I’m still thinking of buying an iPad (or another tablet reader thingie), as soon as it becomes clear to me whether I could then in clean conscience cancel some newspaper subscriptions, pay for the appropriate app or two that gets me those same newspapers, and provides them some revenue. Then I could be paperless and digital, but not be an internet leach on my own time, getting  the fruits of their expensive work forces’ labors for nothing (The future of ksjtracker, if most media outlets do get themselves into a pay-to-peruse regime, is murky. We hope for indulgences).

But while newspapers wander the web wilderness looking for a refuge, other outlets are springing up and eager to give the news away free of direct charge. Maybe half of you out there know of it already, but I just found Before It’s News / People Powered News.   Its About Us page says anybody can write for it. It says nothing about getting paid, although perhaps writers get a cut of ad revenue. The Contact Us page indicates it’s based in Mill Valley, CA – at the base of Mt. Tam across the bay and visible through the front windows of my house.

Boy, does it have a lot of science and energy and related news.

Take a look at the output by just one contributor, Alton Parrish. A link says he’s a research analyst and lives in Durham N.C. He has six stories so far today, and filed seven yesterday – Sunday. Naturally, one suspects he’s posting press releases mildly rewritten. That turns out to be true, but perhaps not for every piece.

I came upon this site after seeing, at EurekAlert, a news release from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (in Grist below). It noted discovery of huge domes of asphalt that have risen from natural oil seeps in the shallow sea floor off Santa Barbara, CA. That caught my attention – both of my parents grew up in Ventura County just south of Santa Barbara. We had relatives who years ago built little cottages at Rincon Beach – as kids we’d walk from Uncle John Pinkerton’s place to Uncle Stan & Aunt Virginia’s Petit’s place and every time get smears of tar stuck to our feet. Beach residents all had tins of kerosene for cleaning feet. The region leaks oil and that is why the Pinkerton side of the family came to Ventura more than 100 years ago, to work for the Union Oil Co.

A search for anybody who covered the asphalt domes didn’t find very much but it found Alton Parrish‘s piece on them. Yes, it picks up long stretches straight off the press release from WHOI. But when I looked through others among his stories, some appear to represent at least a modicum of reporting to go with the mild rewrite disguise the asphalt dome one received. For instance, one on work at Michigan State University on biofuel subsidies is different – other people, even another journal article at its root – than what I see at the Michigan State news site (also in Grist).

There is, again,  a lot of science writing at Before It’s News. The readership is, from what I can tell, small. It  calls itself a Beta version so presumably is just getting going. It has a meter with stories to boast whether mainstream media has yet latched on to what it has hustled up from handouts or elsewhere. It asks for contributions from whistleblowers or other insiders on news that mainstream media hasn’t seen. Presumably lots of its material is NOT off press releases. Nonetheless – whether it reflects a serious effort toward or even potential for independent, critical journalism from of conflicts of interest is far from apparent. ‘Can’t rule it out, either.

Grist for the Mill:

WHOI Press Release ; Michigan St. Univ. Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Some remarkable photos from Wisconsin, showing scads of shiny lake sturgeon spawning in rivers and creeks, are on the AP wire today. Writer Carrie Antlfinger has the story, describing the resurgence of this endangered fish, its throngs that are attracting sight seers, and argument among some about the states rather restricted spear fishing season that allows people to get some sturgeon meat for themselves. She took the pictures too. And it’s overall a cheerful, useful piece of news writing. However…

   I’m feeling a little picky and puckish today and this story set me off. While she does mention other species of sturgeon such as the beluga of Europe and the regions around the Caspian Sea, the white sturgeon of the West Coast, and others, generally she conflates the entire genus. It would be pertinent to mention that Wisconsin’s lake sturgeon are among the smaller examples of sturgeon. A quick search suggests they’re big – approaching ten feet long at the upper end but generally much smaller - while others among the 27 species are giants including the Atlantic, green, beluga, and others. They run toward 20 feet or even more.

Then she refers to them as prehistoric. Hmm. So are humans, horses, wolves, and house flies. Prehistoric means before written history, so it’s not very long. Once your deep into the bronze age, you’re pretty much talking prehistoric. She writes that the fish “survived whatever killed the dinosaurs.” Well, so did the ancestors of today’s flies, sharks, turtles, and many other classes, many of whose members today look very much like some of their distant foreparents did in the Mesozoic.

   It is popular to regard many species as prehistoric or as survivors of the KT extinction that killed off dinosaurs (except birds). There is no stopping it, and one does not, to say it again, single out this rather good AP story for particular criticism. But such labels are, at bottom, meaningless. They tend to be fitted only to modern species that look pretty primitive to our intuitive gaze, including our friend the Coelacanth and alligator. I mean, a sturgeon just looks like it belongs in the tub with a mesosaur. But, so? I’m guessing confidently that taxonomists do not suppose that the lake sturgeon,  Acipenser fulvescens, or any other contemporary species of sturgeon was among the species extant 65 million years ago.

  One hopes that science journalists, even those working for trashy and sensational tabloids, use such descriptors with care and not without a little explanation. And should never casually interchange prehistory with the Age of Dinosaurs. That’s just silly.

Grist for the Mill: Wisc. Dept. of Natural Resources Lake Sturgeon Spearing Season info.

- Charlie Petit

The Hubble’s handlers today celebrate their telescope’s 20th year by releasing another (yes, another) false color image of a spectacular star-forming region wreathed with roiling molecular clouds and streaked with the scatterings from beams of channeled starlight. That’s it, or click on the hi def version at NASA’s website. It appears that the telescope’s image team spent considerable time massaging the data to blend shots at various wavelengths just so, take out artifacts and other hash, and generally spiff it up.

   Several outlets promptly put the pic, along with galleries of other Hubble eye candy, on their sites. Images like this are simultaneously dreadfully misleading, worthwhile, and useful. The colors are nothing like what your eye would see – which is, one ventures, that it would see a few stars and perhaps diffuse, glowing blobs. The features are so juiced up in contrast it looks as though these dense molecular clouds are, you know, dense. They are – I just checked this - more rarefied than the best vacuums ever pumped on Earth. You could fit a condor with a space helmet and fling it through there at 20,000 mph with its wings stuck out flat into the “wind” and it wouldn’t feel a thing. The data are real, but it’s not a picture in the way that a picture of a butterfly is. But awful pretty.

  Stories:

• Wired News – Betsy Mason: Wow! Celebrate Hubble’s 20th with best space image ever ; Dunno if it’s the best but it’s pretty good.
• Science News – Ron Cowen : Hubble’s new instant classic ; Cowen grilled the Hubble image massagers to find out exactly how the photo was amped and pasted up from separate pictures taken at half a dozen narrow bands in the visible and infrared. He calls these “black and white” pictures, but that doesn’t seem quite right – they are one-color images. ”Black and white” implies a broad spectrum image rendered in gray scale. But a salute overall to getting the info and explanatory graphic.
• Telegraph – Andrew Hough: Hubble Telescope: Nasa releases dramatic space image to mark 20th birthday ; He picks up some info (with attribution) from Science News. Hough calls the first Hubble images “grainy” due to the famously out-of-focus main mirror, later corrected with astronaut-installed spectacles. Right sense, but wrong literally. They weren’t grainy – they came off a finely (if wrongly, for the ‘scope’s focal length) figured mirror with a hi-definition detector. But they were blurry.
• Scientific American/Skymania – Paul Sutherland: Hubble’s 20th Anniversary Treat ;
• Times (UK) Hannah Devlin : Hubble celebrates 20 years with dramatic image of Carina Nebula ;

Plus two 20th Hubble Anniversary Stories without the new image:

• Space.com – Charles Q. Choi: Hubble Space Scope: 20 Years of Cosmic Awe ;
• BBC – Martin Rees : Hubble’s role in search for aliens ; Rees is no scrivener, but the well known astronomer royal and is Sir Martin to boot.

Grist for the Mill: NASA Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Things are pretty rough in climate politics and science these days, with extreme levels of invective and accusation blowing every which way. Anonymous and violent threats have been made against many climate researchers, including some in the US.

   A Canadian researcher at the University of Victoria in BC, Andrew Weaver, is one of the nation’s more prominent inspectors of the link between atmospheric chemistry and climate. He inevitably has been called out by the denialist wing of this noisy and often uncivil discussion. And some of the vehement denunciations of his conclusions and his actions generally have run in columns of the conservative-leaning newspaper the National Post.

   Yesterday it emerged that Professor Weaver earlier this week filed suit in Vancouver against the newspaper for libel. I read the formal Statement of Claim, below in Grist, submitted to the Queen of England (a formality up there, but the “defender of the faith” ancient boilerplate is striking to American eyes) and to the court. Looks to me that he was insulted, almost surely attributed with actions that did not happen. It’s not clear whether he’d have a good chance in US courts where public figures, a group of which one presumes he’s a minor member, have a tough chore unless there’s convincing evidence of malice. Perhaps Canadian libel law gives him more standing.

   Suing the press for getting overwrought in its opinionizing makes me and most reporters uneasy. That is, I suspect Dr. Weaver is on the side of the angels in any objective analysis of climate change politics (and reasonable science) and decent behavior. He seems almost surely the target of false depiction. But it’s harder to root for him in court. The arguments will be interesting.

  Stories:

•  CBC – BC climatologist sues National Post ;
• Guardian – David Adam: Climate Scientist sues newspaper for ‘poisoning’ global warming debate / Climate modeller Andrew Weaver launches libel action in Canada for publishing ‘grossly irresponsible falsehoods’ ;
• Courthouse News Service – Darryl Greer: Climate scientist sues National Post ;

Two of the several National Post stories that kicked all this off:

• Terence Corcoran (Jan 26, 2010): Heat wave closes in on the IPCC / Insider Andrew Weaver is getting out while the going is good ;  
• Peter Foster (Dec. 8, ’09) Weaver’s Web ;

Grist for the Mill:

 Law firm Press Release ; The suit pdf  itself is an oonch too big for the ksjtracker server to swallow but the Courthouse News Service, with a story linke above, has it,  here.

Barely Related News in Libel Wars:

SIMON SINGH FLAT OUT WON. In the discombulation of traveling last week, I didn’t post on this. But in case you were wondering, the British chiropractic society that has kept UK science writer Simon Singh spending money and anguishing in court has now dropped the whole thing. Here’s one acc0unt, in the Guardian by health editor Sarah Boseley  (his so-called libels ran in the Guardian in the first place).

-Charlie Petit

Note to ksjtracker newsletter (email) readers: The day’s postings by me have been hobbled by a suddenly, direly sick lap top (this is coming from a creaking old slow desktop PC). Gotta get the patient to the local IT clinic down next to my podiatrist’s office. And hence the email is going out a bit early. Cheers, happy Earth Day, onward…

- Charlie Petit

The 40th annual Earth Day is eliciting relatively little coverage. But the two major general news outlets in the US do have overview stories. Their reporters take sharply different, although not contradictory, themes:

• NYTimes – Leslie Kaufman: At 40 Earth Day is Now Big Business ; Quite a shift too from 1970, she writes, when organizers resolutely shunned corporate money or even association.
• NYTimes/Business of Green – Louis Uchitelle: Green Economy is not yet made in the USA: We’re busy, but we don’t have the business here. Check the links, at this story’s page, to other “Business of Green” stories filed this week.
• AP – Seth Borenstein: No more burning rivers, but plenty of new threats ; Borenstein reports on the easy targets already picked off – we have cleaner rivers, clearer air – while other environmental perils (global warming for one) still grow but out of easy sight and hence, narrower concern for the public.

There is of course much more. But as the NYTimes brought up so prominently today the business of green and US involvment, a far deeper, narrower look at how capitalism is responding to climate change, and how different it is from forecasts, is to be found elsewhere:

• Slate – Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus: The Revolution Will Not Be Patented/ We’re already sending our clean-energy tech to China, and intellectual property law has nothing to do with it. Expectation was that rich countries would have to give or share their patented low carbon and high efficiency technologies, by int’l agreement, to developing economies. Reality has moved faster, and not on that exact path. Led by China and somewhat by India, the former third world is leaping out on its own, buying or just reverse engineering the technologies we and Europe and Japan figured to control.

And finally, news with which to suck lemons or nice green limes: From Nature today, an opinion piece by a raft of scientists is getting some media pickup. No surprise, but the authors’ review concludes that even if the weak compact semi-embraced in Copenhager got full compliance, the Earth seems bound to warm by 3 degrees C (5+ F) by 2100, well beyond the 2 degrees C many say is roughly the divide between a planet we recognize as the one we were born on, and something very different. It’s an opinion column, not a new piece of research. That may explain why it’s not bigger news. But it’s in Nature.

Sample stories on Global Warming on Overdrive:

• BBC – Richard Black: ‘Paltry’ Copenhagen carbon pledges point to 3C world ;
• Times (UK) Ben Webster: Copenhagen emissions targets so weak the world is in peril ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Evo Morales began his speech in the Bolivian Climate Conference by saying something clearly true: “We are here because the developed countries haven’t commit to reduce greenhouse gases emissions”. Then he said something stupid: transgenics lead to baldness (that’s why in Bolivia they have such a strong hair), and the hormones in farmed chicken can make you gay. The consequences: general loss of credibility on any environmental issue, and more coverage of these two sentences than the essential contents of the summit. Some reporters attending the conference have managed to evade discussion of baldness and homosexuality and  report plans to present a well structured document in Mexico next December, the idea of a global referendum in April 2011, and the money that countries suffering the effects of climate change plan to demand from those that created it (30 times more than the amount offered in Copenhagen). Except in Bolivia, one finds poor coverage of this meeting.

Evo Morales empezó su discurso en la Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio Climático y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra que se celebraba en Bolivia del 20 al 22 de Abril con algo bien cierto: “Estamos aquí reunidos porque los países desarrollados no han cumplieron con su obligación de establecer compromisos para reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero”. Luego siguió con algo rotundamente falso y sorprendentemente absurdo que le hizo perder muchos puntos de credibilidad para afrontar temas ambientales: asegurar que los transgénicos provocan calvicie y las hormonas en los pollos homosexualidad masculina. Una verdadera lástima, porque esta innecesaria salida de tono ha conseguido ofuscar el importante mensaje de fondo que envuelve la cumbre: Los países que no son responsable del cambio climático pero sí sufren sus consecuencias deben trabajar conjuntamente para exigir acciones y compensaciones a los países ricos. Hay más mensajes, pero los periodistas internacionales cuyos editores habían designado un espacio limitado a cubrir la cumbre, evidentemente se han centrado en la memez de la homosexualidad y la calvicie en lugar de debatir si la Tierra debe estar por delante de sus habitantes humanos o no.

En España, por ejemplo, El País presentaba una nota de Mabel Azcui y una tribuna de G. Warkentin criticando las palabras del presidente boliviano. Lo mismo cubre para ABC desde La Paz Baldwin Montero: “Evo Morales dice que hay calvos y gays por comer transgénicos”, y así el resto de medios. Ídem en BBC Mundo, por Mery Vaca en “Morales asocia el pollo de granja con la homosexualidad”. O La Nación (Argentina), o El Comercio (Perú), etc…

Injusto quizás omitir las propuestas emitidas en la conferencia, pero es que… ¿¡a quien se le ocurre!? Tras este ridículo; ¿cómo nos vamos a tomar en serio lo que diga Morales sobre cambio climático? Lamentable… quizás haya conseguido más presencia en los medios de la que había esperado, pero el mensaje ha sido completamente diluido. Aislémonos de la polémica, y veamos cómo está cubriendo la prensa el trasfondo ambiental de la cumbre.

La Razón (Bolivia) – A. Melgarejo “Evo reafirma el frente de defensa de la Tierra”. Aquí se recoge muy bien pero sin mucho análisis la posición de Morales: el problema es el capitalismo, deben ponerse de acuerdo para presentar una propuesta bien estructurada en México, los derechos de la Madre Tierra son más importantes que otros principios en el mundo, se pide que los países desarrollados saquen sus recursos del presupuesto de defensa, y que la segunda edición de esta cumbre se realice en Europa. Desde esta misma nota se puede acceder a otras relacionadas que está cubriendo La Razón, como la de Claudia Soruco sobre el referéndum mundial que pretende promover dentro de un año y las 5 preguntas que se trasladarían a la población.

Los Tiempos (Bolivia)- Alcocer Caero Gisela: “Cumbre Climática: plantean crear un nuevo paradigma”. Reportaje muy detallado. Explican que las consecuencias con las que ir a México fueron: exigir el respeto de Kyoto (¿dónde queda eso ya?), que la temperatura suba máximo 1.5ºC, se reduzcan al 50% las emisiones hasta el 2030, y que los países industrializados entreguen –atención al sueño- el 6% de su PIB para pagar los efectos del calentamiento global.

Página 12 (Argentina) – Sebastián Ochoa: “Salvar al Mundo”. Texto muy objetivo y buen resumen de lo expuesto en la cumbre.

La Jornada (Mex)– Rosa Rojas: “Antes que los derechos humanos están los de la madre tierra: Evo”. Transmite el mensaje en que basa su posición Morales: preocupándonos primero de la Tierra y la vida conseguiremos proteger los derechos humanos; no la arrasemos inducidos por un capitalismo desmesurado. En discusiones de la cumbre, la posición es clara: los países emisores deben reducir sus emisiones, pero también compensar económicamente el resto para implementar medidas de adaptación.

Clarín (Argentina) – Pablo Stefanoni: “Críticas a Evo por vincular el consumo de pollo con los gays”. Por si era necesario, busca opiniones de expertos que desacreditan las palabras de Morales sobre las hormonas y transgénicos.

Chron (Houston) – AP- Carlos Valdez: “Pueblos reclaman 300.000 millones dólares por crisis climática”. Es 30 veces más de lo que se ofreció en Copenhague. Hay una frase interesante a perseguir: “Los participantes rechazaron, además, “la categorización de los países según el grado de vulnerabilidad a los efectos del cambio climático” para recibir la posible ayuda económica.”

Visto el global de la cobertura periodística, trabajo les queda por hacer si quieren ganar adeptos y representar realmente una estrategia fuerte para presionar más a los países industrializados. Especialmente, tras el incidente de los transgénicos y las hormonas de pollo.

- Pere Estupinyà

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) The Census of Marine Life which has had  2000 scientists from 80 countries working for 10 years will announce its findings next October in a conference in London. They don’t want us to miss the date, so they have already given us some hints of what’s to come. The diversity of microorganisms is much higher than the stories about them, but we’ve found 4 clear preferences to frame the story: 1- the “unexpected” huge microbial diversity found in the oceans, 2- the enormous biomass they represent (50-90% of all marine biomass), 3- their important function in the ecosystems and implications to fisheries, and 4- the microbial mat the size of Greece (or Uruguay to some newspapers) found off the Chilean and Peruvian coasts (and Mexican according to one story). Do you –as a reader- want to know what a microbial mat is? Check wikipedia, because no science reporter clarifies it in these stories…

El “Censo de la Vida Marina” en el que 2000 científicos de más de 80 naciones han estado trabajado durante los últimos diez años será presentado por todo lo alto el próximo octubre, pero para ir abriendo boca y empezar a publicitar un poquito el anuncio, nos han avanzado algunos de sus descubrimientos. ¿Cuáles? No son muy insospechados… la vida microbiana es mucho más abundante (significan el 50-90% de la biomasa del océano) y diversa de lo que pensábamos, juega un papel fundamental en el equilibrio de los ecosistemas, y… -este es el gancho que más éxito ha tenido en bastantes medios-… frente a las costas chilenas y peruanas hay un tapete microbiano del tamaño de Grecia. ¿Qué es un tapete microbiano? Casi ningún reportero lo explica…

La mayoría de informaciones que han parecido reflejan las notas de agencias. El País (España) es quien más ha trabajado el tema y Sofía Menéndez escribe un muy buen reportaje explicando que  la clave para comprobar esa enorme diversidad (100 veces más géneros microbianos de lo que habían caracterizado) es el uso de herramientas genéticas en lugar de la microbiología clásica. La metagenómica es lo que está revolucionando la microbiología del siglo XXI, y quizás esta sería una buena excusa para hablar con mayor profundidad de ella. Sobre el tapete microbiano del tamaño de Grecia, sólo se habla en el titular.

El resto de notas son de agencias, y lo que cambia entre ellas es qué ha decidido resaltar el editor (cantidad, diversidad o función). El Nacional (Venezuela) incide en la diversidad como también hace Prensa Libre (Guatemala) en “Científicos divulgan “insospechada” riqueza de la biósfera microbiana”. La cantidad se prioriza en La Nación (Chile): “El 90% de la biomasa marina son microbios”, y  El Mundo (Esp) con una nota de idéntico titular y que sí incide en el tapete microbiano hallado frente a Chile y Perú. Algo curioso hace El Universal (México): “Invaden microbios la biomasa marina”. También utiliza información de EFE para resaltar este dato, pero lo acompaña de otra en que se “apropia” el tapete (lo tomamos como un gracioso despiste sin ninguna relevancia) al decir que se encuentra frente a las costas de Chile y México en lugar de Perú. En Argentina, Clarín prefiere resaltar el rol que  han identificado los cientoficos, subtitulando que regulan la composición de la atmósfera terrestre.

En Bolivia, La Prensa titula “Costas de Chile y Perú están asentadas en bacterias gigantes”, confundiendo al lector pues lo “gigante” no son las bacterias individuales en sí sino el tapete (que en información de Tierramerica asemejan en tamaño a Uruguay, no a Grecia). De todas maneras, es la nota que más detalla las características de los tapetes, su metabolismo e interacción química entre los diferentes tipos bacterianos, y su importancia para la pesca.

- Pere Estupinyà

Whenever astronomers get themselves a new telescope, especially aboard an orbiting observatory, the most important thing for the public, most reporters, and funding agencies is to see some pretty pictures right off the bat. The science must come along, and it will, but the Solar Dynamics Observatory launched earlier this year gets aces for the first trove of its images released yesterday.

   The photos land on Earth Day. It’s not clear whether that’s by design. Plenty of outlets brought examples to their readers – primarily on line.

  London’s Daily Mail is what one might term a boisterous newspaper, which means tabloid and not terribly serious. But it tends to go full tilt re provision of snappy images. So from its hardest-working staffer, the Daily Mail Reporter, get a load of how large it presents the same image as I put up in the corner there. That’s one prominent prominence.

 The most popular image among art editors in the daily breezes of the world is this one here, perhaps because of its attractive but non-intuitive color codes for temperatures. Its blues and greens are for hottest and red and yellow for cooler (yes, yes, I know a blue flame is hotter than an orange one and ditto for the spectrum, but intuition and fact differ. Red commonly means fire, blue signals ocean, and green implies, uh, lush greenery.) The thumbnail image hardly captures it – for a higher res example go to the brief Wired News account by Alexis Madrigal. We learn there that this thing drops 1.5 terabytes of data daily on its operators at NASA’s Goddard Space Center. I dunno exactly what that means in Library-of-Congress standard stack of books units, but it’d fill a few dozen thumb high-end thumb drives.

   A few other stories:

• Billings Gazette : Images of sun thrill researchers at MSU ; I put this first out of disappointment. The first thought was terrific, the local outlet covered the news via nearby faculty. But no byline? Then a deeper gaze reveals that the newspaper reprinted the MSU press release (in Grist below). It’s always been the case that a few outlets reprint releases unchewed, unchecked, and undisguised. But the practice seems sadly on the rise. The Gazette does, small but at the top, credit the source. Still….better than nothing, weak beer nonetheless.
• Science News – Ron Cowen: Solar-staring spacecraft captures novel views of sun’s violence ; Serious, sober, economical, well-reported run-through of the pics and the reasons they’re being taken, par for Cowen.
• ABC News (Australia) Stuart Gary: Spectacular images from Sun probe ; Not a rip and rewrite at all - plenty of input from Australian researchers.
• The Sun (UK) Paul Sutherland : Spectacular New View of the Sun ; Gotta look at what the Sun has on the sun. The lede is nifty, if dreadfully hyperbolic: “Forget Iceland. The mother of all eruptions has been captured from the SUN” It’s really just a moderate eruption, for the sun. Sutherland’s job title is cute: Sun spaceman.
• could go on, but balky computer and the absence of any new science in this news forces an onward march.

Grist for the Mill:

NASA-Goddard Sp.Flt.Ctr Press Release ; NASA Flickr Image, Video selection ; Solar Dynamic Obs. site ; Montana St. Univ. Press Release ;

It’s just a little post from Nature‘s Rex Dalton on the magazine’s journalism side, but one guesses other accounts will follow. His lede: “Archaic humans such as Neanderthals may be gone but they’re not forgotten – at least not in the human genome.” A new phylogenetic analysis of so-called microsatellite portions of our DNA shows that, rather than all of them converging molecular-clock style on one number representing the elapsed time since a common ancestor, a subset has two other, more ancient implied deep progenitors. Interbreeding episodes with Neanderthals, or perhaps Homo heidelbergensis or even that newly proclaimed species id’d off a finger bone a short time ago, could be the source.

He gets this news from a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists on Saturday in Albuqueque. A University of New Mexico research team made the report. It’s not clear whether Dalton was there himself. But it is likely to get pickup, one supposes, in more general media. Already a few journalism connected blogs have picked it up: at New Scientist by Ewen Callaway, and at Discover by Razib Khan ;

This will demand deeper reporting for a full explanation. For one thing, I’d like to see explained how the two kinds of inferred dates – those for when the interbreeding episodes occurred, and those for the deeper ancestral root of the new sets of microsatellites introduced by interbreeding – were separately derived. But one thing is for sure – a certain satisfaction must be felt by Milford Wolpoff, the University of Michigan paleoanthropologist who has long argued for a “multiregional hypothesis” of human origins with continuous interbreeding among archaic types to make modern humanity, in stark contrast to the the prevailing spot-origin and radiation “out of Africa” idea.

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker just spent an enjoyable and enlightening hour or so cruising through the pages of Miller-McCune magazine online. Never heard of it? I had, barely, but only now checked it out. This foundation backed, non-profit magazine from Santa Barbara is a treasure chest of well-crafted, deep, and to these eyes, original science reporting. For more background on it, read its About Us page. It says it is non-partisan but the impression I get is of a distinctively progressive tendency.

Science Story Examples (An old pal pointed it out to me, mainly because she has a story in it right now. So I’ll start with that one) :

• Christie Aschwanden: RATIONAL ARGUMENT: Convincing the Public to Accept New Medical Guidelines ; This headline is misleading. The topic and story go far beyond medical guidelines and, in the main example, the backtracking by government agencies after the public furiously rejected guidelines urging less breast cancer screening mammography. It’s about people’s tendency, if they think they already know something about a topic, to summarily discount any disagreeing scientifically gathered data even if they are so solid they amount to hard facts. One is hooked by her lede and first example, a vignette that will have most readers asking themselves how it is some people can be so pigheaded in the face of reality-based argument. But as her story gets into other examples, such as mammography, the reader’s own head may start to make oinking noises.
• Tom Jacobs – ESP Study Suggests Lack of Trust in Science ; This story is convincingly depressing, and subversive, doubling down on the anti-science reflex addressed in the previously bulleted story. It suggests that for most of the public, the worst way to get them to change their minds about something is to cite science.
• Bijal Trivedi: The Science of Green Microbes ; Very long, rollicking ride through the life of a man whose re-engineered (or, prospected cleverly) microbes destroy poisons in the ground, with asides on other bugs that’ll do more. This is an expansively written, lavishly reported profile with an important message. *Correction: An earlier version of this post objected to Trivedi’s reference to a pollutant’s role in the Erin Brockovich crusading public advocate saga of some years ago. As I mixed up in my own mind what pollutants were involved…never mind. I’ve deleted the passage.)
• David Richardson : Shining Light on Clean Energy Superbugs ; The perfect complement to the previous bullet. Nifty passage on the home brewing system to make hydrogen (maybe economically, too, someday).

Needless to say I’ve added M-M’s rss feed to my list. Now all I must do is check it regularly.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Two weeks ago Denmark decided to ban Bisphenol A in materials that contact  food for children under three (baby’s plastic bottles the most obvious) at least until new EU evaluations appear at the end of this year. Some UK and Italian scientists are asking their politicians to do the same. Last January FDA expressed concern about human health risks of BPA after having declared it safe in 2008. Probably this was behind good science reporting in Spain about the controversy.  Público has a two page story that reviews the scientific literature, balances the risks, and checks on Spanish official agency stands. The conclusion: The few studies on possible human health risks haven’t proved significant danger at the levels exposed. But they clearly induce some worries. More research is still needed to clarify this issue. Until new and more conclusive data appear,  Spain will respect the European recommendations and won’t take official measures to limit the BPA in plastic or epoxy resins used in food industry.

El Bisphenol A (BPA) es un compuesto químico que se ha utilizado durante más de 50 años en la fabricación de plásticos y resinas epoxi. Este plástico se encentra en compact discs, partes de tu automóvil, juguetes… pero también botellas de plástico, chupetes y otros recipientes cuyo contenido es ingerido por tu cuerpo. Respecto las resinas epoxi, uno de sus muchos usos es recubrir el interior de las latas de comida para proteger los alimentos que contienen. ¿supone un riesgo? Esa es la gran pregunta. Por una parte sí está clarísimo que en ciertas condiciones estos plásticos o resinas epoxi pueden  (por ejemplo calentándolos) “supurar” parte de su BPA e introducirlo en tu organismo. Y por otra, varios estudios científicos han insinuado -no probado- posibles efectos negativos para la salud humana. Dosis es la palabra clave.

En el 41% de ríos estadounidenses se encuentran cantidades significativas de bisphenol A, y a pesar que no parece bioacumularse en los organismos acuáticos, sí se ha observado que provoca alteraciones en el sistema reproductivo de peces e invertebrados. En humanos, estudios midiendo sus niveles en orina demuestran que claramente estamos siendo expuestos a BPA. ¿a niveles suficientemente altos como para restringir su uso en biberones o contenedores de alimentos que puedan suponer un riesgo? Esta es la cuestión que aborda Público en un muy buen reportaje de dos páginas de Ainhoa Iriberri: “La polémica del tóxico del biberón”.

La polémica es muy antigua, y podría remontarse décadas cuando se descubrió que el bisphenol A podía actuar como análogo de estrógenos y afectar al sistema endocrino. Desde entonces, la gran mayoría de estudios han sugerido su inocuidad a los niveles que estamos expuestos, pero al mismo tiempo la aparición puntual de investigaciones desvelando posibles efectos cancerígenos, cardiovasculares, trastornos reproductivos, y especialmente la mayor susceptibilidad de infantes, han ido manteniendo este compuesto bajo sospecha constante. Tanto que (y este es el motivo de que en estos momentos Ainhoa decida con acierto no hacer caso de un único estudio sino revisar de manera general donde nos encontramos) el gobierno de Dinamarca haya decidido prohibir temporalmente el uso de productos con Bisphenol A (identificado con un 7 en los productos de plástico que lo contienen) en niños menores de 3 años hasta que se presente una evaluación más completa. Sigue así la pauta de Canadá, y la decisión del pasado enero de la FDA estadounidense de incluir al Bisphenol A en la lista de sustancias preocupantes, tras haberlo declarado seguro en 2008. ¿Debería hacer lo propio el gobierno español? En una entrevista al presidente de la Agencia Española de Seguridad Alimentaria, Roberto Sabrido se muestra convencido de la inocuidad absoluta del bisfenol A, puesto que la exposición máxima en bebés es un tercio menor que la ingesta tolerable. Y, basado en el global de toda la literatura médica (no sólo los pocos estudios que observan efectos negativos) decide declararlo como seguro. En el extremo contrario, Greenpeace solicita medidas preventivas urgentes.

Así introduce el artículo Ainhoa, pero hace algo muy destacable: no ofrece el mismo espacio de texto ni credibilidad a Greenpeace que a la Agencia de Seguridad Alimentaria. Evidentemente no tienen el mismo grado de objetividad o responsabilidad como fuente, y aunque este “un tercio menor” expresado por el presidente de la AESAN no nos deja tranquilos en absoluto, vemos que es en la ciencia donde debemos buscar respuestas. Y de momento, no las tiene. Uno de loa estudios que cita el texto, y de los más expuestos por los críticos del bisphenol, es el que publicó en 2008 JAMA observando mayores niveles en orina de esta sustancia en enfermos de diabetes y cardiovasculares, pero como indicaba el Tracker, tal estudio mostraba sólo una correlación; de ninguna manera una relación causa efecto. Y éste es un detalle trascendental en epidemiología, que el artículo de público no debería haber obviado. La toxicidad del bisphenol A está bajo sospecha, pero do demostrada todavía como un riesgo para la salud humana a los niveles que podemos estar expuestos. Y así se transmite en el contenido del artículo de Público, a pesar que las frases destacadas y infografía de la versión impresa inducen a más preocupación.

Una anotación para terminar: este artículo refleja perfectamente el papel imprescindible del periodista especializado en ciencia, que no sólo recoge la nota de prensa de una institución, grupo activista, o describe estudios de manera aislada; sino que aborda un tema de interés contrastando visiones, revisando estudios, da un contexto a la situación, y ofrece datos claves de una manera bien didáctica. Con este tipo de trabajo, el periodismo científico puede competir por la atención del lector ante cualquier otra sección del periódico, y demostrar la función que tiene en una sociedad cada vez más compleja y menos confiable.

- Pere Estupinyà