British Medical Journal - 1 in 5 medical journal articles include honorary and ghost authors

Public release date: 25-Oct-2011
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/uoc--yaw102411.php

British Medical Journal

Research: Honorary and ghost authorship in high impact biomedical journals - a cross sectional survey

Just over one in five (21%) of articles published in six leading medical journals in 2008 have evidence of honorary and ghost authorship, finds a study published on http://www.bmj.comtoday.

These results demonstrate that inappropriate authorship remains a problem in high impact biomedical publications, say the authors.

Inappropriate (honorary and ghost) authorship and the resulting lack of transparency and accountability have been important concerns for the academic community for decades. Honorary authors are individuals who are named as authors but have not contributed substantially to be able to take responsibility for the work. Ghost authors are individuals who have made substantial contributions to the work but are not named as authors.

In the 1980s, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) developed guidelines for responsible and accountable authorship. These criteria are updated regularly and have been adopted by more than 600 biomedical journals. However, studies have found the prevalence of honorary authors to be as high as 39%, and ghost authors as high as 11% across a range of journals.

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Breitbart.com - Teen violence linked to heavy soda diet: study

Breitbart.com  Oct 24 07:11 PM US/Eastern

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.a78af65cc128f522f558eaa64f38258c.3d1&show_article=1

Researchers in the United States said on Tuesday they had found a "shocking" association -- if only a statistical one -- between violence by teenagers and the amount of soda they drank.

High-school students in inner-city Boston who consumed more than five cans of non-diet, fizzy soft drinks every week were between nine and 15-percent likelier to engage in an aggressive act compared with counterparts who drank less.

"What we found was that there was a strong relationship between how many soft drinks that these inner-city kids consumed and how violent they were, not only in violence against peers but also violence in dating relationships, against siblings," said David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

"It was shocking to us when we saw how clear the relationship was," he told AFP in an interview.

But he stressed that only further work would confirm -- or disprove -- the key question whether higher consumption of sweet sodas caused violent behaviour.

The new study was based on answers to questionnaires filled out by 1,878 public-school students aged 14 to 18 in the inner Boston area, where Hemenway said crime rates were much higher than in the wealthier suburbs.

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Bob Unruh - Test results suggest Gardasil doses contaminated

Questions surging about vaccination for sexually transmitted infection

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Posted: October 10, 2011
WND.com

By Bob Unruh
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=353461

Just days after arguments over the controversial Gardasil vaccine returned to the nationwide headlines because of the GOP presidential debates, a new report suggests that the documented side effects including rheumatoid arthritis could be the result of contamination in the vaccine.

The report comes from InvestigateHers magazine, a New Zealand publication, which cited the work of a number of analysts and doctors on the topic of the Merck company product's side effects.

While officials in the United States say there have been only 0.05 percent of individuals who were vaccinated who have reported some kind of side effect, the actual number of those impacted is around 18,000.

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PF Louis - How to fight a grassroots battle against Monsanto -- and win!

by PF Louis

http://www.naturalnews.com/033980_Monsanto_boycotts.html

(NaturalNews) Writing to congressmen, the FDA and Obama, to stop Monsanto from contaminating the food chain, has proven fruitless. It's no use pretending we have a representative government when we are faced with a corporate plutocracy that owns the government.

Careerists have used the revolving doors between biotech industry and the USDA and FDA for years. Obama has chosen one of Monsanto's top revolving door careerists, Michael Taylor, as his "Food Czar." "So what now must we do?"

Boycotting GMOs

This makes good sense. But the biotech industry's successful lobbying for exemption from existing label legislation makes boycotting difficult. They are not required to label GMOs or foods containing GMOs. So how can the public know?

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Sasha Gusain - How social media influences health

Sasha Gusain, Health Me Up | Oct 24, 2011, 11.37AM IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/How-social-media-influences-health/articleshow/10472429.cms

Addicted to checking your Twitter follower count every five minutes, and sending Facebook friend invites to people you met for all of two seconds?

Studies say you could have a problem that'll balloon into a health calamity sooner or later. From drug and alcohol abuse to clinical depression and slower cognitive skills, the wondrous world of social media has many health issues hidden under its convenience belt. But there's plenty of good news too. Read on to find out why social media isn't all bad, and what researchers say about clever use of online networking tools for health benefits.

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Fred Grimm - Climate change deniers may be washed away by rising seas

Fred Grimm | The Miami Herald

last updated: October 24, 2011 12:36:50 PM

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/26/128125/commentary-climate-change-deniers.html

The rising sea will wash across great swaths of South Florida. Salt water will contaminate the well fields. Roads and farmland and low-lying neighborhoods will be inundated. The soil will no longer absorb the kind of heavy rainfalls that drenched South Florida last weekend. Septic tanks will fail. Drainage canals won’t drain. Sewers will back up. Intense storms will pummel the beachfront. Mighty rainfalls, in between droughts, will bring more floods.

The economic losses and the mitigation costs associated with the effects of global warming over the next few decades will be overwhelming. It will cost a medium-sized town like Pompano Beach hundreds of millions just to salvage its water and sewage systems.

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Reuters - PSA test for prostate cancer not recommended: panel

Fri, Oct 7 2011

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/07/us-cancer-prostate-idUSTRE79605220111007

REUTERS

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Doctors criticized proposals by a government-backed panel recommending against prostate cancer screening in healthy men -- saying they went too far and may put some men at risk of the deadly cancer.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which advises the government on health prevention measures, on Friday downgraded its recommendation on prostate cancer screening to a "D," which means it recommends against the service because "there is moderate or high certainty that the service has no net benefit or that the harms outweigh the benefits."

It had previously said there was not enough evidence to make a call on the use of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, tests that measure levels in the blood of a protein.

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Science Daily - Yoga Eases Back Pain in Largest U.S. Yoga Study to Date

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111024164708.htm ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2011) — Yoga classes were linked to better back-related function and diminished symptoms from chronic low back pain in the largest U.S. randomized controlled trial of yoga to date, published by the Archives of Internal Medicine as an "Online First" article on October 24. But so were intensive stretching classes.

"We found yoga classes more effective than a self-care book -- but no more effective than stretching classes," said study leader Karen J. Sherman, PhD, MPH, a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute. Back-related function was better and symptoms were diminished with yoga at 12 weeks; and clinically important benefits, including less use of pain medications, lasted at least six months for both yoga and stretching, with thorough follow-up of more than nine in 10 participants.

In the trial, 228 adults in six cities in western Washington state were randomly assigned to 12 weekly 75-minute classes of either yoga or stretching exercises or a comprehensive self-care book called The Back Pain Helpbook. Nine in 10 of them were primary-care patients at Group Health Cooperative. Participants in the trial typically had moderate -- not severe -- back pain and relatively good mental health, and most had been at least somewhat active before the trial started.

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"University of Michigan - The Generation X Report: U-M survey paints a surprisingly positive portrait

Public release date: 25-Oct-2011
University of Michigan

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/uom-tgx101911.php 

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---They've been stereotyped as a bunch of insecure, angst-ridden, underachievers. But most members of Generation X are leading active, balanced and happy lives, according to a long-term University of Michigan survey.

"They are not bowling alone," said political scientist Jon Miller, author of The Generation X Report. "They are active in their communities, mainly satisfied with their jobs, and able to balance work, family, and leisure."

Miller directs the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the U-M Institute for Social Research. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation since 1986, now includes responses from approximately 4,000 Gen Xers---those born between 1961 and 1981.

"The 84 million Americans in this generation between the ages of 30 and 50 are the parents of today's school-aged children," Miller said. "And over the next two or three decades, members of Generation X will lead the nation in the White House and Congress. So it's important to understand their values, history, current challenges and future goals."

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Jill Richardson - Worst Food Additive Ever? It's in Half of All Foods We Eat and Its Production Destroys Rainforests and Enslaves Children

By Jill Richardson, AlterNet

Posted on October 24, 2011, Printed on October 25, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152848/worst_food_additive_ever_it%27s_in_half_of_all_foods_we_eat_and_its_production_destroys_rainforests_and_enslaves_children

On August 10, police and security for the massive palm oil corporation Wilmar International (of which Archer Daniels Midland owns a majority share) stormed a small, indigenous village on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They came with bulldozers and guns, destroying up to 70 homes, evicting 82 families, and arresting 18 people. Then they blockaded the village, keeping the villagers in -- and journalists out. (Wilmar claims it has done no wrong.)

The village, Suku Anak Dalam, was home to an indigenous group that observes their own traditional system of land rights on their ancestral land and, thus, lacks official legal titles to the land. This is common among indigenous peoples around the world -- so common, in fact, that it is protected by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Indonesia, for the record, voted in favor of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. Yet the government routinely sells indigenous peoples' ancestral land to corporations. Often the land sold is Indonesia's lowland rainforest, a biologically rich area home to endangered species like the orangutan, Asian elephant, Sumatran rhinoceros, Sumatran tiger, and the plant Rafflesia arnoldii, which produces the world's largest flower.

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