I almost wish I were a sheep farmer, just so as to be eligible to read Sheep! magazine, surely the most enthusiastically named trade periodical ever. The cover of the current issue has an adorable picture of a lamb and a kitten on it, and features such intriguingly entitled articles as Golf Course Sheep Poo a Threat to Public Health, Wether or Not (aha!), and Herd It Through The Grape Vines. Fantastic.
This approach to magazine titling is probably not transferable to other professions, sadly. A pharmaceuticals trade rag called Drugs! probably wouldn’t find its way onto the lobby coffee tables at Gigantopharm UK PLC, for example.
[Original link via Errata.]
3 comments 2008-04-24 22:09 Categories: Day Job, Words
Ben Goldacre makes an interesting point in his latest Bad Science column, on the reasons for bias in privately funded pharmaceutical trials:
So science relies on independent replication; but drug trials are so expensive, and state funding of research so miserly, that pharmaceutical research is rarely independently funded. By which, of course, we mean it’s rarely state funded.
I’m totally up for the stuff about the dolphins being good, and big pharma bad. But if only 10% of pharmaceutical research is funded outside the pharmaceutical industry, I’m not convinced that’s entirely the industry’s fault.
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0 comments 2007-04-17 10:12 Categories: Day Job, Science & Maths
Crazy German scientists have developed a device for remotely administering drugs on demand via a dental implant. You need to look at the picture to get a full sense of the horror of this thing. (Via Gizmodo.)
This brings the CIA one step closer to broadcasting on your fillings, and they’ll even be able to sedate you at the same time: brilliant!
0 comments 2007-02-02 12:06 Categories: Day Job, Geek Stuff