A look at the big paper in San Diego, the Union Tribune, finds several stories to herald the opening about now of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Tomorrow I’ll take time to check its news room site for twitter or blog feeds, as well as see what reporters there might be filing.

So far in the Union Trib:

• Mike Lee: Sea change coming for marine reserves? / S.D. science gathering to include discussion ; A stand-alone story. It is keyed to the meeting, but provides an update on marine preserve politics and benefits on its own two legs.
• (Op-Ed) Peter C. Agre, Alan I Leshner: A bridge between science, society ; The Pres and Executive Officer of AAAS give the pitch for themselves. It’s very serious. The topics are important. But it’s kind of dull.
• Scott LaFee: Ig Nobels ring of truth as well as spoof ; On a sideshow to the AAAS, with giggles.
• Mike Lee: Bioengineering to crop up when science group meets ;

Grist for the Mill: AAAS Press Room ;

- Charlie Petit

Today’s a day for space news from or about NASA. Scroll down a bit for two other posts on spectacular views from space near and far. Now one finds, at BBC, a long and deeply reported account by Victoria Gill of the troubles and prospects of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory. It’s a good job. I read it twice to look for holes but don’t see many of size. She has the money it will cost (billions), the hurdles that designers have faced, the intent on when it is to get there (2013), and the novelty of its design. She visited JPL to get a first-hand look, learned about the bad titanium NASA bought to build it with, and the unexpected challenges of designing avionics for its distinctive, multi-stage “sky crane” landing procedure.

Here’s a hole, but as her topic was problems and the electrical source has not been one, there could be reason. Nonetheless, she could have said something about the Plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator that will keep its juice flowing without need for solar panels and sunlight. It’s a proven technology. It also makes some people nervous. It merits routine disclosure. It also leads to the prospect of driving this thing at night. Does it have a headlight? That would be interesting right there. I do discover that the little camera on the robotic arm will have l.e.d. lights for night operations.

Pic: Mars rover family portrait. The new lab is the big one – with no solar panels.

- Charlie Petit

from mindblog.net ( http://tinyurl.com/ydoqumh )

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Lena Stallmach) just ran a great piece about the next generation of lie detectors!

Was what I just wrote a frank lie? The absolute truth? Or sarcasm? Or just an overstatement? Well, it’s hard to tell, especially for machines.

Reports about lie detection involuntarily dig into science, as well as quality standards of forensic technology, ethics and societal issues. It’s a no-brainer, that lie detection would be a great tool to get the truth out of criminals. But on the other hand one should keep ethical issues of personal integrity and dignity and basic human rights in mind (which Stallmacher did not focus on, though). Lie detectors are much more controversial in Europe compared to the US, where the results of conventional lie detectors (see below) are already allowed in some state’s courtrooms.

The article starts (unfortunately) with a detour, trying to explain the difference between lie detection and thought reading. (So far, scientists are able to distinguish the pattern of brain activity caused by looking at an object (house, ball, etc.) from the pattern of seeing a face, e.g. At the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin scientists were able to tell whether a person was up to subtract or add two given numbers just by looking at the different brain activities. At the University of Zürich scientists could “read” in the brain, whether a test person will stick to a given promise or not. But even this is not true thought reading, as scientists are not able to recognize a thought like “Why should I read this article?”, yet. )

But (coming back to the main topic) science can distinguish truth and lie quite well, already, writes NZZ. Parts of the brain in the prefrontal cortex and cingulum show distinct patterns of activity during lying, as well as the limbic system, which is involved in emotion control. Neuroscientists usually based their studies on groups of people, but companies like “No Lie MRI” or “Cephos” did studies, whether the fMRI technology was able to recognize the lies or truth telling of individual. One of the studies (by Cephos) was done with 48 persons, 14 of them were told to “steal” a CD. When they tried to lie about the “crime” in an interrogation two days later, the  fMRI machine “caught” 13 as liers. Sounds great, so far. But the machine falsely found 14 liars within the 22 persons, too, who did not steal anything and did not lie at all.

One of the reasons for this misinterpretation seems to be, that the laboratory experiments did not have to deal with artificially arranged lies. “True” lies cause different brain activities and scientists do not know about the various activity patterns of different types of lies. It’s also not known, how easy it is to manipulate the fMRI scan. The conventional lie detection, which measures physiological reactions, is known to be manipulable: Just raise the basic stress level during the control questions by thinking of something exciting so that the machine is not able to distinguish the excitement, when you tell a lie.

The obviously weak scientific basis doesn’t seem to be a hurdle for Cephos or No Lie MRI to sell their lie detection service, writes NZZ. One third of the users are private, another third try to make a difference in “legal matters”, and the rest are people, who try to prove their innocence, according to Cephos’ CEO Steven Laken. It is still up in the air, whether the technique will be allowed in US courts.

But the example of the electroencephalogram (EEG) based test makes John-Dylan Haynes from the BCCN in Berlin worry. 20 years ago, this test was developed based on the observation, that one can measure an electric pulse (P300 wave), if a person remembers a certain information. This way, a criminal could be debunked, if he remembers a crucial information only the culprit could know. The “brain fingerprinting test” has been used for years, tells the article, based on the assumption that this method meets the “Daubert-Standard”, which approves forensic methods for court if they show a thorough testing, peer reviewed scientific publication and a widespread acceptance by the scientific community. The article quotes scientists, who doubt this. Comparable problems will arise with the current usage of fMRI based lie detection technology, which is still in its infancy. Haynes is currently developing quality standards, together with colleagues, to make sure, that the fMRI technology won’t be another example of bad science in courtroooms.

To sum up: Don’t wire me to a lie detector to prove or disprove my opening line – look for yourself, read the article.

- Sascha Karberg

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Argentine scientists altered diets of cows until they got milk with a distinct mix of fat acids. Is this milk healthier than other ones? Probably yes. But does this milk prevent diabetes, heart disease and some kinds of cancer? That’s the word that  many Argentinean and some other Latin American newspapers are spreading. It is a good example how journalists fail to resist exaggerating  scientists’ findings rather than giving them a critical review.

Cambias la dieta de las vacas, y consigues una leche que “ayuda a prevenir la formación de células tumorales y la diabetes, como también la aparición de ateromas, como el que los cirujanos capturaron en la carótida del ex presidente Néstor Kirchner. Y sale así, desde la teta de la vaca, sin necesidad de agregados químicos, solo gracias a la alimentación previa del rumiante”. Así textualmente empieza en Clarín (Argentina) el artículo de Patricio Downes “Técnicos argentinos crean una “súper leche” que previene enfermedades”.

Yo, con todos los respetos, pero también con la obligada actitud escéptica que se nos presupone, lo pongo en duda. ¿De verdad creéis que desayunar media taza de esta leche va prevenir significativamente tu diabetes, enfermedades de corazón, e incluso cánceres? ¿en serio? Por cómo se ha extendido la noticia incluso fuera de Argentina, parece que sí.

Leamos el texto de Clarín, que es el más trabajado de los que hemos encontrado, para ver si además de las palabras de los técnicos que producen la leche y la “ponen a disposición del las pymes”, algún estudio científico sustenta sus milagros.

“La clave es el alimento de las vacas”, explica el artículo. Dándole comida sana consigues que en la leche haya diferente distribución de grasas, y biomoléculas con “propiedades antitumorales, antiaterogénicas y antidiabéticas”. Lo que contenga la leche (aunque estaría bien saber cantidades), no lo ponemos en duda. Pero ante la cita del especialista “También está probado que puede prevenir los tumores de mama y prostáticos“, nos gustaría ver referencias de esas pruebas. Así como en qué estudios sustentan la afirmación de que un producto natural es mejor para el consumidor que otro enriquecido, en el caso de las leches. Y que la fórmula secreta de la dieta se base en “subproductos de la industria aceitera, de los procesos de generación de biocombustibles, harina de pescado, en general subproductos de transformaciones industriales que pueden recuperarse“… no se, llamadme desconfiado, pero suena muy publicitario.

Bottom line: no decimos que todas las leches del supermercado sean idénticas. Hay con muchas grasas, otras desnatadas, a algunas se les añaden vitamina D o omega 3, y también hay leches con mejores perfiles grasos gracias a alimentos equilibrados. Pero presentar en las secciones de ciencia o salud de un periódico una dieta para las vacas que produce una leche que previene la diabetes, enfermedades de corazón, y cánceres, nos parece inflar demasiado la noticia. Posiblemente estoy exagerando al no reconocer que esta leche sea más sana que si las mismas vacas hubieran comido otra dieta, pero más parecen exagerar titulares tipo “La “súper leche” luchará contra tumores y diabetes” de La Gaceta de Tucumán, o “Crean súper leche contra diabetes y tumores”, en El Universal (México). Claro que esta investigación presentada por el centro de investigación INTA como “un alimento natural y más saludable” debe ser reflejada en los medios argentinos pero, ¿es justo presentar tal leche como un medicamento? Si a tu dieta normal le añades medio vaso al día de esta leche ¿disminuirá tu riesgo de cáncer, enfermedad cardiaca y diabetes? Ya se que no es esto lo que dicen los investigadores, pero sí lo que transmiten todas las notas que han recogido la noticia.

- Pere Estupinyà

(*) Importante: Me gustaría que cuando aquí seleccionamos ejemplos concretos, y nos enzarzamos sólo con los aspectos más críticos, no fuera percibido como un ataque a los investigadores ni a los compañeros periodistas. No lo es en absoluto. Podríamos discutir generalidades y escribir de manera más neutra, pero pensamos que citar casos concretos nos ayuda a focalizar pensamientos, y son una excelente herramienta para reflexionar.

There is nothing like mixing in the name of a celebrity to make otherwise arcane news pop in the imagination of the news-following public including those whose eyes glaze at most stories on DNA and anthropology. It’s not easy to get the latest news on an obscure disease on to the front page or as lede newscast item – unless a famous person just got diagnosed.

Similarly so for the heavy pickup of a cover story report in Nature. It gets a further boost from multiple press releases and a teleconference. The upshot is  new insights into the deep genetic diversity of humanity in Africa. That people evolved first in Africa and hence the continent has people who have been developing differences among each other longer than anywhere else has been well known for a long time. But this set of new details arises largely because the research team selected one Desmond Tutu, the famed archbishop in South Africa, as a type specimen of Bantu lineage. His DNA carries signatures of ancestry going way back, and even includes unmistakable evidence that some time ago a bushmen – or to use another ethnicity label, a San – took part.

The result is a great story spiced with such information as that the genetic distance between the Bantu peoples, and among many other tribal populations in Africa, is greater just on that continent that between, say, Asians and Europeans. People may lump sub-Saharan Africans as all one race, but under all that dark skin is a variety of overlapping but distinguishable lineages more diverse than in the rest of the world combined. DNA from four bushman people were also sequenced. These hunter-gatherers are the oldest distinct populations known, bearing in their genes a twisting line of descent going back as straight as is possible toward the appearance of H. sapiens perhaps 200,000 years ago.

The AP’s Malcolm Ritter zeroes in skillfully on the richness and diversity of bushmen ancestry, noting that the genetic distinction between two bushman cultures in the same region of Africa, but speaking different languages, can be greater than the difference between any two peoples living outside Africa. He gets a fine quote: “We’re looking really back into the wellspring of our genetic origins here.” The whole piece is impressively lucid and well-organized. He, via a source, takes specific aim at racist beliefs about natural human divisions that don’t stand up to inspection.

Other stories:

• LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Scientists find great genetic differences among southern Africans ; His lede deftly separates the old – that great diversity is known and expected among African peoples – from the new details on just how great they are in one region.
• NYTimes – Nicholas Wade: Scientists Decode Genomes of Five Africans, Including Archbishop Tutu; Good for Nick. Tutu is getting most of the ink elsewhere from this news. Wade’s lede provides the click-language semi-renderings of the four bushmen’s given names: !Gubi, G/aq’o, D#kgao and !Ai. Don’t try to say them fast again and again. Your tongue might cramp or something.
• Washington Post – Rob Stein: Genomes of Archbishop Tutu, Bushman decoded in developing-world health push.; Right, he says Bushman, singular, the one named !Gubi. The other three were only partly decoded, it says here.
• Newsweek – Sharon Begley: Desmond Tutu’s Sequenced Genes: How Increased Diversity Helps Doctors Heal ; Her focus is on lessons for medical care and attention to each patient’s genetic distinction. And, she doesn’t think much of white guys and their genomes as typical for most of us. Hmm. What about the other saw of genetics – despite the distinctions as roadmarkers of descent, all people’s DNA is pretty much the same?
• Houston Chronicle – Eric Berger: Houston scientists sequence genome of Desmond Tutu, others ; HIs angle, after Tutu and diversity, is medicine as well. The term pharmacogenomics comes up.
• Reuters – Paul Simao: African gene trawl may provide secrets to long life ;  Maybe there are long life clues here. It could be a legit angle. Simao does not explain why sequencing genes of old bushmen (all past age 80) reveals much about their sturdiness and longevity under harsh conditions.
• Business Day (Cape Town) Tamar Kahn: Tutu gives his genes to science ; Sharp local angle here.
• ABC (Aus) Sarah Clarke: Tutu’s DNA could point to medical cures ; Focus on medical insights and on a South African-raised researcher who co-led the project and who now lives in Australia.
• Sydney Morning Herald – Deborah Smith: Tutu genome offers clues to genetic riddles ;
• Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: Desmond Tutu’s genome sequences as part of genetic diversity study ;

Grist for the Mill:

U.  New South Wales Press Release ; Baylor College of Medicine Press Release ; Penn State U. Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Last month NASA launched the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Yesterday it released some pretty good samples of its work. At the UK’s Register newspaper, Lester Haines writes it up and calls the images “full-fat photos.” Is that a typo? Or have I missed a twist in the evolution of the English language?  What is full-fat? Is it like phat? The NASA release is linked in Grist below. Haines leaves no sign of doing original reporting, but does do a pretty good job of presenting the images – using the abundant material provided at NASA’s website and in press material to which he links directly. He explains in brief terms what they imply about this neighboring nebula.

Many outlets selected one of its several images of Andromeda to highlight, including this one in which emissions at various wavelengths were rendered in exaggerated colors to reflect dramatically contrasting conditions. Regions dominated by mature, main sequence stars are shown blue while red and yellow tones reveal dusty, gas-rich regions loaded with feisty newborn stars.

Other stories:

• Huffington Post – Bianca Bosker: NASA WISE Pictures: INCREDIBLE Photos From NASA’s Sky-Mapping Spacecraft ; Tiny brief item that stovepipes the photos but notable – unless I just haven’t been paying attention – is that HPost is running more stuff lately unrelated to policy intrigue inside the Beltway.
• ABC (Aus) Kate Evans: ‘Australian’ comet captured by NASA ;
• Deseret News (blog) Joe Bauman: Astounding views from WISE ; A technical take for Deseret readers.
• Wired News – Alexis Madrigal: Comet’s 10 Million-Mile Tail Lights Up in Infrared ;
• USA Today – Dan Vergano: NASA unveils first space images from WISE telescope ;  Just a shorty – the news really is simply this: PICTURES that say WOW.
• Pasadena Star-News – Emma Gallegos: Space telescope captures a ‘candy story of images’ ; The writer, in a tiny space, nonetheless takes the story seriously, and as more than eye candy. She provides a well-composed hint of the scientific incentive and payoff that justify orbiting cameras like this one.
• Popular Science – Jeremy Tsu: NASA’s WISE Space Telescope Captures Beauty Shot of Andromeda Galaxy / it’s traveling toward us at about 100 klometers per second, you know ;
• .. enough of this. Stories are just about all very short intros, or fat captions, to the illus. That’s fine.

To state the obvious, we have in this and the post below two very different stories from NASA today, both about windows on space. Both have a WOW factor.

Grist for the Mill:

NASA Press Release ; WISE news ;

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker opines that space tourism and the long term prospects for would-be rocket tycoons such as Elon Musk at SpaceX and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin just got a boost, courtesy of a pot of government money, the previously useless Int’l Space Station, and the architecture of Star Wars. The astronauts opened a picture window. It appears that the first picture of it, shown, to reach the public was sent via Twitter from a Japanese crewman. And suddenly the idea of a space hotel suite, if it had a view like this (or if the hotel’s dining room did) might seem a whole lot more sensible to those folks able to pay tens to hundreds of millions of dollars for an out-of-this-world vacation.

Just sayin’….

The news is that the station’s crew, after some practical problems getting the thing mounted, opened a faceted bay window on the space station. Many sci-fi movies show such picture windows (as did the Jules Verne-based movie with Kirk Douglas, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). Now the space station has one. Perhaps after NASA, ESA, and other space agencies get tired of the place it’ll turn into a microgravity spa – and windows like this would be a big reason to book a room.

The picture up there was posted by ISS flight engineer Soichi Noguchi from his Twitter site Astro_Soichi. The AP put it on the wire, and space and science writer Marcia Dunn reports the station’s residents were immediately humbled by the “absolutely spectacular” views from the new atrium. And one other thing – does the window’s pattern of muntins and stiles (aka sash) look familiar? Maybe you remember the Imperial Tie fighter in the old Star Wars movies with the nose bearing just such a forward-facing cockpit window, in turn inspired by WWII bomber nose turret windows. The practical reason for the cupola, delivered by the shuttle Endeavour and its crew, is to make controlling robotic activities easier. They are part of the last major addition scheduled for the station structure. (This thing should have been among the first.) One thinks it’d be easier and cheaper to mount some high-def video cameras with wide-angle lenses out there and good HD monitors inside. But windows are so immediate.

Other Stories:

• Space.com – Tariq Malik: Astronauts Bask in Spectacular Views from New Space Windows ;
• Daily Mail (UK): First stunning pictures from the space station’s room with the ultimate view ; Editors there also see the resemblance to the tie fighter’s nose job.
• Voice of America – Susanne Presto: Space Station Shutters Open to View of Sahara ;
• Christian Science Monitor – Peter N. Spotts: Astronauts on ISS get first look out of new ‘room with a view’ ; Says here the astronauts were in tears over the new vistas rolling past.
• Florida Today – Todd Halvorson: Here’s the view, Mr. Robinson ;

Grist for the Mill: NASA STS-130 Status Reports ; NASA put most of its p.r. effort into a chat between Pres. Obama, the crew, and some school kids.

- Charlie Petit

Hey, here are two accounts on weather that have no association that I can think with the climate’s baseline – only its inherent variations. We have word today that the pretty mild El Niño that has warmed the mid-Pacific since Fall is fading out. But, it’s not gone.

Stories:

• Bloomberg – Brian K. Sullivan: El Nino Will Keep Weather Unsettled Even as it Start to Fade ; Hmmm. What does unsettled mean? It’s winter. Things are always unsettled in winter. What’s neat is that while pundits and others on the ignorant side of the climate debate, and who argued about the meaning of a warm Vancouver and a snowbound national mall in DC, could have had a perfectly learned talk if they’d been discussing the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. And we also learn here that while the fade of EN will end this merely unsettled weather, its end will also mean more severe weather for the US. Ah, ambiguity, thy name is cover-my-behind news writer.
• Orange County Register – Gary Robbins: Fading El Nino may last until spring ; (with apologies for the preceding link’s having been broken all day yesterday). What, with its readership, the Register had no tildes to put on its letter Ns? Interesting is that weather agencies seem to agree on the fade. Robbins cites the US Climate Prediction Center. The story preceding works off the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Grist for the Mill: NOAA CPC El Niño Southern Oscillation page.

- Charlie Petit

I’m worn out from two long and serious posts so am entirely delighted to find something as light and cheerful as a spring garden with honey bees lumbering from blossom to blossom. The topic is, in fact, bees. At NPR, Robert Krulwich diverts listeners (and readers – pretty much the whole thing is in text too) with the humiliating discovery that one of the best automobiles ever built, if graded for efficiency, has absolutely nothing on honey bees. That hed up there is its mpg. Really. If gallons of honey is permissible.

I supposed that, since the lighter the car the more efficient it is, and since one supposes that there is a general scaling law that one might use to calculate the mileage of this particular car were it reduced to the weight of a honeybee, that a fair comparison would put that correction in and tell us the result. Krulwich is no idiot. He does bring this size and weight thing up to his source. He is assured that even with such things accounted for the little buzzers win by lots of miles per gallon. But one wishes he’d asked for the numbers.

- Charlie Petit

As expected, President Obama said yesterday that he will do his best to make sure at least two new nuclear power units get installed  in the US  in the next ten years or so. Federal loan guarantees will mean that the private companies willing to go first need not face bankruptcy if the nuclear industry cannot make good on its cost and construction-time assurances.

These plans could be big news if it plays out. With 100+ reactors that are  nearly all 30+ years old still producing a fifth of the nation’s electricity, not to mention dumping giant profits into their owners accounts (now that the machines are paid off) while staying out of the headlines and having no accidents to speak of, it seems sensible to add a few more. It is important to see if the streamlined and standardized ones on offer these days will work and make economic and carbon-free sense. I’ve been waiting a long time to see what happens when the nuclear industry in the US, after talking big for years about its incipient renaissance, has to put up or shut up. The political climate for such a test seems optimal now. Just do it.

What is interesting is that the news is not getting huge play. Big but not huge. Plus, compared to how it would have been received just ten years ago, one finds muted apoplexy (or, at least, coverage of it) from established environmental advocacy organizations.

Below are two lists, the first of stories that focus on the specifics of the White House plan, the second on what might be called blowback.

-- Westinghouse AP1000 --

But first: What one does NOT find is much information that might interest a few old timers in nuclear news. Such as: what about the reactors? Who will make them? I did not read every word of the stories, but quick looks saw no sign. However, a glance at Westinghouse Electric Co’s News Room site and some rummaging indicates that they will be that company’s AP1000 line, a GenIII+  pressurized water unit for which new installations are already under construction overseas. China has two sites well underway and, word is (in Wikipedia) that it has ordered six of them already with plans for many more after that. US utilities, it also says, have penciled themselves in for at least 14 of them. Japan’s Toshiba, by the way, absorbed Westinghouse Electric Co. in 2008. It’s not clear to me but probably is easy to find out what parts of these reactors are made in America.

News Stories on New Nuclear Reactors:

• USA Today – Julie Schmit: $8.3B in loans guaranteed for nuclear reactors ; The usual suspects – professors and energy secretaries and a few greenie worriers – have their say.
• Baltimore Sun – Paul West: Pushing nuclear power / Calvert Cliffs reportedly a finalist ; Announcement was in Maryland, ergo there’s a local angle.
• NYTimes – Matthew L. Wald: U.S. Supports New Nuclear Reactors in Georgia ;
• Climate Wire (via NYTimes) Peter Behr: DOE Delivers Its First, Long-Awaited Nuclear Loan Guarantee ;
• Christian Science Monitor – Peter N. Spotts: Obama advances nuclear resurgence with US loan guarantees ;
• Boston Globe – Michael D. Shear, William Branigin: $8b set aside for nuclear plant ; Good usage in the hed. Some stories refer to two plants getting guarantees. Usual nomenclature is that however many reactors it has, a single site is one plant. The individual reactors are just that, or are termed plant units.
• Miami Herald/McClatchy – Renee Schoof: Obama announces loans to build nuclear plants ;
• Financial Times – Anna Fifield : Obama backs nuclear-power push with $8.3bn in loans ;
• Los Angeles Times – Jim Tankersley, Michael Muskal: Obama pledged $8 billion for new nuclear reactors ;
• Washington Post – Michael D. Shear, Steven Mufson : Obama offers loan to help fund two nuclear reactors ; Hmmm. No, not the loans, but collateral to back them. But this does a particularly good job explaining why the  impact on jobs or electrical capacity will be zero for quite awhile.
• And many more…

Reaction, blowback, and analysis stories:

• NPR – The Editors: The Nuclear Future We Really Need: An even-handed and astute editorial. As it says, this is all about just “two – count’em” reactors.
• Atlantic Magazine – Daniel Indiviglio: 5 Reasons to Cheer Obama’s Nuclear Ambitions ;
• Huffington Post – Robert Alvarez: Five Reasons NOT to Invest in Nuclear Power ; Alvarez is a policy analyst with a history in government. This is his point by point reply to the Atlantic editor’s opinions one bullet up. He accuses most news coverage of cheerleading, and states without equivocation that nuclear power is not safe, clean, or affordable (and that, one ventures, is worse than coal how?).
• Business Week – Daniel Whitten : Nuclear Industry Gets Lift, No “Renaissance’ From U.S. Loan Aid ;
• Christian Science Monitor – Mark Clayton: Budget watchdogs see folly in US loan guarantees for nuclear power ;

Grist for the Mill:

White House Press Release ; The Southern Co. Press Release ; Westinghouse Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Optimism saves you from the cold. Optimists stay healthier. Optimists get less colds. And on, and on. Basically every newspapers or online outlet in Germany, Switzerland or Austria picked up this surprising news – which is of course perfectly timed to fit into the mucus season. The news originated from a study of Roehampton University in London (well, a German scientist switched there from Hamburg), the Hamburg University clinic Eppendorf and: the German insurance company Techniker Krankenkasse TK (disclosure: I’m covered by them, happily). It seems their press center did a good job, because the optimism-mucus-connection-news didn’t change much on its way from their website to the German news agency dpa and to the rest of the German speaking world.

To my knowledge, the news is exclusively based on an apparently unpublished study. Was it peer reviewed? No idea, because the hint to the study originates from a press release of the insurance company TK, which did not mention any articles or journals and I couldn’t find anything on Pubmed by looking for the names of the scientists. Anyway, none of the newspapers cared, and no one asked some independant experts about  the “study”, which is basically a questionnaire filled out by 80 students. Questions like “What can go wrong, will go wrong?” were used to classify the students into (no, not fans of sarcastic jokes, but) pessimists or optimists. Then, the scientists assessed the “infectious status” of the students, once during and once after their exam period. But don’t get me wrong, they did not do a blood test or went to a doctoral examination, they just filled out another questionnaire, which asked for sore throat, running nose or cough. A second study in a nursing home also “proved” the hypothesis, that optimists deal much better with stressful situations and therefore don’t get sick as easy as pessimists in comparable circumstances – according to the insurance companies press release. You ask for numbers? How many of the student “pessimists” catched a cold, compared to the “optimists”? Well, you’ll have to call the insurance company – nothing in the press release, nothing in the newspapers.

Reading all the copy-paste-articles one could really get pessimistic about journalism. What about adding some thoughts, some skeptical remarks, that this is just a correlation – if anything? What about a hint for the reader, that the original press release did not mention, that the study hasn’t gone through a peer review process? Why did no one made the effort to explain, that there might be a difference between experts employed by an insurance company and scientists at universities (The press release as well as the dpa piece mentioned, that the science was done by “TK experts”, which nevertheless was no hurdle to redistribute the release). And what about some simple brain work, that it could also be the other way around: that people, who tend to be sick tend to be more pessimistic – for a reason!

Yes, I may sound like a “Spaßbremse” (party pooper, fun wrecker, buzzkill). Who cares, anyway? Come on, this is just this sort of minor news people like to share during a coffee break, isn’t it?

Really?

I don’t think so. I think, people (recipients) know quite well, what’s an in depth scientific study and what’s just a – to be polite – preliminary pilot study (I don’t say, the scientists did bad work, I just think they know quite well, that they have a hell lot of work to do to prove the hypothesis, that we already cast into headlines). The more we distribute shallow science, the more we spread mistrust in (science) reporting. And by the way, doesn’t it sound odd, that a press release from an insurance company says that just a little bit optimism is enough to prevent the next cold?

If you want to go through it by yourself, here are the links. But don’t sue me if you catch a cold!

Focus, Welt, Rheinische Post, Zeit, Wiener Zeitung, Standard, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berner Zeitung, Leipziger Zeitung, Hamburger Abendblatt, and nearly all the others too. (Well, it seems, the NZZ, FAZ, FTD, Tagesspiegel, Spiegel-Online did not pick it up, so far. I’ll take it as a reason to be optimistic…)

Change in Climate Change council demanded

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber is arguably one of the most influential and publicly known German climate researcher. The German chancellor Angela Merkel counts on his advice. And now, in face of the recent turmoil of the United Nation’s IPCC, Schellnhuber suggested in an interview for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, that the leadership of the IPCC shouldn’t depend on political but solely on scientific criteria. Also, the IPCC report should be based exclusively on peer reviewed science.

Rajendra Pachauri should recede, said Schellnhuber, not because of the flaws in the IPCC report, but because of the mismanagement of the communication of these flaws, even if they do not touch the core results of the report. Schellnhuber is one of a couple of scientists worldwide, who call for changes within the IPCC. Gunnar Öquist, head of the Swedish science academy and one of the jurors for the Nobel prizes, said in an interview for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, that the United Nations should initiate an examination of the IPCC and draw conclusions (see the report of Financial Times Deutschland)

- Sascha Karberg

Oh for the love of god, or Darwin, or whatever one exalts. I have to fully and somewhat proudly concede that when it comes to being objective, I am such as much as I can be. And I objectively believe that the global media and blogosphere convulsions over climate gate, IPPC-hate, Himalayan glaciers’ exaggerated fate, and global warming’s implied demise (despite the data) collectively reflect one of the greatest outbreaks of institutional lunacy regarding scientific research since the Vatican told Galileo to say he’d made a mistake about the Sun, Earth, and the moons of Jupiter. I for one am unsurprised and satisfied that what’s left of the US press, especially its cadre that covers science and environment regularly, is getting tired of reporting the same old same old about the IPCC’s now-revealed shortcomings in the fact-checking and executive summary department, digging up new, latest words about old data files and sloppiness at Britain’s Climatic Research Unit, and echoing the cackling from the bloggy fringe and elected GOP mainstream about global warming buried in an East Coast snow bank, and all of that.

But my views don’t seem to reflect  the majority among media critics. One of those who thinks differently is the good man  Curtis Brainard at the Columbia Journalism Review via its The Observatory. He has been on the warpath lately to get US reporters in line with the scriveners elsewhere and mainly in Britain. But he is sensible in his phrasings and specifics. Here is a punchy column Brainard had recently to congratulate as well as throw barbs at a few US outlets that did run IPCC-level stories. Another, his most recent, does an astute job (despite that he quotes me, thanks Curtis) on coverage of the big snowstorms.

Other stories, columns and blogs on this topic:

• Center for Environment and Journalism CEJournal – Tom Yulsman: N.Y. Times makes a mess of politics and science right on page 1 ; Tracker post on the same story here.
• Real Climate – Gavin Schmidt: Whatevergate ; He’s fed up (me too) with coverage that seems to mistake nonsense and opportunistic braying as the considered judgment of reputable sources.
• NYTimes – Thomas Friedman: Global weirding is here ; Friedman’s judgment is usually solid, his phrase-making (eg  The World is Flat) more like stolid or maybe even stulted. He likes the term global weirding. Weird.
• NYTimes – Editorial: With Stakes This High (note: this link was wrong earlier, now fixed thx to David Chandler’s tip); In today’s paper, about as short and low-key yet sensible a summary of IPCC’s woes as one could write.
• Wall St. Journal – Gautam Naik, Keith Johnson: Controversies Create Opening for Critics ; This is not yet another lap at the bottomless well of canny buffoonery among greenhouse skeptics. It’s for serious readers curious how the small number of legitimate researchers who don’t buy the IPCC line are doing. Best move: Quoting one of the favorites among doubters, Bjorn Lomborg, first. He says “It’s important to say that the scandals (don’t change) that global warming is man made and we need to tackle it.” The piece also revisits the views of the decent scientists in pertinent fields who aren’t worried about climate change or at least don’t blame it on us. They got four of them. Perhaps there are more. But this is a huge fraction of the whole bunch.

The political backlash against doing anything that costs anybody a dime to buy some infrastructure insurance against calamitous climate change is a huge policy and politics story that needs constant and heavy coverage. But science journalists must continue to keep their eyes on the ball and report, even more emphatically, the fundamental research and data underlying it all – and look just as assiduously at (or for) any data sets and countervailing reports in legit. scientific literature that suggests the world is unlikely to be headed for dangerous levels of global warming, weirding, or whatever one calls it. Fat chance on this happening, but  if the scientific consensus does change, and it turns out this global warming thing is a mirage? Suck it up, report on how things turned around, and cover that bit of unexpected good news too.

- Charlie Petit