insects and invasive species. You’d think a state like Florida, which is swarming with invasive plants and animals, would consider this a useful and practical operation.
The UF/IFAS (Institute for Food and Agriculture) quarantine facility is a highly secure state of the art lab in Ft. Pierce.
Security is top priority because if any insects were to escape, their impact in our environment would be unclear.
You didn’t get enough yesterday? Here’s another gag-inducing story from Jonathan Eisen. A while back, an MD at UC Davis tried an experimental cancer treatment on three patients: to amplify the immune response to a glioma, they injected fecal bacteria into the patients’ heads.
Two UC Davis neurosurgeons were treating terminally ill brain cancer patients with an unapproved, experimental treatment that is referred to as “Probiotic Intracranial Therapy for Malignant Glioma”. The treatment involved purposefully infecting patients brains with a bacterium Enterobacter aerogenes apparently because of prior anecdotes and case reports that suggested that patients with these brain cancers who also had brain infections might live longer than those with the cancer but without the infection. According to the article, there was an investigation at UC Davis into the practices of the surgeons. It was determined by UC Davis that they did not have IRB approval to carry out the treatments and that there were some other issues with the practice going on. At the conclusion of the investigation UC Davis wrote a letter to the FDA detailing the case and has banned the two neurosurgeons from performing medical research on humans.
Notice that key statement? No IRB approval. They just skipped that whole institutional review thing and squirted something radical, untested, and backed only by anecdote into the heads of very sick people. Two died within weeks, another died a year later.
What happened to the doctors? They left UC Davis after a review found their behavior unethical.
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
Kent Hovind is running free now, except for that pesky probation requirement that means he has to get a court’s permission before leaving the state of Florida.
Oh, hey, who’s that with him?
Holy crap, a doctor talks about her training experience, and I’m horrified.
So here I was, handling the plane (the layer, or space) around the IVC [inferior vena cava] with care to avoid ripping it. It seemed like the intelligent thing to do. My attending asked, “Why are you being so dainty with your dissection there?” I answered that I wanted to avoid ripping the cava because they’re so much harder to fix.
Big mistake.
I take it he interpreted my comment as fear, and decided upon a teaching moment. He took his scissors and incredibly, before my eyes, and with no warning or preparation of any kind, cut a one-inch hole in the cava.
I was stunned. As I tried to process what I just saw, incredulous that he would actually intentionally make a hole in the cava, and as dark blood poured out of the hole, the tide rising steadily in the abdomen, he remarked, “Well, are you just going to stand there or are you going to fix that?”
