(English intro to Spanish lang. post) The Spanish Language Tracker is in Costa Rica and  yesterday visited the science staff at La Nacion. While discussing a  story about the inauguration of a biotechnological lab funded with 11 million euros from the EU, a call came in that  congratulated the newspaper. It said that without its pressure, the lab would have never been finished. The Tracker asked what that was about. The Nacion’s reporters showed me stories from 2008 denouncing delays in contracts and demands by the Ministry of Science and Technology that could violate  UE’s funding requirements.

El rastreador científico se encontraba ayer mismo en la redacción del diario costarricense La Nación comentando la nota de Pablo Fonseca sobre la inauguración de un laboratorio de biotecnología que pasará a ser el más importante de su tipo en Centroamérica, cuando la editora de la sección de ciencia Debbie Ponchner recibió una llamada de felicitación por contribuir con su presión periodística a que dicha inauguración fuera posible.

Para entender a qué nos referimos, debemos fijarnos primero en el apartado “Se inicia labor a 3 años de su inauguración” del artículo de Pablo, y la frase “expresaron en abril del 2008 su  temor a que se perdiera parte de la donación de 11 millones de euros de la UE que permitiría crearlo. Entre las obligaciones del país se encontraba tener, antes del 28 de noviembre del 2008, los contratos que garantizaran la ejecución de los recursos”.

Recurramos a un par de notas anteriores:

A principios de abril de 2008 una nota de Pablo Fonseca aseguraba que los 11 millones de euros que la Unión Europea había comprometido a la creación del centro se podían perder debido a los atrasos en el cronograma de trabajo.

En su artículo se intuía una queja a la lenta gestión del Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, que se hizo más expresa un una editorial de La Nación al final del mismo mes acusando de “dejar para mañana lo que se puede hacer ahora sigue vigente en la administración pública”, y en otra editorial pocos días después que se refería a la posible pérdida de la financiación europea con la frase “Nuestro historial administrativo y político está repleto de llegadas tardías que nos han costado fortunas”.

Pablo había incidido días antes de nuevo en el asunto con otra nota que ahondaba en el problema del retraso en los trámites y contratos que solicitaba la UE para continuar financiando el proyecto, junto con el compromiso de la Ministra María Eugenia Flores de asignar un gerente al ya inaugurado pero todavía inexistente Cenibiot.

En junio del 2008 un nuevo artículo explicaba que las licitaciones para construir y equipar el edificio estaban avanzando, y que el Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología se comprometía a firmar los contratos requeridos asegurando que el centro podría empezar a funcionar a mediados del 2009.

Así a sido, y según Debbie Ponchner “sin la denuncia y presión que ejercimos desde la sección de ciencia de La Nación quizás el asunto se hubiera encallado hasta perder la financiación”.

Presión a los responsables políticos de CyT; otra buena función del periodismo científico crítico que explora la intersección de la ciencia con el bienestar del ciudadano.

- PE

At Spaceflight Now Editor-at-large Craig Covault (let go from Aviation Week to the consternation of colleagues and fans), has an absorbing report of a possible new entry in human use of space, up close and personal.  The hed: Beating swords into plough shares with Soviet Almaz. If one is not a truly deeply committed burrower into arcane space history, that offers no clue to the uninitiated what the news is. His piece, half history and half an announcement of a new business, is that Russian and US investors and space veterans plan to adapt a secret, but extensively tested, new versions of reusable Soviet-era space capsule as essential hardware in a space laboratory for hire. Called Excalibur Almaz, the venture has a business plan and, in Covault’s telling, plausible-sounding confidence there are no technical hurdles. This is not space tourism although it appears to be of peripheral pertinence to that nascent business. Rather, it is a new option for researchers who want to get into orbit for a quick visit, do some science, and come back down without spending a week at the space station with its – for some – inconvenient orbit. He closes with a vignette from his days at Av. Week – illuminating this news and the deep roots of the project as well as his own experience covering such things.

A few other outlets have picked the story up too, although not at the great length as did Covault:

• Register (UK) Lewis Page: Soviet military-surplus manned spacecraft to fly again ;
• Space.com – Tariq Malik: Soviet-era spaceships to do commercial flights ;

Grist for the Mill: Excalibur Almaz Press Release ; Plus, a Wikipedia entry has most of the essence already up, too.

-CP

The Tracker hasn’t looked in on the contentious discussions in the northern Rockies on whether, and how many, wolves might be killed under permit now that they’re off the endangered species list. The Idaho Statesman‘s Roger Phillips had the answer for his state this week: 220 of them. That’s just for the sport harvest by the general public. The Nez Perce may take another 35 on their lands. In one year the estimated 1,000 wolves would be reduced by about one fourth.

The story has a fair amount of back and forth between pro-hunting (or anti-live wolf) interests and environmental and other activist groups opposed to much if any hunting. The piece also address the chances that hunters will be able to get anywhere need the numbers permitted.

See Also:

• AP – John Miller: Idaho F&G commissioners approve hunt of 220 wolves.

Pic, NYTimes, source ;

-CP

Way up north, along Alaska’s North Slope and all the way across Canada’s archipelago and into Greenland, the local peoples hunt almost anything that swims and is edible – including narwhals. As NPR‘s Nell Greenfieldboyce reported on All Things Considered yesterday and today, she got herself recently to a place called Qaanaaq, in Greenland. There she tagged along with a scientist who engaged a few local hunters to go after narwhals for her. But rather than seeking meat and hide from these flippered unicorns, the idea was simply to stick radio transmitters into their hides. The result is a relaxing piece of armchair travel, with science for seasoning and a large appreciation for Inuit skill on the water. Here is yesterday’s account on Morning Edition, Chasing After The Elusive Narwhal, and today’s follow, Inuit Hunters Help Scientists Track Narwhals.

Also cached on NPR’s site: Nell shared a bit of the backstory last weekend – how did she get to Qaanaaq in the first place, what’s it like? For answers: Reporter’s Notebook: Life On A Remote Arctic Fjord.

-CP

We’ve been hearing this story for a while now, how drug companies secretly prepared scientific papers favorable to their products, and then got researchers to sign ‘em as if they’d written ‘em.

The New York Times wraps up what we know about this in a piece by Natasha Singer that looks at calls to discipline researchers who sign on to these papers–and Singer fingers a few of them.

The piece is based partly on documents released during court wranglings over a menopause drug made by Wyeth, which hired a medical-writing outfit to promote its drugs.

Singer does more than bring us up to date. She neatly shows us how all the organizations that might discipline researchers over this are, instead, hiding under the covers.

The National Institutes of Health tells her that universities should set and enforce ethics policies. Asked about a charge against one of its professors, New York University’s medical center says, “If we had received a complaint, we would have investigated. But we have not received a complaint.”

Singer broke the story about Wyeth’s use of ghost writers to promote its products on Aug. 4th, when the court documents were made public at the request of the Times and the journal PLoS Medicine.

A few other news outlets matched that report a day or two later. But Singer seems to be the only one who’s stayed with the story, which deserves broader coverage. Is anyone poking around to find instances of this by other companies that we haven’t heard about yet?

Here are few of those who filed following Singer’s report in early August:

• NPR‘s Scott Hensley supplied some nice background and linked to the court documents on the Times website.
• Jacob Goldstein wrote it up for the Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog.
• And the science journal Nature, which ought to have an interest in this issue, carried a matcher on its science news blog, The Great Beyond

- Paul Raeburn

The AP‘s Stephanie Nano has a story out today that shows she must have been in fourth grade with me. How else could she know of this humiliation?  The music class at Valentine School was just getting underway when the teacher called a halt and glared at me: “Stop that, Charlie. Follow the tune!” After it became clear I was not only mortified to the verge of paralysis but had no idea what she was talking about, she leaned in and whispered, “Just move your lips while the class sings.”

And if you should ever be at a Petit family birthday party when the cake comes in, don’t expect much noise. Few of us can hit a note, and most bob our heads along with those (in-laws, mainly) who can. Personally, I sort of chant. I could play the drums, maybe? Tone deafness is not only something I have, but the very concepts of pitch and tone elude me. Some sounds are just higher in frequency than others. That’s it. And now I suspect why – a missing brain circuit connecting the frontal and temporal lobes.

The news is that a Harvard researcher – and musician on the side – compared the neural behaviors of people with good ears for music to ones who are tone deaf and found distinct patterns in the scans. One neural highway either had few neurons, or none detectable, in the ones who’ve been told to shut up during the medley. It is in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Grist for the Mill: Soc’y for Neuroscience Press Release ;

-CP

The Tracker, as one might gather from this post and the next one down, is feeling a bit grouchy this morning. Too much reflexive, formulaic reporting on set-piece themes.

The news is of some interest. A team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reported this week, at an American Chem. Soc’y meeting in Washington DC, that analysis of dust captured by the Stardust Spacecraft three years ago near the comet Wild 2 revealed the amino acid glycine. This is the first evidence of an amino acid on a comet.

That adds comets to meteorites as bearers of amino acids formed somewhere out in space. Spectral evidence from distant nebulae also reveals glycine floating around out there. Maybe other places off-Earth are, evidently, making amino acids. This is important, for it shows that pre-biotic ingredients easing the evolution of life are widely distributed in the universe. However …. the fact that meteorites often are bits of asteroids, and that the borderline between asteroids and comets has gotten very fuzzy in recent years, makes the Wild 2 lysine find seem just a bit of routine, doesn’t it? Not easy – the analysis was laborious – but as a datum it’s solidly in line with previous ones.

Not so routine, if one judges by headlines. This is reminiscent of Mars stories – how many times can water be confirmed there and also declared an omen that life may also be awaiting discovery before the news ploy wears thin? A long time, it appears. Ditto with amino acids in space. Also lasting a long time no doubt will be reporters’ certain, jaded knowledge that if written without a certain hyperbole and deliberate suppression of context at the top, arcane science stories will tend to the back of the pack in competition for a news editor’s attention. “Life came from space!” fills the bill.

Onward. Stories:

• NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: From a Distant Comet, a Clue to Life ; Chang, after following NASA’s lead on his lede, gets real after a while in this story that ran well inside the paper. One of the paper’s authors tells him, “It’s not necessarily particularly surprising…I would have been surprised if it wasn’t there.”  Other than flubbing the subjunctive, that’s well put. Chang also provides a public service, explaining that the comet’s Wild 2 name is pronounced “vilt two.”
• BBC: ‘Life chemical’ detected in comet.
• AFP: Life-giving compound found in space ;
• Times (UK) Mark Henderson: Discovery by Stardust probe in Wild 2 comet suggests life on Earth began in space ; The hed is too suggestive of something really new, but Henderson’s lede nails it: the discovery offers “fresh evidence that life on Earth could have begun…” etc. Not to pick on Henderson so much – he provides some info not in the release – but every quote is straight out of NASA’s p.r. machine without any hint the reporter did not witness them.
• Reuters – Steve Gorman : Building block of life found on comet ;
• Wired – Hadley Leggett: Comet Contains One of Life’s Precursors ; Note: his first quote, presumably received via Mr. Leggett’s own ears, is from an outside researcher. CORRECTION (see comments too): Apologies from the gender-confused Tracker. That should be  Ms. Legget’s own ears.
• Science News – Rachel Ehrenberg: Comet Dust Harbors LIfe’s Building Blocks ; Nicely and  individually reported – including welcome perspective on how this fits previous lines of evidence for glycine – the smallest amino acid – as a natural result of interstellar chemistry.
• Sydney Morning Herald – Richard Macey : The right comet chemistry points to life throughout the universe ;  The theoryof life’s roots in space, he writes, has thus “taken a leap.” Small one, anyway. First two quotes off the release, but Macey also calls a local astrobiologist for comment (enthusiastic).
• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts (blog): Scientists find a building block for life in a comet’s halo ;  He riffs off the release, but also adds an interesting aside on how a Korean team has demonstrated in the lab how glycine might form in a comet-like environment.
• Register (UK) – Lewis Page: NASA: Extraterrestrial sample holds ingredient for alien life / Definitly not lab contamination, insist Boffins ; He uses the release’s quotes – and then in a generous touch links to the release at the end of his story.
• And in the way over the top dept: Daily Star (UK) Gemma Wheatley: Aliens’ Comet ; complete with a pic of Spielberg’s ET.

Grist for the Mill: NASA-Goddard Press Release (hed: NASA Researchers Make First Discovery of Life’s Building Block on Comet).

-CP

The prospect of new treatments for human disease as a prime reason to preserve rare and fragile ecosystems is getting some ink these days. Researchers with considerable frequency say as much, whether they’re studying jungles, microbes in rare extreme environments, arctic tundra, forest loam, or a popular one lately:  deep sea coral reefs. Really? One wonders if, in informal chats with seasoned scientists or in organized seminars about how to talk to reporters, authors of potentially newsy reports pick this up as a trick of the trade. It might go something like this:  To make arcane research relevant to average people and help the news reporter frame it, make it real. Explain how the rare purple cabbage-king kelp known only from one island in the Seychelles just might have an enzyme that counteracts mycophloxylositosinoma. Ergo a marine preserve there should be established and enforced.

It could be true (except that I made that disease up). But one wonders if reporters are too easily being taken in by a ginned-up rationale. Ecologists seldom have cancer on their mind, one warrants, when they find new and strange communities of plants and animals and realize that if left unprotected they will vanish from the Earth forever. But then a reporter comes around. Why should anybody care?, asks the agent of the Fourth Estate. Speculations on medical miracles follow.

All this griping stems from exactly two data points (and suspicion I’ve seen many others but can’t document them at the moment).

Early yesterday morning the AP‘s Brian Skoloff filed – with the dateline FIFTY MILES OFF CAPE CANAVERAL  a fascinating account of a large expanse of corals in the deep water “beneath the crystalline blue surface of the Atlantic Ocean” The main news is that it is pristine, may be the largest undisturbed such tract along the eastern seaboard, but is vulnerable to deep water trawls that some might compare to clear-cutting old growth forests to harvest rabbits. One researcher likens it to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, exept too deep to see without a lot of very expensive gear. It’s an important class of story, well done. But one reads along for a bit and sure enough the same source is talking about hypothetical cancer drugs lurking in the genomes of coral ecosystems.

That rings a bell. The Tracker posted in May on a somewhat similar discovery off Ireland. Again, but from a different set of scientists, a near-identical medical miracle angle came up.

Genome prospecting for medically and chemically useful compounds, from cures to catalysts, is a fine news topic and meritorious activity. But as a reason to preserve ecosystems it is not very specific. Chances that any one of them provides a jackpot has to be very low. The big reason to save them is the alternative – gone really means gone – and it applies every time. Each has aesthetic or evolutionary significance and a place in the web of life. Pull enough nails from a ship and it may suddenly founder, etc. Maybe reporters ought to let their eyes glaze a bit when scientists declare pharmacology as a major reason the average person should worry over the fate of a rain forest canopy in Borneo or a microbial varnish in the Gobi Desert. Ask the source – is that REALLY a reason you’re so interested in conserving this place, or just something you think will go over in public?

-CP

Texas, they say, is not as red and Republican a state as it used to be. But, one expects, stories on global warming and its impacts still get readers there even more riled than they get them in many other states. This came to mind on reading in the Star Telegram Anna M. Tinsley‘s matter-of-fact report on birds and other wildlife that may soon cease being natives of Texas. They will be documented alienated emigrants. She talks with local and regional wildlife official about the migrations that appear to be underway as heat and drought become more common. Most are birds on her list – American goldcinch, cedar waxwing, etc., but include mangrove tree ranges shifting east and north along the gulf coast and a fish called the gray snapper whose preferred domicile  is moving upriver and up coast, is near the Louisiana border now and may be headed out of Texas altogether.

   Nicely done. No surprises, but useful to local readers to see how and whether their local scene is undergoing significant changes. Of some interest is the list of readers’ comments. It has the usual run of readers convinced that mankind is not responsible for any changes in climate, and saying so rather vehemently. But in here is an about equal number of vehement and at time insulting replies from those fairly well convinced we’re screwing the planet. Usually, the ranters from the right outnumber the weepers (and ranters) from the left in such venues. This one is a catfight.

-CP

Starting first with the last of the items in this post’s hed,  Andrew Pollack has a brief but eye-opening  yarn – about DNA evidence - floating in nowheresville without illus on p. 3 of today’s Science Times. I only had to read the story’s hed  DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show to slap my own head. In a flash I thought of all those recent stories on the plummeting price of individual genomes, the abundance of lickety-split DNA sequencers in biotech labs all over the place, and thought one thing: Crime Scene Investigation. Already, producers of the TV crimeshow CSI  franchises based in ‘Vegas, Miami, and NY must be sparring over who gets to have the first episode in which some rich evil genius criminal murderer rapist wreaks his felony – but only AFTER cooking up a synthetic version of somebody else’s DNA to splash around the crime scene. If the SNPs fit, you must convict, right?  Bring Grissom back. He’ll figure it out (the old methylation test).

   The section’s big story is Nicholas Wade‘s update on those anti-aging, starvation-diet mimicking drugs that everybody was writing and reading about in the last few years, but now are seen in public mainly as topics of semi-fraudulent pitches from dietary supplement grifters. It is accompanied by a sidebar on fringe advertising excesses written by Sarah Arnquist.  Wade gives it a lively go. The story does not quite back up the hopeful air of the main illus – those two hands of remarkably similar size but of vastly different ages – but the body of the text keeps its balance. Wade clearly thinks something big is cooking, but he also explains that such things as resveratrol have been more hype than justified hope so far. One section on wild v. lab mice is telling. Wade mentions another line of research, which he calls single gene changes, but so briefly that this aspect might well have been better left out.

Other Headlines of Note:

• Cornelia Dean: Clash Over Rebirth of Mt. St. Helens ; A richly detailed profile of policy conflict on the skirts of a restive, homicidal volcano. They are a natural lab for studying how ecoystems respond to devastation. But it’s been nearly 30 years since the big blow. The snowmobilers and the hunting and fishing and second-home developing crowd is getting angry over all the fences and signs and guv’mint regulations and scientists with their precious data. Money is tight all around, too. Lovely illus.
• Benedict Carey: Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers ; On rising attention in the US military to emotional /psychological injuries and how to prevent them  (and resonant with the superb two-part report in the Times this week on the enthusiasm that seasoned commanders are surprised to find themselves feeling as women arrive for combat and do well.)
• Denise Gray : Healthy One Day, Dying the Next: A Medical Race ; Just another annals of medicine weeper, I thought. Then could NOT stop reading.
• Jane Brody: End-of-Life Issues Need to be Addressed ; Jeez, this or something like it should have been on the front page weeks ago at the first sigh of the deliberately concocted canard about “death panels” that has disgraced discussion of US health reform. (See Paul Raeburn’s pertinent post from yesterday)  End of life counseling is already part of the better private health plans. And chances of rationing care and cutting off grandma, someday, from heroic treatments are just as high with HMO corporate pencil pushers in charge as with government bureaucrats. Jane tackles it well and pointedly – and should have been put on the line of scrimmage a month ago.
• Tara Parker Pope: Weight Lifting May Help to Avert Lymph Problem ; It is hard to spend time around women who have undergone aggressive mastectomy and avoid the glared, accusatory question from the furious patients, “Why didn’t anybody tell me about this arm thing?!” That’s the blocked lymph flow that can leave women almost crippled in their use of both arms. Maybe, Pope writes, physical therapy can do a better job avoiding the problem.

As usual, lots more in Whole Section;

-CP

Time Magazine says no.

The American College of Sports Medicine says: Phooey.

On Aug. 9th, Time published an article by John Cloud entitled “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.” How is it, Time asks, that membership in gyms is way up over the past 15 years, and obesity in Americans has risen dramatically over the same period?

Time’s answer: Exercise makes us eat more, and so, paradoxically, makes us fatter. “Could pushing people to exercise more actually be contributing to our obesity problem?” Time writes. “In some respects, yes.”

Whew. That’s a relief. Cancel my Equinox membership, and watch as the new slim me emerges from the current, uh, less-slim me, like somebody in those Nutrisystem ads.

Of course, it’s not that simple. And the reason we’re looking back at a week-old Time story is because we have just been given an email that the American College of Sports Medicine sent to its members. The Time article contains “statements that we believe run counter to fact and the public interest,” ACSM told its members. It “claimed that exercise, contrary to the research with which we’re all familiar, is not an effective health tool, particularly as it pertains to weight loss.”

That’s not an entirely fair criticism. Time did say that encouraging people to exercise is “sound advice for many reasons” and that people who exercise reduce their risks for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other ailments.

But the thrust of the ACSM criticism is correct. The Time article, despite its caveats, is too critical of exercise. Further, it undermines its argument by noting that moderate exercise, such as walking, is indeed beneficial, and suggests we should do more of it. Time makes a blanket case against exercise for weight loss when what it seems to be criticizing is not exercise in general, but sweaty, over-the-top gym exercise.

After decades of research on the pros and cons of exercise–and many unresolved research questions–it’s a little painful to see Time answer the question with such finality. A little more skepticism, and balance, would have been welcome.

- Paul Raeburn

Sunday’s Dispatch carried a dispatch from the war on bugs – with some word play to compare it to the war on drugs. Writer Timothy Magaw reviewed the parasitic wasps unleashed on tree-killing ash borers, the Asian lady beetles launched against aphids, and for that matter some efforts gone awry historically (mongoose againt rats in Hawaii but that killed mainly birds, or house sparrows against weevils in the US that just became too many house sparrows). And, he adds, such biological control stratagems against invasive species that arrived without their natural enemies do, on occasion, work quite well. Nothing groundbreaking here but a tidy piece, well dispatched. 

-CP