GOOD NEWS A report from the National Science Foundation shows that black and Hispanic students are closing the achievement gap with white students in the fields of math and science. White students still outperform black and Hispanic students in testing, but minority children are improving at a faster rate. From 2004 to 2006, the proficiency level for black and Hispanic kids improved by about 18 points. [EUR]

It probably didn't take more than a few seconds for the scientists behind a recent controversial study on the toxic effects of sludge fertilizer to figure out the best place to run their tests. How about going to a poor black neighborhood where we'll offer residents with children "free lawns" and food coupons in exchange for participating in the government-funded sludge study but not really tell them that the sludge is toxic and dangerous and fail to offer any follow-up medical testing? Perfect!

The purpose of the study was to test whether or not sludge — made from human and industrial waste — can protect children from lead in the soil. What the scientists failed to mention to the nine, low-income Baltimore families that participated, was that some scientists believe that the "heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms" found in sludge have possible harmful effects.

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• Two men in Hawaii " think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe. Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure." Uh, how sure?

• African Americans make up nearly one-fifth of all U.S. diabetes patients, and the number is growing.

• Vytorin, one of the most popular cholesterol drugs, "doesn't prevent heart disease." Sounds promising.

• Blacks with a family history of colon cancer are less likely to get colonoscopies than their white counterparts.

• Twelve tips to live longer.

The long, discouraging, and expensive struggle to find an AIDS vaccine has hit a major road block, and scientists are left confused as to what went wrong and where to go from here. Two field tests for the "most promising contender" out of the possible AIDS vaccines, "made from a common respiratory virus called adenovirus type 5 that had been crippled and then loaded with fragments of HIV," have been halted after it was discovered in one of the field tests that the vaccine not only didn't prevent the virus but may have also increased the risk of contracting it.

That National Institutes of Health are meeting next week to figure out where to go from here with the AIDS vaccine program. But scientists are saying the prognosis is grim.

"None of the products currently in the pipeline has any reasonable chance of being effective in field trials," Ronald C. Desrosiers, a molecular geneticist at Harvard University, declared last month at an AIDS conference in Boston. "We simply do not know at the present time how to design a vaccine that will be effective against HIV."

If you're waiting for the good news, there wasn't much of any in this story, sadly. [WP]

At right is Eric Delgado, a senior at Bayonne High School and one of 40 finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, the nation’s most prestigious high school science competition. Bayonne High is situated in a city where the median household income is $41,566 and only half its graduates attend college. Indeed, it's not an easy place to become a biology whiz. But, by definition, "prodigies" are as unlikely to be found in tony prep schools as they are in Bayonne High. The New York Times seems to have forgotten that fact. We suppose it's difficult to see the flowers growing in the ghetto from on high the ivory tower.

Black people don't participate for medical trials. It could be due to mistrust of doctors or fear of being experimented on, but new research says that blacks are 40 percent less likely to volunteer in clinical trials. For the record, I was an avid participant in my college's psych department trials, and an avid casher of the checks they provided. But that's beside the point.

The researchers asked a series of questions to learn why people did or did not want to volunteer. They found that 58 percent of blacks, compared to just 25 percent of whites, said they believed doctors use drugs to experiment on people without a patient's consent. In addition, 25 percent of the blacks, compared to 15 percent of whites, expressed the belief their doctor would be willing to ask them to take part in a study even if the study might harm them. And 28 percent of blacks, compared to 22 percent of whites, said their doctors would be willing to expose them to unnecessary risks.

Without question, the medical community needs volunteers of all races in clinical trials, but I wonder if placing the blame solely on the individuals or an entire race is ignoring the responsibility of researchers to try harder to recruit a diverse group of volunteers.

It's no secret that a small amount of knowledge can be poisonous to a person who lacks context and understanding. As more and more scientists uncover tiny variations in DNA that cause certain racial or ethnic traits — such as pale skin in Europeans, West Africans' resistance to certain diseases, and even Asians' tendency to sweat less — many in the scientific community worry that people who are already prejudiced will use these findings as false scientific proof that certain races are superior to others. It's already happening, according to a story in the New York Times.

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James Watson is nearly 80 and looks it — his skin is dotted with liver spots, a shock of wispy white hair (half) covers his head, wrinkles surround his blue eyes, and his teeth… Well, don't get me started on his teeth. But it's the Chicago-born Nobel laureate's ideas, not his physical appearance, that age him the most. Lauded almost 50 years ago for determining, with the help of an unrewarded female researcher named Rosalind Franklin and others, the structure of DNA, it seems like his mission since has been to sully his notable scientific works with off-color comments.

From CNN:

In 1997, Britain's Sunday Telegraph quoted Watson as saying that if a gene for homosexuality were isolated, women who find that their unborn child has the gene should be allowed to have an abortion.

During a lecture tour in 2000, he suggested there might be links between skin color and sexual prowess and between a person's weight and their level of ambition.

And in a British TV documentary that aired in 2003, Watson suggested that stupidity was a genetic disease that should be treated.

Watson's latest comments, about a link between race and intelligence, may have destroyed his reputation in the scientific community and his legacy for good. Stereohyped spoke to Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Dean of University Studies at North Carolina A&T University and the author of The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium and The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America about James Watson, scientific racism, and the need for more scientific literacy.

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