If you have small children at home, as I do, just the mention of shaken baby syndrome is likely to give you chills. (OK, in fairness: Even if you don’t have little kids at home, it can be disturbing.) It seems impossible to imagine: Shaking one of these tender little creatures so hard that it dies or is left horribly brain damaged. (I’m cringing as I’m writing…)

So I was fascinated to read an Op-Ed in The New York Times last week suggesting that the syndrome is without solid scientific support. The piece, by Deborah Tuerkheimer, identified as a law professor and former assistant Manhattan district attorney, seemed plausible. Shaken baby syndrome is so offensive that one could easily imagine well-meaning doctors and child advocates making too much of it, and overstating its prevalence. I sent a copy of the story to my wife, Elizabeth, and never thought to look at it more closely for the Tracker.

Then Phil Hilts, MIT Knight Fellows czar and Godfather of the Tracker (this was easier than looking up his actual title), called my attention to several posts on the indispensable CommonHealth blog at wbur.org, written by the all-star team of Carey Goldberg , former Boston bureau chief of the New York Times; and Rachel Zimmerman, former health and medicine reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Zimmerman linked to the Tuerkheimer piece without comment on Sept. 21, when it appeared. A week later, a doctor wrote in to charge that Tuerkheimer’s piece “systematically distorts the scientific consensus.” Goldberg reported the criticism in a second post on Sept. 27, and asked for comments. And she got ‘em.

A Connecticut superior court judge to say it was “disconcerting” to see a law professor making “legal misleading statements.” Another comment came from a man who identified himself as a lawyer and “the father of an eleven month old boy who died when he was shaken by his child care worker.” The debate over shaken baby syndrome continues in the courts, he said, but there is no debate in medical centers.

Those were among 29 comments (as of this writing), many from doctors and other professionals. Much of it–but not all of it–is critical of the Tuerkheimer piece. The comments are fascinating.

On Tuesday, Tuerkheimer responded to the criticism at the request of CommonHealth. ”I am not able to comment on blog comments,” she wrote, and she linked to the abstract of a law journal piece she’s written on the subject. Why isn’t she able to respond to blog comments? She puts makes a very controversial argument in the pages of the New York Times and then suddenly she’s too shy to speak?

Our job here isn’t to persuade Tuerkheimer to comment, but to note that CommonHealth has sparked a very interesting discussion, which should be essential reading for anyone who read the Times piece. It’s an interesting way of doing journalism in the blog era. Instead of calling sources for comment, open it up to anyone who cares to respond. I’m guessing that even reporters as good as Goldberg and Zimmerman would not have found some of these fascinating responses using the old-fashioned tricks of our trade.

- Paul Raeburn

(Note: This is the only post from me today – distraction, and this post’s topic and huge news flow, stole the morning/CP)

See that painting there? Today millions of people have seen it too. Way cool, eh? No wonder they call some exoplanets SuperEarths. It’s what prolific science illustrator-artist Lynette Cook concocted to depict Gliese 581g, a planet of a red dwarf star just 20 light years away. Word of this planet’s existence was greeted yesterday afternoon and this morning by an explosion of news stories. Detonating it was a DC press conference, pre-print on line of an upcoming paper in Astrophysical Journal, video, press releases … a full p.r. drumline. This may be the biggest non-medical, purely gee-whiz  science story to briefly, abruptly captivate media since Ardi the genuine pre-human ancestral relative, maybe even since Ida, the overhyped but distant conceivable but probably not-ancestor. Our roots a long time ago and our possible doppelgangers on a far planet seem to trigger the same fixed gaze of attention.

As for that painting,  Ms. Cook was smart to show the planet basically back lit, with one illuminated limb visible. As the planet keeps one face perennially, tidally locked to its tiny star, we see a stretch along the terminator between a dark, deeply frozen hemisphere and a bright, deeply cooked one. But those and land-o’-lakes dappling of blue water? That’s the thing about artist’s impressions. They’re eye candy to stimulate imagination. They may have only slight connection to the science. That picture, however, may drive the public’s imagination more than any number of paragraphs of text, however well-crafted.

The image may be plausible. Barely. Indulge me here, but one thinks there would be NO liquid water on such a place – it’d all freeze out on the dark side, building an immense ice cap stiff as granite under the endless night. Maybe outlet glaciers could get enough heat from sun-side-spawned windstorms to crawl into the light, melt, sublimate, make clouds and rain and seas and generate a weird hydrological cycle? Again maybe. Pure guess: fat chance.

The news is that Gliese 487a star’s planetary system, which has been studied for 11 years and often to great publicity before, has now yielded Doppler-shift data implying the best planet yet (see Earlier Post for news on previous ones, with another artist’s impression). This one seems to be in the Goldilocks zone where temperatures, on average, should permit liquid water on any solid planet. The inferred new one is small, not much bigger in diameter than Earth, and about three times as massive (don’t forget – spherical mass goes as the cube of radius). But its existence is reason to think scads of other stars may have habitable zones occupied by Earthlike planets. One  might some day, if we get far better telescopes to look closely, vindicate that painting up there.

There is a quote issue to discuss. The paper’s lead author (among six),  UC Santa Cruz’s Steve Vogt, enthused at the teleconference that he, personally, is 100 percent confident there is life on this planet. Okay. That’s his guess and vigorously phrased, as you’ll see reading accounts. But such things demand careful treatment. A scientist-says statement, if not further addressed,  implies that it reflects what is in the formal report too. A reporter should ask, “Really? Would you publish those odds in a refereed paper?” Back would surely come an answer along the lines of: C’mon, are you kidding? No!

But alas, several reporters did not couch the remark as the giddy small talk it was. One exception is at the NYTimes, where Dennis Overbye uses the quote and immediately follows up by getting the response from a co-author that he prefers data. Ergo, no way is it 100 percent sure. Overbye thus has it both ways in a good sense of the term – the quote for impact, and the context to assure readers how it was framed, and not to take it too literally.

*UPDATE 1: One learns from participants that the audio call-in for questions during the teleconference was spotty, so most had to email questions. Many did follow up the 100% remark for clarification and got some satisfaction – but the give-and-take of a traditional press conference was absent.

*UPDATE 2: At Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson has two stories. The first lays out the news, apparently largely from the UCSC press release, with attribution. More interesting is a second, more analytical piece focussed largely on that “100 percent” line from Vogt. which she calls the spark for “wild speculation” on the meaning of these findings. She’s careful and smart, and quotes to good effect some of the twitter twaffic (@Gliese581_G) on the statement and what it meant and on its impact.

Other Stories:

• AP – Seth Borenstein : Could ‘Goldilocks’ planet be just right for life? ; We get an insight into the reporting process here, as Borenstein says “five outside astronomers told (AP) it seems to be the real thing.” That’s a lot of phoning or emailing around. Nice job, too, explaining without describing them all that the list of things we don’t know about this world is very, very long. One biggie: it’s atmosphere’s constituents.
• NPR All Things Considered – Joe Palca: ‘Godilocks’ Planet’s Temperature Just Right for Life ; The story comes to life with audio excerpts from the scientists, neatly bridged by Palca’s own remarks.
• San Jose Mercury News – Lisa Krieger: Newly discovered planet may be habitable ; For her, it’s largely a local story. Interesting side light – the once-mighty LA Times picked up this story and the AP’s on line, but did not report it in house.
• Washington Post – Marc Kaufman: First “habitable zone’ planet found outside solar system ; Good inclusion on history – that among the paper’s authors are some from the pioneering teams that first reported extrasolar planets in 1995. This is funny: he says warmth loving creatures could live on the sunnier side of the temperate band, and polar bears on the other. That’s ok, readers will surely know it’s parable built on data. He further has a nice touch on the red dwarf’s long lifetime for evolution. See also Joel Achenbach blog, Gliese 581g, with  some sober common sense; and Alexandra Petri blog, Hi “new planet” Gliese 581G! Welcome to the neighborhood! , Light, with vampires yet, and she lists the planet’s twitter presence.
• ScienceNews – Laura Sanders: Distant world could support life ; Welcome explanation how an active atmosphere might keep things from totally freezing on the dark side. (Dept of Self-Serving Verbiage: Check the S/N site’s left side pic of the magazine and cover story on an event horizon telescope to take pictures of ultramassive black holes, which I wrote.)
• BBC – Katia Moskvitch: A distant Earth-like exoplanet ‘could have life’ ; Speaking of fanciful artist’s impressions, check this one, complete with exo-pterosaurs. And really, as Earth-like exoplanets go, this one is not distant.
• Time Mag – Michael Lemonick: Found: An Earthlike Planet at Last ; This story is among the best of the lot, and the lead is nice. It sets up the reader, it shows astronomical savvy, and it manages to seduce without giving it all away at the start. Plus, he throws in a knowing aside on the rivalry of sorts between the first-line doppler shift planet hunters, and the new throng using the Kepler and other telescopes to see planets casting transitory shadows on their host stars. I say rivalry of sorts because some astronomers are doing both.
• Sky & Telescope – Alan MacRobert: First “Potentially Habitable” Planet Announced ; Expert, if slightly jaded, report. This is, he assures his readers who may already have guessed it,  not as revolutionary as most media may make it out to be. He helpfully refers his savvy reader to the full paper and an introduction “more readable than research papers often are..”
• Montreal Gazette: ‘Habitable’ planet found outside solar system ;
• MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle: Aliens planet looks ‘just right’ for life ; Another expertly written account – with a welcome aside to put context on remarks, at the press conference, on the plausibility of building a rocket ship and visiting this place.
• Register – Lewis Page: Habitable Alien World discovered 20 light-years away! I clicked on this, wondering how long before a boffin appeared, betting on second sentence. It’s the second word. page bollixes the technology employed, suggesting the Doppler method was newly used to add this planet to the earlier Gliese list. Same method was used to compile the earlier ones, too.
• Mirror (UK) Mike Swain: Astronomers find another Earth… just 20 light years away.
• Guardian (UK) Ian Sample: New Earth-like planet discovered:
• Independent (UK) Steve Connor: Not too hot, not too cold: could the “Goldilocks’ planet support life? ;
• Telegraph (UK) Heidi Blake: Alien life certain to exist on Earth-like planet, scientists say ; Oh sigh. Only one scientist said it, and then with heavy personal qualification. Well, it’s true in one literal aspect : somewhere surely is an Earth-like planet with life, even aside from ours. The hed is lousy. Blake did not write that, one assumes, and her story is sensible if not adventuresome.
• Space.com – Mike Wall: Alien World Tour: The Exoplanets Around Star Gliese 581 ; Roundup on this star’s new and previous news events.
• Astronomy Now (UK) Emily Baldwin, Keith Cooper: Goldilocks exoworld discovered ;
• Popular Science ; Clay Dillow: Odds of Alien Life on Newly Spotted Exoplanet Are “100 Percent” Says Its Discoverer ; Oh, sigh, again. Oddly, even with the artists’s impression of 581g available widely, Pos Sci uses an old one of another of the star’s family. The hed on Dillow’s piece is extreme; the piece tempers that considerably.
• Scientific American – John Matson : Planet Hunters Discover a World That Could Harbor Life ; Nice job calling around, including comment from Geoff Marcy – a pioneer in doppler shift planet hunting who is now splitting his time with the newer transit method and the Kepler project.
• National Geographic – John Roach: First Truly Habitable Planet Discovered, Experts Say ;
• Bad Astronomy (blog) Phil Plait: Possible earthlike planet found in the Goldilocks zone of a nearby star! ;
• Daily Mail (UK) Niall Firth: Does ET LIve on Goldilocks planet? How scientists spotted ‘mysterious pulse of light’ from direction of newly-discovered ’2d Earth’ two years ago ; In tabloid-land, hooking this news to a small report awhile ago that a possible SETI signal briefly arose from the same planetary system is a scoop. There is a nugget of fact in this : The Australian (May 2009): Watch This Space ; There also is a nugget of utter error. Firth id’s the star as a red giant near the end of its life. Nope, ’tis a red dwarf, still young (Note – that error later fixed).
• .. there are many more.

Grist for the Mill:

UC Santa Cruz Press Release ; U. Hawaii Inst. for Astronomy Press Release ; NASA Press Release ; Carnegie Institution for Science Press Release ; National Science Foundation Press Release with related video, pics.

Apj Paper (via arXiv.org)

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) There are huge differences in climate change policies to be seen in the  US, in Europe and in countries in Latin America. Here’s an example. The priority in Guatemala is not to fight against the causes of climate change, but to adapt to serious consequences. I choose Guatemala because the IPCC’s Rajendra Pachauri has visited the country and included it among the world’s 10 most vulnerable to climate change. He has also announced a project to improve energy efficiency in public buildings. Energy efficiency? Is this really the best action for Guatemala to take against the danger of floods, land salinization, heat waves, increasing gastrointestinal diseases, or extreme atmospheric events? Don’t ask Guatemalan reporters, whose coverage of Pachauri’s visit has been disappointingly poor. We haven’t found a single story signed by a reporter, or quotes by any local scientists or studies, or someone providing deeper explanation of what makes Guatemala a riskier place. What are its specific threats? And does the announced project have components in adaptation apart from mitigation?

Aquí hay algo que suena extraño. Muy extraño. El presidente del IPCC Rajendra Pachauri ha visitado esta semana Guatemala y dicho que es uno de los 10 países del mundo más vulnerables a los efectos del cambio climático. Y leemos en una nota con información de agencias de Prensa Libre que lanza un plan de eficiencia energética en edificios, “para contrarrestar los efectos del fenómeno”. ¿a qué estamos jugando? ¿Qué pasa; que pagar un dineral a un consultor para que haga “un estudio en el edificio para determinar cómo utiliza su energía, su iluminación y aire acondicionado, para luego formular un plan para hacer más eficiente el uso de la energía” hará a este edificio menos vulnerable a un huracán o inundaciones? El asunto es más profundo todavía: ¿tendría algún impacto a nivel global la reducción de emisiones que podría lograrse en los edificios públicos guatemaltecos? Ínfima. Mejor tomar estas medidas que no tomarlas, desde luego. El ahorro energético tienen ventajas a largo plazo no sólo desde la perspectiva ambiental. Pero si el líder del IPCC viene a decirte que el “Impacto por cambio climático será todavía peor” – Prensa Libre (Agencias) y se prevé salinización de zonas agrícolas, incremento de inundaciones, sequías, efermedades gastrointestinales… lo primordial es trabajar para prepararnos ante estos impactos (sistemas de alerta, nuevos cultivos, mejorar viviendas en zonas de riesgo…) no ver si podemos ahorrar un poco de energía en aire acondicionado cambiando ventanas. Esto, para Guatemala es secundario. ¿no será que hay cierta inercia en seguir la estela de proyectos que sí son importantes para los países emisores? Puede ser que no, y el contenido global del proyecto sea fantástico, pero nuestra labor como periodistas científicos es ser desconfiados e inquisitivos. Y esta vez, de quien desconfía el tracker es de si los periodistas guatemaltecos han trabajado bien la información. ¿por qué? primero, porque se resiste a creer que el millón de  dólares del BID se dedique sólo a eficiencia energética. Y segundo, por el poco interés en la visita de Pachauri que han demostrado los principales periódicos del país. Ni una nota firmada por un periodista local. Todo agencias, y sin buscar algún experto del país que nos explique ¿por qué Guatemala es uno de los países más vulnerables? ¿a qué efectos climatológicos concretos? ¿Qué zonas son más susceptibles? ¿de qué trata realmente el proyecto anunciado por Pachauri? Preguntas básicas, a las que leyendo la prensa guatemalteca no se encuentra respuesta.

En Siglo XXI, vemos una nota básica diciendo que Pachauri pide tomar acciones, y luego la nota de Jessica Gramajo “BID de $4 millones para mitigar cambio climático”. De nuevo, Guatemala no tiene que luchar contra las causas, sino contra las consecuencias del cambio climático. Y nos jugaríamos algo a que el proyecto también lo contempla estas acciones a corto y medio plazo.

Fuera de Guatemala, en La Nación (Costa Rica) encontramos la nota de Michelle Soto “Cambio climático traerá efectos más graves a Centroamérica”. Muy bien trabajada, además de transmitir el mensaje básico aporta detalles más específicos: dice qué áreas se verán afectadas por estrés hídrico , por subida del nivel del mar, efectos en turismo y agricultura… y explica que según un informe Costa Rica está en lugar 38 y Guatemala 32 en los países en más riesgo por cambio climático. ¿pero no dijo Pachauri entre los 10? En fin…

(UPDATE*): El tracker se come gustoso algunas de sus palabras, tras descubrir que a 3 de Octubre El Periódico de Guatemala publicó una buena entrevisata de Marta Sandoval a Rajendra Pachauri.

- Pere Estupinyà

We got a news conflict to report.

From Australia comes word via several outlets that a high-quality video of Neil Armstrong climbing down to the moon’s surface has been discovered and will soon get public screening:

• Sydney Morning Herald / AAP – Judy Skatssoon: New moon walk footage another big step ; Never been seen before, says here.
• AFP: New Australian footage of Neil Armstrong’s moon walk ;
• … and on like that. The gist of this version is that an Australian station got a part of the video feed from Apollo 11 that other receivers on Earth did not, and only now is it surfacing.

Oh Yeah? Dept:

• Universe Today – Nancy Atkinson: ‘Long Lost’ Apollo footage Was Actually Released in 2009 ;  Looks like a kudos is appropriate.

It’s rather funny, how deeply that moon landing hit us. There is no greater historical authority to consult for verification of that than The Onion, America’s Finest News Source. Just check its first report on the landing here, which I dare not summarize, and a recent update on NASA’s moon plans, which you also ought read for yourself. .

- Charlie Petit

A shorty, from the BBC’s science news unit  North East, Orkney, & Shetland Division, looks at first to be a refreshing, guilt-free bit on cute critters without the bother of also reading with distress of global warming, wildlife mistreatment by developers, oil spill, evil poachers or other dire context.

The news is simply that on Fetlar Island, part of the Orkneys off Scotland’s north, a place where ornithologists have been banding sea birds for decades, a largish sandpiper-type wading bird called a whimbrel – rather resembling an avocet or curlew and you know what those are don’t you? – has turned up. Upon examination, it says here, it was revealed to carry a band on one of its long skinny legs put there in 1986. This, declares the RSBP Scotland, makes it the oldest whimbrel ever known. That agency is apparently so well known in the UK it needs no full spelling. I had to look it up – it’s a charity,  the Royal Society (which part you probably guessed) for the Protection of Birds.

I love this kind of story, doesn’t everyone? Imagine that – they’ve found the oldest whimbrel. But, alas, the innocence of this naturalist news falls away quickly as one reads thorugh the short article.  The reason that it and other Orkney birds are being detained for leg band readings is a baleful one.

Grist for the Mill: RSBP whimbrel page.

- Charlie Petit

CBS News reports on its website that, according to a survey, nearly one-third of American workers need a cup of coffee to get through the workday.

Nurses and doctors are more dependent on coffee than others, and young people more than older people, CBS tells us.

MSNBC just read this story on the air, with the anchor, Contessa Brewer, holding up her cup of coffee.

More alarmingly, Jennifer Warner at WebMD reported it! So did UPI.

The survey was done by CareerBuilder–and Dunkin’ Donuts. These news outlets, and at least a few others, are reporting, in other words, that Dunkin’ Donuts says coffee is good for you.

My usual tendency toward prolix commentary fails me. I’m speechless…

Or nearly speechless. Heh-heh.

It reminds me of the studies the AP used to report–and then stopped reporting–about how much you spend operating your own car.

The answer: A lot.

The studies were produced by rental-car companies.

Get it?

- Paul Raeburn

It doesn’t seem so long ago that science reporters, and this site, were gobsmacked to learn that CNN had laid off its dynamic and skilled science and space reporter, Miles O’Brien, as part of a broader drawdown of its expertise on the non-medical science news beat (see earlier post).

O’Brien’s been busy since, as one can see in the press release below, but now gets a spot at PBS’s NewsHour operation of similar importance to the one that CNN pulled from under him. Congratulations to Miles. I am fortunate to have some professional entanglement with him – we have been on panels together and are members of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. But I am convinced I’d post on this good news pretty much the same had I never met him. His work at CNN was always solid, engaging, and far above the daily news broadcasting norm for accuracy and intelligence on technical topics.

Now, I don’t tweet. I do my blogs, my freelancing, and spend almost zero moments beyond that at a keyboard or smartphone.  But I did look just now to see if there is a @milesobrien and sure enough, it’s so. Two days ago he exclaimed to his followers, “Exciting news! I have inked a deal to become the science reporter for the PBS NewsHour. They are not abandoning this important beat!”

Good news it is. My only, slight worry is that what happened at CNN – Miles did such a good job on shuttle disasters and other news that he got plunked in the anchor’s chair a lot, reducing his ability to cover science news himself and directly – will repeat at PBS. Sure, he’s handsome. An occasional anchor fill-in is fine.  But the man is a reporter!

Hardly anybody covered this news, and no surprise there. But it’s big for us in the biz so I’ll use my formal big-roundup format to list the ink flood:

Stories:

• AP – David Bauder: PBS “NewsHour’ continues revamp, adds science unit ;

Grist for the Mill: PBS Newshour Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

In July, as we noted here, a controversy over corporate blogs masquerading as news sent some of the smartest folks at ScienceBlogs fleeing to other nests. Most have now settled down somewhere, and, I’m happy to say, are back at work. David Dobbs and Maryn McKenna are now at Wired Science. Deb Blum is blogging at PLoS. Rebecca Skloot, as far as we can tell, is still touring for her book and has not resurfaced with a blog, although I do see her on Twitter.

Other science bloggers have moved around, too. Dobbs sent me a pdf from somewhere that tracked these movements, and it looks like one of those impossibly complex biological-pathway flow charts, or a Venn diagram from hell. Check out Carl Zimmer‘s list to see where your favorite science bloggers can be found. And see this update from Phil Yam at Scientific American.

Be careful if you’re looking for others on Google; the links to their old blogs will, of course, still be there, as I found out when I inserted an incorrect link recently for Bora Zivkovic, who is now moderating the science-blogging community at Scientific American.

Sadly, however, the problem of corporate public relations masquerading as news–as at ScienceBlogs–continues. The Forbes blog site, which I recently praised here for its medical coverage, is now going to be running corporate blogs, as Advertising Age reports in a story entitled “Forbes’ New Advertising Pitch: Wanna Buy a Blog?”

“This isn’t the ‘sponsored post’ of yore; rather, it is giving advocacy groups or corporations such as Ford or Pfizer the same voice and same distribution tools as Forbes staffers, not to mention the Forbes brand,” Michael Learmonth reports.

As a result, I’m no longer bullish on Forbes blogs. If Prizer or United Healthcare, or some similar leviathan can run a blog on Forbes, then I no longer trust the site’s medical coverage. Forbes reporters would find it difficult, I imagine, to post an item critical of a company that has bought its own blog on the site.

Maybe I’m wrong, but we can’t know. And, therefore, we can’t trust the reporting.

- Paul Raeburn

Many of us cannot get enough of Neanderthals. Two small news bursts feed the appetite. The illus here, by the way, is a painting by fantasy illustrator and painter Frank Frazetta, who passed on earlier this year. Anatomically it’s probably way off. But I was smitten by the muscular brutishness of it many years ago.

First: Volcanic Death? The news is that a Russian analysis of ash deposits in and near fossil sites near the time that H. neandertalensis disappeared from Europe and neighboring regions suggest that massive volcanism sped their demise.No press release is evident – the exact provenance of this news radiation is not clear to me (anybody want to explain it? Make a comment).

Stories:

• National Geographic – Ker Than: Volcanoes Killed Off Neanderthals, Study Suggests; Well-sourced, and seems to have been among the first away from the starting line by several days.
• USA Today (blog) Dan Vergano: Volcanoes wiped out the Neanderthals? ; Another early one, last week, with extensive quoting from the journal. (*UPDATE: am told by reliable source this was the first one out of the blogospheric/journalism-by-gum gate. Plus it not only quotes the journal, as I noted, but one of the authors directly via email, which I failed to notice. A well-rounded, careful job).
• Science News – Bruce Bower: Neandertals blasted out of existence, archaeologists propose; That hed has two spellings to salute, neither being the common form in American press. Bower concocts a ba-da-BAM lede, and follows it immediately with implications of this scenario for a trope: that H. sapiens invaded H. neandertalensis country and may have interbred slightly – but mainly killed them off. Maybe the volcanoes cleared’em out first. A good, pro job.
• Daily Mail (UK) Niall firth: Massive volcano ‘wiped out the Neanderthals 40,000 years ago‘ ; The story mostly hangs together,  but has a patchy look to it. It quotes from a study and has a diagram that looks as though it’s off a formal paper – why not tell readers what journal it’s from? ID’s one professor in England by his last name only. Looks like a hasty rewrite of other pubs.

Second: Neanderthals were no slouches with stone tools and decorative arts, and didn’t just crib from neighboring H. sapiens. Which, if the volcano idea is right, there weren’t many of anyway. Wotta tragedy? They just got their handicrafts down cold and blooie, volcanic ash all over.

Stories:

• NY Times – Sindya N. Bhanoo : Neanderthals’ Tools Were their Own Work ; in today’s Science Times, a shorty with a pretty good picture of their handiwork.
• BBC – Katia Moskvitch: Neanderthals were able to ‘develop their own tools’ ; Sure, but hasn’t the Mousterian assemblage of tools been attributed to Neanderthals for decades now? One thinks that the issue is not wether they had self-invented, native tools, but whether the kit expanded once modern humans entered their territory.

Grist for the Mill: CU Denver Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Two days ago Mrs. Tracker and I saw a coyote run across the winding road through Tilden Park, in the hills east of Berkeley. It was headed west, toward town. Be careful Emma, I thought. That’s our cat. We had a discussion whether to call it a Ky-O-tee, as she prefers, or KY-ote, as I say as though I’m some old squinty-eyed cowpoke.

I sort of follow coyote news and expected no surprises in the ScienceTimes lead story from Carol Kaesuk Yoon. She surprised me – but hid the packets well inside like easter eggs. Her big theme is their mixed genealogy, especially the admixture of wolf and maybe dog genes in the expansion of their range into eastern North America since early in the 20th century. This is not super new, but likely is news to many readers. This site has followed other outlets coverage of discussions about what some call coywolves and their kin. See previous posts here and here, dated more than a year ago despite Kaesuk Yoon’s assertion that the genetics of eastern coyotes has been laid out only this year.

The surprises are  evidence that Kaesuk Yoon reported the story diligently and widely. One is a jaw-dropping vignette on an unlikely-sounding hunting partner that some of these clever canids have learned to recruit. Another is their welcome appetite for a suburban pest many people hate a lot more than they distrust coyotes near town. I’d have been tempted to put at least one of those in the lead or higher in the yarn for sure. The commissioned art reproduced top right, from illustrator and fine artist Jason Holley, is super – in the general genre of fantastical realism shared with a guy I recently learned of (late, as usual), famed Ketchikan fish painter Ray Troll.

Other notable headlines:

• Jim Robbins – Old Trees May Soon Meet Their Match ; Terrific story on the next target for the twin-blights temporarily laying lodgepole pines low – and killing off whitebarks entirely – in the high western US. This is like an episode of House on TV in which you just know the patient will die, except House is on the case, so maybe not. I don’t think there’s any Dr. House to save the famous old Bristlecone pine trees. Robbins even gets in the botanical detail that these are all five-needle pines. Years ago I wrote on the wave of destruction striking the whitebarks and depriving grizzly bears of vital, late-season pine nut nutrition. There were speculative worries then about bristlecones. Now Robbins reports their crisis is on, wrought by blister rust fungus and beetles abetted by climate change.
• Katherine Bouton (book review) Reports From the Hive, Where the Swarm Concurs ; One thinks Bouton, a savvy writer, correctly sees right through the pop-psychology marketing angle for this book. There are differences between learning lessons, and just learning.  But she wields her pinprick needle while advising readers, persuasively, that this is a worthwhile tome anyway. One infers bees work collectively by an old Reagan principle, ‘trust, but verify.’ And then follow the crowd when the votes are in.
• John Noble Wilford – Polar Sidekicks Earn a Place on the Map ; Wilford loves maps. He loves the arctic. Here he gets to do both plus what every editor relishes: beloved, loyal animals – better yet, dogs and ponies – even if people eat some of them. A satisfying small, intimate story on a continent-wide stage.
• Donald G. McNeil Jr: (a big one, and an unsettling small story): 1) A Finding on Malaria Comes From Humble Origin ; or how gorilla scat got chimps off the hook for human malaria , and 2) With Rabies on the Rise, A Menu Item Gets a Closer Look ; A shorty. Sometimes, and maybe often, writing without inflection or punchy modifiers is the best way to underscore news’s emotional freight. You’ll note an odd resonance with Wilford’s story.

Plus, from Sunday’s edition:

• William J. Broad: Zeal for Dream Drove Scientist in Secrets Case ; Fascinating account of the Los Alamos physicist accused by the FBI of being a spy, and who they duped into offering to sell nuclear secrets to – not my guess either – Venezuela. Broad reports it dispassionately but, one strongly suspects, thinks the fellow is a crackpot, a zealot, an idealist, but no spy. It is SUCH a bad idea to talk of selling out the country, even if it’s a bluff, while working at a top nuclear weapons lab. It even tops ‘Hey Ms. Flight Attendant, can you help me with this bomb here?  Ha ha ha’.

As usual, lots more. Whole Section ;

- Charlie Petit

It will be another scorcher here in the Bay Area. The water is flat. San Francisco highrise lights reflecting off the Bay have no wiggly shimmer.  I feel no sea breeze at all. The condensed vapor in the predawn light, from industrial plants near the shore, is going straight up and fading to invisible  fast.  It’s already 70 degrees F before the sun rises. And while a day in the 90s is all one expects here, in downtown Los Angeles yesterday it hit 113, an all-time record with no real break expected for days.

Sometimes a reporter can leave a mis-impression even while couching a story entirely in terms that are defensibly in accord with what evidence says is correct. Take the story on line at San Francisco NPR-PBS station KQED, from the Quest science unit by Jennifer Skene, under the hed “Is this Heat Wave Evidence of Global Warming?”

Her answer, basically, is no. And that’s right enough. We’ve always gotten fall heat waves around here. This story is thus okay. Global warming will make heat waves more common, Skene writes, but adds that  “any single extreme event – a heat wave or a hurricane – cannot be attributed to climate change.” Ah, heard that before. This story is of a type – careful, and responsible. But it may mislead anyway.

Let me indulge myself.  Of course this heat wave CAN be attributed to global warming. Were it not for global warming, this particular one would almost surely not have occurred. And neither would last winter’s big snows in eastern N. America, nor the cool, foggy summer we’ve had here. Without global warming, the thunderstorm with hail so heavy it killed fish and geese yesterday near Kansas City would not have happened. No way.

Here’s a parallel. Take a pot of lightly boiling water. Turn up the flame under it. It boils faster. Many more bubbles. That’s climate change, by analogy. But it’s not as though the specific bubbles come in two kinds : ones that would have been there anyway, same bubbles at the same place at the same time, and a second set of new ones that are the result of the stove getting a higher flame. They are ALL different bubbles. And if one turns the heat back down, the rate may fall to its previous level – but not with the precise same patterns, bubble by bubble, as they’d have had were the flame never changed.  Can one blame a given bit of splatter from the pot on the anthropogenic knob-turning effect? No  – but yes, too.

This kind of subtlety would not be wisely unrolled in any daily weather story. It is at once a too wordy to explain and, for the payoff, exasperating for readers to wade through.

And I won’t go all butterfly effect-crazed, asserting that every teeny change blows up into a hurricane on the other side of the world that would otherwise not happen.

But keep something in mind when writing  or reading that nobody can blame a given event on climate change.  The corollary is not that maybe this very heat wave, drought, freeze, hurricane, or perfect fall day would have happened just like this anyway. Even if global warming is a minor phenomenon, all our weather today would not be playing out exactly as it is were there no anthropogenic greenhouse effect. It is not only global warming that continuously jiggers the climate machine’s daily weather stories – so do volcanic eruptions, albedo-altering changes of farming practice, dams that go up and ice-dams that break, all sorts of things. Without global warming there’d not have been the Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans. But maybe without it some storm would have clobbered Charleston that day for all we know. Same sum, different integers.

Oh my. I got a little tedious there. I have recited to myself lots of  lectures like this – usually I suppress them. Maybe a butterfly’s wingbeat somewhere unleashed this one.

- Charlie Petit

The teaser for Matt Ridley’s post in last week’s Wall Street Journal sounded great:

Can Genes Explain the Sex Divide?

Matt Ridley explores the thought that some of our sex differences might be caused by our culture as well as our genes.

That’s an interesting question, and Ridley seemed the ideal candidate to explore it. He’s a good writer, a best-selling author, and a scientist, and he’s written about genomics, among many other things.

It turns out, however, that he needs to practice his blogging.

Blogs are ideally suited, as many others have noted, for expressing opinions, something we do with relish here on the Tracker. If Ridley had blended some reporting with his opinions about sex differences, I would have read with enthusiasm.

Instead, we get a lazy post that any of us could have scratched out in a hour or two with the help of a glass of wine and Google (and there didn’t seem to be much of that). Ridley doesn’t opine. He guesses, he supposes, he generalizes. He ruminates. What he doesn’t do is add anything to the ongoing, collective conversation about sex differences. (Because I’m writing a book about fathers, I should probably recuse myself here. But, heck, this is too much fun.)

He begins by noting that men and women are a lot alike, but, on the other hand, not much alike. I don’t even know how one would try to quantify the difference. Is a handgun like a bow-and-arrow? If you consider what they’re used for, sure, they’re similar. If you think about what they are made of, they have nothing in common. Are men and women alike? Yes and no. Let’s move on.

“Take the cliché of the golf-playing husband and the shoe-shopping wife,” he says. I’d rather not. I don’t play golf. And I don’t turn to the Wall Street Journal for clichés. I’m looking for a little news or entertainment. And he goes on: ”Without knowing it, golf-course designers are setting up a sort of idealized abstraction of the hunting ground, while shoe retailers are setting up a sort of ersatz echo of the gathering field.”

Well, yeah. I guess. Any evidence for that?

The point here is that Ridley, maybe figuring that this was a blog post, not a real story, evidently wrote down a few of the thoughts swimming in his head, came up with a few felicitous phrases, and emailed it in. That’s not a blog post; it’s a doodle. Blogs are good for a lot of things; they are, indeed, different from stories. But if they are any good, they are also different from the first things that come into one’s head.

Many of my earlier posts fell into that category, I’m not ashamed to say–especially because I doubt anyone ever saw them. But I’ve now spent a few years trying to decode this particular format, and I think I’m getting the hang of it. (Commenters are free, of course, to vigorously disagree.) These things take a little reporting, a little thought, and a little time. Whether or not I have it right isn’t the issue; in my view, Ridley doesn’t.

With that in mind, let’s get back to Ridley’s teaser. Can genes explain the sex divide?

He concludes with “the intriguing thought that some of our sex differences might be caused by our culture, yet also ingrained in our genes.”

In other words–yes and no.

- Paul Raeburn