Aaron Miller - How to Help (Page 11)

Apr 17, 2024 Blog

Protecting the People Who Expose Fraudulent Science

I’m so incredibly proud that this new legal defense fund is being hosted at University Impact. The fund’s purpose is to protect whistleblowers who call out fraudulent science, a big problem over the last few years.

“A Silicon Valley investor has pledged $1 million to help pay the legal costs of scientists being sued for flagging fraudulent research. Yun-Fang Juan, an engineer and data scientist by background, hopes the new Scientific Integrity Fund—the first of its kind—will make speaking up about wrongdoing less intimidating.”

I’m board chair and a co-founder at UI, and one of our big goals is helping philanthropic capital move more easily into needed areas like this one.

Congratulations to the UI team for making this happen. We’re also very grateful to Yun-Fang Juan for trusting UI as the place to make this happen.

Science integrity sleuths welcome legal aid fund for whistleblowers | Science.org

Apr 16, 2024 Blog

Inventions That Have Saved Billions of Lives

I was looking for estimates of how many lives have been saved by vaccines and came across this excellent article. The other inventions that rank as high as vaccines include blood transfusions, synthetic fertilizers, and toilets. The graphic visualization is also very cool.

“For most of civilized history, life expectancy fluctuated in the 30 to 40 year range…By the 20th century, an explosion in new technologies, treatments, and other science-backed practices helped to increase global life expectancy at an unprecedented rate…What were the major innovations that made the last century so very fruitful in saving lives?

These discoveries saved billions of lives | World Economic Forum

Apr 15, 2024 Blog

Elementary Students in Canada Discover EpiPens Are Useless in Space

Using a NASA program that partners with university researchers, a group of elementary students were invited to test an idea of their own. Not even NASA knew that EpiPens become useless in space. I love stories like this.

(Via the excellent Legal Nomads newsletter)

Students from St. Brother André Elementary School’s Program for Gifted Learners (PGL) were interested in the effects of cosmic radiation on the molecular structure of epinephrine, a medication found in EpiPens used in emergencies to treat severe allergic reactions. The PGL students had their experiment accepted by the Cubes in Space program, meaning that it was sent into space with NASA. The John Holmes Mass Spectrometry Core Facility in the uOttawa’s Faculty of Science analyzed the returned samples to find the epinephrine sent into space returned only 87% pure, with the remaining 13% transformed into extremely poisonous benzoic acid derivatives, making the EpiPen unusable.

Story: uOttowa

Apr 12, 2024 Blog

You Can’t Buy Virtue

Most people agree that there are things money shouldn’t be able to buy. Making everything a market has the potential to disrupt our virtuous instincts. Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel has written extensively on this topic, but this piece of his is an engaging explanation.

“If the supply of altruism, generosity, and civic virtue is fixed, like the supply of fossil fuels, then we should try to conserve it…But to those not steeped in economics, this way of thinking about the generous virtues is strange, even far-fetched. It ignores the possibility that our capacity for love and benevolence is not depleted with use but enlarged with practice.”

How Markets Crowd Out Morals - Boston Review

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