Five science selects

  • How to Find Trustworthy Science and Health Information – Today, we’re overwhelmed with sources of information, with hundreds of television stations and millions of Web sites, and it can be hard to figure out what to trust. Google recently tweaked its search algorithm to bring higher quality sites to the top of its searches, but even then, how do you know what’s good? Here are some questions to ask when evaluating the trustworthiness of science and health information (though many apply to other areas of life)
  • Placebo vs Pain – Researchers are elucidating the many mechanisms that go into measured placebo effects, and the differing magnitude of placebo effects for different outcomes.
  • Can chemistry save the world? – The greening of chemistry…
  • $200 ‘Mini’ NMR detects cancer faster and cheaper than full biopsies — Engadget – Detecting cancer could be on the verge of getting a whole lot cheaper — and better. Researchers at Harvard and MIT have come up with a device that, using a needle to get a tissue sample, has achieve 96 percent accuracy despite having a cost to produce of just $200.
  • When will we have something like paper.li for scientific publications? – Science needs its own Paper.li, argues Bjoern Brembs.

My latest selection of five science stories on, picked up by David Bradley Science Writer @sciencebase.