Steven Salzberg, PhD
Fellow
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Steven Salzberg, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine in the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds joint appointments in the Departments of Biostatistics and Computer Science. He has written about pseudoscience in medicine in his popular blog Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience. He also writes a column for Forbes on pseudoscience.
From 2005-2011, Dr Salzberg was the Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB) and the Horvitz Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. From 1997-2005 he was Senior Director of Bioinformatics at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, one of the world’s leading DNA sequencing centers at the time.
Dr Salzberg received a master’s degree in Computer Science from Yale University and a doctorate in Computer Science from Harvard University. He joined the Computer Science Department at Johns Hopkins as an Assistant Professor in 1989. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996, and become a Research Professor in 1999, after joining TIGR.
Interest in the human genome project motivated Dr Salzberg to develop one of the first computational gene-finding systems for the human genome in the early 1990s. His initial collaborations with TIGR at that time led to the development of a gene-finding program (Glimmer) that has subsequently been used in the analysis of hundreds of bacterial, archaea, viruses and other organisms. He was a co-founder of the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project, the first large-scale genomics study of human and avian influenza viruses. He continues to pioneer several next-generation sequencing applications.
Dr Salzberg has authored or co-authored two books and over 200 publications in leading scientific journals. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a former member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Center for Biotechnology Information at NIH. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Genome Research, Genome Biology, BMC Biology, Journal of Computational Biology, PLoS ONE, BMC Genomics, BMC Bioinformatics, and Biology Direct, and he is a member of the Faculty of 1000 (post-publication peer review). He co-chaired the Third through the Eighth (1999-2005) Conferences on Computational Genomics, the 2007 and 2009 International Conferences on Microbial Genomics, and the 2009 Workshop on Algorithms in Bioinformatics.
Selected Blogging:
- “The Baltimore Sun dives into the anti-vaccination pool,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 Jul 17.
- “Strychnine for your child’s cold – courtesy of your friendly homeopath,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 June 19.
- “A ‘triumph’ of hype over reality,” The Atlantic, 2011 Jun 16.
- “Chronic fatigue syndrome hypothesis collapses further,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 Jun 2.
- “Why medical schools should not teach integrative medicine,” Forbes Focus, 2011 May 23.
- “Measles invades US: anti-vaccine movement scores again,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 May 1.
- “Bad medicine at the University of Maryland,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 Apr 20.
- “Pseudoscientific Chinese medicine infiltrates scientific publishing,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 Mar 27.
- “It’s time to destroy our smallpox,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 Mar 13.
- “Supreme Court saves the vaccine system,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2011 Feb 27.
- “‘Recontrolling pertussis’: a phrase we shouldn’t have to hear,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Dec 28.
- “Non-GMO foods: nonsense,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Dec 12.
- “At the movies: popcorn and anti-vaccine fearmongering,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Nov 28.
- “Oscillo – what? Homeopathic flu ‘cures’ and dead ducks,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Nov 20.
- “Second thoughts on osteopathic medicine,” Forbes, 2010 Oct 29.
- “Whooping cough in California: deaths caused by the anti-vaccination movement,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Oct 10.
- “Acupuncture infiltrates the University of Maryland and NEJM,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Aug 22.
- “Fish oil salesmen,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Jul 24.
- “Deceptive marketing of dietary supplements,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Jul 15.
- “Save NIH $$$: eliminate ‘alternative’ medicine,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Jun 13.
- “Alzheimer’s treatments don’t work, but you can buy them on the Internet,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 May 23.
- “Making money by making people sick,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Apr 25.
- “Vaccine court ruling: thimerosal does not cause autism,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Mar 14.
- “Battlefield acupuncture: pseudoscience for wounded troops,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Feb 14.
- “The Lancet finally retracts erroneous study linking MMR vaccine to autism,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Feb 3.
- “Wakefield’s claims about the MMR vaccine ruled ‘dishonest and irresponsible,’” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Jan 28.
- “The flu pandemic may be over, but it wasn’t a hoax,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2010 Jan 17.
- “The worst scientific idea of the decade: vaccines cause autism,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Dec 28.
- “Stimulus funds are promoting pseudoscience at Harvard Medical School,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Nov 28.
- “Scare-mongering about the flu vaccine and cancer,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Sep 9.
- “Opening up influenza research with a new kind of journal,” Medpedia, 2009 Aug 20.
- “Bad medicine at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Aug 6.
- “Stimulus funds for pseudoscience,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Jul 5.
- “Frightening quack autism treatment,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Jun 1.
- “Former NIH director Bernadine Healy joins ranks of pseudoscientists,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Apr 25.
- “Washington Post shines light on waste at NCCAM,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Mar 17.
- “Healing Touch for cancer (thanks, NCCAM!),” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2009 Mar 15.
- “Johns Hopkins University offers quack medicine as ‘herbal consultations,’” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2008 Nov 7.
- “NIH halts chelation study after patients die,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2008 Sep 27.
- “Vaccines, autism, and Obama,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2008 Apr 23.
- “Chiropractic hucksters,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2008 Mar 27.
- “NCCAM, weight loss scams, and acupressure,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2008 Jan 28.
- “Oh great, more ‘alternative medicine’ funding from NIH,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2007 Oct 13.
- “Fake acupuncture works as well as ‘real’ acupuncture,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2007 Sep 25.
- “NCCAM and homeopathy,” Genomics, Evolution, and Pseudoscience, 2007 Aug 28.
- “Bird flu, Bush, evolution — and us,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 2005 Nov 2.
Selected Presentations:
- “Autism & vaccines: How bad science confuses the press,” Center for Inquiry, Washington, DC, 2009 Jun 14.
- “Autism & vaccines: How bad science confuses the press & harms the public,” National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, 2008 Nov 8. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5)
In the News:
- “Blatant pro-alternative medicine propaganda in The Atlantic,” by David Gorski, Science-Based Medicine, 2011Jun 20.
- “The hazards of “CAM”-pandering,” by Kim Atwood, Science-Based Medicine, 2011 Apr 1.
The Online Steven Salzberg:
Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
