Scientific American Online

A leading psychopathy researcher has used the threat of legal action to have changes made to a research paper critical of a widely used criminological rating scale he developed 20 years ago. In the process the paper, which was accepted for publication in 2007 by Psychological Assessment , was delayed three years. It finally appeared in the journal's June issue, but the whole affair has raised questions about how legal threats can impact the progress of psychological science.

The article in question concerns the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R), which is commonly administered in serious criminal cases to help make sentencing decisions as well as in prisons and psychiatric hospitals to determine suitability for release. A high score on the PCL-R is used to diagnose psychopathy .

(Announcer’s call of “GOAL!”)

That’s a shout World Cup enthusiasts don’t hear too frequently. Soccer’s known for low-scoring games, which makes it difficult to find an objective means of measuring the skill of top players. In a given game, a couple might nail a goal or have an assist. But who’s the best of the best?

Editor's Note: Vienna, Austria-based science writer Chelsea Wald is taking part in a two-week Marine Biological Laboratory journalism fellowship at Toolik Field Station , an environmental research station inside the Arctic circle. To see the current conditions in Toolik, check out the Webcam . [More]

By Alla Katsnelson

A combination gene therapy that endows human stem cells with three ways to resist HIV has passed its first safety test in humans. [More]

HIV infects an estimated 430,000 infants and children worldwide each year. Although many of those cases are contracted from an HIV-positive mother during pregnancy or birth, some 40 percent of infected children get the disease through breast-feeding . But because of health risks associated with formula feeding--especially in resource-poor regions--the World Health Organization still recommends breast-feeding for mothers with HIV/AIDS in the developing world. Left untreated, however, about half of HIV-infected infants die before the age of two. [More]

NEW YORK CITY--Here is how climate change could shut down a city: On the morning of August 8, 2007, a thunderstorm paralyzed the largest rail transit system in the U.S.--New York City's subway--during morning rush hour. Flash floods deposited more than 7,000 kilograms of dirt and debris on tracks that stretch more than 1,350 kilometers and carry 1.5 billion passengers annually. A December 1992 storm had a similar impact, including flooding portions of Lower Manhattan and the East River Drive. [More]

Editor's Note: A team of researchers led by John Kessler , Texas A&M College of Geosciences chief scientist and assistant oceanography professor, has traveled to the Deepwater Horizon disaster area to study the methane leaking into the Gulf of Mexico (along with tens thousands of barrels of crude oil) daily at the site of the damaged Macondo 252 well. Kessler, along with David Valentine (an assistant professor of marine sediment geochemistry, biogeochemistry and geomicrobiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara) and the rest of his colleagues are hoping to come away with a rough estimate of the spill's size by the time his team returns home on June 20, followed by more accurate estimates as they complete their analysis of the information collected. Other objectives of the expedition onboard the RV Cape Hatteras include trying to determine how the methane might be removed from the water (whether eaten by waterborne microorganisms or released into the atmosphere) and how methane concentrations will change over time. Valentine filed the following dispatch. It's the team's third blog post for Scientific American.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 [More]

The Kepler spacecraft , launched in 2009 to scour distant stellar systems for Earth-like planets, has yet to attain that lofty goal, but it is now returning a flood of data about all manner of planets outside the solar system. On June 15, the Kepler team released information on possible planets identified in the first month or so of the spacecraft's three-plus-year mission--a massive set of more than 300 candidates that promises to significantly augment the known catalogue of extrasolar planets. The data were published online at the preprint repository arXiv.org and will be submitted to The Astrophysical Journal . [More]

Take a good look at the intense power of the oil spill .

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said yesterday that he welcomes "vigorous debate" on climate science.

"We who are on the side of the consensus must remind ourselves that the evolution of knowledge thrives on debate," Rajendra Pachauri said in an essay published on the website of the BBC .

How safe was your last meal? If you dined out, you took a significant risk.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates 76 million Americans acquire foodborne illnesses annually. In the U.S., 3,334 incidences of outbreaks from 1998 to 2002 were reported in restaurants or delicatessens according to a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report . And recent research by food safety specialist Ben Chapman of North Carolina State University found that meals prepared in commercial kitchens have been involved in up to 70 percent of food poisoning outbreaks.

Alzheimer's disease and its associated dementia can be a scary prospect for individuals and families faced with it. Between 2.4 million and 4.5 million Americans suffer from this debilitating, incurable disease, according to the National Institutes of Health. That figure is expected to rise as the baby boomers age.

Community memory screening events are becoming increasingly popular as individuals and their families seek to detect dementia in its earliest stages--before it destroys patients' memories and thinking skills. But many physicians warn against these screenings, which are often ineffective when it comes to detecting dementia, and can leave test-takers feeling scared and powerless.

Which of these guys would you guess is stronger? Him? [Arnold Schwarzenegger saying “One of us is in deep trouble.”]. Or him? [Pee Wee Herman saying, “I’m having a party, and you’re invited!”] If you chose Arnold over Pee Wee, it’s not just because you’re an astute student of popular culture. A new study shows that people are able to accurately judge a man’s strength from his voice. The work appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society . [Aaron Sell et al., http://bit.ly/9qnXXa ] [More]

By Matt Spetalnick and Alister Bull

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday laid out what he called a battle plan to tackle the BP oil spill and exhorted Americans in warlike terms to embark on a mission to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

By Emma Marris

The United Nations is setting up a body to monitor global ecology modeled on its influential climate panel. [More]

Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, talks with podcast host Steve Mirsky [ pictured ] about neutrinos and gravity waves. [More]

By Bruce Dorminey

The star Eta Carinae (Eta Car), once one of the brightest in the southern sky, has long been shrouded in mystery. [More]

I don't believe in God--at least, not any version I've encountered so far--but I do believe in free will. Free will, which I define as our capacity to recognize and act on choices, is what makes life meaningful. I can't be sure that free will exists, so my belief is, I suppose, a faith. And it is a faith sorely tested by advances in science and technology.

Recently, for example, I've been brooding over whether the Internet, laptops, smart phones and all the razzmatazz of our wired (and wi-fi) age are enlarging or diminishing our free will. Because free will is not something you either do or don't have; it can thrive or shrivel, depending on your circumstances. You have more free will now than you did when you were two years old, for example, or than you would if you were locked in a prison or afflicted with Alzheimer's.

The deadly fungal infection that afflicts bats known as white-nose syndrome (WNS) has now been found on another U.S. bat species , the ninth since the infection was first observed four years ago. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, WNS has now beset 20 percent of North America's bat species.

WNS's latest victim is the southeastern myotis ( Myotis austroriparius ), which lives in the Gulf Coastal Plain and the lower Mississippi Alluvial Plain. An infected myotis bat was found in Virginia's Pocahontas State Park in May. It died soon after it was captured by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.