(English intro to Spanish lang. post) About Venter’s achievement to create a cell controlled by synthetic DNA: some really good stories in Spanish speaking newspapers, a few “artificial life” expressions in the headlines, and too many important newspapers in Latin America where such a big announcement has not been covered as it deserves.

Por fin Craig Venter lo ha logrado. Tras más de dos años anunciándolo, y buena cantidad de intentos fallidos, ha logrado sintetizar un genoma bacteriano en el laboratorio, insertarlo en una célula bacteriana, y hacer que ésta lo asuma como suyo, sobreviva, y empiece a multiplicarse convirtiéndose en la primera célula con genes sintéticos. “Vida casi artificial”, como Nuño Domínguez titula en Público, alabando el hallazgo de Venter pero añadiendo que llamar a su creación “la primera célula sintética” no es totalmente cierto, ya que el chasis de la criatura es natural. No todos han sido tan puntillosos. El Universal (México) titula “Científicos de Estados Unidos crean vida artificial”, o en Página 12 (Argentina) Pedro Lipcovich añade al “Vida creada en laboratorio” el subtítulo “Un equipo liderado por Craig Venter logró fabricar una bacteria íntegramente en laboratorio”. Lástima de este equívoco “íntegramente”, porque el texto está bien estructurado, aporta buenos datos y está escrito con un lenguaje muy ameno. Para expresión precisa, la de Pablo Fonseca: “Científicos crean bacterias controladas por ADN sintético” en La Nación (Costa Rica), acompañando un texto muy bien contextualizado y didáctico. O el de Axel Christiansen y Alexis de Ponsón “Científicos de EEUU crean la primera célula con ADN artificial” en el chileno La Tercera. Sólo decir que la palabra “sintético” nos gusta muchísimo más que “artificial”. En La Nación (Argentina) Nora Bär “Trascendental paso científico: crearon una célula sintética” también ofrece un buen texto, con cierta visión crítica de científicos no relacionados directamente con el trabajo diciendo un “tampoco exageremos”.

Y es que realmente es un hito espectacular que tiene un gran impacto en el ciudadano y abre muchas preguntas éticas y científicas. De eso no hay duda alguna. Pero para los expertos en biología sintética, tampoco es que haya un antes y un después. Era algo previsible. No se trata de uno de esos descubrimientos que nos hacen ver que estábamos equivocados y transforman nuestra visión del mundo, como la expansión acelerada del Universo o –a pequeña escala y más reciente- que el 4% de nuestro genoma de Homo sapiens provenga del neandertal. Lo que Craig Venter ha conseguido es culminar un impresionante proyecto, como en su tiempo fue secuenciar el genoma humano. Diseñar genes de novo (un paso por encima de la ingeniería genética convencional) e insertarlos en bacterias para que expresen las funciones requeridas es algo que ya hace tiempo que los expertos en biología sintética han conseguido. Y de hecho, los reparos que algunos de ellos muestran hacia la aproximación “crear todo el genoma desde cero” de Venter es que a nivel práctico, no tiene tantísimo sentido. Es mejor coger una célula parecida a la que quieres conseguir, quedarte con lo que te sirve, y quitar y poner lo que te falte. Así será mucho más robusta. Por ejemplo, Venter aprovecha un poco el anuncio para vendernos otro de sus proyectos: crear un alga sintética que capture CO2. Aunque sea unicelular, la complejidad de esta futura alga es mucho mayor que la sencilla bacteria que Venter ha conseguido, y es mucho más probable que él mismo, u otros investigadores en biología sintética que dicen no distraerse con “la propagandística creación de vida”, lo consigan modificando estructuras que han soportado millones de años de evolución. No creando de cero. Pero no seamos quisquillosos, porque como románticamente empieza en El País el excelente reportaje de Javier Sampedro “Vida de Bote: Toda célula en los 3500 millones de años de evolución de la vida en la Tierra ha provenido de la división de otra bacteria; hasta ayer. Leyendo este precioso inicio, no queda duda alguna de que ésta será una de las fechas marcadas en los libros de historia de la ciencia. Y bien nos podemos permitir la licencia de exagerar un poquito, como en algún fragmento de su buena nota en El Mundo hace Miguel Corral cuando repite el “Venter ha jugado de nuevo a ser Dios”, o dice que: “Las implicaciones científicas, éticas y filosóficas que tiene esta nueva investigación son infinitas. ¿Hemos definido bien la palabra Vida? Si pudiéramos mejorar el código genético humano, ¿Deberíamos hacerlo?”. No son preguntas nuevas, y filosóficamente el impacto no es tan grande. Por lo que hemos dicho antes: no es una revolución en el sentido de cambio de paradigma; es la culminación de algo previsible.

De todas formas, bien es cierto que los humanos a veces no nos ponemos las pilas hasta la materialización de estos previsibles, y ahora empieza algo que sí dará mucho jugo periodístico y sería bueno que persiguiéramos atentamente: la mejor legislación que el propio Venter ha pedido a su gobierno. La respuesta ha sido inmediata, afirmativa, y nos mantendremos alerta.

Último comentario: no puede ser –o mejor; no debería ser- que muchos periódicos importantes de América Latina no dediquen un redactor a cubrir este histórico avance de la ciencia.

- Pere Estupinyà

Page A17?

That’s where the New York Times plays Craig Venter’s announcement of a computer-generated synthetic genome able to take over a cell’s operations–and reproduce. In the second graf, Nicholas Wade quotes Venter as saying this is “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”

That’s obviously a carefully crafted comment, and reporters are free to react with skepticism–indeed, that’s exactly what they should do. But when a prominent and highly accomplished scientist makes that claim, doesn’t that deserve better than Page A17? Or, to put it another way, how the hell can that NOT make Page 1?????

The Times didn’t even put it on the National page; it’s merely one in a grab-bag of national stories. The National page leads with student protests over budget cuts at Puerto Rican campuses, a story few of us will remember tomorrow, unless we happen to be students at a Puerto Rican college. Do you remember the last student protests over budget cuts? Of course not.

Also placed more prominently than Venter’s research are a story on a Harrisburg, Pa. incinerator, one on the White House gate crashers, and, on the front page, one on the sex life of a Chinese computer science professor and another on inflated pensions in Yonkers, N.Y.

No comment.

The Washington Post looks a little better, running its story, by David Brown, on Page 3. Brown puts skeptical comments first, following up with Venter a graf or two later.

I wonder… How many science writers are happy to jump on skeptical comments–happier than they should be–because they think Venter is arrogant and get tired of hearing him say that he can do things other people can’t do? (Even if he’s often been right.) I have no idea what’s in Wade’s head, or Brown’s. This is pure speculation. Still, I wonder…

The AP shows with a very nice story by Lauran Neergaard. She provides a very nice explanation of the work, with reaction from several other researchers from Harvard, MIT, and elsewhere. A very competent story from the always competent (and prolific) Neergaard.

She also notes that President Obama reacted to the news, calling on the presidential bioethics commission to assess the development. Even with a political angle, the Post couldn’t find time for this?

Dave Perlman gets it right in a Page 1 story in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Although the advance is far from creating ‘life in a test tube,’ it was a singular achievement in making and assembling the chemical components of genes that functioned inside living cells exactly the way natural genes do,” he writes.

He does his due diligence, getting reaction, and provides perspective, recalling the famous meeting on genetic engineering held at the Asilomar conference center near Monterey, Calif., in 1975. If I’m recalling correctly, Perlman was there, covering it for the Chronicle.

Nature news gives us a very nice reaction, in a package of eight comments from “synthetic-biology experts.” (Not synthetic biologists; Venter hasn’t made one of those–yet.) Ethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania calls the work “one of the most important scientific achievements in the history of mankind.” The Nature comments contain plenty of skepticism–one researcher calls the work “a technical advance, not a conceptual one.” Several make clear that this is not synthetic life, and they question the approach. But all agree the news is worth our attention.

Among the newspapers, everybody, it seems, plays Tea Party candidate Rand Paul’s comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act far above Venter. Can’t wait until Paul weighs in on Craig.

Grist for the mill: Science press release.

- Paul Raeburn

Gatekeepers – one of those words that from the start seemed awfully wonky and formalistic – has up and come to mean a whole new thing in science journalism,  journalism generally, and the way that news filters through society. It used to mean editors, reporters, and others at major media. Now it means almost anything but those people.

At  his site Framing Science the busy analyst of science in society, American University’s Matthew C. Nisbet, has posted the full text of a talk he’s giving to the University Research Magazine Association. His message is that writers of such house pubs are now in the front row among science news gatekeepers with better seats than those of  the old guard at newspapers and broadcast news outlets. He likens the web to one giant magazine staffed not by media professionals but the people who used to be lumped among sources for news along with the public.

Sounds to me as though, if there’s no gate anymore, then there can’t be gatekeepers either. Nisbet gets into the arrogance and elitism of the old model. He is a defender of the new “engaged” way of transferring information. Then he says it again, to wit: “Professional journalists have gotten so mired in the idea that we are guardians of all that is true and good and we know better than everybody else ; the arrogance has really been their downfall in a lot of ways.’

It’s a deeply thought essay. He says little however about other realities. These include that it is not arrogance that propels many reporters and editors to defend their jobs so much as a simple desire to, um,  keep those jobs and continue providing the news with an explicit effort to do so impartially (total disinterest is usually impossible, but the effort is worthwhile). Also here is repeated discussion of the empowerment of the public and other participants in this hive news generation and the decreased transmission of “neutral” facts and concepts. He calls those working for house publications “journalists.” How, one asks, does he define the term, exactly? Is a press release journalism, and if not then why is a corporation’s or university’s controlled publication of its own story substantially different from p.r.?

I’d need to read it again a few times to be sure what to think. It appears to spend almost nothing on the salutary aspects of the old way, on what is being lost. These include  professional news delivery that is largely independent of the news’s sources and is clearly labeled as such. Another is the fade of a national conversation that provides a large share of the public a file of shared information.One could go on, but I don’t want to sound arrogant.

The conference is hosted by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, publisher of the (superb actually) in-house journal HHMI Bulletin. One little difference between this meeting, and a typical workshop for old-line media reporters and editors. It says prominently at that site that a fee of $375 covers ALL food and housing for participants for three days, courtesy of HHMI. Old time reporters get freebies and favors regularly while covering the news or attending workshops, to be sure. I have spent time aboard a lot of research vessels and never paid a dime for the food or berth. Nobody’s perfectly saintly. But at least we have the good taste to try to paper it over as innocuously mumbled “discounted” room rates, “fellowships,” as just taking a ride with a source,  and such!

*CLARIFICATION: I learn from HHMI that yes, the meeting participants got a super deal on housing and meals but it was no direct freebie. No extra money was budgeted to put up the meeting goers at the HHMI home. Their very nice headquarters building has rooms, they were between meetings for their fellows, and the $375, they tell me, covered all incremental housekeeping and food expenses.

- Charlie Petit

Time Magazine‘s Michael D. Lemonick took some time on a pure physics story this week, and it was worth it.

Earlier this week ( post) we tracked a few outlets’ take on news from the Tevatron machine’s operators at Fermilab near Chicago. They have results implying why it is that the universe has so much matter and not much anti-matter (or no matter at all). Some readers will devour this, most will avoid it as incomprehensible, and a few may decides it’s a waste of time to do or care about such arcana as this.

So Lemonick warms up his audience by getting it into a reflective, philosophical, perhaps even intellectual mood. He then goes through the observations by Fermilab’s DZero team and their tiny destruction derbies. He gets in a small dig at the NYTimes’s and Dennis Overbye’s overinflated but harmless description of this work (attributed to a source, to be true) as revealing why we exist at all – it’s true, but it is not THE reason but one of many.

At the end, Lemonick returns to his effort to warm up his readership first – and concedes that there are some people for whom this is futile, who will persist in having a tin, or even deaf, ear for the music of the cosmos.

More on the Matter-Anti-Matter News:

• Science News – Ron Cowen: Matter beats out antimatter in experimental echo of creation ; Cowen even includes a link to the raw papers announcing the results, put down there in Grist. This is a serious, straight-on explainer of the research and the issue’s place in the history of physics.

Grist for the Mill: arXiv paper on “dimuon charge asymmetry.”

- Charlie Petit

.......photo N.O. Times Picayune/Ted Jackson

It’s about time. A few outlets within media, so-called watchdogs on the powerful, are starting to get tough with the engineers, petroleum geologists, executives and public servants who are telling us about the gulf oil spill and what they’re doing about it. It’s not that these first responders are not working desperately hard to stop the leaks. But it’s also looking like their 5,000 barrel per day estimate of the on-going deep sea gusher, a talisman to which they have clung for weeks, is akin to a pathetically low-ball guess -  or even just maybe what few have the gumption to suggest plainly:  a lie. That would on reflection be a bad idea – there remains after all some possibility that the true figure will turn out to be in the neighborhood of 5000 barrels daily. Isn’t there?

Stories:

• Science News – Janet Raloff: Science & the Public: BP’s estimate of spill rate is way low, engineer suggests ; Well-put-together follow on the enterprising reporting done first and most prominenty by Rick Harris at NPR. This adds up the several leaky spots in the wrecked riser pipe – as portrayed in videos from remotely operated submersibles – to come up with a discouraging plausibility that 100,000 barrels are flowing daily into the deep waters of the Gulf.
• NYTimes – Justin Gillis: Scientists Fault Lack of Studies Over Gulf Spill; It’s not only the amount of oil that government agents have allowed to go unscrutinized, despite authority to order it done and made public. The movements and concentrations of oil plumes circulating below the surface has been left largely to the imagination. Tools exist to get those data, it says here. Where are they?
• Bloomberg – Jim Polson: BP Capturing 5,000 Barrels a Day From Gulf Oil Leak; Hmm, that ought to stop it. Polson, in a laconic story, lets the numerical conflict speak for itself – listing what BP says it is capturing (5000 barrles per day), the larger estimates from outsiders as to the size of the leak, and continued refusal by industry to concede that they shared suspiciously low estimates of the spill’s rate and have stuck with them – implicitly, for no good reason.
• New Orleans Times-Picayune – Bruce Alpert, Jonathan Tilove: Scientist disputes BP’s estimate ; “no scientific chance,” he tells a House subcommittee, that the 5000 bpd figure will stand.
• Let’s call it the Plumecam:  Boston Globe – Martin Finucane: Rep. Markey to post live video of massive Gulf oil spill ; One of several accounts of BP’s agreement, under pressure, to provide all its video of the ongoing leaks for general circulation , live.

A few samples of other coverage:

• Providence Journal – Peter B. Lord: URI professors sauy it’s unlikely Gulf oil spill will reach East Coast ; As the man says – worry about the Gulf Coast, not the Atlantic short – at least not north of Cape Hatteras. The story has sensible info on how currents tend to work.
• LA Times (blog) Geoff Mohan: Gulf oil spill: NOAA skeptical of oil-plume reports ; This is a few days old, but vital reading for those after an insight of this story’s difficulties for reporters and gov’t officials. Some things ARE ambiguous. Excellent glimpse here of NOAA boss Jane Lubchenco’s efforts to stick to solid science, waiting for good data, and otherwise showing due diligence while people are shouting at her for answers. She’s in a pickle.
• Reuters: Anna Driver, Matthew Bigg: BP, under first, says its oil leak control advances / … now capturing 5,000 barrels per day of crude ;
• Bloomberg – Jim Polson, Jessica Resnick-Ault: BP Moves Closer to ‘Top Kill’ of Leaking Oil Well ;

- Charlie Petit

Now comes the counter-attack from the academy – with a capital A. Yesterday – as seen one post down – AP‘s Seth Borenfeld was one of several who moved quickly to cover a message from the National Academy of Sciences to Congress on the persistent conviction among most academics who study such things that the climate is moving rapidly into a state that ought to induce fear. Ergo, drop the blinders and do something about it. Slap on a fat tax, disguise it as cap and trade, whatever, just write the legislation and vote yes. (And a report from a NASA-NOAA-&international team in Nature today underscores things with details on how much the oceans are heating up – let’s see somebody blame that on freakin’ urban heat islands.) These are my words, not the academy’s, but judging by press reports it suits the mood.

The report is really a set of three documents from the academies’ National Research Council (including National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine). The illus here is just one portion grabbed from one of the reports. The NRC’s job it is to put together just such reports as these by gathering up committees of the top, pertinent brains in a field. These three missives, it appears, reveal what the scientists really think and without hiding it entirely behind a cloud of maybes and error bars (and typical use of the latter reflects, one must say, the glorious employment of doubt that distinguishes scientific method from denialism, rumor, and theology).

One hopes White House science adviser John Holdren and DOE Sec’y Steve Chu, these documents in hand (and on thumb drive and iPad or Slate or whatever), are marching around Congress, the West Wing, and Cabinet-level agencies to enter fancy offices for earnest conversation. Um, not that I’m anything but an objective journalist about this. I’ve been getting steadily more scared during 30+ years covering climate science. Can’t help that – hearing the drumbeat not from opportunistic greenies, but the sober people at AGU and similar research meetings.

It may have been difficult for many reporters to pour much energy into this story. It may be more emphatic and more politically pointed than most such things, but the essential facts have been reported so many times that it looks like what we used to call boilerplate. So it goes in the news biz, and most of America’s A-list news outlets covered it even if they didn’t all give it great play. An angle to explore (again): With all the delays since the Earth Summit 20 years ago in Rio, is it too late, practically, to do anything as drastic as this report asks? History, one surmises, will not be kind to us on Earth now.

More Stories :

• NYTimes – John Broder : U.S. Science Body Urges Action on Climate ; Buried way inside – shoved aside in part, one supposes, by the more enterprising piece on gov’t's tepid use of scientific tools in reacting to the gulf oil spill up on p. 1. ; Also in the Times Andrew C. Revkin (Dot Earth blog): Academies (Again) Seek Climate Action ; despite the (again), Revkin calls the reports invaluable.
• Wall St. Journal – Gautam Naik: Scientists Reassert Man’s Role in a Changing Climate ;
• USA Today – Dan Vergano: 3 climate change reports: Set prices on carbon emissions; He lifts to prominence a curious side-aspect of the reports. They were requested during the Bush administration.
• LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II : National Academy of Sciences urges strong action to cut greenhouse gases ;
• NPR – Christopher Joyce: U.S. Scientists Urge Action on Climate Change ; First words in the text version: “The nation’s pre-eminent scientific organization…”  That’ll grab some (smart) readers. Others will get glazed eyeballs or start snorting. Sigh. And meeting the report’s goals, as it itself says, will according to one stop source require the “invention of technologies that don’t exist yet.” Point made, complete with redundancy.
• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts : March and April warmest ever. Humans must adapt, report says. Nice tie of another piece of spot news to this report. And one is unsure, at an on line pub, between blog “Pete” posts and full-on “Peter Spotts” stories.
• Washington Times – Stephen Dinan: Scientists defend global warming work ; It’s the hed one expects for a pub whose readers mostly don’t believe climate is changing enough to warrant any action, esp. taxes. Fourth word: climategate. It leads on that – but does give the report’s authors their say too.
• San Francisco Chronicle – David Perlman: As oceans get warmer, Congress is facing heat ;

Grist for the Mill:

NRC Press Release ; NRC Full Report links ;

- Charlie Petit

This post is, for now, mainly a place holder. I’ll look around more tomorrow for a bigger roundup on the news. The AP’s Seth Borenstein reports today that the National Academy of Sciences, in response to direct questions from Congress, is calling on the nation to put a tax or at least a cap with credits that cost money on emissions of net carbon (the fossil fuel kind)  into the air. He uses a strong verb in describing the unusually direct policy stance the academy has taken, starting off the story with “Ditching its past cautious tone…”

The situation is urgent, it says here. This as a news topic sure beats a lot of hoo hah about climate denialism and intemperate emails among ticked-off research scientists.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Today the first cloned fighting bull was born in Spain. His name is “Got”, a word that means “glass” in the Catalan language. His cloned brother will be born in a few hours from another cow and will be raised in a different environment to compare their development. Science reporters are covering the achievement with enthusiasm, and although the researchers say that their first goal is  progress towards cloning endangered or extinct species, some stories dream on a future where splendid cloned fighting bulls will be running on the bullrings. Just a few articles mention the problems on development than animals cloned by nuclear transfer usually have, and the different traits that adults show compared to their progenitor. We expect deeper analysis during the next few days.

Revuelo considerable en los medios españoles por el nacimiento del primer toro de lidia clonado: “Got” (“vaso” en catalán por el nombre de su único padre Vasito, de cuya piel obtuvieron el ADN que transfirieron al óvulo vacío de una hembra). Esperemos que vayan apareciendo notas analizando mejor el trasfondo científico del hito. Bueno; “hito” quizás es exagerar. Como vemos en este excelente gráfico de El País realizado por Heber Longás explicando el proceso de clonación, ya son bastantes los mamíferos clonados. El verdadero sentido de clonar a un toro es avanzar en la comprensión científica de la clonación reproductiva para que algún día sea posible utilizarla con éxito en animales en riesgo de extinción, o incluso especies ya desaparecidas. Imaginar que toros clonados aparecerán en plazas, como algunos medios han escrito, tiene un punto disparatado. ¿Por qué? porque de los mamíferos clonados anteriormente por transferencia nuclear sabemos que esta técnica es costosísima (en tiempo y óvulos invertidos), y los individuos suelen tener problemas físicos conllevados por la reprogramación del ADN en el proceso de transferencia. Será útil en casos donde no exista otra opción, pero como manera de tener copias idénticas de los mejores sementales no parece la mejor estrategia. Por coste, altas posibilidades de fracaso, y riesgo de consanguineidad. Veamos cómo los medios han cubierto la noticia.

ABC – Judith de Jorge “Nace el primer toro bravo clonado” fue de las primeras notas en aparecer y ya el martes anticipaba un muy buen grado de detalles. Varios medios han reportado sobre el texto de Judith. En su segunda nota: “Así es Got, el primer toro bravo clonado” Judith se muestra exultante al considerarlo “la primera promesa que puede saltar a los ruedos” y la pregunta retórica “¿se llenarán los ruedos de astados iguales unos a otros?”. No creemos que sea éste el objetivo de los científicos. Interesante lo que explica la nota sobre “Glass”, el hermano clonado de Got que nacerá en breve con el mismo ADN pero del abdomen de una vaca de raza diferente, y que será criado en otro ambiente para ver si esto influye en la agresividad en la lidia. Nos parece obvio que así va a ser, pero nunca está de más analizar esta comparación.

El País tiene dos notas, una de Rafael Méndez en la que un catedrático de genética no relacionado con la investigación la considera “un sinsentido”, y dice que “clonar un toro sólo tiene un carácter sentimental”. También tiene un despiece para citar la clonación del bucardo, una cabra pirenaica que se extinguió en el 2000 y los científicos lograron revivir por clonación en 2003. El becerro murió a los pocos días. La segunda nota, de Carmen Morán, da más información sobre el proceso seguido por los investigadores.

En El Mundo, la nota de Teresa Guerrero incluye un video de Got y la rueda de prensa con el responsable de su nacimiento. Su nota presenta muy bien los mismos detalles de Got, y añade que el equipo es joven con mucha mayor presencia femenina, y se siente satisfecho por el trabajo durísimo que ha significado clonar a Got y Glass. Empezaron intentando clonar el lince ibérico, pero desistieron por complicado.

Público: “Got: una esperanza contra la extinción animal” resume muy bien el principal sentido de este experimento: la preservación de animales de gran valor genético. También incluye video.

Actualizaremos este post si en las próximas horas alguien se desmarca ofreciendo más información científica sobre el proceso, los problemas de desarrollo que podrían tener Got o Glass, aborda la parte ética, o incorpora una visión que merezca ser destacada.

- Pere Estupinyà

Does the LHC matter? It does for those who think about its opposite. Several outlets yesterday and today are reporting that another big but not humongous particle collider is delivering signs that the universe favors matter over anti-matter. It’d be unrealistic to expect this to garner front page news, but in fact it did yesterday.

The New York Times‘s Dennis Overbye got it fronted – where I saw it, meant to track it with the rest of the news in the Science Times section, and – uh, I forgot is what. I don’t know why he calls anti-matter the evil twin of matter. If that evil twin had predominated then the universe might have still have had complicated enough chemistry and stars and planets to have beings somewhere who’d call OUR kind of matter the anti-matter. I guess he means it would be an evil twin if the two had fought to a draw and all we had in the universe were a few refugee baryons and a whole mess of scattering photons.

The news is that from Fermilab come data sure to inform experiments at CERN as the LHC ramps up its power. It appears that the Tevatron machine is giving hints that when matter is annihilated into a fireball, some of the particles that congeal are in a ratio slightly favoring matter over antimatter. To be precise, more muons by a hair than anti-muons. Overbye writes it with his usual grace and clarity and with opinions from and references to physicists of lofty reputation.

It’s just as well this missed the track yesterday. It gives time to find a few other outlets with the same or similar news”

• Space.com (via Christian Science Monitor): Particle accelerator says matter wins ;
• MSNBC / Cosmic Log: Alan Boyle: Answers to Scientific Riddles ; An item among several ;
• Ars Technica – John Timmer: Fermi’s Tevatron finds another bias against antimatter ;
• BBC – Paul Rincon: New clue to anti-matter mystery ;

Grist for the Mill: DOE Fermilab Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

An enterprise story is not always a scoop.  One that splits that difference is on the AP wire now  from Alicia Chang, who describes in detail and lively style the latest plan by planetary specialists to have NASA and the European Space Agency jointly fetch them some dirt from Mars for a close look here on Earth.

I particularly salute the casual lead and the conversational “now what?” question in the second graf. The story provides info I had not heard before, and seems not to be inspired primarily by or regurgitated from a press release or other NASA-ESA p.r. push.

She contacted several of the right people for this story including, resourcefully, a Scripps scientist in San Diego, Jeff Bada, who is among the better authorities on how life might have arisen here, and on Mars too. She threw effort and initiative into here reporting. A look around finds, no surprise really, that the specialty press that dogs space events closely has provided much the same material. Exclusive, investigative stories are the best expressions of muscular journalism – but catch-ups, well reported, well-told, and delivered to people who hadn’t heard it the first time, that’s good journalism too.

Other, earlier stories: ( late April, very early May)

• Spaceflight Now – Stephen Clark : Making a Mars sample return more affordable ; Includes one of the sources Chang used; filed from an astrobiology conference in Houston.
• Aviation Week – Jefferson Morris : Astrobiology Heavy Factor in Decadal Survey ;  A trade pub laundry list story, listing items on the missions dearest to planetary science’s collective heart. Including a Mars sample return.
• Science News (via USNews & World Report) – Ron Cowen: Mediterranean Microfossils Offer Hope for Finding Life on Mars / Discovery on Earth suggests possibility of similar signs of life on the Red Planet ; Another roundup triggered by the astrobiology mtg in Houston, including nascent plans for an international, three-part sample return project.

And, in the Dept. of Nothing-Too-Stupid/Exaggerated/HarHar-for-Us-to-Write-It-Anyway Journalism:

• Sun (UK): NASA: Evidence of Life on Mars ;    Ooops. It’s gone. It won’t load. The flavor of this unbelievable discovery of proof of Martian microbes can be seen in an apparent light rewrite of it at the Times of India, where I happened up on it first: ‘Compelling’ evidence of life on Mars: NASA. This arose from the same meeting in Houston reported in a few of the stories linked above, including that from Science News. As seen in the next bullet, NASA  rose to the Sun’s bait. It bothered to issue an official rebuke…
• Space.com (via Christian Sci. Monitor) Clara Moskowitz: British tabloid finds life on Mars. NASA disagrees.

- Charlie Petit

It’s the same few video clips running, or perhaps one should say looping, on the broadcast news and spinning virally through the web. A broken pipe and an ugly boil of reddish brown fossil crud cascading upward into the sea. But this is not as misleading as showing the one building in a city that fell down in an earthquake over and over – that petroleated python is in fact writhing upward from two miles under the sea floor every second, every day. Whether it is 5000 or 40,000 barrels per day, it is powerfully disturbing.

Among the new terms that the news-following public has suddenly learned, like a remote hamlet name in some war torn land that becomes a household word for its pivotal role in the fate of a faraway nation, is “loop current.” It also is like a snake. It winds north from the Caribbean, through the Yucatan Strait and around Cuba’s western side, then southeasterly  along Lousiana and Mississippi to pivot at Florida’s southern tip through the Keys and then take a northerly debouch into the mid-Atlantic. It seems already to be entraining oil. Whether by the time this stinking load reaches Florida the formerly safely subterranean muck will still be highly toxic, or mostly just icky and dispersed tarballs that nature can handle within a year or so with no ecosystem ruined, is not clear. But it is among the petro-disaster topics of the day. As seen in this photo from NASA’s Earth Observatory site, a dramatic tendril, like a river, is being drawn south toward the current’s locale.

Loop Current Stories:

• E&E Greenwire (via NYTimes) – Paul Voosen: NOAA: Oil Tendril ‘Likely’ Headed Into Loop Current ; It’s just a “thin stem,” evoking a vine’s tendril reaching toward a new branch to climb, is says here, but the fragmenting oil patch is certain to get into the current. He used the right term too: “entrained.” This is solid news writing with qualifications and howevers well placed throughout. And he makes a nice simile to a freeway with overpasses, exits, and clover loops.
• National Geographic – Christine Dell’Amore: Gulf Oil Is in the Loop Current, Experts Say / Satellite pictures show oil snared by an eddy ; Another reasonable story, tinged by the threat, scandal and sadness of the spill, but also qualified with uncertainty. Plus, somebody numerate wrote or edited this dimensional couplet: “..the current travels about 50 to 100 miles (80 to 160 kim) a day…” Nobody there robotically converted two-significant-figure accuracy into something reminiscent of pi.
• Christian Science Monitor – Mark Guarino: Gulf oil spill targets Florida beaches as it nears loop current ;
• Houston Chronicle – Matthew Tresaugue: Oil Reaches Marshland, may hit Keys ;

Grist for the Mill: European Space Agency Press Release ;

Just wondering. The instinct is to report any change in the spill or any new movement by it as bad news. Is it not possible, as a thought experiment that may merit reporting, that this loop current is just what we need about now. It’s like a hose washing part of the spill into the vastness of the Atlantic. Aren’t there upsides to that? Or is the Sargasso Sea now at risk? If the current doesn’t wash much of the oil onshore but just ferries it mostly around Florida while it continues to oxidize and get munched by microbes – is that worse than having it circulate and sink in the Gulf?

And I’m still waiting for somebody to explain whether this oil strike of BP’s was a big new field, or what? They went out exploring and found oil. Then it blew up. But what about the first half of that – the finding part. Was that interesting? One guesses no, and that the US still hasn’t enough reserves to make any difference to global warming or our dependence on imports. But the question remains.

Meanwhile, one outlet is still leading the media pack in its  independent analysis of the quantity of oil coming from the ruined well pipe:

• NPR – Richard Harris: New Video Could Provide More Answers On Oil Spill ; The breathlessly terse tone of the first scoop is not seen in this piece, following the report last Friday on NPR’s independently commissioned analysis of the gout’s size. This one settles into a calm recitation of the uncertainties of trying to measure it. Harris notes   BP’s insistence on sticking with its original 5000 barrel per day guesstimate, despite persuasive evidence that whatever the true figure is, it’s not that low. Why? Liability payout size may be involved, he reports.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Here is the Spanish lang tracker’s  personal view following the EU- Media For Science Forum in Madrid last May 12-13. You all know what these gatherings are, and the kind of discussions you can expect. But good organization and a nicely equilibrated program provided a few new faces and discussions. The blogging vs journalism issue was one of the most argued. We could see clear signs of strong agreement and worry over a future no-competence scenario: In the XXIst century, the role of the science journalist –using a blog or not- is so important that it must not be endangered by any media reshaping or web 2.0 new tools. The discussion about the role of public opinions and online scientific debate had also some interesting controversies. Some speakers showed tools to encourage it, and to even incorporate it as a part of the information itself. Others feared that this could distort the scientific consensus and create more confusion. In general, the science editors showed cautious optimism. One good sign is the high acceptance of their stories in online papers. Institutional European news services were presented. Also indicators of the public perception of science. But Europeans (and for sure Spaniards) are not usually talk so open and direct about business and monetary issues. Although none of the attendees needed to be convinced, we talked more about the social relevance of science communication than about new strategies to directly help professionals and media to increase and improve their scientific coverage. This is quite important when one thinks  about (and the Spanish lang media do) the local and international initiatives paying serious attention to the lack of professional science journalism in regions of Latin America. What we are seeing now is a kind of bottleneck. The editors have good cv’s from writers and emails full of proposals, but no pages for science. Thinking on upcoming events in LA, this is one of the issues we should address more openly.

Algunos científicos se quejan de cómo los periodistas resumen sus trabajos, pero también muchas veces otros alaban la capacidad de sintetizar y presentar de manera directa los argumentos principales sobre un tema cuando ellos no hacen más que perderse en detalles. No somos tan diferentes, pues la situación inversa se plantea cuando nosotros le damos vueltas y vueltas al futuro incierto del periodismo científico, el rol de la web 2.0, los inconvenientes de los embargos, el perfil ideal de un comunicador científico… los matices nos confunden, y en ocasiones no nos dejan avanzar.

Uno de los ejes más debatidos en el Media For Science Forum que se celebró en Madrid el pasado 12 y 13 de mayo fue el rol de los blogs y nuevas herramientas de Internet como posible amenaza al periodismo científico. ¿Amenaza? ¿Cómo van a ser una amenaza!?¿os imagináis en este científicamente vibrante siglo XXI algún medio de comunicación que pretenda ser serio y no ofrezca un análisis riguroso de las noticias científicas que van sucediendo? Lo primero es no diferenciar la crisis –o momento cambiante- del periodismo general con el científico. Si el primero se reinventa y sobrevive –y sin duda lo hará- el segundo le seguirá sin problemas. Porque de hecho, la ciencia sale bien parada del fenómeno Internet. En su presentación Pablo Jáuregui, redactor jefe de la sección de ciencia de El Mundo, lanzó un mensaje optimista asegurando que la ciencia cada vez importaba más a la población. Ejemplo de ello era que en la web de su periódico las noticias científicas solían estar siempre entre las más leídas. Otra muestra de esperanza es que un periódico joven como Público tenga hasta 6 páginas diarias destinadas a ciencia en su versión impresa, y 10 periodistas científicos a su cargo, como explicó su redactora jefe Patricia Fernández de Lis. Quizás los medios más antiguos arrastren rémoras de un pasado en el que la ciencia tenía menos relevancia y les cueste más ir ganando espacio. Pero si la ciencia, tecnología, salud, y medioambiente van a estar cada vez más presentes en nuestra sociedad, por fuerza también van a estarlo en los medios. ¿Buscarán los lectores de Internet su información científica en otras fuentes, tipo blogs? Claro; ya lo están haciendo. Hay blogs de especialistas que son mucho mejores que ciertos artículos de periodistas. Pero esto no es ninguna amenaza. Hay espacio para todos. Javier Pedreira, blogger de Microsiervos (uno de los más seguidos de España) defendió el rol de los blogs; pero también manifestó un claro convencimiento que el periodista científico tiene un papel fundamental con su manera de trabajar la información. “La batalla por dar la noticia el primero ya no tiene sentido, ni el periódico en papel tiene que contar las noticias que ya aparecen en todos los sitios”, dijo; la distinción está en hacer un trabajo con más recursos y mejor elaborado. Ésta es la clave. Viola Egikoval, la directora de la sección de ciencia del diario ruso Moskowskaya Pravda atacó ferozmente a los blogs acusándoles de competencia y diciendo que no son periodismo. Aquí volvemos a perder el norte. Periodismo o no, son las palabras que se escriben. Los blogs son una herramienta, no un contenido. Hay blogs de mejor calidad periodística que notas convencionales. Y de hecho, es un formato que perfectamente puede integrarse a las secciones científicas como una manera diferente –pero igual de rigurosa- de transmitir la información. Si está escrito por un profesional bien pagado por ello, y al amparo de un medio que responde de los contenidos que publica en su web, será un blog periodístico sin duda. ¿Y los blogs o portales no acogidos por un medio? Poquísimos van a ganar la confianza del lector mayoritario. Y aquellos que lo consigan, pueden incluso representar una presión positiva para que los periodistas vayan mejorando su tratamiento de la información. ¿Y si llegan a ser más leídos? Pues si un blogger consigue ganarse su sueldo haciendo el trabajo de revisar la actualidad, contrastar información, generar contexto y elaborar notas de manera comprensiva e interesante como debería hacer un medio convencional, pues él se habrá convertido en periodista científico. Uno más en la familia; nada de crisis.

Cierto que si nos alejamos de Internet en panorama se oscurece un poco. El propio Pablo Jáuregui reconoció que en la versión impresa disponían de –en proporción- menor espacio. Además, el medio más masivo –la televisión- continúa dando la espalda a la ciencia. Pablo Francescutti de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid presentó un estudio mostrando que las noticias de ciencia representan un insignificante 1.1% del total en los informativos, y suelen versar sobre temas tecnológicos o del espacio. ¿por qué? imágenes. Éste es un tema carente en el Foro y que debería abordarse de una vez en alguna de estas reuniones. ¿cuál es el verdadero reto actual de la comunicación científica? No es dar información de mejor calidad al lector interesado y que ya sabe dónde buscarla (que también), sino llegar a ese amplísimo sector de la población que está profundamente desconectado de la ciencia y nunca irá a visitar de manera activa ninguno de los fabulosos portales que se están subvencionando. Para llegar a él la televisión es un excelente medio. Pero para ello hace falta ofrecer imágenes que reflejen las investigaciones y sean atractivas para televisión. Aquí –y porque online ocurre lo mismo- es donde deberíamos estrujar más nuestra creatividad y buscar fórmulas originales. Y saber jugar con el entretenimiento, aunque el paleontólogo Juan Luís Arsuaga declarara que “la ciencia no tiene que entretener. La ciencia tiene que ser interesante”. Entendemos el punto que quiere transmitir, y lo compartimos, aunque no de manera literal ni en todos los formatos.

¿Podemos conseguir todo esto solos? El aspecto de la financiación es otro que se debería haber abordado de manera más enérgica en el encuentro. Sea con fondos públicos o filantrópicos, ofrecer un periodismo científico de calidad que tenga una función social positiva no puede dejarse en manos del mercado de la información. Requiere apoyo. Y cuanto más directo, mejor. Éste es un tema muy importante en Latinoamérica, donde están emergiendo varias iniciativas locales y de organismos internacionales decididas a apoyar económicamente la gran oportunidad de mejora del periodismo científico que existe en algunos países. De nuevo, aquí es donde debemos buscar fórmulas originales de financiación que eviten los habituales rodeos y se dirijan de manera directa a generar más y mejor información sin comprometer la objetividad. En algún momento del congreso se dijo –refiriéndose a España-, que faltaba más formación de profesionales. Falso. Nunca está de más, claro, pero éste no es el cuello de botella. Ni hay carencia en número de notas ofrecidas por gabinetes de comunicación de universidades y servicios de noticias. Como dijo el periodista polaco Slawomir Zagorski, ya hay mucho donde elegir, añadiendo que le irrita que los gabinetes de prensa escriban sus notas como si fueran textos periodísticos fáciles de copiar y pegar, o espectacularizando los titulares. Ver qué es importante o no y cómo debe ser presentado es su trabajo. Y es muy importante! Porque en unos momentos en que la ciencia está abandonando la pureza que quizás alguna vez tuvo, con una alta mediocridad de artículos de científicos que se juegan su futuro publicando papers, centros de investigación –por lo menos en Estados Unidos- percibiendo la comunicación como parte de su marketing, y sobre todo una irrupción cada vez mayor de la ciencia en la vida cotidiana, la figura del periodista científico especializado es básica para el siglo XXI. Y no puede ser sustituida por aficionados. Pero a lo que íbamos… quizás no en algunas partes de Latinoamérica, pero en otras los eslabones intermedios de la cadena funcionan a un ritmo bueno, y el cuello de botella que se debe ayudar a desatascar es al último, al profesional o medio que en última instancia tiene la función de hacer llegar todas estas informaciones al público. Ante los futuros talleres o congresos venideros en Latinoamérica, no nos olvidemos de ello, y no perdamos mucho tiempo discutiendo sobre el perfil ideal del comunicador.

No malinterpretemos; resultó muy provechoso conocer el funcionamiento de plataformas de información científica que hacen un gran trabajo con escasos recursos representadas por Philippe Lebaube de Cordis; Sonia López de AlphaGalileo; Patrick Bierther de IdW; Ingemar Björklund de Expertanswer; Kathleen Van Damme de AthenaWeb; y Laura Corcuera del Servicio de Información y Noticias Científicas (SINC), pero no olvidemos que no son quienes en última instancia hacen llegar la ciencia a la sociedad. De nuevo pensando en las regiones donde hay más trabajo a realizar, sirve de poco que el editor tenga curriculums en el cajón y su mail lleno de propuestas interesantes, si luego su director económico le dice que no sale a cuenta invertir en más espacio para ciencia. En este sentido, escuchar a responsables de decidir el destino de las ayudas públicas y conocer qué proyectos priorizan hubiera sido un elemento interesante del encuentro. Nos faltan un poquito de agallas, y muestra de ello fue que el encuentro lo despidieran dos cargos políticos sin mensaje.

Hubo muchas más reflexiones en el congreso. Volvió a salir el “problema” del embargo y la homogenización de la información. Entrecomillado, porque a pesar de conllevar inconvenientes, sin duda el embargo aumenta los estándares, es de enorme utilidad para las regiones donde el periodismo científico no está tan bien asentado, y para aquellas que presuntamente lo esté, es lo que va a distinguir a los profesionales que sean capaces de ofrecer más que el resto. Otro tema que apareció y quedó abierto para más discusión es el valor de la opinión del público y la importancia de promover el debate. Alexander Gerber, director de INNOCOMM presentó herramientas muy novedosas para favorecer la participación del público e incorporarla a la propia información. Es complicado, porque últimamente hemos visto muchos casos –el más paradigmótico el cambio climático- donde esta maraña de opiniones con más o menos fundamento termina desvirtuando los propios resultados científicos. Quizás en esta última línea el científico Luís Serrano advirtió que los investigadores debía trabajar – sólo en algunos aspectos- libres de lo que pudieran pensar los ciudadanos. Lógico también, el enfoque de Gerber parece que tendrá continuidad en conversaciones futuras.

Pero para despedir también con optimismo este resumen parcial, atropellado, decantado al mundo del periodismo, y en busca de una cierta provocación que ha realizado el tracker a partir de sus notas, impresiones compartidas, el completo blog del Media For Science Forum (posts en inglés y español), y el documento meta-review sobre comunicación y periodismo científico dirigido por Vladimir de Semir, recordemos la pasión e ilusión que desprendía el experimentadísimo Tim Radford de The Guardian cuando contagiaba su satisfacción por “estar trabajando en una profesión tan bonita e interesante”. Que no se nos olvide.

- Pere Estupinyà