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Canada urged to tackle scientific misconduct

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More education, advice and transparency needed to improve integrity. As cases of questionable conduct among scientists stack up around the globe, a report commissioned by the Canadian government calls for a rethink of the country’s research system to boost honesty and curb misconduct. The recommendations, if implemented, would relax privacy laws that hamper the identification of individuals and institutions found guilty of research misconduct, and create an independent council to promote best practices and prevent research misconduct. The Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) — a not-for-profit corporation based in Ottawa that independently assesses science relevant to public issues — released … Read more…

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Sizing up the spill

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When the government began releasing estimates of the size of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil well leak, scientists and environmental groups questioned the figures, certain the leak was larger. New research supports that notion. According to the study, published in Science, some 4.4 million barrels of oil has escaped into the ocean. It is the first independent, peer-reviewed paper on the size of the leak. (doi: 10.1126/science.1195840) Timothy Crone, a marine geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in Palisades, New York arrived at the estimate using a video analysis technique originally designed to study hydrothermal vents. He had spent years developing … Read more…

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Collapse of the ice titans

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Nature Monitoring Greenland’s melting glaciers from a 15-metre long sailboat. In early August, a 260-kilometre-square chunk of ice broke off the Petermann Glacier — the largest iceberg to calve in the Arctic Ocean since 1962. The collapse didn’t surprise Richard Bates, a geophysicist from the University of St Andrews, UK. During a visit to Petermann last summer, with glaciologists Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University in Columbus and Alun Hubbard of Aberystwyth University, UK, the three noted rifts and meltwater — a sign of pending collapse. They installed time-lapse cameras atop the 900-metre-high cliffs … Read more…

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Taxing times for Canadian postdocs

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Trainee researchers struggle to make ends meet after the government clarifies tax rules for grants. Staff, student or employee? The employment status of Canadian postdoctoral researchers remains unclear — and many are struggling with the tax issues that arise from the ambiguity. Some of Canada’s postdocs are categorized as associates with benefits, others are fellows with no employee status and, until recently, some had a tax-exempt status on a par with students. “We fall into this no-man’s land,” says Marianne Stanford, chair of the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS) and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute … Read more…

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River metals linked to tar sand extraction

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Researchers find that pollutants in Canada’s Athabasca River are not from natural sources. Oil-mining operations in Canada’s main tar sands region are releasing a range of heavy and toxic metals — including mercury, arsenic and lead — into a nearby river and its watershed, according to a new study. Research published online yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that 13 elements classified as priority pollutants (PPEs) by the US Environmental Protection Agency were found in the Athabasca River in the province of Alberta1. Seven of these were present at high enough concentrations to put aquatic … Read more…