New vaccine data is coming, watch out for these three claims
The last few weeks have seen dramatic headlines on the efficacy of several new coronavirus vaccines. But coverage to this point has been based on press releases – tiny snippets of results that were trickled out from clinical trials. This week, the real data deluge will begin. The Food and...
Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist for declining to manipulate Covid data
State police brandishing firearms early this week raided the Tallahassee home of Rebekah Jones, the former Department of Health employee who built the state’s much-praised Covid-19 dashboard before being fired over what she said was refusing to “manipulate data.” “They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at...
How Google kicked out star ethics researcher Timnit Gebru
It is often argued that scholarship is always a conversation and always a work in progress. However, on the evening of Wednesday, December 2, Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, announced via Twitter that the company had forced her out. Gebru, a widely respected leader in Artificial...
Coronavirus origin: ‘Without it, we are flying blind’
It is a big ask. Intensified detection of coronavirus in humans might require doing a thorough evaluation of any patient who comes to any hospital or clinic with the kind of symptoms that are usually dismissed. An unexplained fever or the symptoms of a respiratory infection that has no obvious...
Pivot point: Efforts shift from vaccine to tracking origin of coronavirus
With cases soaring in the United States and elsewhere, the Covid-19 pandemic is nowhere near its end – but with three vaccines reporting trial data and two apparently nearing approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, it may be reaching a pivot point. In what feels like a moment...
Confidence rises upon reports coronavirus vaccines may soon be available
With the news that Moderna has applied for emergency use authorisation for its coronavirus vaccine, and that Pfizer and BioNTech’s shot has been approved in the UK, the US is inching ever closer to having one, if not two, vaccines approved for use. Both are mRNA vaccines, which trigger cells...
Hackers target Covid-19 vaccine ‘cold chain’
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, hackers and scammers have focused extraordinary attention on it, whether for espionage or for grift. Now, as pharmaceutical companies prepare to ship long-awaited vaccines, a new round of sophisticated phishing attacks is focused on the complex supply chain that will get them to people in...
‘Old age may soon become treatable pathology rather than an inevitability’
In July 2017, I sat in a closed-door meeting coordinated by the State Department and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. In the room were research scientists, government officials and policy wonks with PhDs in the hard sciences. Our task that day was to talk about the future...
25 countries notorious for human rights violations invest in spyware
A surveillance technology that can identify the location of a phone anywhere in the world in just seconds with only a telephone number has been detected in 25 countries, some with chequered records on human rights, according to research findings released this week. Forbes magazine reports that the technology was...
How coronavirus vaccines are being divvied up around the world
Vaccine developers who have already reported promising phase III trial results against Covid-19 estimate that, between them, they can make sufficient doses for more than one-third of the world’s population by the end of 2021. But many people in low-income countries might have to wait until 2023 or 2024 for...
