News aggregation by websites, lifting other people’s stuff from their original publishers’ sites and putting one’s own spin, or just name, on it is part of the new media. That’s what we do here at the Tracker – take other people’s writing or broadcasting, link to it or summarize it, and put our names at the bottom. It is important, however, to make crystal clear the distinction between what we write or provide on our own steam, and what others did already (and to give original authors and publishers due and unmistakable credit, prominent direct links to originals, etc).

The well-known magazine Popular Science has a website that does aggregating as well. It often employs a hybrid style – putting at the top of some posts its own staffer’s byline, with a credit at the bottom to the source that actually provided the information rewritten and re-reported to varying degrees at Pop Sci.

Late last year the writer of a piece that ran originally in IEEE Spectrum magazine complained directly to Popular Science that one of the Pop Sci bylines ran on top of a light rephrasing of his reporting. He called it a rip off  of a science writer’s work – a practice that erodes the ability of freelancers to make a living. I then asked John Mahoney, web editor at Popular Science what was going on. He defended the practice, saying they always did provide a link to original material and adding that “we would never consciously screw over other writers or reporters on the web.”

Nonetheless, ructions continue. Today Wilson de Silva, editor of COSMOS Magazine in Australia, sent me the link to an on line to-do over original writing and subsequent rehashings, and credits therefor, at the Australian edition of Popular Science. It is the second item in a post, rip-and-read science journalism at a site in Oz called Crikey. The assertion there, bolstered by links, is that Pop Sci re-ran two university press releases with hardly a change but put its own bylines on them. Pop Sci’s Australian editor is quoted to say that recycling press releases is “standard practice across the science magazine industry.” De Silva responded to that post in a readers’ comment – which you can see if you scroll down a bit  here. One of da Silva’s  ripostes: “This is not the case at COSMOS, or at any other science magazine that I know of.” He then links to COSMOS articles that did arise in part from a press release but included extensive additional quotes and evidence of reporting.

Da Silva reports that some of his examples of Pop Sci’s apparent regurgitation of stories from COSMOS or press releases have since disappeared from easy view at the Pop Sci site – but as nothing truly dies on the web, he ran down the originals here and here.

What to make of all this? The specific examples open upon the long-standing issue among web journalists, aggregators, and other new-media hybrids about intellectual property, uncredited liftings of prose, outright plagiarism, and transparency of provenance. There are hardly any cops, courts, or other enforcers of rules.

One  problem may be the blurring of distinction between using without attribution a full-b0re journalist’s story at a news outlet (IEEE Spectrum can be considered such), and using a public information officer’s press release, in both cases putting one’s byline on it. I have seen many examples while working at the tracker of news stories, emblazoned with the immediate publisher’s bylines, but reporting information and using quotes identical to what was in press releases. Is there an ethical distinction between not identifying prominently and immediately, by name and source, what one takes from a press release and what one takes from an independent journalist?  My instinct is to say yes. But in the vanishing old-timey world of traditional journalism some outfits considered unattributed  lifting of quotes, even from press releases, to be a firing offense.  Codifying such things in today’s world is difficult.

- Charlie Petit

In the Economist, bulwark of smart and anonymous reporting, one finds a piece  recently with one particularly brilliant, clarifying paragraph. Whoever wrote it should get a few pints bought him or her by mates at the pub for putting things this way.

The topic is the storms that are blowing through the political science of climate change science and whether said science is now discredited – or will go on pretty much as it has because of deep robustness and no matter what the skeptic bloggers and other opportunists say.

I’ve been struggling to figure out how to phrase the issue myself. The simile I’d halfway developed is pretty awkward. It is that climate science isn’t like discovering that one’s neighbor, who does so many things so well and keeps the place tidy and watches your cat for you, is suddenly unfit for human society because he or she years ago, uh, lied about his military service record to get elected or something like that. Rather, climate science is a collective of great and merely mediocre individual scientists who interact and self correct, not perfectly, but well enough that if most of them say we are in deep trouble on the atmospheric carbon and GHG front generally then we would be smart to do something about it. But I could not boil it down.

This guy or gal did. Maybe it’s not original, but it sure works. The key is in graf 4 (no secret either, if you read the hed up there.) Tip of the hat to Seth B. at the AP for noticing the piece and sending a note.

Addendum: I just noticed that a “pieces of the puzzle” metaphor comes up today at Dot Earth in a post by Andy Revkin on the same topic. The post is quite an enterprising one on its own, with or without attention to specific turns of phrase.

- Charlie Petit

Two notable honeybee research and honeybee scarcity stories cropped up this week, one just this morning on the AP wire from Garance Burke in Merced, CA, and from Seth Borenstein filing from the DC bureau. They jump on a “quick federal survey” that finds that the past winter delivered another bludgeoning on the nation’s commercial bee industry. It apparently names pesticides, in general and one specifically, as the top suspects along with a slate of other things (mites, viruses, genetic frailty….).

In the four years since a malady quickly dubbed colony collapse disorder hit the news, we learn from one of the AP’s quoted sources, “It’s just gotten so much worse.” The reporting from California’s vast agricultural heart, the Central Valley, found beekeepers in despair over their “livestock,” with the late-winter checking of the somnolent broods find the worker bees not merely sluggish, but dead or absent by the millions.

The pesticide angle, propelled by a recent study in the journal PLoS One and led by Penn State and US Dept. of Ag. researchers, gets good play in the AP. It also does at Science News where in a blog post on Sunday Janet Raloff filed Bees face ‘unprecedented’ pesticide exposures at home and afield. She got the story and the lead for the PLoS study, she reports, while preparing for the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco.

Pronunciation Tip for Reporters Wanting to Sound Like they Know more than they Do:

Anybody covering this  story might well call California almond growers or their trade representatives for comment, as that big industry depends critically on commercial honey bees for pollination. It is, don’t we all know, often a mistake for reporters to adopt the lingo of experts when asking questions if they don’t in fact possess much expertise. The answer might be all  gobbledy-argot-gook.  But just so you know, and as Ms. Burke at the AP certainly does already,  to a California almond grower those nuts are not ALL-munds. They are more like AMM-ens. Really. First syllable rhymes with wham. I learned that decades ago while on assignment in Modesto. And just the other I was at the neighborhood farmers market where a man from near Fresno was selling almonds.  Still call’em AMM-ens down there? , I said nonchalantly, posing to seem possessed of  more inside knowledge than I have. You bet, he said. The lady in line next to me whipped around and exclaimed What! I NEVER heard that before! So she’ll tell somebody else. Eventually maybe almost everybody will know, starting with Berkeley foodies who are already insufferable enough.

Stray question: Are there entomologists who do censuses of feral honey bee colonies? How are they doing?

Grist for the Mill:

PLoS Paper – High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals…Honey Bee Health ;

- Charlie Petit

In the US, thanks in large part to the big job stimulus bills, some of them tied to energy and green technology research, federal dollars at the moment seem to be flowing reasonably well toward scientific research and development. Not so in the UK, editorializes science editor Roger Highfield in New Scientist. Rather, the nation’s ability to keep up with other nations in R&D, and consequently in innovative industries and economic growth generally, is in peril.

I’d like to have seen a link to a hall of shame listing of big projects that have been cut or crippled in recent years, and perhaps a plot illustrating trends in money going into R&D.

But Highfield’s worry appears to be widely shared in Britain. The UK’s Press Association has Science cuts ‘could hit economy’ on the wire today. The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemistry World site reports likewise.

On the Other Hand Dept:

• Financial Times – Clive Cookson: Britain launches UK space agency ; What’s surprising is that no such centralized agency existed before now.  That’s a British designed, proposed resuable booster up top right, something called the Skylon.

- Charlie Petit

I have no idea – never having asked – how often or whether editors at the Science Times select story lineups that lean toward one theme or another. So perhaps when I suspect an example  it is just the imagination – like thinking the clouds today sure are tending to look like fish, or like elephants, or like characters from Dr. Seuss.

Nonetheless, I’ll dub today ancient reconstruction day. Here’s the triple clue:

• John Noble Wilford: After Years of War and Abuse, New Hope for Ancient Babylon: Lots of us recall reading, during the run-up to the US assault on Iraq, that Saddam Hussein’s self-glorification led him to deface the ruins of Babylon with garish and unscholarly reconstructions plus a brand new palace roughly in the style of Nebuchadnezzar. Wilford brings a fresh angle to old Babylon – the big threat  now is neither egocentrism nor vandals.
• Sean B. Carroll: For Extinct Monsters of the Deep, a Little Respect ; The prolific biologist/writer provides an appreciation for mososaurs, plesiosaurs, and other finned reptiles of the Mesozoic.
• Carl Zimmer: Artists Mine Scientific Clues to Paint Intricate Portraits of the Past ; A few examples of  the ways that artists past and present have portrayed people and beasts they could never see for themselves. Some are wonderful yet all the results surely include mistakes. I would argue however, judging from the job on the people in the piece reproduced above right, that this particular artist might not have drawn an elephant correctly even if a stuffed real one had been posed in the studio.

The lead art piece cannot be easily shoehorned into this imagined theme, although it is about reconstruction. Henry Fountain reports on a trade that few of us ever heard of , the gathering of living specimens for a growing hobby of elaborate (and costly) coral reef aquariums. One needs the coral, pretty fish, snails, shrimp, plants, and the filling of vital econiches. He asks a question and bravely tells readers nobody knows the answer – does stocking the toy tame ones endanger the real wild ones?

As ever, plenty more, whole section ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Yesterday Spain inaugurated its first synchrotron. “Alba” has become the largest scientific installation in the country, and aims to consolidate Spain’s place in “the first division of science among European countries,” as president Zapatero said at the ceremony. All newspapers report the story. Comparing them, we find two focuses: on how to Alba can help lead to efficient industry and economic development, and on the specific research applications of this enormous ring. Its electrons travel close to the speed of light and generate intense X-Rays that makes it possible to observe microscopic phenomena with exceptional precision.

En Cerdañola del Vallés, una población al lado de Barcelona, ayer se inauguró Alba; el primer sincrotrón del estado español que pasa a ser la mayor instalación científica del país y albergará 1.000 científicos al año. Alba es un descomunal anillo de 270 metros de circunferencia por el interior del cual circulan electrones a velocidades cercanas a la de la luz produciendo finísimos haces de rayos X de gran intensidad que, cuando sean enfocados por los científicos, permitirán distinguir estructuras atómicas de proteínas, virus, compuestos químicos, fármacos, dispositivos microelectrónicas y nuevos materiales sintéticos. En el fondo, es como un poderosísimo microscopio gigante. Las posibilidades de investigación e industriales que se abren son enormes, y el gobierno español se congratula de tener una infraestructura que –cuando esté plenamente operativa dentro de unos meses- atraerá talento internacional, industria, e impulso económico de la mano de la ciencia. A ver si es verdad; éste es el objetivo. Hay unos 40 sincrotrones en el mundo, bastantes de ellos en Europa, pero ninguno en el área del Mediterráneo. La prensa científica española ha cubierto la noticia con buen grado de detalle. Revisemos algunos enfoques.

El País – Alicia Rivera: “El sicrotrón ya alumbra”. Alicia cubre de manera habitual las noticias sobre el LHC, y demuestra un gran conocimiento de la materia al redactar con palabras propias y aportar mayor grado de detalle en su buena nota, que viene ampliada por otra de A. Trillas analizando el arrastre empresarial que debería suponer la instalación del sincrotrón. La idea es que alrededor del parque Alba se movilice la i+D privada y se generen hasta 40.000 empleos.

Público – Nuño Domínguez: “El Alba se llevará 400 millones de euros más”. Una nota también bien detallada, que aúna los principales puntos, y explica muy bien los entresijos científicos del funcionamiento de este acelerador. El titular es más de nota complementaria que de artículo principal.

El Periódico de Cataluña es quizás quien ha realizado el trabajo más completo. Además de varias notas describiendo la inauguración y detalles generales, encontramos dos notas de Michele Catanzaro explicando cómo ayudará a la producción de microchips, el estudio de lo pequeño, que no se debe confundir con el LHC porque en el sincrotrón no se produce choque de partículas ninguno, y un interesante artículo buscando la perspectiva de los futuros jóvenes trabajadores de Alba, que mezclan ilusión con quejas sobre sus condiciones laborales, que “no son competitivas con instalaciones europeas parecidas”. Antonio Madridejos en “los científicos acuden en masa al sincrotrón pero las empresas aún no”, incide también en el deseo de arrastre industrial de esta prometedora instalación. También encontramos un muy buen texto de opinión de Joan Roca sobre la entrada española y catalana en el Big Science.

Quizás por las mejores condiciones que se reclamaban en la nota de Michele, y los últimos recortes presupuestarios en ciencia, no parece muy acertado el titular que en La Vanguardia han elegido Ana MacPherson y Susana Cuadrado: “Los investigadores deberían estar agradecidos” para una buena y punzante entrevista a la ministra española de ciencia e innovación en la que reclama que las universidades se especialicen, defiende que los presupuestos del 2010 “son los mejores que puede permitirse este país en estos momentos”, y explica que con el nuevo sistema un investigador que tenga buenos resultados podrá dejar de ser mileurista a los 35 años. Maite Gutiérrez estructura bien su pieza con un calendario de las fases de construcción de Alba y un apartado detallando sus futuras aplicaciones.

El Mundo sólo ha ofrecido una nota a Alba, de Jordi Ribalaygue: “España ya tiene su primer acelerador de partículas”, explicando que desde que en 2002 el expresidente Aznar lo definió como “la mayor obra científica de esta década”, el proyecto se ha retrasado y encarecido 80 millones de euros

ABC – Janot Guil: “un sincrotrón a media luz”, dice que “Ciencia aparte, el estreno ayer de Alba tiene un calculado efecto mediático, político.”, ya que se ha hecho coincidir en una buena fecha y de hecho todavía está a medias.

- Pere Estupinyà

Several outlets are carrying modest reports, with varying levels of suspenseful concern, on the eruption of a volcano billowing ash and lava fountains onto a field of glaciers in Southern Iceland. Leading the drama parade is the account from AP‘s Paisley Woods in London and Gudjon Helgason in Reykjavik. The headline jolts the reader with Iceland’s eruptions could have global consequences. Global, it says. Like Pinatubo, whose stratospheric aerosols cooled the entire globe after the mountain blasted an eruption cloud high into the sky just as a tropical storm whirled past. That was a bad day on Luzon.

The eruption this week is a dramatic natural event, of serious concern in Iceland where vast floods have sometimes followed major eruptions through ice fields, and perhaps regionally, too. This story is notable in coverage for providing some tectonic context to the eruption. But upon  reading through it,  it appears the headline writer got carried away by implying significant global threat.  AP Video makes the eruption look a bit puny, so far. The story itself mentions only a few, historic examples of Icelandic volcanoes that had wide consquences – including a 1783 eruption near the same place that cooled Europe and North America. That’s hemispheric, close to global, but the story’s series of what-ifs to explain how today’s eruptions might lead to a replay seem a real reach.

Nonetheless, a fascinating vulcanological two-step may be in play. It says here that eruptions like those in the rift spurting lava now, from the  Eyjafjallajokull volcanic zone along a glacier of the same name, have in previous centuries led to mightier eruptions from the bigger, nearby and glacier-buried Katla Volcano.

Other stories, most of which leave out the global impact angle, include:

• Bild (Germany): Could a volcano eruption in Iceland cause a deadly glacier tsunami? ; No sign why they call the possible  flood a tsunami.
• National Geographic – Iceland Volcano: Lava Explodes form Ice Cap ; Useful only as a collection of photographs.
• Reuters – Omar Valdimarsson: Icelandic volcano May Cause Bigger Eruption ;
• Times (UK) Roger Boyes:  Iceland prepares for second, more devastating volcanic eruption ;
• Bloomberg – Omar R. Valdimarsson: Icelandic Volcano Erupts, Forcing 500 People From Their Homes ;
• Iceland Review : Hard to Predict How Long Iceland Eruptions Will Last ; OK, it’s just one example – but this is from a local outlet, presumably by a reporter familiar with Iceland, and it is the least frantic in tone.

Grist for the Mill: University of Iceland Inst. of Earth Sciences Eruption in Eyjafjallajökull Bulletin;

- Charlie Petit

Have you ever heard of a Gleason score? If you’ve covered cancer you probably have, and you might know more about it than I did. I knew–or thought I knew–that it had something to do with how severe a case of prostate cancer was. And I was reasonably sure it had nothing to do with The Honeymooners.

Now I have a much better idea, thanks to the solid reporting of Ed Edelson of HealthDay, who can pack more detail and clarity (two things that in less capable hands conflict with one another) into a 500-word story than just about anybody in the business. Of course, he’s had practice. I met Edelson in the 1980s when he was doing this for the New York Daily News and had been doing it for a long time before that. As far as I know, he’s been writing spot science stories since sometime in the late paleolithic. (It might not sound like it, Ed, but I mean this as a compliment.) And he can write a story in less time than it takes the rest of us to text the link to somebody.

Edelson’s story on a March 22 report in the journal Cancer reports that men who are infertile have an increased risk of developing an aggressive form of prostate cancer. He quickly explains that previous studies have hinted at such a link, that the new study found little difference in the incidence of prostate cancer among fertile and infertile men, but that it found an increased incidence of prostate cancers with high Gleason scores in the infertile men. A Gleason score, he deftly explains, is a measure of abnormal organization in a prostate tumor and an indicator of aggressive growth.

The nice thing about Edelson’s explanation is that he doesn’t pause, alert readers that an explanation is coming, and then explain. He keeps the story moving and slips it in so neatly that you don’t even know you’ve learned something. Such tricks are part of the sport of writing a tight, clear spot science story.

Edelson also resists the temptation to make this a one-source story. He quotes the American Cancer Society’s director of cancer screening, who vouches for the study’s potential value.

Frederik Joelving of Reuters doesn’t explain or even mention the Gleason score, which is too bad. He merely refers to “aggressive prostate cancer.” And where Edelson gave us an isolated number–the cancers with high Gleason scores were 2.6 times more likely in the infertile men–Joelving packs four different numbers into two paragraphs: 1.2 percent, 0.4 percent, 2.6 times, and 1.6 times. He explains what the numbers are, but I fear that readers trying to recall this story at supper time will struggle to remember what the most important number was:

Reader: “I saw a story today saying that infertile guys have more prostate cancer.”

Spouse: “How much more?”

Reader: “I’m not sure. One-something, or two times as much. Point four? I dunno. Anyway, it was higher.”

Spouse: “Well, my brother doesn’t have any kids. Should he be worried?”

Reader: “I don’t know. I don’t remember…Can we please change the subject?”

Edelson’s story is far more likely to promote marital bliss:

Reader: “I read that infertile guys are 2.6 times as likely to have a bad kind of prostate cancer.”

Spouse: “Wow, honey, you really know your stuff! I’ll call my brother!”

Reader: “But wait–tell him we need more research before we can be sure!”

Thomas H. Maugh II at the Los Angeles Times Booster Shots blog gets the 2.6 figure in the lede and the hed, something neither Edelson nor Joelving did. He includes the other numbers lower in the story, after readers have had time to absorb the key finding. No Gleason score mentioned here.

Jennifer Warner of WebMD Health News politely explains that there were 22,262 men in the study, at 15 infertility centers, that they were evaluated from 1967 to 1998, and that researchers found 168 cases of prostate cancer, not much different from the 185 that would be expected.

All of those numbers–six of ‘em, if you include the dates–appear before we get to the key number–that infertile men are 2.6 times more likely, etc.

Best to, uh, put the important stuff up top, no?

Edelson makes it look easy. Scan a few other stories, and you’ll see that it’s not.

- Paul Raeburn

....Artist's impression of what's inside a visible blob

Some places in the Milky Way – the Pleiades come to mind – seem to be chock-a-block with little balls of contracting gas turning into brand new stars. But in Nature on line yesterday astronomers from the UK’s Durham University and elsewhere in Europe say they have photographic evidence that star birth was around 100 times as intense in at least one and probably many galaxies of the younger universe of 10 billion years ago.

The images are distorted blobby looking splotches that are made visible at all only by the presence of an intervening, close galactic cluster. Its roughly spherical gravity field bends the light from the more distant galaxy in a way that mimics a magnifying glass, crudely. It doesn’t come out in focus, but it’s interpretable.

The authors also got an artist to paint what it might look like, close up and sensational. A temptation for art editors would be to run that made-up impression as an actual photo of the region. Shame on anybody who runs the scientifically fictional thing and lets readers suppose it must be the real thing.

As it was a Brit astronomy group, a few among press there wrote it today. But at least one US outlet did it too.

Stories:

• Telegraph: Galaxy compared to footballer Peter Crouch ; Big growth spurt, hence the reference to a very large English soccer player. And as far as I can tell from the on line posting, nobody told readers that the artist’s impression is merely that.
• Mirror :  Galaxy’s growth spurt just like Tottenham Hotspur’s Peter Crouch ; Yes of course, exactly so, just like a tall guy in shorts. Press release says so in a quote it provides. Gotta be. This little story has no other info on the galaxy except that it’s, by implication, 10 billion ly away and birthing stars faster than our own.
• Science News (a US outlet whose readers hardly ever heard of Peter Crouch) Ron Cowen: Cosmic telephoto lens shows intense, early star formation ; It uses the artist’s impression and clearly says that’s what it is. Also has the actual image (not much to look at). The story takes the news seriously, explains who did the work and how, provides context from other work, even mentions that observations were by submillimeter wave observatories in both Chile and Hawaii.

Grist for the Mill:

European Southern Observatory Press Release ; Durham University Press Release which is, yep, source of the comparo to Mr. Crouch.

- Charlie Petit

Oh for the love of Pete. I wrote this last week, on Thursday, to go with some bigger posts on stories from last Thursday’s Nature, polished it all up, and forgot to push the obscure (actually, great big blue) PUBLISH button. So here it is, four days late.

————-

The journal Nature usually stimulates at least one episode of herd journalism every Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, just as Science does 24 hours later. Today’s (Mar 18)  Nature trawl is particularly large even though the cover story, on courts and science, did not get much media interest. Science reporters on the daily beat had, one suspects, some tough choices (a few did more than one).

Separate posts below deal with an impressive and naturally popular piece of news on when and where dogs first descended from wolves, and a challenging piece of quantum physics (and practical electronics) news being published early on line.

Here are a few samplings of stories inspired by a few of the other research papers in the journal:

1) An alien jupiter that’s not a hot jupiter. An international team finds a transiting gas giant exoplanet that is far enough from its sunlike star to, in all likelihood, have a structure and chemistry much like our own Jupiter or Saturn:

• Independent (UK) Steve Connor: New planet has Earth-like temperatures ;
• Jerusalem Post – Judy Siegel-Itzkovich : TAU researchers help discover new planet ;
• Christian Science Monitor  – Peter N. Spotts: New ‘temperate’ exoplant hints at solar system like our own ; Sort of like ours, he adds, but a “topsy-turvy, Alice in Wonderland version of our own.”
• Science News – Ron Cowen : Cool: New Exoplanet Is Near Habitable Zone ;

2) On Flores Island – Hints that “Hobbit” Ancestry goes back 1 million yrs+ ; looks like the hypothesis that the hobbits are just diseased, or short, or both, versions of normal modern humans is fading?

• BBC – Jonathan Amos : “Hobbit” island’s deeper history ;
• National Geographic – John Roach: “Hobbits Had Million-Year History on Island? ;

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker must admit to have had a fascination with jaguars in the US since a day, I’d guess in junior high school in the late 50s, when I discovered a map in a wildlife guide that showed jaguars native to a little corner of California abutting Arizona along the Mexican border. I’d thought them as exotics that exclusively prowled steaming jungles in South America. I imagined going down there on some family vacation and seeing one. The mind raced.

So it hit hard to have heard a year ago that the only jaguar known to visit, and maybe even live full time, in Arizona had been “accidentally” captured in Arizona. Then it died – whether due to pre-existing illness, or something related to the capture, was not clear. (See earlier post).

On Friday the Arizona Game and Fish Department had more to say – the capture was no accident, it said. An employee and a biologist had lured the cat to the trap with jaguar scat, then lied about it. The employee, a guilt-ridden technician, has been fired after he blew the whistle on himself and the privately-employed biologist.

The Arizona Daily Star‘s Tony Davis had the story in the paper Saturday, with a lot of wrinkles in who said what and the troubles they are in, and the AP has spread it further.  But Davis, as you’ll also see from the earlier post linked above, has devoted extensive time to getting this story and to re-getting it as new information emerged.

Davis and another staffer, Tim Steller, had apparently been nosing around last Friday’s news already as seen in this account that ran a week ago, and this from a few days earlier.   The reporters even posted, last month, on their site a pdf of the original report from state officials on what was, at the time, the official (and now recanted) story about the capture.

Hats off for diligent, persistent work.

- Charlie Petit

Farmers are always having to deal with this or that psyllid, leaf miner, root borer, sapsucker, beetle, fruit fly, fungus, virus, bacterium, or whatever that threatens to wilt their fields and bank accounts. That’s life in the sowing and reaping trade. But right now two of the more glamorous, iconic, and profitable crops in California – wine grapes (table grapes too, one presumes) plus oranges, lemons, and other citrus – face different pests with similar dire prospects.

For the grapes, it’s a moth (and its larvae) called the European grapevine moth- on the right – already hatching out in the Napa Valley. Its caterpillars eat grape flowers, burrow into the fruit, and spread bunch-rotting fungus. Citrus farmers are watching the invasion, north from a foothold in Mexico, of a tiny insect on the left and called the Asian citrus psyllid.  By itself it’s a nuisance, but much worse is that it can be a vector for a tree-killing disease called Huanglongbing, or citrus greening (the fruit don’t just go green, but also small, ugly, bitter… and then the tree dies) . It’s already knocking big holes in Florida’s citrus crops.

That’s farming for you. My own extended family, I gotta add, has some acreage in lemons in Ventura County where the cousin who runs the ranch keeps us all up to date. News accounts however make these sound to be worse than the usual troubles of the trade.

EUROPEAN GRAPEVINE MOTH STORIES:

• Bloomberg (via Business Week) Ryan Flinn: Grapevine Moth Invades Napa Valley, Threatens California Crop ;
• AP – Tracie Cone: Grape moth threatend Napa Valley growing method ; And that threatened method? It’s really a virtue of omission – organic or near-organic practices that minimize pesticide spraying.
• SF Chronicle- Peter Fimrite : Wine country sounds alarm over grapevine moth ; Well-written alarmism here. Too soon to say if the alarm is justified, but one can’t not read on after learning of “the monster threatening to turn premium Napa Valley wine into rotting slime.” The tiny monsters, he adds in skillful overkill, “is no more welcome in Wine Country than pod people from outer space.”
• Monterey County Herald: County Takes steps to keep out Napa moth;
• Fresno Bee – Robert Rodriguez: Quarantine in Calif. wine country set for moth;

Grist for the Mill: CA Dept of Food and Ag Press Release ; STORIES:

ASIAN CITRUS PSYLLID STORIES:

• Ventura County Star – Chris Sayer, Karen Schmid: Like Orange Juice? Protect it ; Op-ed by reps of the  Nature Conservancy and a County Agricultural alliance.
• Ventura County Star – Stephanie Hoops: Looming citrus disease could annihilate county’s trees ;

And On Both:

• San Luis Obispo Tribune – David Sneed: County is trapping destructive insects ;

The upshot of all this coverage is that it is driven almost entirely by local reaction and news from nearby agricultural officials and agencies. Those are the proper places to start. What is missing is some perspective – such pests as these (and I’m not even mentioning the light brown apple moth also causing California conniptions) are native somewhere.  To be deeply useful and informative, a few news outlets ought to be calling authorities and farmers in Europe and Asia to see just how growers there handle these specific pests. Are all citrus absent now from Southeast Asia where the psyllid arose?  Are all grape vines in Europe barren because of these moths?  Answer: No. Question: Why not?

I spent a few minutes to see how things are going elsewhere, and came up with this 2007 paper presented at a conference in Malaysia on citrus greening disease in a region where it is endemic, but not universal. Such papers as this with their lists of authors and agencies ought to lead enterprising reporters to deeper insight and more useful information on such pests. Perspective – can’t get enough of it.

*UPDATE: (Tip of the hat to cousin Robert for noticing this)

• Tampa Tribune – Neil Johnson: Report details steps for battling Florida citrus greening ; Excellent public service reporting. Johnson distills a set of findings and recommendations from the state agricultural research agencies and the federal National Research Council. But he still might have called around to learn how and whether citrus growers in areas of SE Asia where the disease first arose manage to stay in business.

Grist for the Mill: National Research Council Press Release on Citrus Greening.

- Charlie Petit