Dinos in the news again, this time from the bountiful late-Mesozoic strata of Utah.  The  news follows a comfy, familiar, surefire plot – they’re pretty big, very bizarre, and arrive in public with a colorful story of how these two new species of horned dinosaur were found and then exhaustively exhumed and analyzed. Best of all for reporters, editors, and art directors, the newsmaking institutions behind the discoveries provide colorful paintings of the parrot-beaked oversized rhino-like things with their  multiply horned muzzles, eyebrows,  and flaring frills of bone.

Do I sound jaded? I’m not. Love these guys. This is so in part because of the familiarity of the story. Just about everybody even half literate in North America for the last century-plus has shared an image, implanted in childhood, of dinosaurs with three main characters. There are A) big toothy biped meat eaters along the lines of T. rex, B) long necked giants with their icon the mis-named boneyard mash-up called Brontosaurus and now straightened out as Apatosaurus, and as in this case, C) the goofy rhin0-like fullback of a browser called Triceratops and its kin. Lesser actors include dim-bulbed armored dinos, duckbilled goofballs, velociraptor gangsters, etc., but A, B, and C are the mainstays.

The news is that in the journal PLoS One, prepared specimens of two new species of ceratops, named Utahceratops gettyi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni, have been recovered from 75 million-year-old sedimentary rock in a national monument in the southern part of Utah. Leaders of the analysis are at the Utah Museum of Natural History. The lead author is already a public figure – host of a PBS dinosaur program. Weird they are (the dinos, not authors). That word gets a workout in coverage. One has a really really big head, the other the most ornately frilled frill yet – like others in the family, presumably for sexual and other social signaling more than for fighting. So they say.

Stories:

• Salt Lake Tribune – Mark Havnes: Scientists unveil new Utah dinosaurs ;
• AP – Brock Vergakis: 2 new dinosaur species discovered in southern Utah ; Not long, and little context other than to mention Triceratops in the lede.
• Bloomberg – Elizabeth Lopatto: Dinosaurs With 15 Horns, 7-foot Heads are Discovered in Utah ; Nice job by phone, with effort to explain why these interest the scientists – such as that the two species seem to have lived at about the same time, occupying roughly the same niche. on what was then a huge island or small continent.
• National Geographic – Rachel Kaufman: Two New Horned Dinosaurs Found in Utah / Bizarre beast lived on an ancient “lost continent,” experts say; Hmm. Nice enough job, but enough with the  “lost continent.” This is not to pick on this writer. Several outlets use the term. It’s right off the press release. But there is no explanation there whether ancient Laramidia can be called lost or why it merits quote marks. It was either lost or it wasn’t . If the quotes mean so-called lost continent, reporters should feel no obligation to use it. Reporters would be smarter to see through it as a press agent’s trick for stirring up interest by slyly evoking  The Lost World novel by Conan Doyle.  It’s better called a former or vanished continent. Nobody ever had it and then couldn’t find it. Atlantis is a lost continent but it’s fiction. This one’s rocks are all over the American West, full of bones and stuff. I supposed people sometimes call Gondwanaland and Laurasia lost continents too, but that’s sloppy usage as well.
• ABC (Australia) Annabel McGilvray: Horny find uncovers triceratops’ ancestors ; Ms. McGilvray has it as a local story, of sorts, as one author is at an Australian university. She also says the land was on a lost continent, but without the dumb, qualifying quotation marks. Presumably she takes the meaning to be synonymous with former continent. She didn’t write the hed, one suspects. One is confident neither of these was Triceratops’ ancestor. One of them, maybe, but not both. Predecessors, relatives, okay.
• BBC – Katia Moskvitch: Fossils of new species of horned dinos found in Utah ;
• Guardian – Ian Sample: Horniest dinosaur ever discovered – Kosmoceratops – found in Utah ; Isn’t there a sort of rule that a story’s hed and lede should not tell the same joke? Sample’s first graf says this creature “can lay claim to the dubious title of the horniest animal every to walk the Earth.” The headline writer already gave away the punch line. Besides, maybe there are non-ceratopians with more head protuberances than this thing had. But Sample doesn’t skirt cultural references of all sorts, having fun. We even read of Raquel Welch and her fur bikini.
• LiveScience – Charles Q. Choi: Really Horny Dinosaur Heralded from Lost Continent ; Wow same joke. And Choi’s lede qualifies Laramidia’s status, calling it a now-lost continent. No quotes, at least.
• Scientific Blogging – “news staff” : “Lost Continent” Of Laramidia Finds Two New Dinosaurs ; Hmmmphhhttt. And the lede calls the place a long-forgotten world. Forgot? Like the land that time forgot? What does that mean? And the continent found these bruisers? Sigh….I’d give up but have to remind myself that journalists have always played fast and loose with the language.

Grist for the Mill:

Utah Mus. of Nat. History Press Release ;     PLoS One Article ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Yesterday  was World Alzheimer’s day, so we’ve tracked some stories from Spanish speaking health reporters. No big news, but in Chilean press we found a curious international report. It says that that Chile, Uruguay and Argentina (the southernmost countries in S. America) have the continent’s highest portion people over age 60 suffering from Alzheimer disease (~7%). Comparing a bunch of stories, we can see two groups: the ones that recognize that there is little to do to prevent and threat Alzheimer, and the ones that are still saying that a healthy diet, exercise, brain training, or low blood pressure may reduce risks significantly.

Ayer martes 21 fue el día mundial del Alzheimer, y la gran mayoría de secciones de salud sacaron notas sobre esta enfermedad. Veremos qué decidió destacar cada publicación.

Reportar desde la perspectiva científica o sanitaria sobre el Alzheimer es difícil. Debemos hacerlo porque es una enfermedad que conlleva un sufrimiento abismal tanto a pacientes como familiares, cada vez será más frecuente debido al envejecimiento de la población, y sin duda es uno de los grandes retos científicos de la primera mitad del siglo XXI. Pero de momento poco más se puede decir además de que todavía no hay ninguna cura cercana, la genética por sí sola no nos da buenos indicios de quien va a padecerlo o no, o que las terapias preventiva pueden quizá retrasarlo un poquito pero de forma muy nimia. Las informaciones parecen tener un carácter más social, de estilo reportaje, y hablando de todo lo que envuelve a esta enfermedad. Si a nivel médico algo tiene cierta controversia, es hasta qué punto las terapias son más o menos eficientes.

En ABC (España), Cristina Garrido: “No hay dietas para prevenir el Alzheimer”, nos recuerda en un buen texto que nadie está a salvo y no hay manera de prevenirlo con garantías. Valiente texto, que expone el profundo desconocimiento que aún tenemos sobre los mecanismos de esta enfermedad, y desprestigia notas como la de BBC Mundo: “Proteína de artritis revierte el Alzheimer”. Si leemos esta última nota, vemos que se basa en un estudio con ratones de laboratorio. A estas alturas, debemos ser concientes que uno de los grandes problemas del Alzheimer es que la gran cantidad de posibles fármacos que han tenido cierto efecto en ratones, han fallado estrepitosamente luego en estudios clínicos con humanos. Sabiendo esto, no podemos utilizar bajo ningún concepto un titular tan contundente a partir de un estudio con ratas de laboratorio. De hecho, a nivel interno los científicos tienen una gran discusión sobre si esto indica que el envejecimiento del cerebro de un ratón es demasiado diferente al de un humano como para que el modelo animal sirva para algo. Éste es un tema profundo a abordar.

En contraste con ABC, La Nación (Costa Rica) muestra más esperanza con el texto de Isabel Rodríguez: “Pequeñas acciones pueden retrasar efectos del alzhéimer”. Es sólo enfoque de titular, porque en el cuerpo del texto se reconoce que crucigramas o dejarles conversar pueden ser eficientes sólo en las primeras etapas.

Ambos textos se basan en entrevistas a expertos locales, pero como recomendamos algunas veces, si queremos cerciorarnos una rápida búsqueda en Pubmed de las últimas revisiones científicas siempre nos es de gran ayuda. Y en seguida podemos encontrar un review reciente reconociendo que las intervenciones cognitivas no han mostrado evidencias de retrasar la aparición o progresión del Alzheimer, y otra de esta misma semana diciendo que intervención cognitiva unida a tratamiento farmacológico sí mejora los síntomas respecto a las terapias por separado.

Complicado, y quizá por eso tanto Isabel Lantigua: “Más allá del olvido” (El Mundo), y sobre todo el extenso reportaje de Patricia Liceras: “Contra el alzhéimer: cuidemos al cuidador” (El País), buscan el apartado más social de la enfermedad, que en España afecta a más de 600.000 personas.

Sobre números, la información más “novedosa” la encontramos en La Tercera (Chile), por medio del completísimo artículo de A. de Ponson y T. Quezada: “Informe mundial ubica a Chile entre los tres países de América con más alzheimer” según el cual “Latinoamérica Sur -zona que comprende Chile, Argentina y Uruguay- es la que presenta la mayor presencia del mal de alzheimer en todo el continente americano”. En concreto, la prevalencia en mayores de 60 años de estos 3 países es del 7% de la población; mayor que EEUU, Brasil, o cualquier otro país del continente. No se ofrece una explicación, porque posiblemente no la hay, pero un experto opina que Chile combina larga esperanza de vida con altos niveles de estrés y enfermedades cardiovasculares que son riesgo para la demencia. De nuevo, la costumbre de suplir con palabras la falta de datos.

En La Nación (Argentina) Facundo Manes – “Alzheimer: reducir los riesgos” se adhiere al sano estilo de vida para asegurar que ejercitar la mente, hacer ejercicio, y una dieta saludable con vitamina B12,ácido fólico, poco alcohol, bajo colesterol, presión sanguínea baja… disminuyen el riesgo. Con todos los respetos, nos parece demasiado tópico, y pedimos datos que lo sustenten.

El Universal (México) – Patricia García “El Alzheimer, una responsabilidad de todos”. Texto que pide conciencia política y social sobre el más que seguro aumento de casos de los 500.000 que ya hay en México. En la misma línea Milenio – Arturo Gómez Salgado: “En 20 años se duplicará el número de personas que tienen Alzheimer”, y La Jornada – Fernando Camacho Servín:” El mal de Alzheimer, problema creciente de salud pública en el país”

Seguro que olvidamos muchas notas, pero no encontramos notas sobre Alzhéimer en medios que lo hubiéramos esperado. Es cierto que no hay noticias recientes al respecto, y por motivos socioeconómicas es un problema que preocupa más a unos países que a otros, pero sí creemos que fechas como la de ayer son una buena excusa para plantear reportajes bien trabajados sobre la situación en nuestros países de una enfermedad que va a ser cada vez más importante en todo el mundo.

- Pere Estupinyà

The longest and deepest economic and environmental  impact of the Gulf Spill, one surmises, may not be due to the spill itself. There is also the overdue overhaul it prompted within the Dept. of the Interior – chiefly the dismantlement of the Minerals Management Service and creation of a less conflicted and less industry-cozy agency, the tongue-tangling Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (or BOEMRE, which is or at least should be pronounced ‘boomer’).

Hats off to a few news outlets that, in the wake of the gulf spill and the recent natural gas pipeline explosion near San Francisco, have looked around and found a chance to warn ahead of time that another, somewhat similar federal regulatory agency may need likewise reform.

Stories:

• Mother Jones – Kate Sheppard: The Next Fossil Fuel Disaster? ; After all, she writes, this pipeline overseer, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in the Dept. of Transportation, is led by a former MMS director. That’s not a conviction, not even an indictment, but it ought to prompt digging.
• E&E Greenwire (via NYTimes) Paul Quinlan: Critics Fault Oil and Gas Pipeline Regulator’s Industry Ties ; Sheppard for her Mother Jones story leans heavily on and lifts (with full attribution) from this Greenwire piece.
• MinnPost – Derek Wallbank (Sept 16): Congressional hearing on pipeline safety: Obserstar recalls Minnesota incidents ; This, along with other news reports, foreshadows the more pointed reporting at Greenwire and Mother Jones.

There likely are other news agencies on the prowl. There is in this, need one say, an echo of the fight-the-last-war syndrome among military planners. The press ought, in a perfect world, not need the example of catastrophe to get flinty-eyed about governmental failure of oversight – and there were plenty of warning signs about MMS. But this is better than learning no lessons at all.

- Charlie Petit

It seems that Earth’s Moon – widely regarded as re-agglomerated pieces of Earth’s crust blasted into space billions of years ago by the crash into the planet by Mars-sized impactor – may have a sibling near Mars itself. The clue is in a water-born class of minerals, phyllosilicates, that the European Mars Express spacecraft’s spectrometer data recently imply on Phobos’s surface. Which is to say, it looks a lot like Martian crust.

Violence and outer space and shiverings of peril in the sky ought to be eye-catching, eyebrow-lifting ingredients for spot news. A report at a meeting in Rome this week holds that the battered moon Phobos, long assumed, along its sister moon Deimos, to be a captured asteroid, might have been born similarly. For reasons unclear to me – other than that in the US at least the daily science writing corps within the spot-news, daily general press is dreadfully depleted – this is getting little coverage.

Stories:

• BBC - Massive blast ‘created Mars moon’ ;
• Astronomy Now – Emily Baldwin: Phobos born from Mars impact ;
• New Scientist – Stephen Battersby: Mars moon may have formed like our own ; Quite a complete, well-informed report with history, context, and a light dusting of data. Includes mention of the daring Phobos-Grunt Mission to be launched next year in Russia to bring samples of the moon back to Earth.
• Discovery News – Irene Klotz:Moon Phobos: A Chip Off The Martian Block;
• Sky & Telescope – Kelly Beatty: Phobos: A Chip Off of Mars? ; Nice insight into the bearing on their origin of the near-circular, equatorial orbits of the two moons of Mars. Plus, he gets into ultramafic rocks plus phyllosilicates.
• *UPDATE : Universe Today – Nancy Atkinson: New Theory Say P:hobos Formed From Re-Accretion of Impact Debris ; Missed this in first searches this morning. And Atkinson does a good job zeroing in on the low density and implied high porosity and weak structural integrity of Phobos as indirect support for re-accretion over capture.

That’s not much. Where’s the Brit daily press? Not even the Register‘s Lester Haines, an avid and vivid writer on space (among other topics)  and who covered the flyby that led to these data, wrote it up. What gives? More in the not-even dept: Neither space.com nor Universe Today (oops – see update re U-today, above) seem to have it. Or maybe my news judgment has gone to pot….

Grist for the Mill: Europlanet Media Centre Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Yesterday the regular e-mailing of a National Academies Press alert included reminder that among titles on its recent, hefty tomes is “Ocean Acidification: A National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean” (links and the press release in Grist below). The 175-page report, with 12 authorities on its authoring committee, appears to have been out for awhile. The press release is dated in April. But coming across the notice leads to a question. What kind of coverage of this worrisome, nagging, and darned near insoluble issue has landed recently?

You can probably guess the answer, so one naturally wonders whether a problem is its label, the ear-numbing “ocean acidification” ?

Before getting to the list, it’s worth reminder of (previous post) the spot of news in the NYTimes this week on coral bleaching due to the high  temperatures in many mid-latitude stretches of ocean. That’s bad enough. Acidification, by some forecasts, is as bad or worse on the potential havoc meter.It’s also a lot simpler science than climate change.the report, incidentally, includes as a “national strategy” a recommendation for more research, better data handling, and a longer term plan to start planning to eventually do something, if that seems possible, to abate the fall in pH by means other than, you know and what’re the chances of this?: carbon taxes or caps and trades or governmental laws with sharp teeth that compel a stop in the rising CO2 level in our air.

Samples from the recent, very small rumble of coverage:

• Alaska Journal of Commerce: Andrew Jensen (sept 10) : UAF increases research into ocean acidification ; A sober if unremarkable single-source piece on a new university center.
• Fairbanks News Miner: UAF creates ocean acidification center ;
• Voice of America (editorial, Aug 30): Monitoring Ocean Acidification ;
• Ars technica – John Timmer: Shellfish feel the burn: damage linked to atmospheric CO2 ; Cites the recent NRC study, along with a PNAS report on commercial clams and scallops that already seem to be growing thinner shells than during pre-industrial times.
• USA Today – Elizabeth Weise (blog, Sept 21): 2010 Heinz awards announced ; One is a NOAA man in Seattle who says o.a. is global warming’s evil twin. I also learned here that one of our clan, the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert who has probably written more than a few lines on ocean souring, got one of these yearly environmental prizes. (off-topic note: Time Mag‘s Bryan Walsh is among others who covered these prizes. He doesn’t highlight the o.a. man from Seattle, but notes that while harsh partisan politics drive climate debate and have gotten worse, prize-eponym John Heinz was not only a stalwart conservationist, but Republican. )
• Seattle KUOW (NPR affiliate, Sept 15) ) Tom Banse: Experiment Looks for Shell Fishing’s Future in Changing Ocean ; Segment on “the evil twin” and a conversation with another NOAA man in Seattle.  Suggestions here that local correction of pH, at seeds farms etc., might help oyster industry persevere.

Coverage lately has been, one must say, on the scant and obscure side. That’s likely because no big events – whether new studies or some new phenomenon noted in nature – are driving attention. Ocean acidification is scary precisely because it is occult, insidious, and slow. That’s no recipe for breaking news attention.

One More: a sample of experimental, new media coverage:

• Helium – Christobel Rajesh: How acidification is threatening the world’s oceans ; Not journalism, more like a high school report. But the Massachusetts-based site calls itself “the face of a publishing revolution” and declares that its writers stand a chance of earning cash through up-front payment, revenue sharing, and even writing contests (!). Good luck.

Grist for the Mill:

NAS Press Release ; Nat’l Research Council Report ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Mexican scientists have created a  drought resistant maize by adding a bacterial gene that lowers the levels of an enzyme called trehalase. It degrades trehalose, a sugar that helps keep water inside the plant. The researchers don’t call the new plants transgenic but “syngenic”, arguing that the bacterial gene they have used is very similar to the one that original maize plants have, it has the same function, and that the new varieties don’t produce any new proteins. Is that correct? Shouldn’t we call it a transgenic plant? It’s obvious that the researchers want to avoid this term, but a much better explanation is required.

Científicos mexicanos del Cinvestav han creado la primera variedad de maíz resistente a la sequía. Un avance que puede ser útil para áreas de este país u otros con gran cantidad de terrenos áridos. Quizá te preguntes si se ha conseguido fruto de alguna alteración genética, pero en Crónica de Hoy, el titula de la nota de Antimio Cruz se encarga de sacarte rápido de dudas: “El Cinvestav desarrolló maíz capaz de soportar sequías 20% más severas que las actuales, y no es transgénico”. Bien utilizado el “y no es transgénico”, pues sin duda es uno de los datos más importantes que quiere conocer la población. ¿Cómo lo generaron entonces? En la buena nota de Antimio una experta explica que: “Lo que hicimos fue introducir material genético a una planta, la llamada agrobacterium, una bacteria natural del suelo que se dedica a transferir material genético a la planta”. ¿Cómo? Entonces… ¿es o no es transgénico? La nota explica que “El gen que utilizamos es muy similar al de la alfalfa y el maíz, por eso estamos hablando de un organismo sisgénico, no transgénico, ya que la secuencia utilizada es muy parecida a la del maíz”. ¿Sisgénico? ¿muy parecida? Esto suena raro… Revisemos el proceso: Entre todos los azúcares que produce de manera natural el maíz, uno es la “trehalosa”, cuya función es mantener agua en los tejidos de la planta. Pero este azúcar es degradado por una enzima llamada “trehalasa”, disminuyendo así la capacidad de la planta de retener agua y haciéndola más susceptible a la sequía. La nota se vuelve un poco ambigua en este punto, pero parece que los científicos introdujeron un gen bacteriano que disminuye la acción de la trehalasa, aumentando así la cantidad de trehalosa, y por tanto convirtiendo al maíz en más resistente al estrés hídrico.

En la nota con información de agencias de Milenio: “En el Cinvestav crean maíz que resiste la sequía“, o El Universal: “Mexicanos crean maíz resistente a sequías”, se cita el nombre de la bacteria (“la tumefaciens que se encuentra de forma natural en el suelo mexicano”), y también se recalca que según los investigadores “este nuevo maíz no es estrictamente transgénico, sino sisgénico. No ofrece resistencia a los antibióticos, ni tampoco es potencialmente alérgeno, porque en él no se sintetizó ninguna proteína. Esto se debe a que los organismos combinados pertenecen a la misma especie y la secuencia genética de ambos es “extraordinariamente similar”.”

Primero, no entendemos eso de que “los organismos combinados perteneces a la misma especie”, justo después de decirnos que un gen bacteriano se ha incorporado en una planta de maíz. Pero segundo, aunque las secuencias fueran muy parecidas y no se produzca ninguna proteína nueva sino sólo mayor cantidad de un enzima ya presente, ¿no es eso igualmente un transgénico? Hasta cierto punto, nos debería dar igual lo que digan los científicos: para la sociedad esto es un transgénico en toda regla. Y si resulta que no lo es, entonces se requiere una explicación mucho más clara de lo que han dado los medios y agencias de noticias. En La Jornada, Gabriel León Zaragoza opta por definirlo como un organismo genéticamente modificado, pero no entra en la disquisición acerca de su nomenclatura.

Resulta obvio que los científicos están intentando evitar por todos medios la demonizada palabra “transgénico”, tanto por beneplácito social y legislativo. Les puede salir bien a corto plazo, pero quizá están haciendo un fleco favor a esta rama de la biotecnología que puede dar tantos beneficios. Más conveniente sería reconocer que sí se trata de una planta modificada genéticamente, pero explicar por qué no hay nada que temer ni a nivel sanitario ni medioambiental, y puede resultar tremendamente beneficioso para su país.

- Pere Estupinyà

Apply by October 4

One of the more difficult challenges to journalists is tracking and understanding the evidence in science and medicine. The Knight Science Journalism program has put together a four-day workshop to tackle the issues, with a dozen speakers including experts from NIH and FDA, to talk about everything from what epidemiology reporters need to know, to the latest on scientific journals, and covering particular cases from the vaccine-and-autism debacle to the latest screening techniques.

We pay journalists $750 expenses to get to the boot camp, cover hotel and most meals. To apply or get more information go to:

http://web.mit.edu/knight-science/bootcamps/current.html

What an odd trio on the Science Times section front today. Maybe it’s the last day of summer thing – time to end play, get serious, but for now let’s kick out the stops on playtime. We have a story of a fuzzy topic written large, of a tiny topic written for the jokes, and another that points out that people are the only animals known to actually like Tabasco sauce. All are profiles – one a self-profile of sorts.

First up, Carl Zimmer goes on and on about a man obsessed by measuring consciousness. One thinks this is a book proposal, not a news story, with quick teases and then a change of subject. It is a profile of a doctor determined to devise a simple way to tell whether somebody is conscious. I got lost about the time it tells me of “translating the poetry of our conscious experiences into the precise language of mathematics.” Zimmer is as ever a conscientious and adventurous reporter, but this one zooms over so much ground without even defining what consciousness is that I at least am among readers left in the dust. Maybe that’s the point of it – the last sentence of the story sums it up. (Don’t miss – colleague tracker Paul Raeburn mentions Zimmer’s piece in another post today).

Then Pam Belluck amuses us with lots of funny bits from the life of a doctor who is about to star in a reality show that, it turns out, is not meant to be funny. Too bad. A man who publishes Placebo Journal, full of parody ads for non-existent health related things (Sick-Na Health Care, its logo a dead tree)  has to be pretty amusing company. The story, alas, goes nowhere much. Not that you’ll forget it. But it is mere diversion.

Further diversion is provided by Times’s estimable writer-editor James Gorman as he recounts some of the science of hot peppers while describing how he and his son grow them and make their own picante sauces. The bottom line: it’s masochism.

Too much whimsy, adventurism, and obscurantism at the start for my tastes here. For a dose of serious science news writing, go to the paper’s front page. There Justin Gillis writes that coral bleaching is still a problem and this year looks bad. The problem here is that while the events he describe are current, the topic has been written in similar fashion for a decade now. He pumps it up – but one fears the reaction by the public will be muted by the poison and faux-opprobrium spread by numerous yahoos concerning the science of climate change. The cure for that, I don’t know. the story has strength and honesty – letting readers know that corals can recover, they’re not all dying, that many previous episodes have passed without permanent harm. But the baseline temperature just keeps getting higher and higher….

Other Science Times headlines to note:

• Monique Mugnier: Racing Time and Nature to Find Aviators Entombed in a Glacier ; And the glacier, in Greenland, is headed out to sea.
• Sindya N. Bhanoo: (Observatory roundup) -  Spreading Their Wings to Longest on Record ; The real big bird.
• Nicholas Wade: Natural Selection Cuts Broad Swath Through Fruit Fly Genome ; Modest length on this, but it addresses what may be a paradigm-buster in evolutionary theory.
• Unexpected headline of the day – Anahad O’Connor: Really? Replacing your desk chair with an exercise ball can improve your posture ;
• Tara Parker-Pope: In Worries About Sweeteners, Think of All Sugars ; And stop zeroing in on high fructose corn syrup, sheesh! But then the story goes soft, leaving readers unlikely to know what to thing.

As usual, lots more. Whole Section.

- Charlie Petit

Just caught up with the closing essay in last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. Entitled “The Plot Escapes Me,” the essay, by James Collins, a novelist, is a reflection on why he doesn’t remember the books he reads–and whether they were worth the time it took to read them. “What was the point?” he asks.

Fair enough; he’s entitled to his ruminations. But then he goes one step further: He backs them up with Science! “Those books must have reshaped my brain in ways that affect how I think,” he writes. And he asks Maryanne Wolf (left), director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University.

“I totally believe that you are a different person for having read that book,” she says, in reference to a particular volume Collins mentions. “It’s there,” she tells him. “You are the sum of it all.”

That certainly sounds like science, but it won’t fool the Tracker’s readers. I “totally believe”? Wolf cites nothing in her research or in anybody’s research to back up this claim. Nor did she cite Tennyson, who had the same insight in 1833, when he wrote, in his poem Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met.” Tennyson, unlike Wolf, made no scientific claim. It’s just what he thought–and it’s a pleasant thought.

In fairness, Wolf did say this was what she believed, not what she could prove. But readers will reasonably assume that when a scientist says she believes something, she has some scientific basis for saying so.

Further, Collins might have called other researchers, and he might have found some who disagreed. This is what we call, in our business, a one-source story. It’s like asking a Democrat to give us the electoral landscape without asking a Republican. Not fair, and not credible.

So, a weak cheer for Collins for a nod toward science. And a demerit for not doing the reporting properly, even if this is a personal essay. And two demerits for Wolf, for expressing beliefs that can easily be taken as facts, because they come from a Scientist. This is the kind of thing that gets scientists in trouble. (“I totally believe that evolution is correct…”)

- Paul Raeburn

Your tracker has to concede almost scrolling past an AP story that Gillian Flaccus filed from Southern California yesterday: Calif. utility stumbles on 1.4m-year-old fossils. What, another horse jaw, ground sloth femur, mastadon tusk, oh sigh and oh how dull?

But it turns out to be quite interesting, even if Flaccus was over-enthused in using a quote declaring this could be even more scientifically significant than the La Brea Tar Pits collections. Perhaps in some narrow paleontological sense but,  given the immense diversity of La Brea’s remains and their remarkable condition,  this new discovery outshines them? Nonetheless, the story has enough sourcing and detail to inspire readers to ponder the region’s Pleistocene, back when today’s deserts were lush grazing grounds. Better yet, it appears, these fossils pre-date La Brea’s and are from a time that had not been well sampled until now.

The Los Angeles Times‘s Thomas H. Maugh II and Amina Khan elevate the news to drama, launching on the tableau that may have immediately preceded the death of one specimen – a horse – and the saber-toothed cat that put the bite on it. Llamas, many rodents, owls, hawks, and others are included among the 1450 specimens, 250 large animals among them. Remarkable is that Southern California Edison has 70 scientists on payroll (or perhaps on retainer?) to study chance discoveries like this. Is that big staff  its decision, or something required by law?

Other stories:

• Discovery News – Jennifer Viegas: Animal Fossil Treasure Trove Unearthed in Southern California ; Derived, it appears, from the
  AP and LATimes stories. Nice illus. One notices that the site url’s filing system categorizes this as dinosaur news. That’s a bit odd.

Other Paleontology News:

• Guardian (UK) Brian Switek : Sperm whales: a long and vicious history; Switek, a US paleontologist and blogger, provides a detailed and colorful, professional analysis of news that broke back in July, to wide coverage. The Guardian does well to provide its readers sophisticated reporting as is this.

Grist for the Mill: Southern Cal. Edison Press Release (via Business Wire) ;

- Charlie Petit

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A lot of news reports flowing over the transom this week on genetically altered salmon and whether selling them should be okay by the FDA – and whether consumers are entitled to mandatory labels disclosing their transpecies origins. As though it makes a difference to life’s peril quotient – do we demand that merchants by law tell us whether that beef at the meat counter is angus, piedmontese, or zebu? But put a little chinook and ocean pout DNA in Atlantic salmon to make them grow in pens to full size in a jiffy (and all be females too) and some people go nuts worrying about their right to know and the possibility of allergic reaction or growing an ocean pout tail fin for all I know. Plus much more seriously – what hazards might such farmed fish pose to wild  populations should they escape their inland tank farms and some of them fail to be sterile as advertised?  What will they eat? Is salmon chow production going to be a major enviro problem itself? How about the salmon poop, where will THAT go?

As one would expect the major carrier of this US-based news story is the Associated Press, where Mary Clare Jalonick has it out under the hed FDA considering whether to label engineered fish. Her lead – “Genetically modified salmon for dinner? Diners might not even know it.” Not even?  That sentence structure implies that if they don’t, it’s a scandal and it’s on the FDA. Better would be if the hed merely asked, “Must diners be told?” But she smartly keeps the story simple, and focussed on food safety rather then the bigger issue of environmental hazard.

At ABC, Kim Carollo reported late yesterday that the panel has already decided to do nothing – asking for more data. This is not in the AP. That is a puzzle. The Chicago Tribune‘s Andrew Zajac, Monica Eng, and Kristin Samuelsen also reported that no decision will be coming out of this advisory committee until it learns more.

At NPR, on Monday’s Morning Edition April Fulton began appropriately on the nutritional and healthiness of GM salmon vs. the natural kinds. The report says also that the broader implications of large scale salmon farming, especially with an always-on growth gene, will be heavily debated. One can only wonder whether this is something for the FDA to settle, or other agencies such as EPA or Fish & Wildlife Service. At  NPR’s site, a blog by Scott Hensley works hard on the yuck factor of including a gene from the ugly ocean pout. He writes that the fish have three sets of chromosomes (italics his) without explaining why anybody should care – but implying it ought to give us the yips.

Finally, a little more background and context. At HealthDay, posted via the Bloomberg/Business Week combo, Jennifer Goodwin tells readers clearly that this hearing is just one small part of a cumbersome, extended process of approval. One FDA science advisory panel already has told the agency itself that these salmon are just as safe eatin’ as the ones that grow wild. Now the Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee is at bat. And Goodwin lists some of the large array of advocacy groups with their many objections. Plus, she links to a huge FDA background info document laying out the criteria for decision (in Grist below).

Other stories:

• NYTimes – Andrew Pollack: Panel Leans in Favor of Engineered Salmon ; A calm and useful piece – focuses on the safety issue before the veterinary panel. Also worth reading is his earlier (Sept 3) report on the thumbs-up the FDA’s science advisory panel already gave to these fish.
• Wall St. Journal question of the day: “Would you eat genetically-modified salmon if approved by the FDA“.  Results so far (spoiler alert!) about two thirds say …..  no. What exactly is the usefulness, distinct from the purpose which is to inspire conversation, of such uncontrolled and sloppy surveys?
• PostMedia News (Canada) Sarah Schmidt (Sept 17) Foes of engineered salmon appeal to Obama to halt FDA approval ; Largely about the Canadian roots of these altered salmon.

The point is that a right to know a food’s history and broad societal and environmental impacts appear rather distinct from the Food and Drug Administration’s far narrower, primary  mandate to focus on documentable health and safety effects on the people who eat it. Most of these news stories on the salmon issue don’t help readers distinguish the categories of worry or whether the FDA is the right body to address them all – or whether this particular stage of the process is so important.

Maybe sorting through the welter of worries that people have about GM foods, and whether they all best left to the FDA to worry over, is the job of pieces sporting “news analysis” tags.

Grist for the Mill:

FDA Public Meeting Advisory (with background documents); FDA Key Facts Commonly Misunderstood about these fish; ; FDA advisory panel Briefing Packet ; Center for Food Safety (advocacy group) Press Release (in which the group’s senior policy analyst says FDA needs a “more fulsome novel foods approach.” Fancy-sounding, but somebody should have looked up fulsome in a dictionary and saved the woman from a minor printed public embarrassment); AquAdvantage / AquaBounty Technologies Press Page .

- Charlie Petit

You probably saw Carl Zimmer‘s interesting story this morning about measuring consciousness; we all read Science Times. But did you see the story yesterday about the risk to kids from manganese in drinking water? Not unless you were following the CBC in Canada. Or how about the story on new research on the link between adenovirus 36 and obesity? That one was on the BBC.

You might have seen versions of these stories in other places, too, but one source I follow to keep up with these things is the Biopsychiatry mailing list, run by Marc Breedlove. Yes, I said mailing list–this is an old-fashioned, 20th-century style email list; no Facebook or Twitter here. Breedlove is the Rosenberg Professor of Neuroscience at Michigan State University, and he always seems to find a few stories I’ve missed. It’s a daily update, and it’s free. You can subscribe here, or, if you have trouble, by emailing Breedlove directly (breedsm@msu.edu).

Breedlove’s links are also archived here, a useful place to look for that story about memory that you remember seeing but can’t remember who wrote it or where you saw it. If you remember a word or two in the story, you might find it in Breedlove’s archive. (I confess that this sort of thing happens to me all the time.)

Clever visitors to the site might notice that Breedlove is also a co-author of a textbook, Biological Psychiatry, published by Sinauer Associates. The site gently promotes the textbook, but that doesn’t detract from the archive’s usefulness. And I don’t recall ever receiving a promotion for the textbook on the mailing list. Indeed, I didn’t know Breedlove had written one until I first looked at the archive.

Breedlove collects stories from some familiar sources, such as Discover mag and New Scientist, but also from other sources you might not follow. If you cover neuroscience, you might want to add this subscription to your list.

- Paul Raeburn