Is marketing a bad thing? How much money does Coca-Cola spend on Research & Development of its premier soft drink? Nothing. When something works, you go with it. New Coke taught them that. But they market it like crazy.
Yet whether pharmaceutical companies are primarily interested in research and development or marketing is central to the cultural debate about medicine.
Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin, writing in PLoS Medicine, state that information on promotional expenditures from IMS, the most widely quoted authority that surveys pharmaceutical firms, isn't reliable.
2007 was a big year for science, though it may be that we just noticed it more because it was our first year too. If you're reading this article, you're probably already a fan of our "just science" concept and it seems to be catching on everywhere.
We wanted to create a site where the best science writers, regardless of popularly or politics or ideology, could get together in one place and write about science, whenever they want on whatever topics they want. We went to top people in their fields; well-known authors, post-docs and professors in our various categories, and explained what we wanted to accomplish and the response, from writers and from the audience, has been fantastic.
In the 19th century, leaders like Bismarck understood that the politics of nation-states and warfare were going to be implemented by countries having the most effective transportation. Railroads required fuel and the notion of a 'strategic resource' - a resource essential for a modern country to be successful - was born.
The 20th century and the rise of tanks, planes and automobiles meant that oil was a strategic resource. If you didn't have it, you had to buy it and if you couldn't buy it, you had to fight to get it.
How many people will get the "Science 2.Ho Ho Ho" thing in the holiday banner? Not many, because no one reads blog posts yet. But in v2 of the interface they will.
Nothing is stranger than telling someone you play guitar and having them respond that you would therefore really enjoy playing "Guitar Hero" on a television.
Wouldn't the time they spent learning an interface and practicing a game have been better spent practicing on an actual guitar?
It would seem. There are some things that are fun to do virtually because obviously we can't do them in real life. In real life a British shoemaker got to put an end to Napoleon's dreams of conquest but I can't go back in time 200 years and learn to make shoes and go to war. Likewise I can't defeat alien Nazis in World War II but ... bowling? I can do that.
I just saw this MIT project called
Knight Science Journalism Tracker, which looks quite polished.
Unfortunately the only science writing they seem to know about is on Grist and then the usual media outlets. I guess actual scientists doing the writing slips under the radar.
But it's fun to take a look at regardless of their surface-level insight into the science journalism world. When you have foundation funding, you don't have to dig as hard.
And no, we can't get foundation money. The Knight foundation requires that you be government ( because, you know, governments need money ) or a charity.
Kentucky Windage, For Science: Using Black Holes To Measure The Universe's Rate Of Expansion
So You Want To Dance On The Ceiling?
European Farmers Ignore Science In Favor Of Superstition - Or So They Want Us To Believe
