For those who have not gotten enough on the trumpet-blaring roll out this week of Darwinius masillae, aka Ida, there may be something more to chew on thanks to a remarkably detailed and swiftly composed blog on the little old girl from Messel, Germany, and one of a different sort that cited it.

The blog, posted almost as soon as the news broke, comes from Brian Switek, a science writer with ties to the Smithsonian, at his Laelaps site.  That was on Tuesday (if you read it, also check his briefer followups at the same site). What is notable is his detailed attack upon the authors of the PLoS ONE paper and their efforts to portray the specimen as directly from near a deep root to the ape-human lineage.   Tracker doesn’t know his paleontology enough to comment on the substance of his critique, but does mumble “foul” when he declares that “Ida has become a victim of a sensationalistic media that values audience size over scientific substance.” That’s true only if “media” is taken as the entire enterprise including making movies, selling books, etc. If he meant news media – what’s left of it – it appears that relatively few major outlets went along with, or boosted, the hyperbolic exaggeration of the scientific significance of this wondrously well-preserved specimen as related to them by publicists from outfits deeply invested in making money via Ida’s sudden new status as commodity.

• (*UPDATE:  Switek got a story into the Monday, May 26 Times in the UK with many of the same points, smoothed and polished and with a historic reference to Thomas Huxley in his lede, as he did in last week’s web log posts. It’s smart of the Times to pick up this sharp analysis.)

Switek’s labors appear entirely honest. Not so an “Evolution News & Views” post at the creationist Discovery Institute in Seattle. It offers Switek’s writing as ammunition for its cause. It disingenuously declares that “As is known, the Smithsonian doesn’t play nice with people who don’t toe the line. Switek doesn’t commit the sin of disavowing a strict Darwinian view, but he does chastise the establishment for overselling this latest “missing link.’” So Switek, in writing a heavily opinionated but purely Darwinian post, must suffer the injustice of being the day’s poster boy for an anti-evolution movement. A low blow is the implication he is pulling his punches on evolution only because taskmasters at the Smithsonian demand it. Argument within a field of science is not the same as argument against that science. Opportunists don’t always bother with such niggling niceties.

-CP

It is a fairly familiar speculation that Earth may have evolved life afresh several times. This is a corollary to the idea that, especially during a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment a few hundred million years or so after our planet congealed, asteroids and minor planets hitting Earth would have vaporized and jounced so much crust that any microbes etc. already in place would have been erased. The Moon’s ancient, pocked face still bears the scars.

Now in the news, reported by scientists at the University of Colorado, is an argument that a few of life’s terrestrial pioneers, living in the pores of our rocky crust thousands of feet down, could have survived that great pulverization some 3.9 billion years ago. Not only that, they believe, a proliferation of deep, boiling-water hot spots might have enhanced evolution during such tumult. The new study’s authors say the analysis implies our ancestry may go as far back as 4.4 billion years during a geologic period called the Hadean. That’s close to the solar system’s birth about 4.7 billion years past. The 4.4 figure reflects roughly the birth of oceans. Another factor is that 4.5 gigayears is about when the Moon congealed. The latter in turn followed no mere heavy bombardment. In the most accepted current theory the Moon grew from debris of the near-dismemberment of Earth by collision with a body the size of Mars. That, say some, might well melt and viciously stir things right down into the core.

Stories:

• Denver Post – Jennifer Brown : CU study: Asteroid may have aided life ;  This is the source of the pic, too – with one CU researcher shown standing before a calculated, thermal map of how an asteroid-bombarded Earth may have appeared. Brown calls asteroids “giant, reckless rocks.” Nice.
• Boulder Daily Camera – Laura Snider: CU: LIfe on Earth could have survived asteroid bombardment – New study could push back the timeline for life on Earth  ;  A US university issues a science press release (maybe had a press conference too) and TWO local papers, in 2009!, wrote it well. Hurray.
• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts (blog): Life’s foothold on Earth may reach back 4.4 billion years ;
• AFP: Scientists set back clock on origin of life ;
• Telegraph (UK) : Life on earth may have started 4.4 billion years ago, according to asteroid study ;
• Reuters – Julie Steenhuysen : Study turns back clock on origins of life on Earth ;

Grist for the Mill: U Colo – Boulder Press Release ;

-CP

  One post down is discussion of those in Congress who see global warming as some kind of hysteria based on nothing (except socialism, maybe). A piece of contrariwise news from that citadel of lefty politics, MIT, won’t change those firmly decisive minds. It is getting wide pickup in MSM – albeit much of it in their on line blogs. The study, in the Journal of Climate, relies on a heavily computerized tool called the Integrated Global System Model. It uses a huge variety of varied but plausible parametric values for both a coupled ocean, atmosphere, and land climate model along with input from representations of human economic, agriculture, sea level change, and gas emissions,. The conclusion is that the degree of warming by century’s end will probably – if humankind keeps doing business as usual – be twice what a previous such exercise six years ago saw in the cards. So says the press release written by former newshound David Chandler, who also wrote it up for the MIT pub Tech Talk.

Stories:

• USA Today – Doyle Rice: Global warming may be twice as bad as previously expected ;  Rice also quotes two outside experts, each a well-known academic authority on climate science.
• Telegraph (UK) Louise Gray: Global warming of 7C ‘could kill billions this century’ ;She calls a man from Friends of the Earth for reaction. FOE is a good enough outfit, and inherently a political advocacy org. Calling it for reaction to a climate science piece is akin to calling somebody at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
• Guardian (UK) George Monbiot (blog): Price of doing nothing costs the earth / MIT scientists forecast a global temperature rise of 5.2C by 2100 – but climate change deniers reject models devised by the world’s finest minds. So what do they suggest instead… seaweed? ; More of an exasperated essay than news story ;
• NYTimes – Andrew C. Revkin (Dot Earth blog): High Odds of Hot Times ; Links to his previous reports on the MIT team’s work, and explains the Roulette wheels in this post’s illus. Those gambling devices are be a good idea, in principle. But in practice don’t seem to work so well for lay public use where most graphics should be grasped in one glance.
• Washington Post – Andrew Freeman (blog): MIT Climate Study Garners More Attention ; And, he reports, the Post had it first – back in Feburary.
• Reuters – Felix Salmon (blog): Global warming could be twice as bad as forecast ;
• Wall St. Journal – Keith Johnson (blog): Climate Changes: MIT Study Temperatures Could Rise Twice As Much ;

And for one with a broader perspective:

• Christian Science Monitor – Judy Lowe (blog) : Americans don’t agree about global warming ;  Lowe used the MIT study as springboard into one, recent poll on US attitudes toward greenhouse policy. Most favor action, but a significant fraction either reject that, or don’t care.

Grist for the Mill:

MIT Press Release, MIT Integrated Global System Model ; Yale Project on Climate Change survey Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009 ;

-CP

Oh, sigh. The Post‘s David A. Fahrenthold (a byline that nudges the non-metric American brain right off to think temperature) reports this week on the continued hold that rejection of anthropogenic climate change has on some of the nation’s senior elected representatives. As it is a political story, not a report from the halls of science where people have actual advanced degrees in this stuff, it is justly balanced with opinions from both sides. Some of the usual suspects come up.

The piece is a good explainer of the Congressional shoals the rather feeble carbon emission cap and trade bill may hit as it plows along.

But, one would like to have read a single sentence “other side” response, from that commodity known as data, to the assertion by the Republican party’s national committee chairman that “We’re cooling. We’re not warming.” Another and perhaps more usual version of this, which has caught on and spread among the rejectionists like swine flu through an orphanage, is that global warming stopped ten years ago. The Tracker has squinted and tilted his head at the tables of data, as from the one above from NASA’s Goddard Inst. for Space Studies (ones from NOAA and from Britain’s MET Office aren’t much different). It’s impossible to see a cooling for ten years. Sure, it jags up and down and 2008 was the coolest year on record since way back in 2000 and we’ve had two straight years that were less hot than the previous. But one doesn’t need a sophisticated statistical analysis to see that the scale and nature of such variations lately is right in line with the whole plot’s irregularities, and the trend remains. Moreover, the average of just the last three years is tied with the previous three as warmest on record. 2005 is the warmest single year EVER (second warmest to 1998 in some data sets). It might take a nose dive, one supposes. To bet the house on it doing so appears foolish. And it seems from here that only the aggressively ignorant can honestly assert that it has already done so.

Easy forecast: confusion between preference and likelihood will continue….

Pic hi res ;

-CP

The Tracker is unfamiliar with the Brit pub Spiked, but in it this week its editor-at-large Mick Hume relates the stygian legal morass in which a British science writer, Simon Singh, finds himself as he battles a libel suit brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. Singh, it appears, wrote in an article for the Guardian that the chiropractic soc’y “happily promotes bogus treatments.” That seems from here to be demonstrably true enough to be utterable in polite society. But BCA’s lawyers brought umbrage. And now, it further appears from this piece, Singh is not only the one with the burden of proof, but that the assertion whose merits he must demonstrate is itself an empty fabulation by the judge. Hume discusses parallel episodes including some involving himself – and writes that what is truly bogus is the UK’s body of libel law.

pic – source ;

-CP

What’s this? A negative review of the return of the American national symbol to the skies of nearly every American state? Yes, sort of. Filing last Friday from Portland, Maine, the AP‘s Clarke Canfield reports that at least one colony of rare seabirds there is under intense attack by eagles described as “like thugs.” Canfield gathers word from elsewhere that this is not an isolated event. Several scientists quoted in the story say there is nothing really surprising about this – a bird’s gotta eat, after all.

It’s all in point of view, one supposes. The other evening, while surfing past one of the Nature channels, I stopped at a piece about the Zambezi river near Victoria Falls. The film focussed for awhile on a pair of giant kingfishers patiently raising their young until, tragically and before their very eyes, a mongoose raided their streamside nesting cubby. So much for this year’s brood. BAD mongoose! Had the film makers been following a mongoose family the emotional impact may have been different.

Back to today’s story. More commonly and with justification, one finds nothing but good news about resurgent eagles, as exemplified in this nicely done, randomly-selected story : The State (S. Carolina) Sammy Fretwell: Biologist helps bald eagles soar ;

Pic by Carl Donohue, source ;

-CP

 At Seed Magazine its senior staffer Lee Billings has written the sort of little story that many science journalists only wish they had time to write long – truly sharing with readers the quirks and fancies that drive a few scientists to work day and night, scrounging left and right, in pursuit of a potentially exciting discovery that major funders think too risky to chance. It’s an astronomy yarn about looking for Earth-like planets in a nearby neighborhood where few have spent time. It’s about a small effort that has competition from a better equipped team of long-time rival colleagues. It is about going on an assignment that is just plain fun.

Save it until you have time for a deeply reported, 5,500 word account that has more to do with scientific temperament, process, and idiosyncracy than with results. Some passages verge into the over-breathless. Nonetheless, enjoy.

-CP

When The Tracker checked the Google site this morning (thank you very much Ann Gibbons for suggesting a peek), it became clear that a strange new kind of science news event has detonated in our midst. ITS CHOREOGRAPHERS EVEN GOT GOOGLE TO USE A FOSSILIFEROUS NEW LOGO!

(For more on this, next post down, co-tracker Pere Estupinyà provides a survey of Spanish language reports)

UPDATES below indented. Original post continues below;

• *UPDATES ONE: Another, excellent roundup on all this is at Nature Magazine’s daily “Great Beyond” blog on science news in wide-ranging post by Lucas Laursen. Plus, pithy commentary comes from LiveScience editorial director Robert Roy Britt.
• *UPDATE TWO: Time Magazine – Michael D. Lemonick: Ida: Humankind’s Earliest Ancestor! (Not Really) ; A master class in ballyhoo, he writes. The fossil is great, the debut is “overhyped nonsense.”
• *UPDATE THREE: Seed Magazine – Elizabeth Cline: Ida-lized! The Branding of a Fossil. Jørn Hurum, the History Channel, and PLoS ONE editors tell us how and why they kept the story of the “missing link” fossil a secret ; It may not at all quell accusations that the imperfect but time-honored, stodgy process of checking science with colleagues before declaring it a new paradigm has been subverted and hijacked. The story does move the ball forward. Cline gives the ringleaders of this circus plenty of space to explain their motives. She writes, in addition, that such a perfect storm of science and hype won’t likely recur often but the episode hints of “the way of the future.”
• *UPDATE 4 – Barista Blog : Anybody reading deeply into Ida’s newsiness must include this. Posted May 23 by unknown writer – connected, some say, to Starbucks (!) – it is a well-stitched, arch narrative that pieces together just about every news tidbit and bloggy plop of inside info that has come out so far.
• *UPDATE 5 – At Framing Science, Matt Nisbet offers his parting thoughts – including the observation that while this fossil may not have merited such hooplah, the “going broad” strategy for science news penetration may be necessary anyway. The reason, in my distillation, is vacuum. Traditional journal, peer-review, and press conference-driven science journalism attracts such a small audience that it has left a huge opening for more imaginative tactics.
• UPDATE 6 - Longtime science news publicist at Ohio State University, Earle Holland, analyzed the Ida episode caustically and  at length – and declares evidence for a clear violation of Plos ONE’s conflict-of-interest rules and the declarations by the paper’s authors there are none.
• UPDATE 7 – Laelaps Blog  – Brian Switek(June 2) : Carnival: Uncovering ‘Ida’ ; Superb recap.

One must tip one’s hat in awe, if not admiration, to this championship quality bit of drumbeating and bagpipe skirling for a 47 million year old fossil of a young, female, and primitive primate from then-tropical lake deposits now cold and dank in Germany. It ordinarily would be a solid if routine and maybe front page story – unless of course a hush hush yet amazingly well-leaked story followed by a p.r. artillery barrage were not bombarding us with the likes of “LINK: This Changes Everything” ! And here we are without a foxhole. Good Lord, it was even on the Rachel Maddow MSNBC nightly political  wonkfest yesterday where it got description (a bit tongue in cheek amid much giggling, to be sure) as the event that finally proves Charles Darwin was right. I would have gone with DNA-based cladistics as iron clad proof – or even, you know, finches – but what do I know? They’ve even given little “Ida” a potent new genus name: Darwinius.

Darwin’s vindication seems unaltered, but there IS a book, History Channel special, David Attenborough mouthing excitement, and a debut at the New York Museum of Natural History just for starters. All for a little lemur-like cutie described by Norwegian and other researchers in the PLoS ONE journal. While the publicists go ape on implications, the paper is restrained – except for celebrating and describing the incredible completeness of the fossil including outline of soft tissue and its last berries and leaf meal. It explicitly says the specimen “could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates (ie, us – CP) evolved, but we are not advocating this here.”

Such a well-preserved fossil is of intense interest to paleoprimatologists. From more restrained coverage it however appears hardly seminal in proving or disproving any aspect of evolution theory or explaining more interesting anthropological questions about the origin of actual people with our noteworthy gates and our brains. As for promotion, not Lucy, not Taung Baby, not Ardipithecus, nothing in our family tree in my lifetime has gotten this treatment right out of the gate. Maybe the celebrations of Java man, or the ill fated Piltdown man (not that I’m suggesting actual fraud in this week’s lollapalooza) sort of compare. It puts into the shade the inspired Discovery Channel news flackery that airlifted a frozen payload a few years ago, with tusks protruding from the slingload under a Russian helicopter, rising from the tundra and heading for a laboratory amid trumpetings of imminent, cloned woolly mammoths.

Anyway…to business. Leaks of the news already prompted stories last week in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and two weeks ago in Britain’s Sunday Mail. (see posts early yesterday and last Friday) Who reported this news  for today?

A good place to start is in UK’s Guardian where Adam Rutherford, a regular contributor to Nature and one of several journalists tipped months ago to this on condition of keeping mum, recalls his two word response to hyperventilating publicists: “F*ck Off.” The fossil, he says, is indeed beautiful. But as a media story “it is all weird..” His first brush was “like being shown an Area 51 alien.” The affair, he writes, “is science as marketing” in which the TV show was scheduled before the paper was written, the press campaign set up before it was submitted to a journal, and the book deal was cooking before peer review occurred. As he writes, it is “a magnificent specimen set in stone, but one from which conclusions are most certainly not.”

For a knowing look at the atmosphere at the press debut, see the Guardian in which Ed Pilkington compared the hullabaloo as the sort “normally reserved for misbehaving film stars.”

Other samplings:

• Nat’l Geographic News – Brian Handwerk: “MISSING LINK” FOUND: New Fossil Links Humans, Lemurs? ; While the paper is circumspect, he notes that the lead author at the Natural History Museum of Oslo is not shy in saying “This is the first direct link to all humans.” Another of his sources tells him, less grandiosely, it may represent an important branching point “but it’s not the only branching point.”
• Los Angeles Times – Thomas H. Maugh II, Tina Susman: 47 million years old and still dazzling ; It starts with one quite plausible fact – this is the most complete primate fossil ever found, of any age. They also compare the press conference to “a Hollywood premiere.” Why the razzmatazz, they asked the lead scientist? A: “That’s part of getting science out to the public, to get attention.” A source downgrades the missing link angle: “It’s more like our third cousin twice removed.” As do many reporters, they report the unusual way the specimen surfaced for science, split in two with half sold to a museum in Wyoming after a private collector had owned it.
• The Australian – Leigh Dayton: Scientists divided on Ida as the missing link ; Gorgeous specimen but, one prominent source tells Dayton, “it’s not telling us too much that we didn’t know before.” And, one of the paper’s US co-authors is quoted to say a more dignified publication in Science or Nature would have been preferred, but pressure from the TV company forced things along.
• AP – Malcolm Ritter: Early skeleton sheds light on primate evolution ; Hed looks exactly right. Ritter keeps it sane, with terms like “could help illuminate” our roots and the explicit declaration that for a passel of experts Ritter contacted, it is “far from a breakthrough that would solve the puzzles of early evolution.” Or as one source said, “It’s about as far away as you can get from that (monkey, ape, hominin) line and still be a primate.”
• Reuters – Michelle Nichols: Scientists unveil ancient fossilised primate ; She provides info – the specimen was collected from its German shale pit resting place in 1983, and stayed in private hands until 2006. Story is otherwise quite restrained.
• NY Daily News – Samantha Strong, Rich Schapiro: Missing link found? Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate, Darwinius masillae ; Hook, line, and sinker. Complete with a Holy Grail. And they call it, in an utter error, perhaps “the long-sought missing link between humans and apes.” That’s like saying the oldest known wooden pegs in some paleolithic canoe are the missing links between allen-head screws and aircraft rivets. Sheesh. The Daily News, once upon a time, had a whole gang of experienced science writers.
• Toronto Star (best headline award) : 47 million year-old fossil reveals last supper ; Story is amalgam of LA Times, AP.
• BBC – Christine McGourty: Scientists hail stunning fossil  ; A close, gushing look at it on video. Wonderful specimen but McGourty smartly calls “missing link” a “cliche that just barely means anything at all.”
• LiveSCIENCE – Clara Moskowitz: Unveiled ‘Holy Grail’ Fossil Gets Celebrity Treatment ; Her first quote, in keeping with the event’s froth, is from NY mayor Michael Bloomberg. He thinks Ida is an astonishing breakthrough. Story has no naysaying.

One suspects that many (remaining) mainstream journalists shunned or bristled against this news out of resentment that a showbiz production had invaded their beat. There may have been some bias, therefore, going in and against making too much of it. It further appears that the high profile p.r. campaign, for the moment, fell somewhat flat. Perhaps the book and TV show will do fine.

Grist for the Mill: THE LINK website ;  Press Release ; PLoS ONE article ;

-CP

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Interesting gradient of trust in the Spanish language media about the announcement of the “missing link in evolution that changes everything”, or the “mediatic circus around a good enough discovery”

Diferentes grados de confianza sobre el mediático anuncio del fósil Ida, presentado ayer por todo lo alto en el Museo de Historia Natural de NY como el hallazgo “que lo cambiará todo” (La Nación, Argentina).

“Descubierto el antepasado humano más primitivo”, titula El Mundo (Esp), añadiendo que sus descubridores lo consideran “la octava maravilla del mundo”.

Hallan ‘eslabón perdido’ de los primates, según el Universal (Mex). “Confirma la teoría de Darwin”, dice ABC (ejem…)

Un leve ápice de duda se entrevé La Tercera (Chile) en el “fósil que terminaría con la búsqueda del eslabón perdido”, complementando su información con una pieza de Paulina Sepúlveda y Daniela González sobre cómo fue encontrado el fósil que ayudará a comprender la evolución humana.

El Pais (Esp) también tira directamente de información de Agencias pero titula que el fósil de 47 millones de años da pistas sobre la evolución humana.

Pablo Fonseca matiza muy bien en La Nación (Costa Rica) “creen haber encontrado el antepasado común entre dos subórdenes de primates, del cual descenderían tanto los seres humanos como los lémures.”

Clarín ofrece un listado con varias frases extraídas de las declaraciones de los anunciantes. Todas espectaculares como “Estos restos fósiles probablemente estarán en todos los libros de texto de los próximos 100 años”, “Para un científico, es como hallar el Arca Perdida” “Este fósil es una especie de piedra de Rosetta”, “Darwin estaría más que sorprendido”….

Sin embargo O Globo (Brasil) incluye la opinión del editor de Nature diciendo que el término eslabón perdido puede inducir a error, y que Ida no merece figurar entre uno de los grandes descubrimientos recientes.

BBC Mundo se muestra más escéptico todavía y añade que expertos independientes están interesados en estudiar el nuevo fósil pero se muestran escépticos ante cualquier anuncio de que éste podría ser “el eslabón perdido”.

Pero sin duda el artículo más crítico aparece en Público (Esp), donde Javier Yanes asegura que “ni el estudio científico que reúne los detalles ni las primeras reacciones al hallazgo sostienen las ambiciosas pretensiones de los descubridores”, califica a la presentación de “circo mediático”, dice que “en sus declaraciones a los medios los científicos perdían el rigor desnudo de los datos”, y considera que la revista PLoS ONE (donde se han publicado los resultados) “no pasa por ser una de las principales referencias en el mundo científico”.

Exagerado posiblemente, sobre todo si nos fijamos sólo en estos extractos, porque en realidad la suya es una de las notas mas completas publicadas hasta la fecha, y se nota un esfuerzo en dar un contexto al hallazgo. Además, explica en detalle que el principal interés de Ida es su semajanza a los lémures, con el pulgar oponible característico de los primates, uñas en lugar de garras y una disposición de sus extremidades traseras que sugiere un principio de evolución hacia un futuro bipedalismo.

Pero en cambio, carece de ciertos rasgos típicos de los actuales lémures, como el peine dental y la garra de aseo, dos estructuras que estos animales emplean para el cuidado de su pelaje.

Sin duda el Darwinius masillae (nombre científico de Ida) dará que hablar. Veremos en qué lugar de la historia de la ciencia queda su descubrimiento. Lo iremos siguiendo. Pero a la hora de tratar el tema, quizás sí nos deberían poner en alerta las palabras del científico que lo ha estado estudiando en secreto durante 2 años, mientras se escribía un libro y History Channel preparaba el documental que pretende ser un éxito comercial, refiriéndose a la espectacularidad de la presentación: “Eso es parte de promover la ciencia ante el público, de llamar la atención. No creo que eso esté tan mal”, dijo Jorn Hurum. “Cualquier banda de rock hace lo mismo. Tenemos que empezar a pensar igual en la ciencia”.

Pues posiblemente tenga razón… ya lo sabemos entonces. A partir de ahora, a no fiarnos tan alegremente de lo que nos cuentan científicos…

- PE

Last week The Tracker noted several fresh stories on the decline of US salmon outside Alaska, with court battles swirling and with much of the commercial fishery closed while the annual spawning runs dwindle nearer to zero.

Another lot is in since then.

The big news is that a judge has told various plaintiffs and defendants that current management plans don’t come up to snuff. One potential outcome, the judge suggests, would be court mandate to take down several dams in the huge Snake River drainage that feeds the Columbia River.

Stories:

• Los Angeles Times – Kim Murphy, Greenspace blog: If salmon can’t be saved, Snake River dams may have to go ;  Or maybe not. Murphy reports dam operators and partisans hope to find a way to have both.
• AP: Judge tells feds to do better for Columbia Salmon;
• The Columbian – Erik Robinson: Judge poised to reject latest federal dam plan ;
• Idaho Statesman: Dam breaching an option to protect salmon, U.S. District judge says ;

See Also:

• KQED TV Quest – Chris Bauer producer: California’s Lost Salmon ; The Tracker has intended to watch this for a week. If previous shows are any indication, it’s worth it. A clue is in its linked text Producer’s Notes.

For further background:

• Santa Rosa Press Democrat (Apr 4) Glenda Anderson : Quick drop in water level kills coho ;
• AP (Apr. 4): Coho killed after water diverted to protect crops;

Last week The Tracker bloggified out loud in surprise at a Wall Street Journal article (earlier post here) suggesting that intense new debate between evolutionists and creationists may break out today. The news, being announced about now in New York, is that a delightfully well-preserved fossil of a primitive primate, dug from 47-million-year-old deposits in Germany, may be the oldest yet member of the lineage that eventually produced monkey, ape, and human. How in the world, it was asked here, could a new link in the great chain of life bring a fresh element for discussion into that unbridgeable chasm between evolutionary biology and those who turn to literal scripture for their conviction that all species – or at least us – were separately and perhaps simultaneously minted by divine decision?

Still no answer to that. But the creakings of a great publicity machine behind today’s unveiling are well limned on p. 1 of today’s NYTimes by reporter Tim Arango under the hed, “Seeking a Missing Link, and a Mass Audience.” That is a tasty hed, with double and deep meanings that may only exist in my head. “Missing Link” evokes an idea that should have died in the Victorian Age that spawned it, but thus also evokes the great arguments of that time. And a mass audence? As in Mass, a religious rite? Hmm. Maybe I’m overinterpreting here….

The story lays out in great detail the schemings and plannings by managers at The History Channel and other agents to convince the public on the eve of their show about this fossil that not only is a wondrous scientific specimen now up for display (true), but that This Changes Everything (huh? Didn’t biologists already assume that our lineage has to go back through something or other at every point since the first, pre-Cambrian cell sparked to life? Has that changed?). The History Channel, one notes, is now also promoting its special on Nostradamus and its program on The UFO Hunters.

Congrats to the Times. One might also profitably take a look at the Framing Science website where Matthew Nisbet lays out his interpretation of this highly orchestrated roll out of science news, one that seems even to dwarf the tightly-controlled patterns pursued by the National Geographic Society.

As for debates, one is certainly underway already. At the Wall St. Journal the usual sorts of partisans in the (non science) debate about evolution are going at it. Thank you Lee Hotz for nudging the Tracker to recognize that some sort of debate has been re-ignited. It is also worth noting that at the Journal, people have to use their real names to comment (or, one suspects, present a pretty convincing alias). Remarks still tend toward vitriol and scorn.

Tomorrow I’ll post on what fresh gusset of news arose from today’s formal announcement.

Grist for the Mill: The History Channel promo ; PLoS One Article

-CP

Perhaps it is time for NASA to turn the doughty Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity into weather stations, allowing the aged, arthritic machines to live out their remaining days in partial retirement and ease, measuring temperatures and eying whirlwinds -  like honored old folks rocking on the porch, taking the measure of any pretty girls dancing past in their summer dresses.  Such a move would free up a little money so that NASA and its contractors and university-based researchers with their grad students may spend a little more attention to new projects.

The news, unfolding over the last week, is that Spirit is in a rut. One of her six wheels doesn’t work anymore. The other five are hub-deep in loose soil. Opportunity is still trundling along toward another, even bigger crater. But, one suspects, after nearly five years on the job their essential discoveries – in a data set vastly greater than ever expected – are behind them.

In the meantime, Jet Propulsion Lab workers are working in their sand box (simulation lab) to try to figure a maneuver that could get Spirit back on track. If only it were as easy, on Mars, as in the picture.

Stories:

• AP: Spirit rover’s wheels stuck in soft Martian dirt ;
• Los Angeles Times – John Johnson Jr.: Mars rover Spirit is stuck in sand ;
• AAAS ScienceNow: Mars Rover Stopped in Its Tracks ;
• NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: Mars Rover’s 5 Working Wheels Are Stuck in Hidden Soft Spot ; Latest story of the lot, in today’s Science Times section.

Grist for the Mill: NASA JPL Press Release ;