(graphic altered from Kadivar et al., 2006) If it’s not new, you can’t publish it; it is an axiom that illustrates a sickness in science. Doing biological research is not cheap, it takes time and money, and there is not enough of either to go around for everyone to fulfil their Nobel Prize dreams. If a scientist wants stability and adequate funding, i.e. a career, they have to produce. But these days knowledge is not enough; it has to be something that can turn into a “breakthrough”, a patent, or a pill. The pressure to produce, and for experiments to…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By jeffreyhelm
Jeffrey is an ex-scientist turned science writer. Right now he's in the Journalism program at UBC and trying to be a writer...or at least get better at writing. Apart from science writing he also dabbles in the Rock and does pieces for Discorder.
BREAKING THE CHAINS OF ADDICTION
The cost of addiction is high. In 1992 the estimated cost of substance abuse in British Columbia was $2.2 billion, but that is just money. It is difficult to know the full cost of lives eroded away by addiction because addiction is more than an addict. The price of addiction is also paid by all the lives that are touched by an addict as well. In a way we are all chained to the networks in the brain that cause addiction. But, a group of scientists out of the University of British Columbia are examining the biological chains of addiction…