02-05-2014, 12:38 AM
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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 38,323
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Some people are less than enthusiastic about pay-to-publish science journals such as PLoS:
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PLoS One: Not a real science journal
I love the open-access concept for scientific journals. There is no reason why someone should have to pay $35 to read my papers.
PLoS is one of the first and largest open-access science journals out there. Some of their journals, like PLoS Biology, are very prestigious places to publish and have put out many amazing studies. They also have a vigorous peer-review process.
Unfortunately, to subsidize publication in their premier journals, PLoS pretty much lets anyone who's willing to pay a couple of thousand dollars to publish anything in their barely peer-reviewed journal PLoS One.
Their argument for minimizing the peer-review process (and ignoring the scientific merit of their papers) is that it is reviewed by the global community. Unfortunately, all it does is get a bunch of non-scientists make a big deal of a crappy study for being published in a scientific journal.
Don't get me wrong, there have been some nice papers I've read in PLoS One, but they also let in a lot of crap (70% of what's submitted is published), like this recent one about a model for Moses parting the Red Sea, that has absolutely no scientific merit. Because of this, PLoS One made it to my Fake Science list.
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I read this about the HIV breakthrough cited by the OP in the initial post of this thread:
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German scientists have used a genetic modification technique to cut HIV out of infected cells in mice. Now they hope it will lead to a cure for the virus ? but the likelihood of that remains to be seen.
A team of researchers at the Dresden University of Technology say they managed to create an enzyme that can identify a sequence of the virus and remove it with 90 % accuracy, according to The Local.
The enzyme ? sometimes called "molecular scissors" ? gets inside the DNA double helix, cuts it up and rearranges it in a new, HIV-free pattern, according to the European news site.
Hauber said it is the only method to actually remove an HIV infection.
"There are various methods and similar approaches, but removing the virus from infected cells is unique," Hauber said.
But it is premature for scientists to be able to conclude what this progress means for people.
Professor Frank Buchholz, leader of the research team from the Dresden University of Technology, thinks the research could potentially be ready for humans in about a decade, The Local reports.
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Professor Jürgen Rockstroh, president of the German Aids Society, hopes the scientists can secure enough funding to continue their work ? and possibly find a cure.
The only patient thought to be cured of HIV is Timothy Ray Brown, who received a bone marrow transplant in 2007.
Experts say bone marrow transplants are risky and not a reasonable method for treating the virus.
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Funny, that some of you are already proclaiming this a cure, because you read something you didn't understand on the internet. Gotta love the GFY scientists (almost as good as the GFY lawyers). Never let facts get in the way of a good rant or conspiracy theory. 
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