When people in a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study were told that anorexia nervosa had a biological or genetics-based cause they were less likely to put any personal accountability on anorexics than when they were told it was personal or cultural.

That makes sense. A disease that is egalitarian and exculpatory like a genetics or biological mutation is different than a syndrome. We can't blame kids with Autism for having Autism, though we do teach them to moderate their behavior - and that's a key point.

Anorexia nervosa is characterized by an obsessive desire to be thin and results in self-starvation and related medical complications.

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.