Letters from the October 14, 2006, issue of Science News
By Science News
Name game
“Named medical trials garner extra attention” (SN: 8/5/06, p. 93), I think, has it backwards. It’s not that labeled trials are more likely to be funded. Rather, well-funded, large trials are more likely to be named. We research chemists label only the important projects. The name makes the project easier to track and reference.
Charles D. Shuster
Columbus, Ohio
Behind the IQ numbers
I suspect the findings in “Racial IQ Gap Narrows: Blacks gain 4 to 7 points on whites” (SN: 8/5/06, p. 85) might be correlated with the reduction in lead exposure over the same timeframe. I wonder if the greater reduction in early-childhood blood lead for blacks might be sufficient to explain the effect described in the study.