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Much Ado About Personalized Medicine… or Why the Nose of Biomedical Research Keeps Growing Longer

The following article first appeared in German in the June 2025 issue of Laborjournal and was translated with the help of ChatGPT Personalized medicine – or, as it prefers to be called these days, precision medicine (PM) – has been heralded for some time now as a kind of salvation. The great leap forward on [ ]

„Research Trek – Aufbruch in ein unbekanntes Wissenschaftssystem“

Für die Beitragsserie „Forschung vordenken für 2035“ in den table.briefings research skizzierte ich meine Vision für die wissenschaftspolitische Welt der Zukunft in Form der fiktiven TV-Serie „Research Trek“ – und lieferte die Rezension gleich mit. Die biomedizinische Wissenschaft – grenzenlose Möglichkeiten. Wir schreiben das Jahr 2035. Dies sind die Abenteuer der akademischen Forschung, die mit…

AI in Medicine: Hubris, Hype, and Half-Science

Due to time constraints, I haven’t been able to maintain my blog since June 2023, which is why there haven’t been any new posts since then. However, the following article (published in Laborjournal 4/2023) fits very well with the last post, “Artificial Intelligence: Critique of Chatty Reasoning” and since I’ve received many requests for an [ ]

Artificial intelligence: Critique of chatty reasoning

Why AI is not intelligent at all, and therefore can’t speak, reason, hallucinate, or make errors (This is a slightly extended version of my June column as der Wissenschaftsnarr in the German Laborjournal: Kritik der schwätzenden Vernunft ) The ongoing debate whether ChatGPT et al. are a blessing for mankind or the beginning of the reign [ ]

Fraud in science is rare. But is this actually true?

After a break of 2 years, here again an English translation of one of the musings of the ‚Wissenschaftsnarr‘ (i.e. ‚science jester‘) – my alter ego that writes a monthly column for the German periodical Laborjournal. My apologies, to save time I used DeepL, but the AI has some difficulty with the writing style of [ ]

Boost your score: Digital narcissism in the competition of scientists

Do you have a fitness tracker? Are you on Twitter or Facebook and count your likes and followers? Do you know your ResearchGate score? Do you pay attention to Gault Millau toques and Michelin stars when you visit restaurants? Then you re in good company, because you re doing reputation management on a wide variety of levels [ ]

In the fight against Corona, learning from Botswana means learning to win!

As long as the majority of the population is not immune to SARS-COV2, the health care system must be protected from collapse due to overload with COVID patients. Therefore, for the past year, we have been testing measures ranging from increased hand washing to total lockdown with some success. Measures are introduced, tightened, relaxed, or [ ]

Judging science by proxies Part II: Back to the future

Science gobbles up massive amounts of societal resources, not just financial ones. For academic research in particular, which is self-governing and likes to invoke the freedom of research (which in Germany is even enshrined in the constitution), this raises the question of how it allocates the resources made available to it by society. There is [ ]

Jugdging science by proxies: A short and incomplete history

In this post I ll be looking at the question of why scientific careers today depend so much on the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). And the acquisition of as much third-party funding as possible. Or, more generally, why the content, originality and reliability of research results are often a secondary matter when commissions talk their heads [ ]

Peer review is dead, long live peer review!

We all have been there: After a long wait and increasing tension, an email arrives from the editotial office. With an increasing heart rate we open the email. “Thank you for submitting your manuscript to our Journal. Your manuscript was sent for external peer review, which is now complete. Based on our evaluation and the comments [ ]