Just a final tip before closing shop for the day. At the Washington Post Rachel Saslow has asked a somewhat random selection of known-scientists, engineers, inventors, and the like for their fave reading. Some familiar titles, some not, a little heavy on sci-fi, but plenty for all the kinds of tastes that tend to bring people to this site. Definitely some beach reading here.

- Charlie Petit

I just discovered at the NYTimes one source of good reading I had not known  and did so via one of its contributor’s final missives. It’s at the Opinionator on line-only site. Evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson is also an experienced writer and journalist. Her final posting before a sabbatical she’s taking is an accounting of how she develops and worries over topics to write on. She includes glimpses of her research and note-to-self filing and organizing system. A lot of us will recognize a few of her habits as our own, and perhaps pick up a few new ones.

A compilation of her past posts. Includes one on beer, hence the pic.

- Charlie Petit

Animal rescue stories are about the only way for reporters to cover the ongoing BP gulf oil spill and give readers something to feel at all good about. People do care – even if washing the oil off those birds saves few of them, rescuers will keep doing it. Ju-u-u-st …  because. So word that tens of thousands of turtle eggs, now incubating in beach nests where clotted oil swirls in the water, will be dug up is a natural news item. Workers will take them, reportedly, to Cape Canaveral for further incubation in properly warm and humid conditions, then set the hatchlings free far from the spill.

Media seem to be reporting the story with reasonable care, including the downside of the plan to go with its inevitable awwww-cute-baby angle. Turtle eggs don’t take to handling well. But chances are high for a near-total year-class wipeout if they are left where their mothers, mostly loggerheads,  put them. The move is going forward with coordination from the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies.

Less well reported, with exception noted below, is how well the turtles might fare in the long run by being let go so far from normal nesting areas.

Stories:

• AP – Brian Skoloff: Some 70,000 turtle eggs to be whisked far from oil. One quibble – no whisking allowed. Says right here one must avoid turning them over or jostling them much.
• Reuters – Steve Gorman: Plan hatched to move turtle eggs from oil spill ; Gorman reports this is not just unusual, but unprecedented.
• BBC – Turtle egg rescue plan announced ;
• Alabama Press-Register – Ryan Dezember: Wildlife officials to move thousands of sea turtle eggs to Florida’s east coast ; Kudos – there is reporting here. Dezember answers the right question. How will the baby turtles know, when they are grown and it is time to lay their own eggs, that the usual spot is along the Louisiana and Alabama shores? The answer from experts – natal imprinting – is unconvincing. But at least the topic is raised.
• CBS – Charles Cooper: Biologists Plan Massive Transfer of Turtle Eggs ;
• Miami Herald – Craig Pittman: Biologists to move sea turtle eggs east ;
• E&E Greenwire (via NYTimes) – Noelle Straub: U.S. Plans ‘Extraordinary Measures’ to Rescue Turtles Along Gulf Coast ;

On the other hand…

• Miami Herald – Curtis Morgan: Gulf of Mexico sea turtles may be burning with oil, groups plan to sue BP ; Hard to judge this piece without data, which it lacks (and says so). But one is sure the reporter let a hyperbolic quote in, from a turtle rescuer calling the possible incineration of turtles “The most inhumane thing I have ever heard…”  Are there, one wonders, any rules of thumb in journalism to avoid quotes made in haste and not, um, true? Surely the woman has heard of things as, or more, inhumane than this.

Grist for the Mill:

Deepwater Horizon Response (joint agencies) Press Release ; Plan FAQ ; Official Relocation plan from which the pic above comes ;

- Charlie Petit

A piercing report for Public Radio International‘s The World, by Marina Giovannelli, gave NPR and BBC World Service listeners this week a wrenching look at the difficult politics, ethics, and clinical application decisions that can emerge from scientific research into disease in remote and poor parts of the world.

The genetic ailment is Huntington’s Disease, just as fatal now as when it took Woody Guthrie’s life more than 40 years ago. But now, wherever modern medicine is available, a DNA test can at least tell people from families that are prone to it whether or not, as they approach middle age, they themselves will likely face its attack on their ability to control their muscles and to think sanely.

Much of the raw material to develop that test came from impoverished farming and fishing communities near Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. In many families there, the genetic defect is unusually common. The people there remember well the American researchers who gathered blood, semen, and other samples in the early 80s. Many family members are still dying in their prime years, in agony and with little medical attention. Giovannelli visited the area and talked to them. Many, perhaps most, have not heard there is a test now that can say who inherited it and who did not. The report skillfully weaves their predicament with the accusations from some quarters of scientific ingratitude and ethical lapses that kept the fruits of study of their genes from them. It notably includes the reply by the noted American researcher Nancy Wexler. Her own family is prone to Huntington’s.  She led the Venezuelan field testing and has returned to the villages many times. There is no doubt of her compassion for the people there. Her work has made her famous. But she resists the idea of providing costly tests in the villages (she was and is after an effective treatment, which she says she would insist be made available free to the Venezuelans).

This is enterprising reporting on a conundrum, done with sensitivity and clarity and done thoroughly. Wexler’s position does need further exploration. She is rightly celebrated for her work. She does, as the report notes, raise money for a clinic to provide care for those with the disease. She fears the diagnostic test, provided with little other counseling, is a mistake in the primitive villages. She’s not sure it would help. Others say that’s not her judgment to make.

But for the PRI team to have gone straight to the site of the sampling to see how things have changed – well done.

Pic source ;

Grist for the Mill: Nancy Wexler faculty profile, Columbia University.

- Charlie Petit

Last week we posted on the meager coverage in media – despite a substantial blogstorm – of a PNAS study that rather imprecisely but without much bias chopped climate researchers into two camps. They are doubters of anthropogenic warming as very anthropogenic or very warm,  and those who accept that substantial warming is occurring and that our greenhouse gas additions are the main reason. The study found that the latter group is far more numerous and that its members sit in more substantial chairs in the pertinent academies of learning. Do say. But it also provided, in essence, lists of people put neatly into oversimplistic bins. Some ought to be in a middle ground, or have views that cover a big too ambiguous a spectrum to fit such classification. The statistics may be robust but the who’s who not so much.

An important addition to discussion of how media handled the story, and how reporters ought to view its data bases, is Finding the Right Expert on line from Curtis Brainard at CJR’s The Observatory site.

It seemed to me that the statistical finding is unremarkable for its lack of surprise, but that to use the lists of names (via data bases the preceded the study) as a guide to which authorities can be labeled so starkly is dangerous – and journalists should use it with extreme caution. Brainard took the time for serious digestion of the study and its coverage, and its usefulness or lack thereof  to journalists seeking sensible and well-described balance in their coverage.

- Charlie Petit

Last December, I predicted that we would see a torrent of bad reporting on a forthcoming study on cell phones and cancer. In May, when the study was published, I confirmed that prediction in two posts, here and here.

And now the issue rises again. Last week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (the city council) passed an ordinance requiring cell-phone makers to disclose the amount of radiation absorbed by the heads of cell-phone users who hold the things next to their ears. Studies of the cancer risk associated with this radiation have found only sketchy evidence to support the concern. But, as often happens in science, the studies have failed to conclusively dismiss the concern.

Today Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post reports that the enactment of the law has prompted CTIA, a cell-phone industry group, to cancel future shows in San Francisco, beginning in 2011. After a few grafs recounting the news, Kang writes, “Lacking conclusive evidence one way or the other, studies relating to cellphone safety are being hurled about frenetically as cellphones grow ever more powerful and pervasive…” We’re on solid ground, so far.

Then she goes on to describe a Swedish study that found an increased risk of brain tumors in long-time cell phone users, and notes that the federal government is launching a $20 million study of cell phone safety. But as she continues to review the evidence, the story lands pretty squarely in the middle of the debate, not taking sides in the debate. It’s a good story, especially considering the potential pitfalls.

Only a few others weighed in on the reaction to the San Francisco ordinance. Not surprisingly, the San Francisco Chronicle was one of ‘em. There Andrew S. Ross, in a business story, discussed the potential impact of the law, including the estimated $80 million that San Francisco will lose because of the cancelation of the cell-phone industry conference. Ross manages to discuss the issue without making reference to the debate over the risks or using the c-word (cancer). I expected and would have welcomed a graf recapping the debate, but as it turns out, I didn’t miss it. Ross took the safe course–avoiding a short recap that might be inaccurate–and that course also proved to be the smart course.

On CNET.com, Kent German scolded the cell-phone industry for doing precisely what it accused San Francisco of doing–oversimplifying the issue. German noted that the research so far has been inconclusive, but that consumers, nevertheless, are concerned about the risks. “I hear from them every day,” he writes. “The CTIA needs to recognize that and do its best to keep consumers informed.”

Intomobile.com likewise avoided getting into the details of the debate, but seemed unhappy with the CTIA, which it said was “taking its ball and going home.” It did reassure its readers, however, that it would provide “up-to-the-minute coverage” of the conference, wherever it is held. That’s a relief.

The bottom line: Most news organizations skipped this story. Those who covered it did a reasonably good job.

- Paul Raeburn

Ford Vox crops up here at the tracker once in awhile. Put his name in the search function on our home page and see. A physician specializing in rehab, he started dabbling a few years ago in the advice doctor-writer genre. It turned into a formal sideline. He’s still at it, but with a difference. He doesn’t merely give consumers advice and warning, or interpret confusing studies. He has the soul of an investigative reporter even while pursuing his main career in clinical medicine. Take a look in the Atlantic at his two-fisted take on the cozy relationship between medical device manufacturers and orthopedic surgeons.

- Charlie Petit

The August issue of Smithsonian Magazine is not only its 40th anniversary issue, but one that has an unusual, even by Smithsonian standards, high portion of pure science-beat feature stories. It’s too long to read in one morning, but a quick dash through the table of contents reveals a consistently high-quality, high quotient of diverting, informative natural history and technology stories. It has, in addition to its table of contents, a catchall list of them  here if you don’t want to bother with my tips coming up.

Plus, a tip of the hat to Rob Irion, Santa Cruz science writer and head of the UCSC Science Communications Program, for the tip to this issue. By sheer coincidence, he has a piece in it,  Asteroid Hunters. It is on the usual: Armageddon, the end of civilization, birth of a new geologic era, and how to avoid them on our shift here on Earth. It’s a good piece: fast paced, eye-popping examples of how to spot Near Earth Objects, some that have hit us and others that may.

Want to squirm in dread and disgust? :

• Abigail Tucker: Jellyfish: The Next Kings of the Sea / As the world’s oceans are degraded, will they be dominated by jellyfish? ; Packed with detail, and the cheering word that some of these pulsating, rubbery things are pretty good to eat. And boy are there a lot of them, more all the time.  Staff writer Tucker says here that a merciful nature gave them no brains. That way they don’t know their mouths also are their anuses. That’s the only funny part in this whole story. They can sting somethin’ horrible.

Or mourn what is passing? Celebrate the new? :

• Erica R. Hendry: Five Species Most Likely to Become Extinct in the Next 40 Years ;
• Richard Coniff: Meet the New Species ; New ones are coming to the attention of science all the time  ;
• Abigail Tucker: Rising Seas Endanger Wetland Wildlife ; Written after a visit to Alligator Island in North Carolina, where the red wolves howl, the water is rising, and the the marshy land is sinking.

Or ponder how you’ll get around a carbon-constrained world?

• Joshua Hammer: Charging Ahead With a New Electric Car ; A long feature that commendably lets an entrepreneur fully explain why his battery-swapping stations will make e-cars hassle-free, and then corrals a herd of doubters who explain why his business plan may well fail. This is balanced, hard-headed reporting by somebody unsatisfied to blow it off  with a puff piece.

Or want escapist political boilerplate?

• Barack Obama: Why I’m Optimistic ; A lot of us read Dreams from my Father. Man, that gentleman could write. Then he became President. He does his duty to his office with this paean to enterprise and know-how, not to mention a hint of cavalry riding to the rescue. Incisive writing it’s not. But it gets feature billing in the intro from executive editor Terence Monmaney.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) We highlight today great reporting on five new frog species in Ecuador, the country with most amphibian density. Also, the Spanish press celebrates the new Large Hadron Collider record: doubling its particle collisions per second. Only one reporter explains that it is still far from what Tevatron at FermiLab is currently achieving. New argument from the Spanish environmentalists groups against GMO: organic crops generate more jobs. We had not heard about this till now. That’s part of a complaint than Spanish government is investing 60 times more funds in GMO research than in organic agriculture. Related to this, the possible FDA-approval of transgenic salmon for human consumption is the focus of an extensive story in Público.

Dos buenos y extensos reportajes sobre alimentos transgénicos; uno de plantas, y otro –atención- sobre el posible primer animal modificado genéticamente para el consumo humano. En El Mundo – Nadia Benyahya “El apoyo del gobierno a los transgénicos desata la polémica” reporta las quejas de grupos ecologistas de que España dedique 60 veces más presupuesto a investigar en cultivos transgénicos que en ecológicos. Lo nuevo del reportaje es que –además de los habituales argumentos sobre salud, contaminación ambiental, e independencia empresarial- aparece un nuevo elemento en escena: los defensores de la agricultura ecológica aseguran que genera un 25% más de empleo, y en un momento de crisis económica se debería apostar por investigar en ella. Rebuscado, quizá. La visión de la industria –que muy bien pondera en todo momento el artículo- es clara: la tecnología transgénica requiere una investigación más avanzada que la ecológica pendiente de mantener el status quo. Con las discusiones sobre si se terminan utilizando menos pesticidas o más, o si las evaluaciones de impacto europeas son objetivas o están manipuladas, uno confirma que en el debate genérico –y cobertura periodística- sobre transgénicos, deberíamos avanzar hacia el análisis de casos específicos. El “¿si o no?” radical ya no tiene sentido.

Público presenta un buen texto de Manuel Asende “Marchando una de salmón transgénico” sobre la prevista aprobación por la agencia estadounidense FDA del primer animal transgénico dirigido al consumo humano: un salmón que crece el doble de rápido. La noticia sería importante, pues sentaría un precedente tanto en EEUU como en el resto del mundo. En el caso específico del salmón, la modificación consiste en insertar un gen de la especie salmón real (que crece más rápido porque produce más hormona de crecimiento) en los salmones atlánticos propios de piscifactoría. De esta manera, en un año y medio alcanzan el tamaño que antes conseguían en 3 años. Y según la empresa, sin cambiar características ni afectar al consumo humano. Eso último es lo que va a valorar la FDA. Más allá de la salud, la controversia es acerca de los efectos que puede causar en los ecosistemas la fuga de este tipo de peces, que según estudios se reproducirían más rápido. La empresa asegura que serán sólo venderá huevos que producirán individuos estériles, con lo que se elimina el problema. Veremos más reacciones si finalmente se aprueba. De todas maneras,  el artículo matiza que en realidad no se trataría del primer pescado transgénico para consumo, pues en Cuba ya han desarrollado tilapias.

Como noticia del día, varios medios celebran con entusiasmo el nuevo record del LHC de duplicar las colisiones de partículas y alcanzar las 10.000 por segundo (¿algún día dejaremos de hacer referencias constantes a Dios -ABC?). En Público, Nuño Domínguez es el único que matiza que el estadounidense Tevatrón todavía está generando 1.000 veces más colisiones que el LHC.

Otra noticia del día en España tiene como fuente SINC, sobre la supuesta igual fiabilidad para identificar cadáveres de la dentadura como las pruebas de ADN. Supuesta, porque para ser efectiva debería mapear nuestras dentaduras constantemente (van cambiando) para poder ser comparadas cuando se necesiten. Avance e investigación original sin duda, pero no vemos cómo podría llegar a ponerse en práctica salvo en casos muy concretos.

Saltando drásticamente de tercio, vamos a El Universo (Ecuador) donde nos llamó la atención la nota de Gabriela Jiménez “Cinco ranas se suman a la numerosa familia anfibia ecuatoriana”. Ecuador cuenta con la mayor densidad de anfibios por kilómetro cuadrado; una riqueza a proteger. Y para hacerlo; buen periodismo científico es de gran utilidad. Nos sorprendió gratamente el detallado texto de Gabriela describiendo las características de las  nuevas especies identificadas. Una –por ejemplo- tan diminuta que hasta ver que se estaba apareando los investigadores pensaban que era un individuo joven, y otra que pone como máximo 5 huevos por nido y de ellos no nacen renacuajos sino ranitas ya formadas. Destacar también la galería de fotos del artículo.

El 10º aniversario del primer borrador del genoma humano finalmente pasó con más pena que gloria, pero destacamos dos trabajos. Uno en El Colombiano por parte de Ramiro Vázquez por el dinamismo de sus textos, la visión crítica con los tests genéticos actuales, y el anuncio (no detallado en su nota) que una encuesta en Medellín asegura que la mayoría de gente querría conocer su genoma. En El Universal (México) Guillermo Cárdenas también se muestra crítico con los temas éticos pendientes del genoma. Sí, seguro que las expectativas en su momento fueron demasiado optimistas. Pero no nos alejemos demasiado de los genes; entre alimentos transgénicos, biología sintética, genética del cáncer… , la cobertura periodística sobre ellos va a continuar aumentando.

- Pere Estupinyà

It’s just me, I concede. Today’s Science Times is not my cup of tea. The back of the book topics, domains of the health and behavior writers, get the run of the place today. At one time, years ago, I was an all-around science writer, hitting to all fields from astronomy to asthma (oops, false range there). I gradually stopped doing medicine, lying low when JAMA or NEJM arrived. All those fuzzy numbers, anecdotes trumping epidemiology, tragedy and hope and no hope and a readership that understandably reacted with heartbreaking demands upon news that seemed hardly any genuine news at all. I’m just a hardware, gadget, archeology, evolution, physics, astronomy, earth science etc. kind of guy.

So, to start myself off in a good mood, here are a few that are from other fields of science, and which do hit my sweet spots:

• Cornelia Dean : BOOKS ON SCIENCE / When the Day After Tomorrow Has Come; A sensible scoot through books on geoengineering from a reporter who knows quite a bit on the topic herself. And quite a range of authors incl. Eli Kintisch (of Science), Roger Pielke Jr. of U. Colorado (with his punctilious, even-handed way of worrying about climate that some find irritating); and a few other scholars.
• John Markoff: Team’s Work Uses a Virus to Convert Methane to Ethylene ; Nifty tale for those who enjoy the wizardry of nano-bio-chemical-process engineering. The gene-jiggered viruses, by the way, don’t to the converting. They are semi-living substrates, weaving upon themselves a wondrously great acreage of catalysts that does it.

The Health and Behavior Lineup, Sampled:

• Denise Grady : From M.S. Patients, Outcry for Surgery / Vein-Opening Procedure Attracts Adherents, Though Theory Is Unproven ; Not only unproven, but the procedure comes nearly  devoid of documentation – that is, barely registering above status as interesting idea. And how do YOU regard chelation therapy and laetrile? Grady reports a very iffy procedure’s plausibility – it is plausible, pending powerful blinded, controlled studies with convincing evidence one way or the other. She’s sympathetic to the passion of the popular lobby for this method. The result is no result – journalism that informs on medical science and its ponderous ways, but won’t change anything and to me only frustrates.
• John Tierney: Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind: Tierney’s best, as here,  when he’s not distracted by this or that episode of what he perceives as political correctness. He writes an essay, with reporting, on the generally useful tendency of human minds to drift and daydream even when ostensibly focussing on something more important. I’m betting most readers of this site, tending toward those accustomed to editors and wordplay, will guess the answer to JT’s puzzle right off, and spot instantly his deliberate grammar tomfoolery deeper into it.
• Abigail Zuger, M.D.: BOOKS / Compelling Stories, If Not Literature ; Poor Dr. Zuger. She identifies with writers reminiscing on their encounters with disease. Often heartbreaking ones. So she tries to break it to them with no hurt feelings: most of them can’t write worth a dime. Great stories. Crummy on narrative, spark, cleverness, or ability to evade cliche. But she likes’em. But most can’t write. But she likes ‘em. But ….
• Shannon Gulliver, M.D. : CASES / Doctor, Please Carve Out the Time to Heal Thyself ; Written straight, but deeply funny – a compendium of absurdly rare ailments that usually tie to something dire, and that doctors confess to having gotten and, usually, gotten over.
• Tara Parker-Pope: Seeking to Pre-empt Marital Strife / Researchers are reaching out to couples – sometimes online ;

As usual, lots more: whole section here (sci) and here (health).

Elsewhere in NYTimes and that could’ve gone in ScienceTimes:

• William J. Broad, Kenneth Chang: Obama Reverses Bush’s Space Policy ; No, not the one about going to back to the Moon anytime real soon. This is about treaties and int’l cooperation generally.
• Gardiner Harris: Antibiotics in Animals Need Limits, F.D.A. Says ; It’s about evolution, with a good line about people in cowboy hats.
• Henry Fountain: BP Discussing a Backup Strategy to Contain Oil ; What if the relief well doesn’t relieve?

- Charlie Petit

As Chief Tracker Petit noted in his Science Times post today, medical stories are not his favorite. He gamely commented on the medical stories that made up almost all of today’s SciTimes, and he invited me to do the same, knowing that these stories are among my favorites.

I started with John Tierney‘s piece on wandering minds. I’m not sure it quite delivers on the headline: “Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind.” The piece seems mostly concerned with establishing that our minds do wander, something that doesn’t come as a huge surprise, at least to this easily distracted critic. When Tierney comes to explaining the virtues of mind-wandering, he quotes a researcher saying, “People assume mind wandering is a bad thing, but if we couldn’t do it during a boring task, life would be horrible. Imagine if you couldn’t escape mentally from a traffic jam.” Sorry; that’s not science. That’s a scientist expressing an obvious opinion; something any of us could have said. Other astute observation in this piece include this: When readers aren’t aware of their own wandering minds, that’s “a condition known in the psychological literature as ‘zoning out.’” Dude, that’s what we called it in college. This piece was a waste of my time. Besides, any time I’m reading Tierney, I am on the lookout for some overt or veiled libertarian view. I’m never quite sure what to believe.

Denise Grady walks us through an unproven treatment for multiple sclerosis that discards the notion that MS is an auto-immune disease and instead says it’s caused by narrow veins in the neck. A surgeon is now opening those veins with a technique he calls the “liberation procedure.” If that weren’t a bad enough choice of words, some of the advocates of this new procedure are promoting it though a group they call “The Reformed Multiple Sclerosis Society.” Yeah, I know–it sounds like a religion to me, too. Grady raises all the right questions, but her piece will undoubtedly cause thousands of people with multiple sclerosis who hadn’t heard of this treatment to seek it out. So did this story help or hurt them? Until this treatment is proven or disproven, it’s impossible to know. I’m skeptical.

Tara Parker-Pope, in “Seeking to Pre-empt Marital Strife,” tells us that “only” 19 percent of currently married couples have had marriage counseling. Only? To anyone outside of New York City, the idea that one in five couples has had marriage counseling might sound like a lot. She further notes a recent study finding that only half of couples who received marital therapy reported long-lasting improvements in their marriages. Do we have any reason to think that the marital “checkups” she’s writing about would be any better? One study found that half the couples did better, no matter which of two therapies they received. Is a 50 percent chance of success worth the cost and travail of therapy? Again, it’s hard to know whether this story gives readers something useful, or not.

The most interesting and useful medical story in the section was the very last one, on page 7. (It’s completely buried on the web.) Gardiner Harris reports on new research on the heart risks associated with the diabetes drug Avandia. It’s a straightforward news story on two just-released studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Others covered this story, too, and if you or anyone in your family is taking Avandia, you must read Harris’s story–or somebody’s story. In my view, this is the story that should have led the section.

- Paul Raeburn

Here’s an answer to the accusation, heard once in awhile by science journalists, that we practically never report on the way typical science is done – long hours, meandering paths, blind alleys, stubborn diligence,  and more perspiration than inspiration. And sometimes a payoff. The answer is in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Tom Avril’s  story out today, “Fruit fly genes yielding clues to a deadly disease.”

And the answer is that such ambitious stories do get written. But not often. They are hard work, and have their pitfalls.

Four years ago, it says here, the Inquirer (Avril, namely) started following a Penn graduate student, her professor, and their inquiry into the genetics of fruit flies carrying a mutation on a gene that has an analog in people (and other vertebrates presumably) linked to such neurological disorders as ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

The upside here is that the research has gotten somewhere, has found surprises, and may have big repercussions in human health.

One downside is that Avril now knows so much about the details that he must use the most terse form of short, declarative sentences to lightly mention enough detail to hold its meandering path together. The result is a breathless, jumpy pace. Another is that, while we’ve learned about genes that scramble eyes in Drosophila and that cause ALS and similar diseases in people, it may be years or decades before any clinical outcome to this research – and even the persistent Avril surely doesn’t want to wait that long to write something.

One must salute the integrity that it takes to get this done. It strikes me as overambitious in its effort to capture the full sweep of this young researcher’s coming of age as a fully fledged scientist. But it is also difficult to see how it could be whacked down to a narrower, coherent whole – and easy also to see that it is better to write something on this, than nothing.

And this is exemplifies why one doesn’t see, outside books or the occasional very long magazine article, profiles of science as it most typically occurs. A few readers will snooze, or wonder why they’re reading all this. In all likelihood, however, a few bright young persons will see this and think: that’s the kind of job I want (and buckled down on their homework).

- Charlie Petit