NatureNews – A sulphurous news story, or what happens when the press releases misses the point?
When it comes to Nature vs. Science and mention in either’s news pages of the other, one is alert. Occasionally there arise signs of pettiness or mere chortling by either towards its arch rival at the top of the world of science journals. All quite amusing.
That acknowledgment is appropriate even though one doesn’t find anything overtly unseemly, but a lot that is instructive about science journalism and the need for general wariness toward press releases, in a piece that Richard A. (Rick) Lovett had last week in Nature about a paper that ran in Science.
The topic is arcane. It would not, in any case, get much ink outside specialty publications. The news is that a research team – its lead author a Russian living in Paris – has used diamond-faced anvils to subject sulphurous compounds to the temperatures and pressures of the Earth’s deep lithosphere and mantle. They discovered it converts on the benchtop, and presumably down deep in Earth too, to a deep blue form akin to a material in lapis lazuli that includes something called the tri-sulphur anion, S3-.
This is important, reports Lovett, because geophysicists and geochemists use ratios of sulphur isotopes in ancient sediments as proxies, for complicated reasons, of atmospheric oxygen levels at the time. Now, with a new pathway in which sulfur may fractionate as it gets recycled through the depths, the oxygen-estimating system may need serious recalibration.
But, Lovett tells us, the summary of the story for the press that Science distributed in advance says nothing about that. Rather, it merely says this exotic form of sulphur may be its dominant mode inside the planet, and that something called sulfur dating is involved. He tells us that he spent more than a day chasing the sulphur clock angle before learning that there is nothing much to that, but a great deal to implications for paleo-oxygen. And he wonders whether any other reporters chased the story up the wrong alley.
Judge for yourself. Here is the summary for reporters that Science ran:
New Sulfur Species Stirs Up Debate:
It’s time to change the way we think about sulfur and how it affects Earth’s internal geochemical processes, according to researchers. Gleb Pokrovski and Leonid Dubrovinsky performed experiments with sulfur-rich fluids at high temperatures and high pressures to find that a particular sulfur ion, the tri-sulfur anion known as S3-, was stable under such conditions. Though sulfides and sulfates are the most common forms of sulfur in surface waters, these researchers suggest that this tri-sulfur anion could be the dominant form of the element in other places that are difficult to study, like in the magma brewing deep below a volcano. If this is true, then the sulfur-dating techniques that researchers sometimes employ to investigate Earth’s geologic record needs to be reconsidered, they say. Many experts have believed that sulfides and sulfates transport precious metals, such as gold, copper and platinum, through high-temperature fluids to form massive ore deposits in cooler fluids. But, this new study suggests that those common sulfides and sulfates might actually be products of rapid reactions involving the tri-sulfur anion, S3-, at greater depths. A Perspective by Craig Manning explains these findings in more detail.
But few other reporters wrote this, none from major outlets. So to what degree this news summary may have deflected reporters from the best angle is hard to tell. Also, while I am persuaded of it, I am too little of an authority to be completely sure Lovett got the right one too. But he’s a smart guy – has a PhD even…okay, it’s in economics and he has a J.D. too – and is a reliable reporter. Here’s his website. Plus, his undergraduate studies were in astrophysics. He’s also, in case you are wondering, the same Richard Lovett who is an ace science fiction writer.
Other stories:
- ANI via Hindustan Times: Rare sulphur could rewrite theories of early Earth ;
- ABC (Australia) Stuart Gary: Sulphur secrets uncovered ; A few good additional angles, including a Pinatubo mystery, but nothing on early oxygen levels in question.
- Ars Technica – Yun Xie: Unusual form of sulfure may move inerals around the Earth’s crust.
- Physorg.com : New form of sulfur discovered in geological fluids ;
Neither of those stories reflects serious effort at independent reporting. Thus, whether Lovett might have been the only reporter to see the real story behind the press release has not gotten a serious test. But judging by the summary above, sifting out the oxygen angle was not easy.
- Charlie Petit
