A small segment of scientists are not in favor of skepticism; primarily if it happens to be in their discipline.   But a group of cancer researchers welcomes it and asks for even more.

Writing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a trio discusses the exaggerated fears and hopes that often appear in news coverage of cancer research and seek to provide guidance for both the media and journals to help alleviate the problem.

You are in a game show with nineteen other players. You don't know the other players, you can't see them, and you can't communicate with them. The game you are in is called 'Greed!', and is straightforward to explain. You are asked to write down a whole dollar amount in the range $1 - $1,000,000 on a piece of paper. You will be paid the amount you asked for if it is deemed to be 'non-greedy'. Whether your request is indeed 'non-greedy' will be decided once all twenty request have been received by the host of the show. Your requested amount will be labeled 'non-greedy' if no other player has asked for less, and at least one player has asked for more.

New nanosensors can measure cancer biomarkers in whole blood for the first time, according to an article Nature Nanotechnology, and that could dramatically simplify the way physicians test for biomarkers of cancer and other diseases. 

A team led by Mark Reed, Yale's Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Engineering&Applied Science at Yale, and Tarek Fahmy, associate professor of biomedical and chemical engineering, used nanowire sensors to detect and measure concentrations of two specific biomarkers: one for prostate cancer and the other for breast cancer. 

The gases which formed the Earth's atmosphere and probably its oceans did not come from inside the Earth but from outer space, according to a study by University of Manchester and University of Houston scientists.

The report in Science claims that textbook images of ancient Earth with huge volcanoes spewing gas into the atmosphere will have to be rethought, putting to rest the age-old view that volcanoes were the source of the Earth's earliest atmosphere.   Dr Greg Holland, Dr Martin Cassidy and Professor Chris Ballentine tested volcanic gases to support their new theory.

The research was funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Creativity seems to be the "buzz word" of the 2000s. Society values it, companies need it, and employers want it. Or do they? What society claims to want and what is actually rewarded in practice are two different things. We claim to want innovation, but are innovation and creativity actually encouraged, or even allowed in most environments? What types of creative behaviors are rewarded by society, and what types are punished?

Back in August, I gave a talk at the Pacific AAAS meeting explaining why research scientists need to blog. After a long delay to put my incomprehensible notes in to readable (but still somewhat fragmented) form, here is my argument for why scientists need to blog:

Expert Blogging in the Science Communication Ecosystem

My talk is about scientists writing science directly for the public. Specifically, I want to get at the question, "What can blogging by scientists bring to the science communication ecosystem of newspapers, TV, and magazines?"