A researcher at Wellesley College, Susan M. Reverby, has uncovered evidence that U.S. government scientists in the 1940s intentionally infected hundreds of people in Guatemala with gonorrhea and syphilis as part of a public-health research project. The discovery of the project, made by Ms. Reverby while researching the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment in Alabama, has prompted apologies to Guatemalans and Hispanics by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, and Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. secretary of health and human services.

For the second time in two years, a Nobel laureate, Linda B. Buck, has had to retract a published paper. Her two newest retractions, as well as one in 2008, all involved studies of the sense of smell in mice and all involved the same first author, Zhihua Zou, a postdoctoral researcher who carried out the experiments as part of Ms. Buck's group at Harvard Medical School. Ms. Buck is now at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle, and the retracted material does not involve findings for which she shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

A couple of weeks before the actual awards, the news agency Thomson Reuters is out with its annual list of who is likely to win the Nobel Prizes in the sciences. Reuters uses a process that involves analyzing scientific-journal citations to predict potential winners. On its list of likely laureates this year are Alberto Alesina of Harvard University, in economics; Patrick O. Brown of Stanford University, in chemistry; and Charles L. Bennett of the Johns Hopkins University and Lyman A. Page and David N. Spergel of Princeton University, in physics.

A federal appeals court has scheduled oral arguments for September 24 on whether it should keep blocking an injunction, issued on August 23 by a federal judge, Royce C. Lamberth, that temporarily prevents the government from financing embryonic-stem-cell research. The court announced its plans this morning as Senate Democrats used an Appropriations subcommittee hearing to advance legislation that would eliminate any legal confusion about congressional support for embryonic-stem-cell research. The process of drafting such specific legislative language, however, is proving "difficult and complex," and probably won’t be finished before Congress adjourns its current session at the end of this year, said Anthony J. Mazzaschi, senior director for scientific affairs at the Association of American Medical Colleges.

A federal appeals court today temporarily lifted an injunction by a federal judge, Royce C. Lamberth, that blocked federal financing of research on embryonic stem cells. The appeals court ordered the two sides in the case to submit written briefs within the next two weeks setting out their arguments for whether Judge Lamberth’s injunction should be put back into effect for the expected period of several months while the judge hears arguments over the legality of the Obama administration’s policy of expanded federal support for embryonic-stem-cell research.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday filed an appeal of a federal judge's order banning federal financing of embryonic-stem-cell research. The department said in its motion that plaintiffs opposed to such research faced no imminent damages from allowing the research to continue while the judge hears the case, and warned that continuing the restraining order during the trial phase could mean six to eight months of delays in medical research "aimed at curing the most devastating illnesses afflicting Americans." The department acted one day after the judge declined to put his order on hold while the case is on appeal.

As promised, the Obama administration today filed an appeal of a federal judge’s order last week that blocked the White House’s expanded policy for allowing federal financing of research involving embryonic stem cells. In a statement accompanying the filing, the Justice Department said the plaintiffs in the case -- two private researchers -- have little or no basis for claiming the administration's policy harms their economic or professional interests.

BP’s support for university researchers is under growing scrutiny following the company’s three-month oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Activists protested Friday on the Berkeley campus of the University of California, calling for the cancellation of BP’s $500-million, 10-year commitment to the Energy Biosciences Institute at Berkeley, which was launched in 2007 as the largest-ever partnership between a public university and a private corporation. And now, the Los Angeles Times reports, two California congresswomen are demanding that BP give the National Academy of Sciences control of a promised $500-million initiative to finance scientific research related to Gulf of Mexico spill.

Scientific misconduct may be more widespread than realized, but it's also more easily remedied than assumed. A confidential survey of nearly 2,600 scientists who received financing from the National Institutes of Health found that more than 84 percent reported experiencing one or more incidents of misconduct over their careers. According to a report on the survey published in Nature, almost two-thirds of them said they had taken action to stop it, usually in the form of an informal discussion rather than an official complaint, The Boston Globe reports.