In April 2016, an FDA committee voted not to recommend acceptance of eteplirsen, a drug designed to treat muscular dystrophy. In September, however, the FDA did approve the drug, following a heated internal debate.
This wasn’t the end of the story, however. What followed was an unusual scientific controversy that played out in the peer-reviewed literature, discussed in a Retraction Watch post this week.
Following the approval of eteplirsen, Ellis Unger and Robert Califf wrote a letter to ...read more
The impression that your cup of coffee is laughing at you, or that your laundry machine has googly eyes, is uncanny but common. It’s even the subject of a Twitter account called Faces in Things with more than half a million followers. The account has featured winking chairs, moping suitcases and a smug lemon loaf. But this illusion, called face pareidolia, isn’t uniquely human. Monkeys can see it too.
Face pareidolia could be a side effect of humans&rs ...read more
This broken spear point found between two bison ribs ultimately changed not only the field of archaeology but also the narrative surrounding the arrival of Native Americans in North America. (Credit: DMNS/E-51)
The Folsom spear point, which was excavated in 1927 near the small town of Folsom, New Mexico, is one of the most famous artifacts in North American archaeology, and for good reason: It was found in direct association with the bones of an extinct form of Ice Age bison. The Folsom point ...read more
Image: Flickr/Joe Loong
Mmm… warts! Those fun, fleshy skin growths caused by papillomavirus. They are harmless, and yet… ugh. One of the most common methods of removal is to freeze them off using liquid nitrogen (cryotherapy). But apparently there’s a DIY method that, according to this study, works even better: covering them with duct tape. It takes up to a couple months of diligent tape-wearing to work, but hey, it might help you avoid yet another medical bill. And for tho ...read more
The Christophe de Margerie. (Credit: Sovcomflot)
A Russian tanker ship has traversed the Arctic Ocean without the help of a separate icebreaker, marking a first for the Northern Sea Route.
The Christophe de Margerie made the journey from Norway to South Korea in 23 days carrying a shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG), opening up the frigid route to sustained shipping traffic. Ships normally travel through the Suez Canal to reach Asia from Europe, a trip that takes some 30 percent longer. Th ...read more
Plimpton 322 at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York. (Credit: UNSW/Andrew Kelly)
Researchers in Australia say an ancient Babylonian tablet that’s considered the world’s oldest trigonometric table was a far more powerful tool than it’s given credit for.
The square tablet, known as Plimpton 322, is roughly the size of a cell phone and features four columns and 15 rows of cuneiform numbers written on it. Artifacts dealer Edgar Banks—the m ...read more
A black mamba’s sinister smile. Photo by James Arup
As a species, there is perhaps no topic that fascinates us more than mortality, especially our own. So unsurprisingly, there’s no shortage of science fiction based on the idea of scientifically circumventing our mortal coils, most of which seems rather fantastical. But bringing the dead back to life isn’t as impossible as it might appear. While we’re still a long ways away from Dr. Frankenstein, recent developments in u ...read more
1864 painting of the H. L. Hunley by Conrad Wise Chapman. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
On Feb. 17, 1864, naval warfare was changed forever.
That night aboard the U.S.S. Housatonic, master John H. Crosby of the Union Navy saw what he described as a porpoise sliding through the water on a direct course for his vessel just a few hundred feet away.
Three years prior, President Abraham Lincoln had ordered a blockade of all major Confederate ports, and the Housatonic, a sloop-of-war with 12 large can ...read more
