Some of the things making a splash lately…

The Health Affairs Blog had a great post about a recent IOM report on how to communicate with patients about health care evidence. One survey conducted found that “patients view evidence about what works for their condition as more important than their provider’s opinion or their personal goals and values.” The study also showed, however, that for patients, “each decision ‘is patient-specific; it depends upon the medical evidence, the providers’ clinical expertise, and the unique and individual preferences of the patient and family.’”  The next issue of HealthAffairs, to be published on October 9, will focus on this topic.

When Bad News Stories Help Bad Science Go Viral is a detailed post about the questionable assertions behind recent flashy headlines on GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). As this post from The Knight Science Journalism Tracker at MIT discusses, NPR’s On The Media interviewed science journalist and blogger Carl Zimmer about the media coverage of the same study last week.

At the Scientific American blog network, Eric Buckler wrote a fascinating piece about using data visualization techniques to further scientific discovery.

A fast new genetic scan is being used to enable early diagnosis of genetic diseases in newborns, says the NY Times.

The Atlantic reports that California will create a site for students to download free, open-source, digital textbooks!

Catching my eye this week…

From The Daily Scan, ENCODE Goes to Court shows the ripple effect of the project’s recent findings. Did flawed communication of complicated new science lead to distortions in the media and now the legal system as well? Yikes!  How can scientists work to ensure that the public – journalists and lawyers in particular – have  a clear understanding of what new findings mean for all of us?

The NY Times Bits blog covered the new app updates rolled out by Twitter this week.

Another of their blogs, Well, posted a story about the difficulties in effective pain treatment for cancer patients.

And for some Friday fun…The 2012 Ig Nobel Prizes, celebrating “achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think”, were awarded this week. Visit Improbable Research to learn about this year’s winners (along with pony tails, government reports, chimpanzee bottoms and salmon brains).

Making a splash on the blogs these last two weeks…

The results of the massive ENCODE project exploring the human genome are out! Ed Yong explains more about the project (for the non-scientist) and along with the flood of new data there has been online debate over how the project has been covered in the media. Over at The Finch and Pea, Mike White provides an overview of how major media stories have erred. Michael Eisen provides another critique. These discussions point to a gap between the public’s perception of DNA in particular – and science in general – and the difficult job of accurately communicating and reporting complex new discoveries. If you’d rather dive into the data yourself though, here is a link to the ENCODE explorer on Nature, which is also available as a free iPad app.

Eating well and maintaining a healthy weight are important but, as Rob Dunn’s guest post at the Scientific American Blog network pointed out, there is a lot we don’t understand about digestion and our bodies. Read The Hidden Truths About Calories for a better sense of what is and isn’t understood about food’s journey through our bodies  and why the nutrition facts give only a sketch of the whole picture.

In related news, a 25-year study found that restricting the calories in the diets of rhesus monkeys did not not extend their lives, according to coverage in Nature news, it appears that the quality of food and genetics also play a role in aging.

Twitter has announced that their API will no longer support RSS and Atom in March, more in this post from Mashable .