World War Two balloon bomb carried on high altitude winds Photo by Associated Press, 1942

A neat combination of war history and weather science can be found today in Anthony Wood’s piece in the Phila. Inquirer. It recounts the story of Japanese scientist OOishi Wasaburo and his discovery of high altitude winds we now call the jet streams—6 to 9 miles up and a couple of hundred miles an hour. He discovered the fast winds in a series of 1,228 observations during 1923 to 1925. The bad news was that the winds were weaponized when the Japanese made balloons to carry bombs from the Pacific over North America, intended to detonate in the Pacific Northwest. The good news is most of the 9,000 bombs failed. It was also discovered that the high winds can be wildly unpredicatable, as bits of balloon were found from Mexico to Alaska. It’s a good read; didn’t see this story anywhere else.

–Phil Hilts

Socks with silver nanoparticles as antibacterial (image:Domani/Stock.XCHNG

I’ve been curious for some time about the use of antibacterials in soap and now, in many other products. Like socks.

In soap, it appears that the evidence suggests the antibacterial additives, such as triclosan (being reviewed by FDA), aren’t better than regular soap and water in defeating bacteria and viruses. So then the question is, if they are not better, maybe they are worse. Do they have any negative effects in the environment? Seems possible.

New Scientist‘s Helen Knight reported Friday on a study that shows some possible negative effects of using silver nanoparticles as an antibacterial. They are said to be on the market already in a variety of products from “odour-free” socks to wound-healing bandages. The study at Duke University by chemist Benjamin Colman suggests that after two months, tubs of plants outdoors with soil dosed at 55 micrograms per gram of “sludge” added to soil had a much lower population of microbes than controls. And I was surprised to read that they found the level of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, given off in the tub was four times higher than in control tubs. The work also showed that lab experiments and outdoor experiments came up with different results, suggesting maybe lab results might not be a good guide. It’s very early to say, but killing bacteria, fungi and viruses more effectively, or differently, doesn’t immediately sound like an easy fix without consequences. To eliminate odor from socks? Hmmm.

The study was reported at the meeting of the Ecological Society of America at its 95th meeting last week.

Here’s a story last year from Redorbit saying the silver particles wash off socks and into the environment. And one from Discover that says Zebrafish might not take too well to silver particles.

Grist for the Mill: Ecological Society of America Press Release about this study and others.

—Phil Hilts

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Great satisfaction today when observing the fair amount of scientific local stories in Argentinean press during the weekend: In 2013 Argentina will have the first satellite launcher in Latin America. A study shows that 18% of Buenos Aires citizens suffer regularly from psychotic symptoms. A biologist presents a extensive guide of edible weeds assuring that some have even better nutritional properties than most of the vegetables we find in the market. An interesting story about the Argentinean Human Brain Bank, a great job deciphering the neurobiological basis of why we can’t forget emotionally intense events, and a story showing the decrease of heart disease in Uruguay after 3 years of intense political work against smoking. Related to this, in Spain we find a good article about a Lancet paper worrying than cancer rates are increasing fast in developing nations, but there is a huge lack of prevention campaigns and drug distribution.

El conocimiento científico es global. Pero algo que solemos intentar estimular en el tracker es una mayor cobertura de asuntos científicos locales, para potenciar la ciencia propia, dar a conocerla a nuestra comunidad, y evitar esta cierta dependencia de las publicaciones de origen anglosajón.

Por eso nos agradada visitar hoy las páginas de La Nación (Argentina) y encontrar varias notas con esta misma filosofía. Empezando por la más reciente, Nora Bär en “Estudian el cerebro al desnudo” explora el banco de cerebros Fleni, en Buenos Aires, para explicarnos cómo en una época dominada por el estudio de lo “molecular”, todavía resulta muy útil investigar también la perspectiva anatómica a nivel de tejido. Y sobre todo, poder almacenar piezas para posteriormente compararlas a diferentes niveles. De lo más interesante, que estudios post mortem de personas normales mostraban las placas de proteínas típicas de Alzheimer, sin haber experimentado ningún síntoma en vida.

Apareciendo también en otros medios, encontramos el anuncio de que “Argentina tendrá en tres años su trasbordador espacial”- N.B. Se convertiría en el primero en Latinoamérica. La nota se limita a explicarnos para qué servirá, pero viene complementada por otra con detalles técnicos. Una tercera pieza en La Nación, del sábado pasado, la firma Julieta Bravo: “síntomas psicóticos: muy frecuentes” . El contenido es muchísimo mejor que el título, y describe un estudio local según el cual hasta el 18% de habitantes de Buenos Aires tiene algún síntoma psicótico a la semana. La metodología (autoencuesta a 1036 transeúntes) no parece muy sólida,  pero el artículo está bien ponderado con opiniones de científicos no involucrados en el estudio.

Y para interesante, el viernes Nora Bär publicó “Describen 237 malezas comestibles” un reportaje sobre la guía presentada por un biólogo argentino con una larga lista de plantas consideradas malas hierbas, cuyas propiedades nutritivas son tan buenas, o incluso superiores, a otras que encontramos en la verdulería. El investigador se muestra apasionado, y considera que pueden incluso llegar a ser un recurso contra el hambre. El artículo recoge sus opiniones con cierta precaución.

También en Argentina, en Clarín encontramos dos muy buenas piezas. La primera es de aquellas que no deja indiferente. La firma Gisele Sousa Días bajo el sugerente título “La ciencia revela por qué es tan difícil olvidar un gran amor”. El contenido: neurociencia de la buena. Creando una historia y guiada por un neurobiólogo local, Gisele explica cómo los recuerdos asociados a un estado emocional intenso se fijan en un área del cerebro llamada amígdala, que no está tan sujeta a nuestro control racional como otras en las que guardamos información más analítica. Por eso ciertos recuerdos aparecen sin nuestro permiso, estimulados por sensaciones que teníamos asociadas a ese amor. Y una vez se evoca el recuerdo, las emociones de dolor o satisfacción vuelven a aparecer. Un laberinto de emociones, como muy bien titula el recomendable gráfico que acompaña la pieza.

En el área de Salud, Valeria Román: “Uruguay: con una dura política antitabaco, bajan los infartos” realiza un gran análisis sobre cómo tras haberse convertido en el primer país de América sin humo, y acompañar una serie de medidas políticas antitabaco, Uruguay ha logrado que 115.000 personas dejen de fumar en los últimos tres años, y reducir un 17% la cantidad de infartos.

Nos sacamos de la manga una relación de esta historia y otra publicada en El Mundo, porque parece que el cáncer en los países pobres podría ser un tema periodístico a explorar en los próximos meses. María Valerio en “El tercer mundo muere de cáncer” habla de un estudio publicado en The Lancet mostrando la extrema desigualdad en la distribución de recursos frente a esta enfermedad (paradoja 80/5). El artículo explica que uno de los remedios asequibles es la prevención; algo que todavía falta implantar en muchas áreas. Tema a perseguir, también desde una perspectiva local.

Cerramos hoy con el curioso fenómeno de las noticias que se repiten. Leímos también en El Mundo un artículo de agencias sobre un lago argentino que alienta nuevas hipótesis sobre la vida en Marte, se nos estimuló alguna de esas neuronas relacionadas con la memoria, y recordamos que ya lo habíamos tratado en el tracker a partir de un artículo de Fabiola Czubaj “En un volcán de Catamarca, el origen de la vida”, precisamente en La Nación. No es que sea grave repetir. El fútbol, la política y el cotilleo lo hace constantemente y sin complejos. Claro… ellos no tienen a mano información que se renueva tan a menudo como la nuestra.

- Pere Estupinyà

The gene variant has been named after the city, where it might have originated: Neu-Delhi-Metallo-Beta-Lactamase-1, NDM-1, makes bacteria resistant against all currently known antibiotics. NDM-1-bacteria have been originally found in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but already reached Europe, too. In Belgian, a man died, who came back with an injury from a visit in his home country Pakistan (according to the Belgian newspaper “Le Soir”), probably the first NDM-1-caused death in Europe. The German Robert-Koch-Institute said, that a few cases have been registered in Germany, too (that’s the information from dpa, the website of the Robert-Koch-Institute is more specific: 4 cases), although not fatal due to the existence and relative effectiveness of antibiotics like Tigecycline and Colistine (which failed in the Belgian case). The journal Lancet reports about an international study, which found 37 patients in the UK and 140 in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan infected with NDM-1-positive bacteria.

Die Zeit took the chronological path, starting with Fleming’s discovery of Penicillin, the early, euphoric days of antibiotics, and the first waves of resistant bacteria. Then the article explains the recent events, mentioning the NDM-1-gene – and that bacteria with the gene have been found not only in Belgium, but in the UK, the US and Germany, too.

But the whole article does not mention, what kind of bacteria carry the dangerous NDM-1 gene so far (or what kind of diseases or symptoms the bacteria cause). Which is true for basically all articles published in the German language media (Stern, Süddeutsche, e.g.) – perhaps because they are more or less based on a piece distributed via dpa, the German press agency, which did not provide such an information. Nevertheless, the Robert-Koch-Institute knows it (as almost always in such cases) and explains it on its website (also here): So called Gram-negative bacteria, especially “Klebsiella pneumonia and other Enterobacteria”. (Bild, by the way, mentioned at least, “E.coli, e.g.”. )

What I also missed, was an explanation of any kind, how the NDM-1-gene actually works. I found this on, again, the RKI website: The gene codes for a Beta-Lactamase, an enzyme, which destroys antibiotics based on a Beta-Lactam-group – which is a long known weak point of these antibiotics and cause for bacterial resistance. Whereas other resistant bacteria were still sensitive for carbapenem, which is used as a reserve drug, when other antibiotics don’t work. The new gene NDM-1 makes an enzyme, which is able to destroy even carbapenem.

Of course, these are just “molecular details”. But they make clear, that we face a well known and neglected problem and not a sudden, unpredictable catastrophe. These are not “Superbacteria” (most of the headlines used this term), they are just a little bit more effective than all the other resistant bugs, who are already able to destroy Beta-Lactam-drugs. Nevertheless, this antibiotic resistance is a serious problem. But (science) journalists should mention the scientific background, to be able to hint the public (scientists, politicians, etc), that society and pharmaceutical industry needs to take more efforts to develop new antibiotics. Die Welt provided exactly this information: “Superbug displays pharma industry’s failure“. The article names the real problem behind the spectacular death in Belgium: The companies have no monetary incentives to spend (a lot of) money on a difficult search for new antibiotics, if the reimbursement for such a new antibiotic is small, because doctors are going to use it only for the rare patients with multiresistant bacterial infections.

More ink: Berliner Kurier, Standard, Wiener Zeitung, Tagesspiegel

A detail, worth noticing:

Everyone knows Neil Armstrong, of course. But what else do we know about him, the first man on the moon? Not much, and this is because Armstrong almost never spoke to the press after the space capsule of Apollo 11 landed back on earth. Generations of journalists tried to interview him and all got the famous standard letter: “Mr. Armstrong does not speak with journalists.” Never stop trying – that’s the lesson to learn from the editorial board of “Servus TV”, a (very) small Austrian TV station, which is owned by the founder of a successful soft drink company, Dietrich Mateschitz. Like thousands of other journalists before, the Servus TV editor sent his request, but he was clever enough to include the bait, that the interview would take place at the Technology Museum of the Salzburg airport, which has an impressing collection of historical airplanes – all owned by Dietrich Mateschitz. Armstrong came, saw (the planes), and spoke. (With Frank Schirrmacher, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, see youtube).

All the journalists, who tried but were not as lucky as Servus TV, might take some comfort from this article at Süddeutsche Zeitung – about the biological role of consolation.

Sascha Karberg

The AP‘s Cain Burdeau and Jeffrey Collins exemplify the media’s retreat from BP oilamageddon as a theme to post-spill recovery reporting – leavened of course with alertness to long term damage monitoring and all that.

This is good if unsurprising news. Tourist boards along the Louisiana and Mississippi gulf coast will be delighted – and that’s not a bad thing.

Speaking of rejuvenation, for the next two weeks I’ll be off, hoping that the fog along the Golden State’s left edge lifts. In the meantime Phil Hilts, Knight director, and former director Boyce Rensberger, will be maintaining daily vigilance. Other trackers Paul Raeburn, Pere Estupinya, and Sascha Karberg will be at their stations per usual.

See y’all later.

- Charlie Petit

At The Observatory site maintained by the Columbia Journalism Review, primary writer Curtis Brainard has a close look at media performance as the inevitable question arises: is this year’s concantenation of extreme weather plus a monster iceberg the work of global warming, or just one of those things?

The answer, he writes, is in a sense both climate change and mere weather. And that’s how most major media he surveys wrote it. Brainard provides an excellent overview, with links, to recent coverage of weather that is starkly unusual.

Much of the coverage is also in line, as he notes, with a World Meteorological Organization Press Release.  It declares no individual events can be tied to global warming but that the spectacle of so many things unusual “matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming.” There is a little bit of the blah-blah-blah to such a statement. That does not mean it is untrue.

- Charlie Petit

Libration points in space – little wrinkles in multi-object gravity fields that act like parking places for things drifting through – are oddly attractive. In them, dust or asteroids or space telescopes tend to hover in place relative to larger objects around them, like planets or moons, rather than follow a wide orbit.

I’d never seen them described as dead zones until this morning. But that’s a powerful phrase. It has lately been commonly applied to oceanic pits of doom where low oxygen kills fish, crabs, and more. But a dead zone in space. Chills down the spine! And, one wonders whether, had the Carnegie Institution’s press office not put the term “dead zone” in its release about discovery of the first asteroid known from Neptune’s L5 so-called trojan libration point, so many outlets would have run with the story. After all, asteroids are well known to have gotten embraced in other libration points near other planets including a different one, called L4, set up by Neptune’s and the Sun’s interacting gravities. Jupiter has so many such asteroids trailing it at L5 in its path around the sun they have a special name: Trojans.

The news is that it’s been hard to tell if asteroids are caught there because, with Neptune where it now is in its orbit, but backdrop is the star-rich heartot the Milky Way. IN this week’s Science a team using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii (named not for the automobile company, but the Pleiades star cluster’s name in Japanese), report finding the first one.

Only in its headline does the Carnegie press release use the term dead zone. That’s enough for just about everybody. Curious whether the term’s been used before, I did a check. No sign of it in this sense. But the term has been taken, and in the field of planetology too. I found it in reference to regions of the Sun’s long-gone accretion disk, or similar things around other stars, that might slow the migration of protoplanets toward their stars. Personally I’ve often though of libration points as perches, or refuges, or cubby holes. Friendly things. Not dead zones.

Stories:

• Space.com – Denice Chow: Asteroid discovered in Neptunian dead zone ;
• BBC – Howard Falcon-Long: New Trojan asteroid found in Neptune’s dead zone ;
• New Scientist – Caitlin Stier: Neptune “dead zones’ hold more rocks than asteroid belt ; There could be a misunderstanding in this story. The press release is ambiguous about what asteroids in the main belt it means when comparing them to Neptune’s retinue. One suspects that perhaps Neptune’s libration-trapped Trojans outnumber Jupiter’s  Trojans, but not that Neptune’s gang outnumbers the entire main asteroid belt. There must be hundreds of thousands of those.
• National Geographic – Rachel Kaufman: “Dead Zone”  Asteroid Found Following Neptune ;

Grist for the Mill: Carnegie Institution Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Last May the Mexican government announced a program to eliminate junk food and sweet drinks from public schools. Replacing them would be fruit, water, healthy soups and sandwiches. Now it says the food industry needs time to change its products.  So the shift will come “progressively”. For now at least, junk food and sweetened drinks will stay in Mexican schools. Most of the press denounces this as a step backwards, favoring economic interests and compromising the fight against a big problem: the alarming indices of child obesity and diabetes. Sweeteners are part of the “scientific” controversy. The government defends their use. One reporter cites a Framingham study’s conclusion that they worsen obesity by creating  dependence on sweet taste. Another reporter goes even further, and without checking for current reviews proving the contrary, she frivolously assures that sweeteners like saccharine and aspartame are carcinogenic. One should check with Pubmed or similar data base before sharing an assumption like that.

La sencilla nota en Milenio de Blanca Valadez “Ceden Salud y SEP ante comida chatarra” lo explica muy bien, y con abundantes datos: el pasado mes de Mayo el gobierno mexicano anunció que el para el próximo curso escolar “retiraría de los planteles de educación básica la comida chatarra y bebidas azucaradas, y en su lugar las cooperativas podrían ofrecer a 25 millones 596 mil alumnos los llamados “box lunch”, conformados entre otras cosas de una manzana, un sope no frito, un sándwich de atún y una botella de agua”. Pero finalmente, “las secretarías de Salud y de Educación Pública cedieron a las presiones de la industria de alimentos procesados”, y anunciaron que dichos alimentos con alto contenido calórico “saldrán paulatinamente”. El argumento: no ser drásticos, y dejar a la industria que se adapte a los nuevos requerimientos, evitando así pérdidas considerables en el sector. Aquí nosotros no vamos a opinar, pero sí lo ha hecho en mayor o menor grado la prensa mexicana, que ve esta marcha atrás como una cesión intolerable ante uno de los problemas más importantes del país: el crecimiento descontrolado de la obesidad infantil.

En La Jornada, Susana González, Ariane Díaz y Enrique Méndez firman la nota “Reculará el gobierno en la prohibición de la comida chatarra en escuelas públicas“, que apunta al secretario de economía y “lo más elevado del gobierno federal” en permitir los daños a la salud en los niños que consumen frituras y refrescos. También dice que según el secretario de salud, ofrecer bebidas edulcorantes tiene aval científico. En El Universal, Ruth Rodríguez “Ssa defiende el uso de sustitutos de azúcar” balancea muy bien esta información recurriendo a otro experto que apunta al famoso estudio de la localidad de Framingham. Una de las conclusiones de este estudio que analiza durante un largo período de tiempo la evolución de la salud de un elevadísimo número de personas es que tanto quienes tomaron bebidas azucaradas como edulcoradas subieron de peso. El edulcorante no suministra calorías directamente, pero desarrolla un gusto exagerado por lo dulce, y las personas acaban consumiendo más con otros alimentos. Según este dato, los edulcorantes no serían tan inofensivos, pues conducirían a los niños a consumir más dulces. En El Economista, Ana Langner ya habló muy bien de este tema en junio en “El pacto antiobesidad se volvió light”, y ahora junto con Verónica Mecías en “Alertan sobre los riesgos de alimentos light” también citan estudios que concluyen que “edulcorantes como el aspartame y la sacarina están altamente relacionados con el riesgo de presentar cáncer de mama, próstata, ovario y laringe”. Aquí debemos ser muy cuidadosos, pues los supuestos efectos cancerígenos que estudios con ratas en los años 70 se le atribuyeron a la sacarina, no están tan confirmados en cantidades normales en dietas para humanos. Antes de enviar un mensaje de estas características, debemos asegurarnos bien y contrastar con revisiones de estudios científicos más actuales, la mayoría de las cuales niegan esa asociación. Pubmed con key words como “saccharin aspartame sweetener cancer” es un buen aliado. En periodismo científico, siempre que podamos, mejor preguntarle a los datos empíricos que a las personas.

- Pere Estupinyà

In 1998, newly hired at USNews & World Report, your tracker wrote a brief story on possible discovery of a newborn, giant planet, still hot from gestation, ejected from its binary star nursery and flying alone through space. What I remember, a bit fuzzily, is that the report at an American Astronomical Society meeting was given an enormous boost by NASA p.r., excited by the involvement of the Hubble. Also, that alternate explanations soon held sway. Furthermore, that the lead author of the paper was so irritated by media and by NASA for giving such extreme attention to her paper that she clammed up, at least for awhile, when reporters called for updates. The whole affair lingered in my mind with a sour aftertaste and sympathy for the astronomer whose paper went through a meatgrinder.

That’s how I remember it. Now it resurfaces with the aroma of redemption upon it. At Science News Ron Cowen reports new evidence that the perhaps-planet, seen as though leaving a gaseous vapor trail as it flew from its natal system, really was probably or at least plausibly what it was first conjectured to be. That’s nice to hear.

Grist for the Mill:

Original AAS meeting abstract ; arXiv preprint of new paper ;

- Charlie Petit

To read some reports, medicine is about to retreat by the better part of a century in its struggle to stop, and cure, bacterial infection. Reaction to a report in Lancet of a superbug in the UK, imported they say from India, has triggered several near-apocalyptic accounts. The essential assertion in the news is that a gene that confers resistance to a wide range of antibiotics (just about all of them), called New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase-1 or NDM-1), makes E. Coli invulnerable to any potions on druggists’ shelves or anywhere in the pipeline. And the gene, like a cassette that fits almost anywhere, is finding a home in other pathogens as well. The group called enterobacteriaceae is, it says here, particularly hospitable to it.

The Brit press is putting blame iin part on over-the-counter sales of antibiotics in much of the world including India  that rapidly coax emergence of resistant strains, plus “medical tourism” to India for cosmetic and other surgery. In a counter-wave, media in India are trumpeting government declarations – even though many of the paper’s co-authors are in India – that it’s not our fault and don’t call it New Delhi anything.

On the doomsaying side we have among others:

• Daily Mail – Michael Hanlon: We’ve only got ourselves to blame for the indestructable Indian superbug ; His second graf: “But now humanity faces the nightmarish possibility” of losing antibiotics, leaving only vaccination still potent as a big-club answer to dangerous bacteria.
• Wales Online/Western Mail – Clare Hutchinson: “Superbug” could trigger death rates last seen before antibiotics were in use ; A story that is almost all quotes, most of them frightening.
• Guardian – Sarah Boseley: Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? ; She says they’re done, kaput. She uses to good effect a quote – widelycirculated – from the lead author at Cardiff University: “In many ways, this is it. This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1- producting Enterobacteriaceae.”
• Telegraph – Rebecca Smith: New superbug culd make antibiotics ‘redundant’ ; She notes that her paper had already reported on cases in the UK – the news is that UK residents getting care in India may be one route they got there.
• New Scientist – Jessica Hamzelou: Does NDM-1 herald the end of the antibiotic era? ; Same message, but a lot more detail on how the gene confers the super in superbug.
• BBC – Michelle Roberts: New ‘superbug’ found in UK hospitals ; Not quite as hysterical as other accounts. Accompanying video report.
• and so on…

Much of the press in India seems less concerned about the antibiotic resistance of the pathogen than to lift its stain from India as its source:

• Hindustan Times: Govt condemns naming of superbug, refutes its linkage ; Big pharma, it suggests, is behind the fuss in the UK.
• Times of India -Pushpa Narayan : Indian author says superbug report is fudged; The local doc says it was not his idea to put an advisory against elective surgery in India in Lancet. See also in the Times, Risha Chitlangia: “Calling superbug New Delhi metallo ‘inappropriate’”
• India Today – Dinsesh C. Sharma: Govt calls superbug report a conspiracy ; Balanced piece. Sharma leads on the government response, but then says local officials of ignored “damning evidence that points to NDM-1′s origian in Indian private hospitals.”
• Press Trust of India via Times of India: India trashes UK report on superbug, annoyed at name New Delhi Metallo ;
• AFP – filed from Mumbai: Indian doctors warned of superbug before Lancet study ; Good report. One source tells AFP that Indian medical authorities are “in denial about the extent of multi-drug resistant infections.”

One must note that a smaller riffle of news arises in Canada, where several cases of this superbug are on record. At the Toronto Globe and Mail, Jill Mahoney reports at least two Canadian cases, with sources saying more are inevitable. Both so far are in people who recently were in India. Mahoney eschews forecasts of the end of medicine as we know it – noting that hospitals can limit the contagion’s spread by such measures as patient isolation and hand washing.

It is difficult so soon in this news tempest to judge the specific merits of the accounts. However, given that mult-drug resistance has been in the news for years, with frequent warnings that it can only get worse, the outbreak of these particular, newly-evolved disease microbes does have a ring of larger truth. Reporters who have been covering the issue for years will need to dive in deeply to sort it out for a worried public.

Grist for the Mill: Lancet article abstract ; Cardiff U. Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

An amazing flow of news today follows publication in a certain journal that starts with N and sort-of-alliterates with “Whatch’er talkin’ ’bout?” and says a few fossilized  bones of edible hoofed creatures from Ethiopia bear linear scratches. And there’s a picture of two of them on the journal’s cover.

Like somebody hacked them with a stone tool long before there were supposed to have been stone tools. And at the time the only somebodies known in the region are most familiar under the nickname Lucy. Big story.

Or maybe an elephant stepped on ‘em or a crocodile gnawed them. That’s a big story with a big hole in it. It is tantalizing, but that’s about it.

I’m feeling a bit on the lowbrow yahoo side of H. sapiens about these news accounts. Usually I’m all for reporting paleontologists divining the most amazing insights from things that look to me like something that fell off the truck from the rock quarry. But really, those scratches to this uneducated brain don’t look like much, and they are on just four ungulate bones, and neither tools nor hominid fossils are at the site. So, this is a curiosity that ought to be in the literature, one thinks, thus certainly merit publication along with the hypothesis that A. afarensis could have left its mark. But front page news?

Maybe it’s just me. Nature’s reviewers were impressed, and the paper’s authors are pretty emphatic about their hypothesis. But it you read through news accounts, one finds plenty of reporters who found plenty of qualified scholars who are similarly skeptical. Had this report gotten more routine treatment at a less-stellar journal, and not so many press releases trumpeting the chorus, it probably would not have gotten such extraordinary coverage.

Stories :

• Time Magazine: Michael Lemonick: Study: Were Lucy’s Relatives the Oldest Butchers? ; At the time they were not old, so “first butchers” fits better. Despite the question-mark hed, Lemonick reports nobody with strong doubts.
• Wall St. Journal – Robert Lee Hotz : Find Suggests Tool Use Began Before Humans / ..Push back beginning of technology by nearly one million years ; Well, “before humans” is ambiguous, as H. habilis, h. erectus, H. ergaster, H, neanderthalensis and others used tools and some call’em pre-human but not human. That aside, Hotz in his second graf raises some flags. He quotes doubts from skeptics deeper.
• NY Times – John Noble Wilford: Lucy’s Kin Carved Up a Meaty Meal, Scientists Say ; He foreshadows the skeptics in his third graf, and has two doubters flaying the report’s certain tone later.
• AP – Malcolm Ritter: ‘Lucy’ species used stone tools, fossil study says. And some, Ritter says, don’t buy it.
• Reuters – Julie Steenhuysen: Butchered bones give proof of earlier meat eating ; no doubts.
• SF Chronicle – David Perlman : Scientists report finding earliest use of tools;  The lead author and a leading skeptic to this find are locals, so this story is right in Perlman’s back yard. He, as do all accounts, gives the implications of the marks, if hominids left them, their due. But cites a “rash of skeptical comments” and provides a good sampling of them.
• CBS/Discover – Ed Yong : Humans Carved Meat Far Earlier Than Thought ; No doubts.
• Voice of America – Jessica Berman: Stone Tools Discovery Suggests Earlier Meat-Eating by Human Ancestors ; Pretty much a one-source story (aside from the paper, press releases..). And no doubts.
• AFP – Marlowe Hood: First use of tools pushed back a million years ; No doubts.
• USA Today – Dan Vergano: Tool usage came before big brains? Cuts on bone found ; No doubts.
• BBC – Jason Palmer: Tool-making and meat-eating began 3.5 million years ago; One mildly skeptical voice cited.
• Wired News – Jess McNally: New Find Pushes Age of Stone Tools Back A Million Years ; No doubts.
• Science News – Bruce Bower: Lucy’s kind used stone tools to butcher animals ; Gentle doubts quoted, and Bower pushes caution with such lines as “if the new analysis holds up.”
• Financial Times – Clive Cookson: History of tools pushed back 1M years ; No doubts.
• Nature.com – Richard Lovett: Butchering dinner 3.4 million years ago ; No doubts. Alas. Would’ve been good if Nature’s in house journalist contributor had dug up a few alternate interpretations.
• AAAS ScienceNOW – Ann Gibbons: The First Butchers? ; Some doubt, but clear, at the very end of the piece.
• Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: Bone discovery pushes date for first use of stone tools back 1M years;  No doubts.
• Telegraph – Richard Alleyne: Hail Lucy! – the new Queen of the Stone Age ; No doubts. But clever for recognizing that older tools would mean an earlier start for the stone age.
• New Scientist – Nic Fleming: Early humans were butchers 3.4 million years ago ; No doubts.
• Scientific American – Steve Mirsky: Almost a Million Years Added for Earliest Human Ancestor Stone Tool Use and Meat-Eating ; No doubt.
• Cosmos (Australia) Kate Heness: Pre-humans used tools 3.4 milion years ago ; No doubt.
• Calcutta Telegraph – G.S. Mudur: Older, tools & taste for meat ; No doubt ;

Grist for the Mill:

Nature journal abstract ; Max Planck Soc’y Press Release ; California Acad. of Sciences Press Release ; Arizona State Univ. Press Release ; Natural History Museum Press Release ;

On Tuesday the Boston Globe‘s Carolyn Y. Johnson broke news of a well-known Harvard professor in hot water, and now on a year’s leave, over evidence of “scientific misconduct in his laboratory.” A paper has been retracted already. Other papers are getting the gimlet-eye treatment at journals that ran them.

Interesting is that the investigation of the professor, Marc Hauser, author of the book “Moral Minds,” has been underway for three years without, far as I know, media coverage or other public discussion. Johnson handles a delicate and difficult story well – making clear to readers that much about the allegations and the professor’s status is murky. But there is no doubt that the Harvard review is serious business.

The work under review reports evidence in cotton top tamarin monkeys of self-awareness, empathy, and other higher-order cognitive traits that are intensely expressed in people but harder to see in other creatures.

This morning the NYTimes‘s Nicholas Wade provides his own rendition of the same news. He indirectly acknowledges the Globe’s scoop by crediting a quote to the Boston newspaper – which the NYTimes Company owns.  Unclear is whether he was already working on this when the Globe ran its piece. Wade reports that he got stonewalled on some aspects of the story when he called a Harvard press officer. He got the info anyway.

Notably, Wade offers one assessment of why the professor is facing difficulty, and does so without using a source to say it for him. He declares that when analyzing videotapes of primate behavior “It is easy for human observers to see the response they want and so to be fooled by the monkeys.” That seems a good hint to readers that what is behind the news may be sloppy science or self-deception, but not necessarily conscious and willful fraud in data handling.

Also notable in a small way is the reference in Wade’s story to one person involved  as being at the University of South California. That’s obviously a typing flub. But how can it go through edit intact? It just doesn’t look right. Has not everybody at the Times including on the copy desk heard of the University of Southern California, which it should have said, often enough to double check? (At Cal Berkeley when I was there we called it the University of Spoiled Children, which was dumb. That was before I wound up in grad school there. And my Dad’s a USC fan who took us as kids to USC football games. So it was double dumb for me to join in the chants at Cal. But it was always Southern Cal, never South Cal).

This affair is a good chance to circulate word of a new resource for science writers, especially those who follow the ethical dimensions and mechanics of both science journalism and science itself. Ivan Oransky, the MD, former Scientific American, now Reuters Health and NYU journalism school man who already runs the site Embargo Watch, has added a second pipeline into the workings of science: Retraction Watch. Here’s the latter’s post on the Marc Hauser news.

- Charlie Petit