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Science Magazine Podcast

Randomizing the news for science, transplanting genetically engineered skin, and the ethics of experimental brain implants

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3842 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2017

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week we hear stories on what to do with experimental brain implants after a study is over, how gene therapy gave a second skin to a boy with a rare epidermal disease, and how bone markings thought to be evidence for early hominid tool use may have been crocodile bites instead, with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Sarah Crespi interviews Gary King about his new experiment to bring fresh data to the age-old question of how the news media influences the public. Are journalists setting the agenda or following the crowd? How can you know if a news story makes a ripple in a sea of online information? In a powerful study, King’s group was able to publish randomized stories on 48 small and medium sized news sites in the United States and then track the results.  Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Chad Sparkes/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This podcast is supported by the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai,

0:04.0

the academic arm of the Mount Sinai health system in New York City,

0:07.5

and one of America's leading research medical schools.

0:10.7

What are scientists and clinicians working on to improve medical care and health for women?

0:15.5

Find out in a special supplement to Science magazine prepared by the Icon School of Medicine

0:20.0

and Mount Sinai in partnership

0:21.6

with science. Visit our website at www.science.org and search for Frontiers of Medical

0:27.5

Research-Wedmen's Health. The Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we find a way.

0:55.4

Welcome to the science podcast for November 10th, 2017. I'm Sarah Crespi. In this week's show, Gary King talks with us about an experiment to randomize the news in order to test the influence of small news outlets on the national conversation.

1:00.3

And Catherine Mattisick is here with a roundup of stories from our daily news site.

1:08.0

Now we have Catherine Mattisick, editor for our daily online news site.

1:10.0

She's here to talk about some recent stories.

1:11.8

Welcome, Catherine. Hi, Sarah.

1:18.9

Okay, our first story is on brain implants. When a drug trial ends, if the treatment has been shown to be ineffective or it's not giving you the results you want, the participants stop

1:23.6

taking the drug. But what happens when the treatment is actually an implant in their brain?

1:30.2

Some trials have focused on deep brain stimulation with implants and they have ended. What kinds of

1:36.4

studies do this kind of thing? There are all sorts of studies out there looking at how deep

1:41.7

brain stimulation, which is basically jolting brain tissue

1:45.2

with tiny bursts of electricity, affects everything from obsessive-compulsive disorder to depression.

1:51.7

Now that the equipment to do this in a much more targeted way finally exists, lots of private

1:57.8

companies and even public funders are getting into the game. But the process itself is really expensive and, as you said, quite invasive. It often requires drilling holes into the person's head and snaking metal electrodes into tiny nodules of tissue, which are then stimulated with electrical current. In some studies,

2:21.0

researchers implant a battery somewhere else in the body that acts kind of like a pacemaker.

...

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