Mickey does not approve of your science

What happens when a study out of UW-Seattle concludes that "Baby Einstein" has little educational utility? Disney gets pissed off and threatens legal action.

Linn sees the entire ‘baby
industry’ becoming more litigious.
“We can expect more of this kind of
corporate intimidation,” she warns.
“Disney is on the defensive and
they’re going to come out swinging.”
The study, published online
earlier this month (F. Zimmerman
et al. J. Pediatr. doi:10.1016/
j.jpeds.2007.04.071; 2007), found
that babies aged 8 to 16 months
who watched such videos scored
lower than other babies on the
Communicative Development
Inventory (CDI), a standard
tool used to gauge language
development in infants.

This story may be more appropriate over at Seriatim, but the increasing frequency of legal-science hybrid articles continues to amaze me. It seems there will be a time in the not-so-distant future that we will all have to be JD/PhDs!!

Is baby DVD research Micky Mouse science? [Nature]

More biology PhDs going into industry

An article in the latest issue in Nature confirms that what many scientists around academia have observed locally is actually a national trend too: tenured positions are becoming increasingly competitive. The number of PhD graduates continues to increase but the number of jobs in academia has remained stagnant. Further, the funding rate for postdocs has steadily decreased since 2000 - thanks Bush.

Getting a Democrat in office in 2008 may provide help in time for this biologist's graduation and subsequent postdoc, but this article suggests that the economics impact of a research proposal may soon out-weigh its scientific merit.

Check 2007 [Nature]
Innovation versus science? [Nature]