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It's worth asking why Elizabeth Holmes is still leading the embattled blood testing company Theranos Inc. But there may be a good reason why she still is in charge, one that has little to do with the scandal-ridden company's performance to date. Forget what venture capitalist Tim Draper — one of the first to invest in the Palo Alto company — implied this week that Holmes is being attacked because she's a young, female entrepreneur. The simple fact is that Theranos has not been able to deliver on its technology from a commercial, scientific or regulatory standpoint, and that falls...

* Salk Institute scientists have used new technique to cure rats' blindness * It is the first time anyone has edited DNA in eyes, heart, brain or liver * These organs' cells rarely divide, making them very difficult to penetrate * So far the most advanced method is called CRISPR, which can edit skin and gut genes - it was tested yesterday by Chinese scientists * But Salk's study has been hailed as biggest leap in DNA research to date Scientists have discovered how to edit DNA to repair 'broken genes' to cure incurable diseases - and potentially extend human...

2016 has not been too kind to Elizabeth Holmes, the Steve-Jobs wannabe in charge of fraudulent Theranos. She has thus far been banned for 2 years from operating labs, removed from hosting fundraisers for Hillary and lost her entire net worth. And now, the Wall Street Journal has published the "tell-all" story of the whistle-blower, 26 year old Tyler Shultz, who brought the the whole Theranos farce crashing down. It's a sordid tale complete with all the expected twists and turns of a Jason Bourne thriller including intimidation, coercion and private detectives. Tyler Shultz is the grandson of George Shultz,...

After working at Theranos Inc. for eight months, Tyler Shultz decided he had seen enough. On April 11, 2014, he emailed company founder Elizabeth Holmes to complain that Theranos had doctored research and ignored failed quality-control checks. The reply was withering. Ms. Holmes forwarded the email to Theranos President Sunny Balwani, who belittled Mr. Shultz’s grasp of basic mathematics and his knowledge of laboratory science, and then took a swipe at his relationship with George Shultz, the former secretary of state and a Theranos director. “The only reason I have taken so much time away from work to address this...

What the Trump Presidency Could Mean for Science Editorial: a rising tide of economic prosperity could lift science, too, as long as it is honest science serving the citizenry. The morning after Donald Trump’s historic upset, his opponents in Big Science are strangely silent. They may be in shock. Some science news sites, like the BBC News, are panicking, worried what this will mean for global warming treaties. One guy on The Conversation is blaming Twitter bots for the victory. Mike Wall on Space.com is already telling Trump what he needs to do for space science. Science reporters will be...

Ideology is a double-edged sword. Dedication to a set of beliefs can be admirable, but when it leads to inflexibility and obstinance in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it is a dangerous thing.

Scientists have found 500 seabed vents bubbling methane into the Pacific Ocean off the United States, roughly doubling the number of known U.S. seeps of the powerful greenhouse gas, a study showed on Wednesday. Methane naturally escapes from the sea floor in many places around the world and can stoke global warming if it reaches the atmosphere. Worldwide, scientists are trying to see if rising ocean temperatures cause more leaks. "It appears that the entire coast off Washington, Oregon and California is a giant methane seep," Robert Ballard, who is famed for finding the wreck of the Titanic and has...

Students in South Africa are embroiled in a “Fees Must Fall” protest, aiming to lower tuition fees and “decolonize” the nation’s schools. These protests are offshoots of the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement which aimed to get names of colonialists off school buildings. At a meeting with the University of Cape Town science faculty, one of these “fallists” took the movement further demanding science too must fall.

Dead and dying are two very different things. If a person is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, their loved ones don't rush to write an obituary and plan a funeral. Likewise, species aren't declared extinct until they actually are. In a viral article entitled "Obituary: Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016)," however, writer Rowan Jacobsen proclaimed ― inaccurately and, we can only hope, hyperbolically ― that Earth's largest living structure is dead and gone.

Students at the University of Cape Town in South Africa brought some interesting concerns before the science faculty this week: namely, they think science as it is currently understood must be abolished. "The whole thing should scratched off, especially in Africa," said one of the students. Essentially, these students believe that modern scientific understanding is too Eurocentric. But according to the student, witchcraft is like Isaac Newton's theory of gravity—it's just one way of explaining the world, among many. "Decolonising the science would mean doing away with it entirely and starting all over again to deal with how we respond...

How about a little sanity break from the politics and mayhem? Blue jay Crested caracara Cormorants hanging out at the pier

“Rip” Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart, solved the problem of getting respondents to take part in a telephone poll in the 1947 film Magic Town. He found the perfectly representative Midwestern city and simply asked a few folks around town how they felt about the day’s burning issues. Stewart’s character, just back from the war, had his work cut out for him. He wanted to break into the then new science of public opinion polling. But he was broke and his competition, George Stringer, was well established. Then he discovered Grandview, which was perfectly representative of the county as a...

Daan Roosegaarde reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, pulled out a plastic bag filled with black powder, and waved it around. “This is Beijing smog,” Roosegaarde said, before gesturing to the seven-metre tall, gently humming metal tower we are stood next to in the Chinese capital’s art district, 798. “We collected it from the tower yesterday. Incredibly disgusting.” Dutch designer Roosegaarde’s smog souvenir may be disgusting, but it’s the byproduct of an invention that he has touted as a potential alleviator of China’s pollution problems. His “smog-free tower” sucks air, filters it with ion technology, with Roosegaarde having...

Atmospheric oxygen levels have declined over the past 1 million years, although not nearly enough to trigger any major problems for life on Earth, a new study finds.

Bioluminescent waves in San Diego, Red Tide Blue Waves, Alien footsteps on beach, Red Tide Surfing

In a commencement speech at Rutgers, President Obama took an indirect shot at Donald Trump and the Republicans: "Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science: These are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy . . . We traditionally have valued those things, but if you’re listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from." Obama here indulges one of the hoariest progressive clichés: that they are the party of enlightenment, reason, and fact, while conservatives are ignorant obscurantists, “bitter clingers” to the superstitions of religion and tradition. This...

New Study Shows Awe Bad for ‘Science’ (If by ‘Science’ You Mean Atheism) Douglas Axe Psychology professors from Claremont McKenna, Yale and Berkeley have just published a study that should be “disconcerting to those interested in promoting an accurate understanding of evolution.” Specifically, they’ve identified an insidious factor that has crept into science films and videos, undermining the ability of viewers to be good Darwinists.Awe is the culprit, they say. All those jaw-dropping nature documentaries have been messing with our minds.Most wildlife shows are packaged with the usual Darwinian narrative, spoken in an authoritative tone that isn’t supposed to be...

Biologists discovered a new type of flat worm and dedicated it to the US president naming it Baracktrema obamai. Biologist Thomas Platt, who turns out to be Obama's relative, doesn't regard it to be offensive. He believes it should be an honor for the president adding that the parasite resembles his namesake very much. It's also 'long, thin and cute'.

A new species of blood fluke was found infecting the lungs of turtles in Malaysia. This parasitic flatworm has been dubbed Baracktrema obamai, in honor of the President of the United States (who is the fifth cousin twice removed of one of the discovering scientists). More...

One important task of science is to develop testable theories. And one important characteristic of a theory is the ability to falsify it with evidence gathered from experimentation. Predictions should be able to be made that would verify the theory if those predictions play out, or falsify the theory if the evidence contradicts the theory. If, for example, one theorizes that gravity is a force that causes objects with much larger mass, if unimpeded, to pull objects with smaller mass towards it, one can make the prediction that if he drops an apple from his hand, the larger mass of...