Fact-check

One of the things that Xconomy really seems to understand is the credo from Ken Layne “It’s the Internet and we can fact-check your ass.” The Web is a different medium and operates by different rles.

They do not seem to be afraid of interacting with a community in a fashion where their facts can all be checked. Most MSM are still afraid of their customers, viewing them as simply organisms whose purpose is to read ads and purchase from their advertisers.

The best info sites on the web realize that this is an interactive community. Xconomy shows signs of actually getting this and is rapidly becoming a must read for me. Also, while I already know Luke, I feel that I could walk up to Greg Huang or even even CEO Bob Buderi and begin a conversation. They are accessible in ways no MSM reporter is. I wonder if this helps them get leads for their stories?

Technorati Tags: General, Social media

Why Xconomy works

Amgen’s Bid to Make Cancer Drug “Personalized” Lacks Data, FDA Panel Says:
[Via Xconomy Life Sciences Feed]

Biotech, cancer, Personalized Medicines

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology company, with operations in Seattle and Cambridge, MA, came up short in its bid to make its colorectal cancer drug personalized today in front of a panel of expert advisers to the FDA. The panel said Amgen and Eli Lilly will have to run more clinical trials to gather enough evidence that doctors should screen patients for their genetic status, to see whether they are likely to benefit from the drug or not.

The FDA panel, according to this Reuters report, said the companies need to have a well-organized plan to review their data to support this conclusion. They will also need enough patients and tissue samples to analyze genetic issues. “It’s going to make life more complicated, costly…it’s going to require larger clinical trials,” said panel member Richard Simon of the National Cancer Institute, according to the Reuters story.

[More]

It’s articles like that that display how new media approaches can be so different than MSM. Luke has a tremendous amount of experience in reporting on Biotech. He is able to demonstrate this directly to us with his great perspective on why the FDA wants more trials and how Amgen was not too surprised.

Less spin and more perspective. There are also links and such for a dedicated reader to learn a lot more. Even links to outside sites. Compare this with more MSM websites, where the links that are present go to internal pages.

The other nice approach Xconomy takes is to allow the personality of the reporter to come through. We have to learn to trust them if we are to believe the news. MSM want us to trust the institution but hardly ever do we learn which reporters to trust, even with a byline. Here, the byline is front and center (Luke Timmerman wrote), as is the personality and viewpoints of the reporter.

We can look at older articles with easy and if we have a beef or other perspectives, we can comment directly and be seen on the same page as the reporter. Thus our own contributions gain almost as much prominence as the reporter’s, who can now begin a discussion if so required. The benefits of this sort of feedback loop will be huge.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science, Social media, Web 2.0

Natural disaster death map

United States death map revealed:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

A map of natural hazard mortality in the United States has been produced. The map, featured in BioMed Central’s open access International Journal of Health Geographics, gives a county-level representation of the likelihood of dying as the result of natural events such as floods, earthquakes or extreme weather.

read more

This is a fascinating paper to examine. I’ve often wondered where the best/worst places to live when it came to natural disasters was. This paper displays it at the county level, at least based on data from 1970-2004. Red indicates more deaths than average. Blue less. The darker colors means the death rate is more than 1.5 standard deviations from the average. This means that these counties are in the top 10% or so in their class.

So the data does not include Katrina. That will have changed what parts of LA and MS look like. Los Angeles and San Francisco look really good because the Big One has not hit yet. Seattle and King COunty are niceYet, it is easy to see that Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan all have lots of blue, meaning they are better than average. So does New York City and Boston.

The authors also checked to see if the good/bad news was clustered. That is, if it really is a natural disaster, then adjoining counties should have significant correlations. This map shows what this analysis looks like.

Again, the areas listed above show lots of positive correlation. LA and SF are still great until the Big One. The entire states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and most of New Jersey are all blue. Michigan may not be a great place to find a job right now, but you are pretty safe from natural disasters.

What is interesting is the wide swath of red along the Rockies. A large number of these deaths come from severe winter weather and flooding. I’m surprised that these are still such huge factors in mortality due to natural forces.

We tend to hear about big name stuff – earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. But many people still die from age-old disasters – floods and storms.

The other interesting thing to observe is that the safest places to live are generally in urban areas, particularly near water. The Northeast is better than the South, unless you live in a major city in the South. East of the Mississippi is better than west. And stay away from Arkansas.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Health, Science

Loss of polar ice

by wili_hybrid
2 Trillion Tons of Polar Ice Lost in 5 Years, and Melting Is Accelerating:
[Via Discover Magazine | RSS]

Several new studies of ice loss at the earth’s poles paint a distressing picture of global warming’s impact on those fragile ecosystems, and one study warns that changes in the Arctic climate can have a large impact on the rest of the world. In the first study, researchers determined that more than 2 trillion tons of landlocked ice in Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica have melted since 2003, a melting trend that researchers expect to continue. Using new satellite technology that measures changes in mass in mountain glaciers and ice sheets, NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke concluded that the losses amounted to enough water to fill the Chesapeake Bay 21 times. “The ice tells us in a very real way how the climate is changing,” said Luthcke [CNN].

[More]

Loss of land-locked ice means sea levels go up. Loss of Arctic ice means waters heat up more, less ice is formed next year and so on. All the models show the greatest increase in temperatures happening at the poles. And the real world numbers indicate that this is happening faster than the models predict.

I think it is too late to reverse these trends. All we can do now is to ameliorate the damage. The big worry is that as growing seasons move towards the pole, the types and amounts of foods will have to alter. Temperate regions move into regions with much different night-day cycles than seen now. Even if Northern Canada had a climate like Kansas, the diurnal cycle is very different. Not to mention the soil conditions.

Food will be a big factor. And since fresh water is stored in snowpack that is disappearing, better wintertime maintenance of the water supply will be critical. Fun times.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science