Quickies: Bad Scientific Transparency, Flu Vaccine Developments, and Body Shapes

• ‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen – “Perhaps the most shocking thing wasn’t that Buress had called Cosby a rapist; it was that the world had actually heard him. A decade earlier, 14 women had accused Cosby of rape.” From Courtney.
• Scientists Are Hoarding Data And It’s Ruining Medical Research – “A decade later, in 2013, these two economists did something that very few researchers have ever done. They handed over their entire dataset to independent researchers on the other side of the world, so that their analyses could be checked in public. What happened next has every right to kick through a revolution in science and medicine.”
• Ex-Googler On Discrimination: ‘Speaking Up Didn’t Fix A Damn Thing’ – “Ex-Google engineer Erica Baker fought back against discriminatory employment practices when she organized the creation of a spreadsheet of her co-workers’ salaries to encourage transparency. Google’s management was obviously displeased and punished Baker, who is a black woman, by withholding peer bonuses — but didn’t withhold the bonuses from her white male colleague who also helped organize the effort.”
• No, It’s Not Your Opinion, You’re Just Wrong – “There’s a common conception that an opinion cannot be wrong. My dad said it. Hell, everyone’s dad probably said it and in the strictest terms it is true. However, before you crouch behind your Shield of Opinion you need to ask yourself two questions.” From Amy.
• Court Smacks Down Pharmacy That Refused To Fill Prescriptions On Religious Grounds – Maybe if your religion prohibits you from doing your job, you should get a different job.
• New Flu Vaccine Could Protect Against All Strains – “A new study in mice finds that, by presenting a cocktail of flu proteins to the immune system, researchers can induce immunity to strains that the animal has never encountered.” From Amy.
• Hiding Black Behind the Ears: On Dominicans, Blackness, and Haiti – “I felt like I was living in a perpetual Twilight Zone episode. I’m black in a country that by all indications hates black people, and I’m descended from people that are black, but pretend not to be black. Like most teenagers, I was too wrapped up in it to see the bigger picture. There was some serious history behind all this un-blackness. And history starts at home.”
• Body Shapes, a Handy Guide – A riff on the cliche “apple vs. pear-shaped body” guides. You’ve made it this far, enjoy a laugh :)

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