0 A Win For Free Access To Publicly Funded Research

A couple weeks ago I posted about the Research Works Act, and how it would force the public to pay twice for research their hard earned tax dollars already funded.

Today, I'm glad to report that the Research Works Act was rejected. Representatives Issa and Maloney pledged not to move the legislation forward. Infojustice's web site posted about this turn of events, and scathing commentary has ensued concerning the pay wall that is Elsevier.

Read about it here: http://infojustice.org/archives/8477

Also, see this article in The Scientist: http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/28/elsevier-abandons-anti-open-access-bill/

This work by Camp Other is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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0 US HR Bill 3699 Would Put Tax Payer Funded Science Behind Pay Walls

US HR Bill 3699: I have a stake in this one. Many people have a stake in this one. I think that tax payer funded scientific research should be open access and published online as it has been in PLoS ONE and PubMed.

I value high quality peer-reviewed research. It's important. And peer-reviewed journals with high standards and ethics are necessary.

Given the amount of work involved, I think it's okay for privately funded research to be behind a pay wall for certain period of time - publishers need to recoup their money for editing and publishing journals which include not only research papers but articles, letters, and reviews.

Once more knowledge milestones are met and that privately funded research becomes effectively dated then it would best be released into the wild where the general public and students at community colleges and high schools could access it for free.

But this bill? This bill would ensure charging access to tax payer funded research.

An excerpt from the Doing Good Science blog on Scientific American web site pretty much sums up my own thoughts about it:

"The public is all too willing already to see public money spent funding scientific research as money wasted. If members of the public have to pay again to access research their tax dollars already paid for, they are likely to be peeved. They would not be wrong to feel like the scientific community had weaseled out of fulfilling its obligation to share the knowledge it builds for the good of the public. (Neither would they be wrong to feel like their government had fallen down on an ethical obligation to the public here, but whose expectations of their government aren’t painfully low at the moment?) A rightfully angry public could mean less public funding for scientific research — which means that there are pragmatic, as well as ethical, reasons for scientists to oppose the Research Works Act."

Read more commentary about this at the Doing Good Science blog on the Scientific American web site:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/doing-good-science/2012/01/06/the-research-works-act-asking-the-public-to-pay-twice-for-scientific-knowledge/

The original text of US HR Bill 3699:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3699:

This work by Camp Other is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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0 Video: Immunology Lectures from The Einstein College of Medicine

Given the volume of questions I'm getting on the immune system lately, I thought I'd post this 14 part mini series on the immune system.

Others have reported that watching this makes learning about immunology less scary and overwhelming - I haven't seen the entire series yet, but how about watching an episode or two and letting me know what you think of them?

There are slides online which accompany the lectures - these are the first session's slides:

http://www.einstein.yu.edu/multimedia/videos/conferences/immunologycourseinsouthafrica/L-1-Goldstein-Componenets-of-immune-system.pdf

Below is episode 1 - from there you should be able to advance to the next video in the series.

Learning more about immunology, microbiology, genetics, and molecular biology will help in understanding the research that is out there as well as patents.

All this knowledge is within reach - but requires putting the time in, and patience with one's own brain fog. I know, because I've been there... and it's a slow learning process - but learning does happen.

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0 Free Video Lectures & Podcasts: UC Berkeley Molecular and Cell Biology

For those of you who use iTunes to download podcasts and have the ability to learn by listening - or hope to absorb information through repetition and osmosis - there are FREE audio podcasts on Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley you can download from iTunes.

There are also some video podcasts of the classes available on iTunes and both audio and video podcasts can be found on UC Berkeley's webcast site.

If you're new to studying biology, I highly recommend starting with a basic biology course first, - such as this Biology 1A lecture at Berkeley and/or these Biology video podcasts from MIT - then this class:

Molecular and Cell Biology 110, 001|Fall 2009|UC Berkeley
by Qiang ZHOU, qing zhong, Thomas C. ALBER
Download up to 41 classes (start with session 1 at bottom of podcast list!)
http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/molecular-cell-biology-110/id354820350


Followed by its more advanced class:

Molecular and Cell Biology 130, 001|Spring 2009|UC Berkeley
by Randy W SCHEKMAN, Kunxin LUO, David G. DRUBIN
Download up to 42 classes (start with session 1 at bottom of podcast list!)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/molecular-cell-biology-130/id354820424

If you do not have iTunes, you can also go directly to UC Berkeley's webcast site and WATCH and listen to these classroom lectures for free, on a variety of topics.


I realize this may be challenging for many Lyme patients dealing with cognitive issues and "brain fog", but I put the information out there because it can be useful to learn to decipher the studies and research you may come across from the IDSA, ILADS, and other groups. Knowledge is power, and the great things about these videocasts and podcasts are:

• You can play and replay each podcast as often as you like.
• You can learn at your own pace.
• You can share these links with others and talk about what they learned at their pace.
• You can watch some and listen to others - work with your best learning style.
• They are absolutely FREE - do you have any idea how much each unit at UC Berkeley costs?

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