Currently, I am involved in writing a chapter on information reliability for a nano-safety book that should be published by early 2017.\u00a0 My colleague, Evelyn Hirt, who has been leading this chapter effort, found some interesting developments in reviewing the traditional sources of nanotechnology information.\u00a0 The typically recognized governmental sites are still functioning.\u00a0 A number of new sites, which have connections to various government agencies around the world, have been added.\u00a0 There are still a number of sites that are maintained through government funding.\u00a0 Traditionally, these sites contain the latest information.\u00a0 Some sites are either disappearing or have become stagnant, probably due to lack of funding.<\/p>\n
Non-governmental organizations have, like the Royal Society of Chemistry and The American Chemical Society, have information available to both their members and the general public (although some information requires paying a fee).\u00a0 These organization apply a portion of their members\u2019 dues to creating and maintaining a database that can be very useful.<\/p>\n
Do not expect to find most of the information that will probably need.\u00a0 As of 2011 there is information on the Chemical Abstract Service for under 63 million (63 x 108<\/sup>) chemical sequences.\u00a0 Considering the known elements, the estimates are that over 10200<\/sup> possible individual nanoscale particles.<\/p>\n Information on the web is another story.\u00a0 The Internet, which was originally the ARPANet (1968 RFQ), was designed for the rapid communication of scientific data.\u00a0 Peer review is typically a long process with peer reviews, comments to the authors, rebuttals, decision on publication value.\u00a0 Rapid dissemination of information at that time was by air mail instead of surface mail.\u00a0 There was a need to more rapidly share scientific information.\u00a0 Consequently, the ARPANet was conceived to solve this problem among universities and scientific organizations.\u00a0 This has evolved into today Internet with high speed communications. Today there are billions of different sites with a vast array of \u201cinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n While all the types of sources mentioned above normally provide good information, the information on the web is not always accurate.\u00a0 The explosion of data available on the web is not always beneficial.\u00a0 Information needs to be checked and verified.\u00a0 There are other sites that previously had been key sources of information, and now are no longer maintained due to funding issues.\u00a0 Consequently, the data provided is aged and may not be the latest available information.<\/p>\n Even with governmental site, there may be issues.\u00a0 Occasionally, there have been conflicting announcements from different approaches issued by different agencies within one government department.\u00a0 In 2008, two of the US Environmental Protection Agency programs, Office of Pesticide Programs and the Office of Pollution Preventions and Toxics, issued conflicting directives on what would be considered a new chemical based on size alone and the other indicating that this would not be the case if the material was used previously.<\/p>\n With the openness of the internet, anyone can post anything, accurate or not.\u00a0 There is no overseeing guidance.\u00a0 In addition, there is a greater degree of polarization of opinions and the lack of discourse on scientific findings.\u00a0 While there always have been differences of opinion, today\u2019s approach appears to be to attack the opposing side.\u00a0 Even politics seems to be getting into the determination of scientific fact.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Senator Whitehouse (Dem, RI) is threatening to use RICO (Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organizations Act) to silence researchers with opinions that differ from his supporters [Ref. 1].\u00a0 Twenty scientists have asked the President to use the RICO to silence critics of their stance [Ref. 2].\u00a0 This direction is ominous and can severely inhibit scientific research.<\/p>\n Consequently, the ability to obtain accurate, factual information is becoming more challenging.\u00a0 This requires the individual to do more investigation to find out the truth.\u00a0 One needs to check and double check.\u00a0 All I can say is \u201cGood Hunting.\u201d<\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n Currently, I am involved in writing a chapter on information reliability for a nano-safety book that should be published by early 2017.\u00a0 My colleague, Evelyn Hirt, who has [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n