Sometimes a headline overreaches, but in that category here’s one you just gotta love for its expanse:

• Miami Herald – Patricia Mazzei, Lesley Clark, Beth Reinhard: Obama outlines NASA plan, meets with Estafans during Florida Trip ; What a Pres, he not only reaches for the stars, he shakes their hands. This is more of a society roundup than news story, so let’s move on.

While the gist of what the President was to tell gathered space workers at Cape Canaveral yesterday had been reported over the previous few days already, it remains dramatic news. By most accounts, he got an enthusiastic reception while correcting, or trying to correct, impressions that he’s set on scuttling NASA’s exploration or “manned” space efforts. Former astronauts have vilified such non-ambitions and politicians have decried the jobs as well as the US pioneer space-faring tradition they fear it will kill (never mind the irony of some of the same politicians who railed against government-managed health care now embracing what amounts to continued, socialized space exploration).

The news is that, according to the White House, NASA’s budget is going up, the jettisoned Constellation Program of moon rockets was a waste and doomed to peter out anyway, but ambitions to reach Mars are still on the agency’s agenda, and astronauts with US flags on their shoulders are to be the first people to voyage to an asteroid. Private rocketeers will fill the void in US man-rated lift capacity soon enough, and NASA will remain the world’s foremost space agency.

Unaddressed, it appears, by a brainy president who no doubt knows such things is the conviction by most space scientists that automated, semi-autonomous or fully robotic probes and telescopes can do a better job at  lower cost of exploring the solar system than can heroic people and the immense life support systems they require. Some even have twitter feeds. Two days ago in a previous post fill-in tracker Boyce Rensberger, while I was on an airplane, described pithily the large snag in the logic of space exploration in person by government employees. Media, too, did not dwell much on it.

But the address does seem to have had its moments, with Obama sketching a goal more modest than a return to the Moon but also one with novelty: a visit to an asteroid as the next landmark in US space exploration. Still expensive, but it has the advantage of being well into interplanetary space and not requiring gigantic engines to land on a body like the Moon with significant gravity, and take off again. One thinks a lot more people will tune in to such an adventure than would to the construction of a base on the Moon 60 or more years after Apollo.

Stories:

• AP – Seth Borenstein: On to Mars: Obama declares, “I expect to see it ; While relying, it says here, “on rockets and propulsion still to be imagined and built.” So, it may take awhile. Borenstein seems on board for today at least, calling the address reminiscent of Kennedy’s bold call in 1961 to land a man on the Moon by 1970 – a deadline made with room to spare.
• Los Angeles Times: Ralph Vartabedian, W. J. Hennigan: Obama looks to deeper space as NASA’s mission / a refocussed plan taps the private industry to build rockets for a possible Mars mission ; While news space taxis from private vendors have been promoted by the White House before this is the first suggestion the rockets to Mars might be left to industrial initiative too. The meat of the story, rife with politics, is its assertion that “the proposal differs significantly from the austere agenda that Obama laid out in January when he terminated the moon program.”
• Washington Post – Marc Kaufman, Scott Wilson: At Space Center, Obama defends changes in space program; Applause by space workers (200 of them, presumably selected ones) interrupted the speech 15 times, it says here.
• NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: Obama Vows Renewed Space Program ; Chang’s story is pretty bullish but includes this reflection on a contrast with history: “..unlike the Kennedy vision: (the Obama version) was a call for private industry to innovate its way to Mars, rather than a call for a national effort to demonstrate American predominance.” This story puts Obama’s stance largely in a positive light compared to that of  the Bush administration. But turning the Orion capsule,which Bushies intended as a two-way ferry and basis for deeper space missions, into a space station escape pod looks like mere political opportunism in this telling.
• Here’s where I found that pic up there of Buzz-barack Lightyear – NY Daily News – Richard Sisk: President Obama’s ambitious space program skips moon, aims for Mars landing after 2035 ;
• Science News – Ron Cowen: Not our grandfather’s space program; Includes perspective from topflight NASA ex-official and a space historian.
• Here’s a different mood: Time Magazine – Jeffrey Kluger: Has Obama’s NASA Strategy Fizzled at Launch? ; Well informed on history, but more of a column or blogpost than news writing.
• Florida Today – Todd Halvorson: Obama: NASA needs major course correction ; Narrative account of the President’s day, who he spoke with, the weather, the mood.
• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: Obama NASA plan: Mars shot as next generation’s Apollo mission ;

In a very different, reflective vein..

• Independent (UK) Rob Sharp: NASA decision reopens old wounds for Neil and Buzz ; Many have noted that the first two men to the moon, reclusive Neil Armstrong and effusive Buzz Aldrin, came down on opposite sides in reaction to the White House plan. This piece ambitiously attempts to make it the most recent chapter in a long and tumultuous relationship. I cannot vouch for the facts of it, but it is convincingly composed.

Grist for the Mill:

White House:  Remarks by the President on Space …

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Science reporters in Spain show different degree of concern about the health and environmental effects of the Iceland Volcano’s eruption. Climate cooling worries are vanishing, but some alert about increasing hazards for people with asthma and respiratory diseases. One reporter states that there is no risk at all, that the ashes might be beneficial for agriculture, and that we should enjoy such a beautiful spectacle. We also highlight two other stories, one in El Mundo saying the Obama’s NASA plans are good to Europe because the extending of ISS and his more collaborative approach. And another story in Público about subtle indications that a particular plant virus could infect human cells. If this is confirmed, it could be big.

La primera noticia que generó la nube de cenizas emitida por el volcán islandés Eyjafjallajokull fue, evidentemente, el caos que generó –y continúa- en los aeropuertos europeos. Pero pronto las secciones de ciencia empezaron a sacar notas relacionadas: ayer sobre el posible descenso de temperaturas, hoy sobre los efectos para la salud, y algunos medios empiezan a buscar a expertos para que esclarezcan cuanto puede durar la situación, y qué podemos esperar.

El Mundo es quien parece haberse tomado más en serie la vertiente científico-sanitaria-medioambiental del evento. Sara Polo, en “La ceniza volcánica ‘confunde’ a los reactores de los aviones” recurre a un vulcanólogo para pronosticar que las partículas deberían sedimentar pronto debido a su tamaño y peso, y explica que dichas partículas penetran en los reactores de los aviones y estos mandan señales erróneas a los pilotos. Luego, la propia Sara hace en ”Verdades y mentiras sobre la erupción en Islandia” un muy buen resumen de las principales cuestiones que el público puede preguntarse. En ellas desdramatiza la situación y no plantea problemas serios ni medioambientales (la nube es relativamente pequeña) ni para la salud (las cenizas todavía no han llegado al aire respirable). Un poquito más consternada se muestra Patricia Matey en “Las consecuencias para la salud de la nube de cenizas en el ‘aire respirable’”, e insta a los asmáticos y gente con problemas respiratorios a estar alerta de las informaciones, y no salir a la calle y usar mascarillas si los expertos advierten de un incremento de niveles en el aire. Destacar también el buen grafismo que ha preparado El Mundo sobre dicha erupción. Respecto al clima, hubo revuelo ayer por las declaraciones de un científico austríaco y los precedentes de bajadas de temperaturas. “Las cenizas del volcán islandés pueden enfriar la temperatura global” fue un titular que se repitió por muchos medios, en ocasiones de manera casi dramática como la corresponsal para La Nación (Argentina) que advierte de un posible cataclismo y “bloqueo de la energía del sol”, pero hoy ya se han suavizado y como dice El País: “La erupción del volcán islandés no afectará al clima, por ahora”. Todavía quita más hierro –quizás demasiado- ABC por medio de Diego Casado estableciendo que “el polvo que ha expulsado a la atmósfera es totalmente inocuo para los habitantes de los países afectados por la nube “, que las cenizas pueden “resultar extremadamente beneficiosa para la agricultura”, y que “merece la pena ver un fenómeno de tanta belleza”. Un toque un pelín frívolo. Un buen texto también es el de El Periódico de Cataluña firmado por Antonio Madridejos, con un titular que refleja muy bien la situación actual: “Es difícil predecir la actividad del volcán y el viento, pero todo indica que el riesgo aún no ha concluido”. Seguiremos atentos a lo que los científicos nos cuenten.

Destacamos un par de notas interesantes sobre temas diferentes:

- Teresa Guerrero – El Mundo: “Jean François Clervoy: ‘El plan de Obama para la NASA beneficiará a los europeos”. Entrevista a un astronauta de la ESA reaccionando positivamente a la decisión de Obama, debido  que implica extender la vida de la ISS

- Miguel Ángel Criado – Público: “Un virus vegetal puede contagiar a humanos”. Curiosa nota, en que se explica que un virus muy habitual en los pimientos podría ser el primer caso de transmisión de un patógeno de plantas a personas. Si se confirma que un virus de una planta infectada puede afectar a las células humanas, sería una noticia realmente muy poderosa.

- Pere Estupinyà

A few more reporters are heading for Iceland for a first hand and doubtless dramatic account of Eyjafjallajokull volcano’s suddenly vigorous eruption, its ash cloud zipped via jetstream across the North Atlantic, the British Isles, and much of Northern Europe. The economic and social impact is enormous, with airline flights grounded and presumably severe restrictions on private, military, maritime patrol, and other flights as well. Even if one could fly, say, to Central Europe there is no assurance when one might get back – given possibilities the plume will waver to the south.

One cannot evade general news accounts of the mess in air travel. Taking one not at random, as I happen to be in DC today, and one that seems broad and competent: Washington Post – Karla Adam, Ahsley Halsey III: Volcanic ash from Iceland forces cancellation of flights, disrupts travel for thousands.  Datelines London, but Halsey reported from Washington as did three staffers credited in a tagline, Hamil R. Harris, Lisa Rein, and Ovetta Wiggins. One thing it reports and that I didn’t know – ash does not show up well on airliner’s own radar systems.

Such significance for the economy from a volcano means one thing for sure for science writers providing copy to news agencies – editors suddenly fascinated by vulcanology. Especially if the news is sinewed with expert worry over possible, greater calamity to come. And in this case, that includes a concern that the rift through which the hard-to-pronounce volcano is venting may extend to and activate the much larger and easier-to-say Katla Volcano nearby. That one, a subglacial caldera, has the potential for eruption on far larger scale, they say, citing historic records of just such an eruptive tango that put a chill over much of the northern hemisphere centuries ago.

Intuitively it seems clear that buckets of gritty sand running through a jet engine cannot be good. But for a look at why exactly the ash is tough on airplanes the Associated Press put a trio of reporters on the job. Old-hand science writer Macolm Ritter in New York gets the byline, with colleague Alicia Chang in LA and aviation writer Slobodan Lekic credited in a tag line. It’s a sound run-through of past aviation incidents, the damage caused to windshields, turbine blades, combustors, nozzles, and sensors inside the engines, and impacts on weather that can follow large volcanic impacts into on the stratosphere.

From way down in Australia we get word, on ABC News from Darren Osborne in the network’s science unit, that the eruption so far has not the scale to cool the planet – as did the Philippines’s Mt. Pinatubo after its colossal outburst in 1991. Reason: So far the eruption’s convective rise, its Plinian column, is not going high enough to disperse globally. Just look at that Reuters photo up there – the gunk is down among ordinary cumulus (and wafting along at airplane altitude).

Concern over health impacts is wide, with varying angles found in news stories:

• Reuters – Jonathan Lynn: Eruption may hurt people with breathing problems – WHO ;
• AFP – Volcano: health watchdogs vigilant but no risk yet ; Story says “no major risk,” which is different from no risk at all.
• Daily Mail – Liz Hazelton: “Stay inside’: Health chiefs’ extraordinary warning as volcanic ash begins to fall on parts of Britain ; This reads as though the reporter tried quite hard for a balanced account – with health officials’ giving mixed signals but stressing only that people with other breathing problems need worry much. But on guesses that editors and headline writers at this not-particularly-cautious tabloid insisted on amping the story up to the paper’s customary screech.

We’re still awaiting an authoritative piece in the general media on the geology, subterranean magmatic plumbing, current activity, and potential for more form this eruption. When Mt. St. Helens went off, and everytime a Hawaiian eruption changes its behavior, local volcanologists got a ready audience with their maps, charts, seismograms, tiltmeters, gas chromatographs, and excited descriptions of what was going on. One imagines that the geophysicists and volcano experts in Iceland have all such things on hand, too. Some reporters are heading for Reykjavik (word is that this includes NPR‘s Joe Palca) so we’ll keep our eyes open for anything meaty.

LATE ADDITIONS

• At Science News,  she didn’t get to go to Iceland but Alexandra Witze, still pretty newly arrived after several years as a Nature editor, goes calmly through the basics including that delicious Icelandic word for the flood that comes suddenly from a quick-baked bottom of a glacier: it’s a jökulhlaup.
• LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Volcanic ash an air-traffic stopper but not a climate or health hazard ;
• AAAS ScienceNOW – Richard Stone: From the Archives: Iceland’s Doomsday Scenario?
• USA Today -Beth Weise: You say Eyjafjallajokull,I say ‘Jag har ingen aning hur man uttalaa det.” A pronunciation guide.
• NYTimes- Henry Fountain, Elizabeth Rosenthal: Experts Seek Clues to How Long Eruption Will Go On ;

In the meantime, here are some that give a sense how things are in Iceland, under the volcano’s pall:

• Guardian – Robert Booth, Severin Carrell: Iceland volcano: First came the floods, then the smellof rotten eggs ; Dramatic tale but not filed from Iceland itself.
• AFP – Rosa Brynjolfsdottir : Hundreds flee flash floods near Iceland volcano ;

Just be grateful that Popocatepetl Volcano is quiet – we’d see anchormen and women getting cramps in their tongues trying to describe it and  Eyjafjallajokull in the same sentence.

- Charlie Petit

It’s not going to supplant big base load power plants, or even a few roofs’ worth of solar panels, but a Swedish system that is piping leftover heat from a crowded train station (packed with those heat-emitting bipeds that use the trains) to a nearby office building has to rank high in the annals of green energy.

They don’t pump the warm air, complete with body heat and body odor too, to its customer. But it’s still odd enough and interesting enough for Time Magazine and its writer Jim Stenman to give it fairly big play.

- Charlie Petit

You must already have heard that Iceland’s volcanic eruption along the Laki fissure in the island’s south has turned it up several notches – and a broad cloud of gritty ash has forced all airliner flights to and from the British Isles canceled and similar measures likely in much of Europe.

So far most coverage has been on the airliner troubles, but a few outlets are landing with longer-look articles considering what further might happen, the historic precedents for this eruption, the possibilities that it might put a downward blip in global temperature (as bruited by initial coverage of the volcano’s activity last month, see previous post), and chances this specific eruption will spread to a larger volcano nearby. I’ll check tomorrow for more coverage that has a good dollop of science and other big-picture reporting to it. An additional focus will be on reports from Iceland and the flooding underway due to glacial melt, washing out bridges and roads.

Among these more general and badly-needed reports of cause and consequence are:

• Guardian – Greg Neale: How an Icelandic volcano helped spark the French Revolution ;
• USA Today – Doyle Rice: Iceland volcano eruption could last months ;

As for the flood of immediate-worry daily news, here are examples to catch you up:

• AP – Robert Barr, Jill Lawless: Volcanic ash cloud disrupting US flights to Europe ;
  
• NYTimes – Julia Werdiger, Nicola Park: Volcanic Ash Closes Down air Traffic in North Europe ;
• Guardian – Valur Gunnarasson (in  Reykjavik): Iceland Volcano: Hundreds evacuated after eruption ;

Special Mention to Wired News and its Alexis Madrigal: Icelandic Volcano’s Ash Plum from Space ; Nice story, terrific and explanatory picture from NASA.

- Charlie Petit

The weekly Die Zeit had the courage to feature the decade long, emotional and sometimes even violent debate between the University of Bremen and animal rights activists – in an unusual way. The scientist (a brain researcher) and the animal welfare activist got the chance to write down their perspective of the difficult topic of experiments with animals (macaques in this case). Both statements are emotional, the animal welfare activist describes a feeling of powerlessness, the scientist writes about the constant verbal attacks against him and his family. Reading these two statements makes clear: This is a fundamental conflict of fundamental rights – the freedom of scientific research against the rights of personal dignity of living creatures. But is it an unsolvable conflict? One might think so after reading of the two positions. A third article (from Andreas Sentker, headlined “Respect!”) does what journalism has to do in such a situation: Offering a solution, or at least a conclusion after judging the arguments of both sides – or showing the bigger context, the framing of the dispute. Sentker chose the third way and his argument is, that the dispute of Bremen is a distraction, a surrogate war, because the suffering of the macaques is marginal compared to the widely accepted suffering of millions of animals in the food production chain. Whereas the experiments in Bremen are in accordance with the animal welfare laws (implemented in the German constitution in 2002), the agony of countless pigs every year (e.g. if the slaughtering is not done appropriate) is against these established rules – and widely accepted. This way the articles takes the side of the scientist, blaming the fight against animal experiments as “false-faced”. Sentker argues, that the laws for the use of animals in the food chain exist but need much more control. Not the scientist from Bremen, but “others”, who permanently break these laws, need to be taken to trial. But it seems to be much easier to blame a single scientists for working with cute apes, then to blame a whole industry – and customers, who prefer the cheapest meat in the supermarket.

The proponents of strict fisheries management as the way to have fish and a lot of fishing at the same time (or, crabs and a lot of crabbing) definitely got some good news this week. Officials from Maryland and Virginia yesterday called reporters to a wharf restaurant yesterday and revealed that blue crabs, so recently in decline, are up 60 percent in one year and have more than doubled in the last two. The reason they say: a rule that put some watermen out of work two years ago, forbidding among other things the taking of female, often egg-laden crabs in key months.

At the Washington Post David Farenthold almost declared it a victory , period. His first quote, from a marine scientist, celebrates “..to go from the situation where the crab had been over-fished and nearing possible collapse, to a point where it is now being sustainably fished.”

Contrast that with the more cautious job at the Newport News Daily Press. There staffer Cory Nealon said the numbers merely are “an indication that tougher regulations are helping revive the once troubled crustacean.” And at the Richmond Times-Dispatch Rex Springston picks up the Virginia Governor’s quote prominently: “Two years does not make a trend … Improving the bay and the blue crab population will continue to be a priority of mine over the next four years.”

None of those stories, as far as I can tell, played fast or loose with facts. But none, despite their varying tone, also appears to have gone much beyond what was handed out at the dock. It could not have taken much – and may be worth a follow-up story – to call some additional academic or National Marine Fisheries Service authorities to get some context. Could this be a coincidence? Is there precedent for such a dramatic rebound so soon after a change in the rules (and evidence of cause and effect) in other fisheries?  Is there a danger that fishing might now be opened up too fast?

Maybe it’s something about crustaceans. My impression is that the lobsters fisheries off New England and the maritime provinces is in solid shape, with big catches, thanks to good management. Maybe it doesn’t take much to bring the clawed set skittering back. Maybe not More detail would surely find a ready readership. It’s hard to ingest this one example without context from other fisheries.

Other stories:

• Philadelphia Inquirer – Sandy Bauers:  Blue crabs’ numbers soar in Chesapeake ;
• AP – Alex Dominguez: Officials: Bay blue crab population up 60 percent ;

One thing for sure. If this keeps up and can become more clearly pinned on the regs as the reason, the return of blue crabs will become exhibit A by regulators anywhere trying to convince commercial fishers that what they need is tougher regulations and strict catch limits. Let’s hope it’s not just a natural fluctuation.

Grist for the Mill: Maryland Gov’s Office Press Release ; Virginia Gov’s Office Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker scanned down this morning through the journal Nature’s lineup and found most interesting, partly for practical reasons but mostly for traditional, impractical weird physics reason, a report by an international physics team on how to see whether a jumbled string of numbers is truly and meticulously random. The Dilbert cartoon there is filched from Nature’s own account, on line, of the news.

To be random, it appears, something must not only be practically unpredictable but unpredictable even if one knows the innards inside and out of the thing making the numbers. And this report says there is a way to look at the string and know its entirely random, with or without examining the number generator’s insides.

Alas hardly anybody outside the narrow specialty press covered it, with one exception. Tip of the hat, for once again displaying a nose for news that is entertaining and mind-stretching at the same time, to…

• NPR – Joe Palca: Safer Than A Gamble: Finding Truly Random Numbers ;

As for the small outlets:

• PhysicsWorld (London): Randomness is no lottery thanks to entangled ions ;
• Nature.com – Zeeya Merali: A truth test for randomness ; Nature’s own news arm naturally gets a head start on this story. Merali closes with news that a different research group has its own, faster, quantum-guaranteed randomness generator.

A few more big and semi-big outlets who covered the random news:

• AFP (via Australian Broadcasting Corp): Scientists create truly random numbers ;
• MIT  Technology Review : First Evidence That Quantum Processes Generate Truly Random Numbers ; Nope, it’s not the same news – this column plucks from the unpublished (on paper) postings at arXiv an entirely different report on the same general topic.

Grist for the Mill: Univ of Maryland Press Release – old newspaper hand Curt Suplee wrote this release. It’s a lot deeper than press coverage I’ve seen so far.

- Charlie Petit

A second commission in Britain, set up to sift through the data and e-mails and publications at the heart of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit’s troubles lately, has plopped its report on the desk. Not that this will change things much very fast.  An editorial in the Guardian today says, “The damage has been incalculable, but the original sin appears milder by the day.” The editorial on line links in turn to a concise BBC radio broadcast, delivered the eve of the new report, where two sources contrast the wavering public worry over climate change with the solidarity, so far at least, among governments and scientific establishments in regarding it as a top-rank and perilous issue.

The news is that a panel that the Royal Society convened at the university’s request, with Lord (and Baron and Sir Ron too) Oxburgh at its head, essentially cleared East Anglia’s prof. Phil Jones and his colleagues of manipulating data or otherwise knowingly violating principled scientific research or publication to make global warming look worse than it is.  Oxburgh, it appears, is no figurehead House of Lords poobah, but a geophysicist with a Princeton PhD, a former chairman of Shell Oil, and former president of Queen’s College Cambridge. The full report (it’s not long) is linked below in Grist. Phil Jones is in pic above, via Sunday Times whose reporter Richard Girling in February described Jones’s thoughts of suicide.

With all the fooferall after the hacked emails came to light late last year on the eve of the Copenhagen talks, this rather authoritative defense of the scientific integrity of those researchers who shared with one another, and the world, their disdain for climate change skeptics is getting some ink. But its impact on the public cannot be as great. Banal corrections and follows up never get quite the headline impact as do sensational accusations and the first whiffs of conspiracy.

At The Telegraph, a right-leaning paper that has also leaned climate-skeptically over the years, the report’s tone got a quick and doubtful sniff. The paper’s editorial declared, despite the endorsement of the CRU’s scientific work going back 20 years, “the scientists cannot be allowed to escape so lightly.” They must be further pressured to carry out their work transparently and with more openly-shared methodology. And it argues that even if most scientists agree global warming is on the calamity side of the lists of things to worry about, “there is another view, for which evidence can also be adduced, even if it seems to conflict with the received wisdom.” That’s quite a bad mash of terminology – acknowledging that scientists may be worried, implying they do so via scientific method, and then dismissing it semi-theologically as a kind of received wisdom and thus on par with religious dogma.

At the Times, a news story by environment editor Ben Webster leads straightforwardly with the report’s main conclusion: these scientists are off the hook, having “acted with integrity” and did not  “attempt to manipulate their research.” A bit down it reports that the inquiry had a few problems with specific statistical methods employed and calls for more careful record and data base management, but found no evidence of an agenda. In other words, they were providing good science of the sort that good scientists do – imperfect but in aggregate honest and as reliable as such things typically are. In an accompanying analysis, Webster writes that the reports  (following a Parliamentary inquiry last month)  may not have much immediate impact, “dismissed as whitewashes by climate sceptics.

Other stories:

• Independent – Steve Connor: Climate row: backing for scientists ;
• Economist – A place in the sun – the scientists in “climategate’ did not fudge the data a report finds ; Such sweet, if anonymous, writing at the Economist, as usual. Brief intimate vignette lede, and then a solid walk through the report’s findings and likely impact. As for scientific malpractice, it says of the report, “they found no such thing.” The string of comments, while laced with some of the invevitable inanity, is revealing too — and please let it come some day that all media require their correspondents’ real names unless they’re in police state or other circumstance where doing so gets them in real trouble.
• Register – Andrew Orlowski:  Oxburgh blesses Climategate boffins ; Mr. Orlowski, a columnist, is not buying it.
• Reuters – Peter Griffiths: UK inquiry clears climate scientists in email row ;
• Guardian – David Adam: Scientists cleared of malpractice in UEA’s hacked emails inquiry ;
• New Scientist – Catherine Brahic : Climategate scientists chastised over statistics ; hed has only half her lede. The rest is “…that the planet is warming stands on solid ground.
• Express- Donna Bowater: Climategate Team Failed To Get Work Checked by Experts ; This hed is not misleading – the story too goes through all the faults found by the panel before getting to the bottom line: no dishonesty and, by implication, no reason in the behavior of CRU’s staff scientists and those they emailed to doubt global warming.
• BBC: “No malpractice’ by climate unit ;

A Few Reports from Outside the UK:

• Wall St. Journal – Guy Chazan: Panel Says Scientists Didn’t Act Improperly ;
• Washington Post – Karla Adam, Juliet Eilperin: Academic experts clear scientists in ‘climate-gate” ; Straightforward summary, includes riposte from a man at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who feels that the report (put together in about two week’s work) is superficial.” Then Adam and Eilperin append to the man’s opining that his “think tank accepts funding from energy interests.” Hmm. For all I know, so does the Royal Society or members of the panel.
• LA Times – Henry Chu: Panel clears researchers in ‘Climategage’ controversy ;
• NYTimes (DotEarth blog) Andrew C. Revkin: East Anglia’s Climate Lessons ; The Times covered the news, briefly, via Reuters. Revkin here provides a sensible dissection of the report and its multiple messages on whether climate science has run far wide of reality (no) and whether it could be conducted a lot better  (yes).

Grist for the Mill:

Report of the International Panel set up by the University of East Anglia to examine the research of the Climatic research Unit;

UAE Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (right) has signed a law banning most abortions 20 weeks after conception “on the theory that a fetus, by that stage in pregnancy, has the capacity to feel pain,” writes Monica Davey in The New York Times. The law, she continues, is “the first in the nation to restrict abortions on the basis of fetal pain.”

She then goes on for about 10 grafs discussing the history and politics of the bill before getting to what had seemed to me to be the obvious question: Does the fetus feel pain? Or, in other words, does this bill have any basis in fact?

Here’s her answer, near the end of the story:

The question of fetal pain, experts said, is one of intense, unresolved debate among researchers and among advocates on both sides of the abortion question.

Ah. Thank goodness for experts. But as I wrote here two weeks ago, I don’t much care for anonymous experts. A reporter can get unidentified “experts” to say anything, and readers have no way to evaluate it.

Davey then goes back immediately to the politics, quoting an exec at National Right to Life who thinks fetal pain will get five votes on the Supreme Court, that bastion of scientific perspicacity.

The question of whether a fetus can feel pain is central to this story. It provides the underpinning not only of the Nebraska bill, but of a broad new challenge to existing abortion rights. If the fetus can feel pain, then Nebraska is on solid footing, and the Supreme Court might outlaw late abortions. If it can’t, the law will likely be–or should be–thrown out.

So why did Davey make no effort to address this question? We can’t know. As the novelist Henry James wrote, “Never say you know the last word about any human heart.” (OK, it’s silly to use that when discussing a reporter on deadline, but I was determined to demonstrate the breadth of my literary knowledge. Experts say I know a lot about books.)

Nate Jenkins of the AP did a little better, at least giving us a place to look for more information on this question:

The argument used to justify the 20-week ban is based on the testimony of some doctors, some of it given during a 2005 congressional hearing. They contend there is substantial evidence that by 20 weeks, fetuses seek to evade stimuli in a way that indicates they are experiencing pain.

Still, I wish he’d called “some doctors” and asked them about this, rather than treating this as a minor detail in the story.

Sarah Kliff in the Newsweek blog The Gaggle explores the issue and the relevance of this scientific question without doing any evident reporting on whether the claim is scientifically accurate. In some ways that’s worse: She makes clear how important this question is, and still does no reporting to try to answer it.

Andrew Stern (the reporter) and Cynthia Osterman (the editor) at Reuters did not challenge or question Gov. Heineman when they allowed him to say an ”unborn child can be capable of feeling pain,” at least in this web version of the story.

Even the most cursory Google search (which is all I did) would have revealed this discussion of the issue on the University of California, San Francisco website, along with a pointer to a good story by Annie Murphy Paul in The New York Times Magazine a couple of years ago (disclosure: she’s a good friend). These two links would give a reporter plenty of sources to pursue.

Here’s where I sum up and draw the lesson. It’s a little embarrassing, but the lesson is pretty simple: When people say something, make a call or two to see whether it’s correct.

Or, as the old newspaper line goes, if your mother tells you she loves you–check it out.

- Paul Raeburn

As much as science writers have enjoyed covering Shuttle launches  (you get to witness spectacularly impressive hardware thundering skyward), many of us have long known that putting people in orbit is the least cost-efficient way to do science in space. Almost nothing that astronauts do can’t be done by machines at a fraction of the price. Thus President Obama’s cancellation of  NASA’s Constellation program, which was aimed at returning people to the moon and heading for Mars, can be seen as striking a blow for science over spectacle.

But as the New York Times‘s Kenneth Chang tells us today, some of the old timers from NASA’s glory days are calling Obama’s plans “devastating.” They include Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, Gene Cernan,  and Gene Kranz. They and 23 other NASA veterans issued a letter on Monday saying it is a great shame for the U.S. to be unable to send people into Earth orbit or, eventually, beyond.

Chang puts the story in the context of a curtain-raiser for Obama’s visit to Cape Canaveral on Thursday where the president will describe his plan for space exploration.

Other takes:

Todd Halvorson at Florida Today has the story and adds that at least one storied astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, has endorsed Obama’s plan.

Louis Page of The Register, in the UK, teases out one element of the president’s plan, which he calls a partial reversal of Obama’s proposed scrapping of NASA’s Orion capsule. As others note farther down in their stories, Orion is to be kept as an emergency rescue vehicle that can be launched to the Space Station unmanned.

At the Orlando Sentinel Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block write that the reversal on Orion was a response to pressure from Congress and space fans.

- Boyce Rensberger

*UPDATES (Charlie Petit) :

We’ll cover more news from the meeeting itself,  with Obama in Florida, on Friday. Here are additional warm ups, from AP‘s Seth Borenstein from this week:

• Obama revives capsule from canceled moon program ;
• NASA’s generation gap: Obama space plan angers old Apollo hands, delights the younger set ;
• On home turf of his astronaut critics, Obama to make pitch for changes in direction of NASA ;

Since 1980 the rate of women dying in childbirth has fallen by about 40 percent according to a report from the University of Washington published in The Lancet. The lead author was Christopher J.L. Murray, one of the world’s leading experts at tracking global public health. The Murray report puts the absolute number of maternal deaths in 1980 at around 500,000. By 2008 it was said to be close to 343,000.

As David Brown writes in The Washington Post, “Maternal mortality is a key gauge of a population’s health and wealth, as well as of women’s status.” He notes that the world’s average rate is 251 women dying in childbirth for every 100,000 live births. The highest national rate is in Afghanistan (1,575), the lowest in Italy (4). The rate in the U.S. was 17 compared with 7 in Canada.

The AP‘s Maria Cheng focuses on political clashes touched off by the report. For one thing, she says a separate report by the World Health Organization claims the number has not fallen appreciably and still stands at around 500,000 a year. Moreover, she writes, advocates for maternal health pressured The Lancet to delay publication of the Murray report until after a key UN meeting on the subject that was to consider funding needs for pregnant women’s health care. The Tracker has been unable to find the WHO report but did find a page on WHO’s Web site for its Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health that says Murray’s report is “important” and that “the new estimates offer hope at last that the lives of women are finally being counted and that our collective actions are starting to reduce this tragedy in the new millennium.” The Partnership’s director does allow that “debate may continue about the numbers.”

Denise Grady, who had the Murray story in yesterday’s New York Times, says the putative global decline can be attributed to several factors: higher income which correlates with better nutrition and access to health care and increasing availability of skilled assistants during childbirth, be they physicians or midwives.

Grist:

A summary of Murray’s Lancet article is here. Full text requires registration.

-Boyce Rensberger