Editorial Column—Education: Our Most Important Service Sector

EDITORIAL Meet Our Editorial Board Member

Wataru Araki is presently a section chief at the National Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry (NCNP), Tokyo, Japan. His research mainly focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative dementia disorders including Alzheimer’s disease. He seeks the core problems in the pathogenesis of the diseases with an aim to translate the discov...

EDITORIAL Meet Our Editorial Board Member

I was born in Leningrad, Soviet Union in 1951, and have received my B.Sc. in Biology/Biophysics (1971) and M.Sc. in Biochemistry (1973) from the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the Leningrad State University. After receiving my Ph.D. Degree in Molecular Biology and Cancer Biology (1979) from the Petrov Cancer Research Institute, I was continuing my research as a research scientist there. In 1...

Editorial Protecting Our Science

On 6 June 2013, a court in New York City handed down a decision that calls into question the validity of research that was sponsored by Georgia Pacific (GP) Corporation (In re New York City Asbestos Litigation) and published in eight peer-reviewed articles, including two papers published in the Annals of Occupational Hygiene (Sheehan et al., 2011; Berman et al., 2012). While the court did not d...

Water--Our Most Precious Resource.

Placebos: our most effective therapy?

Placebos remain highly controversial therapies largely because of their widespread use in research as a comparator rather than a focus of analysis. While a recent systematic review of placebo versus no therapy arms in trials found no difference, the placebo effect in some areas of drug trial research is large and increasing. We attempt to explain this paradox and suggest how clinicians may use ...