Some things are both inconsequential and so unsettling as to, one hopes, discourage coverage by most reporters and, even if they wanted to write it up, get the axe from their editors.

It comes in answer to a question, of the sort one gets from grade schoolers upon their first exposure to the history of the French Revolution. For how long after somebody cuts off your head might your brain remain reflecting upon its sudden, awkward predicament?

Not everybody could remain circumspect. Thus one reads, and I make no further comment:

• New Scientist – Michael Marshall: Death rattle of a decapitated brain ; On mice, electrodes, collapsing neural pathways, a sharp blade, and a stopwatch.

A registration process may be required to read it.

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker dithered away an hour or more this morning looking stuff up and trying to decide whether this topic is fit for a post that fits this site’s mission to cover media coverage of science news. Decision: close enough.

It started with a press release, a tip list for reporters that a longtime member of the science writing tribe, Kevin Krajick, sent from his current employer, the Columbia University Earth Institute, which mostly means the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. It’s a list of field research sites that reporters might want to report upon, even visit. I scanned through and goggled at this one:

ARCTIC SCIENCE BY SUBMARINE Undersea Instruments Operated by the U.S. Navy  MAR 2011-ON

Civilian researchers and the Navy are reviving a long-dormant program using military resources including nuclear subs to study the fast-changing Arctic Ocean in areas that otherwise are inaccessible. In the 1990s, subs cruising below the sea ice provided much of the original data on the seabed and ice cover that formed our basic understanding of geology and ice trends there. The program languished after the end of the Cold War, but with sea ice now waning faster than ever and competitive claims to the seabed possibly opening, the SCICEX program (Science Ice Exercise) is being revived. Lamont-Doherty scientists, who helped run the original SCICEX, will help prepare researchers with the Navy’s Arctic Submarine Laboratory to take surface and underwater samples, and process the information. Geochemists Ray Sambrotto and Bill Smethie will coordinate sampling for nutrients, microbial abundance, oxygen and other biological and geochemical markers. They hope to learn about biological productivity and how it is changing in response to reduced summer ice cover, and to study the circulation and mixing of Arctic water masses, which are influenced by climate. As a first step, Naval researchers will set up on the sea ice north of Alaska in March to test instruments. Some parts of this operation are classified.

SCICEX is back? How’d I miss that, other than that I miss a lot? Fourteen years ago I wrote about the impending demise of the Navy’s accommodation for science on some of its under-ice Arctic cruises by nuclear sub. It’s not online anymore, but here’s a crummy copy.  I reported that the Navy was shrinking its sub fleet, the older Sturgeon-class boats that had been used for these science cruises and that were tough enough to surface through several feet of sea ice were being retired, and that the newer Los Angeles Class attack submarines would be too busy elsewhere to make dangerous trips under the ice often enough to squeeze in useful science observations of such things as global warming impacts.

So maybe there’s a way for reporters, if not to get a ride on one of these cruises (fat freakin’ chance of that, Mr./ Ms. NoSecretSecurityClearance LiberalMediaMember), to get an insight into how data are being gathered on ice thickness up there -  pending a way to do it reliably by satellite.

It turns out that this news, stunning to me, has been reported, if not terribly recently or broadly:

Stories:

• E&E //ClimateWire (via NYTimes) Lauren Morello (July 20, 2010): Navy Subs Help Scientists Expand Study of Arctic Thaw ;
• US Naval Institute Proceedings – Rear Adm. David Gove (Feb. 2009): Arctic Melt: Reopening a Naval Frontier ;
• Wired – David Axe: How the U.S. Wins the Coming Arctic War ; Pretty hawkish, but it includes this fine Navy pic of its Los Angeles Class USS Alexandria surfaced through Arctic Ice. (One also learns that the Navy used this boat to help a TV show, Stargate SG-1, film a scene).

Now it starts to make sense how the University of Washington program that tracks the volume of Arctic sea ice, PIOMAS at its Polar Science Center, gets some of the submarine data it employs for calibration. Ditto for the Navy’s Polar Ice Prediction System.

This is, again, a departure from our usual practice of sticking closely to media accounts of current events in science. But after spending so much company time nosing around, might as well put the results out there to share.

Other Arctic Ice News:

• Reuters – Thomas Grove: Explorers plan first Russia-Canada voyage via North Pole ;
• USA Today – Doyle Rice: Study: Melting Arctic sea ice puts polar bear populations at risk ;
• Reuters – Yareth Rosen: Walrus protection can wait: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ; see also NYTimes Dot Earth – Andrew C. Revkin: Walrus on Endangered Species Waiting List ;
• AP – Dan Joline: Feds extend comment period for ice seal listing ;
• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: Winter’s freezing, so what’s with Arctic sea ice? ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Several interesting stories from different Latin-American countries today. A very good one about an Argentine scientist ‘s cheap treatment for a bacterial eye infection that blinds to thousands of children each year. An Uruguayan researcher is part of an international team making big progress in artificial photosynthesis. Interesting: Venezuelan government launches a new plan for science that seems to give priority to research published in local journals instead of international publications. In Chile, good story on science policy about the areas that will be receiving more funding in the future. From Brazil, a very well explained article about a new treatment that cures AIDS-like disease in mice, but nearly kills them too. Two different stories in Ecuador talk about the reproduction in captivity of a nearly extinguished frog species, and the problems a 100 y.o Galapagos turtle male has mating. A Panamanian reporter reconstructs the first Smithsonian scientific expedition in the country almost one century ago, and another story says that for the last few years the government has been investing quiet a lot in research, but there is not enough awareness of that. Maybe more communication is needed?

Repetimos: dar a conocer las investigaciones de los científicos de nuestro país es lo que genera un valor añadido a nuestro trabajo. Repetir la noticia curiosa del día suministrada por agencias está bien, pero no es suficiente si pretendemos reivindicar la relevancia social de nuestra labor. Veamos en La Nación (Argentina) un buen ejemplo de periodismo científico que no espera a que le llegue la noticia: Nora Bär en “Seis gotitas pueden evitar una forma de ceguera infantil” explica el trabajo de un investigador argentino afincado en París que ofrece un tratamiento barato a millones de niños que cada año se quedan ciegos por una infección bacteriana que se transmite por moscas. Quizás no es una nota relevante para aparecer en prensa fuera de Argentina –como tampoco lo sería la nominación de un actor local a cualquier festival cinematográfico- pero sí merece que sus compatriotas lo conozcan. Además, destacar lo bien que Nora introduce la problemática de la falta de higiene, cómo relata la historia, cita que se ha publicado en la revista más importante del sector, e incide en la importancia de que el tratamiento es barato y se puede aplicar de inmediato.

Mil trescientos quilómetros al Oeste, El Mercurio (Chile) nos explica por medio de Richard García que formación de planetas y estudio de la memoria serán las dos líneas de investigación más beneficiadas de los $1.980 millones que el ministerio ha otorgado a los centros que fomenten la excelencia científica. En la versión impresa se completa la lista con estructura de proteínas de membrana, líquidos iónicos, conservación marina, y coordinación en redes.

A la misma latitud pero volando de nuevo hacia el este, en El País (Uruguay) Déborah Friedmann nos cuenta que un Uruguayo está al frente del equipo que ha conseguido combustible con agua, luz solar y dióxido de carbono. El artículo fue publicado en Science, y habla de la disociación termoquímica de agua y oxígeno. El proceso no está bien explicado, y no sabemos qué combustible se genera, si hidrógeno o algún hidrocarburo. Sería interesante dar un poquito más de detalle. Pero muy buena nota también.

Y si de Montevideo subimos 2.000 Km hacia el nordeste, el brasileño Folha nos ofrece una muy buena pieza de Ricardo Mioto “Cientistas curam HIV de camundongo”, explicando de manera muy divulgativa la estrategia seguida por investigadores para vencer una enfermedad similar al Sida (esto no aparece en el titular) en ratones. Ya en el primer párrafo Ricardo explica que sufrieron tantos efectos secundarios, que casi mueren después del tratamiento, pero noticia destacada que aparece en Cell. Y que puede interesar al público, por lo bien explicada que está la estrategia, actuando contra un gen que hace de “interruptor” del sistema inmunológico. Agradecemos la ilustración también.

Relacionado con la política científica, de mucho interés la nota en SciDev de Marielba Núñez “Venezuela lanza plan que prioriza áreas de investigación”. Parecen ser urbanismo, cambio climático y eficiencia energética. Pero lo que más nos interesa es que la convocatoria ya  no se queda en Universidades y centros de investigación sino que se abre a innovadores y tecnólogos independientes, y que “para la aceptación de candidatos se priorizará la publicación en revistas venezolanas, aunque también se tomarán en cuenta publicaciones internacionales”. Curioso.

Desde Ecuador nos llegan dos bonitas historias sobre inversión en preservar una de sus grandes fuentes de riqueza: su valiosísima naturaleza. El Universo nos relata los esfuerzos para reproducir en cautividad una especie de rana que se creyó extinta. Realmente, nota muy completa, detallada, y bien documentada. Y BBC Mundo publica el artículo de Paúl Mena Erazo “Una tortuga de Galápagos con casi 100 años busca pareja para procrear”, también con elevado grado de detalle y con un corte parecido: los intentos de que la tortuga Jorge se reproduzca a sus 100 años. No pongáis esa cara; su esperanza de vida es de 50 o 100 años más…

Y en La Prensa (Panamá), Tamara del Moral “Estudio pionero impulsó la ciencia en Panamá” realiza una muy interesante reconstrucción histórica de la expedición de miembros de la Institución estadounidense Smithsonian que hace 100 años visitaron Panamá, y despertó su interés científico por los trópicos hasta que sentó una base en dicho país. Queremos saber más, sobre todo después de este título en SciDev “Panamá invierte en su despegue científico” con Nature como fuente y que empieza diciendo “El gobierno panameño está empeñado en demostrar que los científicos nacionales pueden competir con sus pares de cualquier lugar del mundo” y termina “aun cuando muchos fuera del país desconocen la gran cruzada que se está llevando a cabo para impulsar la ciencia”. Comuniquemos pues.

- Pere Estupinyà

Image source http://tinyurl.com/4jjx5cd

The first thing that fleetingly occurred to The Tracker this morning on reading an assessment of Russia and its seasonally-suspended Lake Vostok drilling program in Antarctica was huh! This guy can’t even spell Lake Erie.

It was only for less than a second. In the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday a reporter named Andrew Darby put a historical umbra around the jot of news on which this site yesterday posted. To remind you all: It’s still summer in the Antarctic, but the season is short.  The Russian Federation shut down its monumental drilling program at isolated Vostok Station, perhaps the coldest place on Earth, until next spring (spring there, fall here). Most outlets who paid attention to the suspension did so in rather granular, breaking-news fashion – deep hole, pristine waters more than a mile down, biology treasures that may be there will have to wait a while longer (along with the risk the program will foul those treasures), and over and out.

I can’t vouch for all that Darby writes, but it has timbre. Its mood is on the melancholy side, capturing the profound depression that swept Russian Antarctic science in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. He doesn’t write about these specifics, but I remember ten years ago, on a visit down there to US facilities, seeing Soviet-built research vessels pass through, big icebreakers some of them, hauling tourists for sightseeing rather than filling their labs with scientific teams. Their parent academic institutes were out of money. At least one ex-Soviet outpost, in one account making the rounds, begged passing ships for spoons, knives, and forks because members of the last crew to rotate out stole the flatware.

He summarizes the Lake Vostok borehole in what reads like knowing fashion. He compares the lake itself in size to Lake Eyre, which I had to look up but is a fluctuating, saline body in central Australia in a closed basin sort of like the Dead Sea. For the Russians’ post-Soviet, struggling Antarctic program, he writes, Lake Vostok is a chance to matter, to do something big. He makes it sound as though it’s all that they have for pride.  Thus he gives the drilling delay a back story that lends the latest news far more gravity than have most accounts.

Searching around, I found a squib at the Russian news agency RIA Novosty, calling attention to Darby’s story. So, it is getting around including in Russia.

Thank you to Science Magazine’s John Travis for flagging Darby’s article for us.

- Charlie Petit

A couple of our most thoughtful science bloggers have been involved in recent days in a discussion about where science journalism is headed. The discussion has already produced a fascinating example of what we might do to get away from the familiar but problematic practice of shaping our coverage around the convenience of scientific journals–a practice that might well do more for the journals and their financial bottom lines than it does for our readers.

John Rennie

The conversation began in the wake of ScienceOnline 2011 (about which, see earlier Tracker posts by me and by Charlie). John Rennie, the former editor of Scientific American, railed against paper-of-the-week science coverage, which limits the news reaching the public to stories “mostly from a select subset of premium journals,” and “to only a small number of stories from those journals.” (He published a transcript of those remarks on his PLOS blog, The Gleaming Retort.)

“Why are we in such a hurry to collect the opinions of other scientists (or whoever else we think is relevant) and cram them into the stories, with very little opportunity for forethought? It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Rennie writes.

Let’s now define science news as what was published this week, he argues. Instead, he asks, provocatively, what if we waited?

Ed Yong

Ed Yong, of Not Exactly Rocket Science on Discover blogs, was inspired by Rennie’s call for new ideas about science coverage, and he came up with something unique–and, I thought, inspiring.

Yong, who has been covering research on induced pluripotent stem cells (mature cells that are re-wound into a stem-cell like state) took the most important stories of the past few years and put them into an interactive timeline with links to the sources.

John Rennie was as impressed as I am with Yong’s work. In a follow-up post, he wrote, “Even if we all agree that the press release-driven pack journalism that now passes for science news is unfortunate, who is really doing anything about it? Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science, that’s who.” Rennie entitled the post “Why Ed Yong is the Future of Science News (and You Could Be, Too).”

As Rennie says, this doesn’t mean we should all drop everything and write nothing but timelines from now on. But it’s a fine example of what a little thought and imagination–in lieu of reflexive filing–can produce. Colleagues at Reuters, the AP, and other rapid-response news outlets are quietly chuckling at my naivete, I’m sure. But I haven’t forgotten my 15 years at the AP. It isn’t easy to break the mold, but thanks to embargoes, we often have time to play around a little before filing. (I know, embargoes have all sorts of problems, but, in this case, we can use them to our advantage.)

Yong constructed his timeline using a site called dipity.com, which provides the timeline software. I wondered how long it took Yong to put this thing together, and so I asked him. Here’s what he said:

It took around 7 hours in total, of which 5.5 went into collating the content. Once that was done, it was fairly straightforward to upload everything into Dipity. The interace is very easy to use. I reckon that now I’ve done it, I could streamline that process into under 6 hours. I’ve covered a few of these stories myself and I’ve been following the field so I knew the key events and papers that I wanted to hit. I also searched the news archives of places like Nature, Scientific American, New Scientist, Wired and so on, to see which events they covered. As per usual, I went back to the primary papers (the abstract, at the very least) to make sure I was representing things fairly.

And here are some of his thoughts on the project:

I think the timeline works because like any good feature, it tells a story. You read it and you can get a sense of the intense competition (lots of people publishing at the same time in different journals), the key players (the same names keep cropping up) and a field that’s slowly advancing. It works because the chronological element to it adds something extra – if it didn’t you might as well stick up a list of bullet points.

As you can see, this isn’t easy to do. It’s easier if, like Yong, you use it for a continuing story that you’ve been covering. But even then, it’s a significant time commitment, especially for unpaid bloggers. Yong told me that he’s had some nibbles from employers who might want to hire him to do this for them. It might turn out that this venture–aside from inspiring us and provoking worthwhile discussion on new ways to cover science–will turn out to be profitable for its author.

“Regardless of immediate remuneration, I now have a resource that I (and others) can use for future stories,” Yong said. “One thing I noticed when I scoured the archives of other news sources was that their stories on this topic were incredibly repetitive. They always had to touch on the same key points to give a bit of background and they had almost identi-kit quotes from researchers about the value of the latest discovery and the goals for the future. I can understand the need for that, but I can now embed my little gizmo and let readers see the full context for themselves. And getting some recognition from peers doesn’t hurt either .”

It’s a nice piece of work. Take a look, and see whether it doesn’t inspire you, too.

- Paul Raeburn

A low buzz of stories in the last few week has heralded the approach of an ice-boring drill bit,  in Antarctica at Russia’s Vostok Station, to  the lake of the same name. It is so wrapped in speculation that it’d be called mythical if it were known long enough go to fit the myth niche.

This morning I saw this on the wire and decided to do a round up of curtain-raisers:

• Reuters – Alissa de Carbonnel: Russia poised to breach mysterious Antarctic Lake ;

Ms. Carbonnel has all the essentials up top (except the name of the lake, which she buries in the 13th graf). It’s many thousands of feet under the East Antarctic ice sheet, isolated from the outside world for millions of years, maybe a cold oasis for strange life forms …. a place to be visited to a soundtrack from the Twilight Zone.

But looks like the Russians will have to be frozen in their poised pose for awhile. No sooner than I started the roundup, I found good news for those reporters who debated but decided not to make the very long trip to Antarctica in order to visit a tiny camp on a vast flat white frozen desert with nothing to do for weeks except to shiver and watch a drill crew fiddle with their drilling stuff. That and to interview scientists in uge parkas who have been saying the same things for year. (Does anybody know if any reporters were actually there?)

Anyway, it’s off for now. Winter’s coming. Time to pack up and go home:

• Voice of Russia: Lake Vostok drill on hold ; The crew’s already pulled out, it says here, and headed for Cape Town till next season.
• Nature – Richard Van Noorden: No breakthrough to Antarctica’s Lake Vostok ;
• CBS (& AFP): Winter Scuttles Effort to Reach Ancient Arctic Lake ;

When the show does resume, it may be that few or no reporters will be on hand for one of the most intriguing science adventures currently underway. This could be right up there with the discovery of undersea hydrothermal vents and their bizarre colonies of worms, crabs, shrimp, and bacteria living on chemical energy. But the assignment could be dreadful – huge expense to get there, and nothing much to see. The big event will be the entry into the lake and the suspense over what’s in it and whether the breach itself will destroy any biological wonders inside. But sampling could take days or weeks. Analysis might be some place else. The while thing could be one of the most boring, protracted, fruitless events one could imagine this side of a stakeout at a Yeti lookout. That’s the good part about being a science writer compared to a scientist. They do the drudgery. We tend to attend only when something really exciting is in the bag.

- Charlie Petit

Donald G. McNeil Jr. has established himself among the few, great contemporary reporters on public health, a field that seems not to have gotten intense, prominent attention by US press for a few years (perhaps not since Laurie Garrett, now at Foreign Affairs, was cranking it out at Newsday). This goes even while the debate over health care reform continues to rage, focussing mostly on its impact on the middle class, not on the poor.

McNeil polishes his star with a section-leading piece on HIV, AIDS, drug addiction and a clinic. The reporting is so good that it won’t change many minds. By that, I mean he presents the hopeful and the ugly in such vivid doses that the politically partisan notion of using taxpayer money to provide clean needles and safe places to stick them in one’s veins may get more vociferously argued now.  But the story may be used as ammunition by whoever reads it and whatever position they stick with.

The news is that in Vancouver, BC, a provincial clinic with a waiver from Ottawa’s drug laws seems to be slashing the HIV infection rate among drug-injecting addicts. It treats them as sick, drains and patches their abscesses, binds their other hurts, gives them clean needles, and prescribes anti-retrovirals to those who are HIV+. It gives them a clean clinic where they can shoot up without fearing a mugging or worse and in a place where it is safe to O.D. Rates of new HIV, it says here, have plunged.

I vote for that. But we also read about the neighborhood – apparently a longtime abode of the down and out. It is thronged by addicts drawn in part by the clinic. McNeil unblinkingly takes us there, a place he likens to “the set of a zombie movie.” Human wrecks shamble, shuffle, tremble, and stagger about. Young women offer themselves for sex. In the alleys, residents “squat to suck on crack pipes …. or lie down so friends can inject their jugulars.” He does a great job adding that these are not zombies, but people and some of them friendly and likable even if they are addicts. Some (like me) will say if it cuts HIV infection, it’s worth a wider try. But I know many others will find the whole scene so repellent that it’s the last place they’d want to see tax dollars flowing as an enabler.

Unforgettable story. While McNeil reports that the HIV rate is dropping fast enough to fully justify the money spent on the clinic and the anti-retrovirals, he doesn’t say whether the city’s use of illicit drugs is up or down. That seems pertinent.

Other notable headlines:

• John Tierney: Social Scientist See Bias Within ; At a meeting in San Antonio, a social psychology meeting gets an earful on the overwhelming statistical anomaly of their profession – it’s almost all liberals, only a scattering of conservatives, and the few who are among the latter feel discriminated against by a hostile climate. Maybe, I’d offer, it is bias. Or maybe it’s that not many conservatives, naturally drawn to admire personal responsibility and careers in which one may achieve money and prestige by dint of superior character, tend to be untempted by lives  focussed on the group dynamics of cooperation, neuroses, collective achievement, and ostracization. Maybe some of each. (More interesting is that here is a profession in which many who follow it raise their hands when asked who is liberal. They admit it!) See also Paul Krugman in op ed: Ideas Are Not The Same As Race ;
• Andrew Pollack – Drugmakers’ Fever for thePower of RNA Interference Has Cooled ;
• Claudia Dreifus – A Conversation with Janet D. Rowley on Genetic Disease ; Best is the closing question and answer, about fishing.
• Jim Robbins: Safeguarding Sage Grouse and Their Elaborate Courtship Dance ; Surprise, not just a cute critter story, but an important one about conservation strategy in an age of attack upon government or other collective regulation. Plus, it is a cute and engaging species.
• Nicholas Bakalar: What’s a Little Swine Flu Outbreak Among Friends ; Yikes. It’s not the classroom or the school bus. It’s the playdate that is the happy hunting ground. (Gad, playdates! I have six grandchildren. Do they walk over to so and so’s house and knock on the door to play? No. Their parents arrange play dates. They get driven, and escorted to doors. Sheesh.).

As usual, lots more. Whole Section.

Elsewhere in the NYTimes:

• OP Ed Paul Krugman: Droughts, Floods, and Food ; On climate change and food and war and peace.
• Business Kenneth Chang: Canceled NASA Rocket Could Return as Part of Low-Cost Space Taxi ;

- Charlie Petit

The arts and sciences, the overlap is large – but one sort of human product seems to be jumping from mostly social science and archaeology toward the realm regarded more as creative art.

Late last week in the New York Times Arts section reporter Judith H. Dobrzynski provided a feature story illustrated by a bold mask of wood and fur. It used to be displayed with its provenance labeled “Kwakiutl,” a North West Pacific tribe or, in Canadian usage, first nation (more properly called Kwakwaka’wakw). The carving was seen more as display of  ethnology than of individual creative skill. Now in Denver it’s on exhibit with a new attribution on the wall : the late woodcarver Willie Seaweed. Other pieces in the exhibit on Native American art either include the names of the artists, or say explicitly they are no longer known.

Another artist mentioned in the NYT piece is the 19th century Hopi sculptor and potter Nampeyo. When I read that name, a bell rang in my head. I’ve just seen that name!

Indeed longtime colleague and friend at the San Francisco Chronicle, David Perlman, he of 60+ years as a newspaper reporter at one place (more than 50 of them as science writer), had just landed a piece on the front page. It described the re-emergence to public display of an old collection of Southwest American Indian art,  at the California Academy of Sciences. He’d written it weeks earlier after learning of it from friends and relatives of the original collectors. Perlman’s story includes the names of three of the artists, including Nampeyo. He doesn’t make the association of specific names with the pieces a part of any explicit theme. He  reports them as a matter of course. Still at the edge, he treated as a given what the Times illuminated as an overdue revolution in the ethos of museums.

Many art collectors over recent generations been fully aware of the names, when known, of top native American artists. And this post’s sampling is pretty provincial of me – from the two papers  (yes, of paper) that hit the front steps each morning. If the Times’s theme is true – that museums tended to keep such art as a category apart, more cultural anthropology than individual expression – one must say that’s a societal blind spot that should have been reported more incisively long before now. One also wonders – the Chronicle story does not provide the answer – whether the S.F. display puts artist names on the tags when known, or says so when it’s not.

- Charlie Petit

In January the environmental watchdog organization Environment America released a report (see Grist for link) entitled Dirty Energy’s Assault on our Health: MERCURY. Mercury poisoning is, one thinks, a significant problem that merits tighter standards. Several outlets picked up the news, few of them at any length.

Here’s a question: at a guess what do you believe is the prime route by which mercury from a coal-fired plant reaches the environment? If you answered that it’s through the smokestack, that’s what I’d have said too.

That’s the implication too of several stories I can dig up:

• USA Today – Wendy Koch: Study: Mercury pollution concentrated in four states ; This says, via one of the report’s authors as a source, “the mercury falls into waterways from rain or snow, where it builds up in fish and those who eat fish.”
• AP: Virginia report details mercury pollution ; Filed from Richmond VA, but it’s a national report. And it too says the Hg falls from the sky into rivers and lakes.
• Baltimore Sun (Green blog) Report: Out-of-state air pollution threatens Maryland ;

None of those stories presents any big surprises to the casual eye. What is interesting is that one outlet ran a longer account, and found a twist in the data underlying the report that might change how people react to it. At the Philadelphia Inquirer longtime enviro reporter Sandy Bauers reports that the emissions listed include everything, including the ash and other waste of such plants, and the in some cases relatively little mercury is going up the stacks even if the amount in the ash and other waste is high. Furthermore, she reports, much of that is captured at the site – giving at least some plants good argument that while their emissions are low, this report nonetheless tags them as severe producers of mercury polution.

Without a lot more experts weighing in, it is difficult to say whether the Env. America report is on balance a public service or not. I’d lean toward yes – anything that urges a reduction in mercury pollution seems good to me. But Bauers, as she tells ksjtracker, is correct that the report did not get much of the close scrutiny from journalists that every such report ought to get. She writes, for instance, of one Pennsylvania plant whose operators tell her their facility is classed by the EPA as an “ultra-low mercury emitter,” but is ranked in the new study from Env. America as the eighth worst in the nation.

I’d be interested in hearing from other veteran environmental reporters whether the distinction between air and solid or waterborne waste at the plants should have been caught and reported in more outlets.

Grist for the Mill: Environment America Mercury Report ; Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Climate gate sure put a ding in ability to track climate news like other news. So much politics, often expounded by people with little interaction with the practice of science, dominates the news.

In that vein, in the last few weeks a sharp back-and-forth has played on the pages of the Santa Fe New Mexican. It began, one learns, in coverage of a paper that  former senator Harrison Schmitt, a geologist and Apollo astronaut who is among the few scientists to have donned a spacesuit before the space station era, sent to NASA. Now firmly on the denier and contrarian side of argument, Schmitt declared that Arctic sea ice is at the same level it was in 1989, Greenland is gaining and not losing ice, and North America and Europe are now dominated by cold winters and cool summers.

To its credit, the New Mexican ran a reply in late January by a University of New Mexico climate scientist of some repute, Mark Boslough. It’s a full-throated reiteration, along with asides on the contrarians’ habit of “making stuff up and smearing honest scientists,” of the scientific consensus that all those things that  Schmitt said above are right are actually wrong, and that the IPCC, climate gate or no climate gate, has things basically correct.

That in turn brought an equally full-throated blast in the New Mexican’s op-ed pages a few days later by the head of the conservative and climate contrarian Heartland Institute, Joseph Bast. He says basically, amid some unkind words about Boslough’s characterization of the kinds of scientists that appeal to the Heartland Institute, that Schmitt’s assertions are correct enough to pass muster.

The final piece in this triptych went up a few days later at the Huffington Post, where hydrologist and active climate change worrier Peter Gleick hunted up some data to refute Bast (and a hat-tip to Gleick for letting us know abut this series of exchanges). His point, well-made, is that Mr. Bast included some egregiously cherry-picked data to make his argument that Arctic sea ice is not in retreat, not at all. That plot up top is of data that show, for one brief interval, 1989 sea ice coverage was in fact lower than it was for the corresponding moment in 2009. QED. Gleick asks, if this figure was your financial record, “would you claim with a straight face that you had more money in 2009 than 1989?”

Speaking of the polemics that have overwhelmed coverage of climate science, the other day while waiting for a haircut in a little shop on UC Berkeley’s North Side, I killed time in the little news stand next door. I picked up a copy of  a liberal magazine that in this town is dead center politically. What caught my eye, among its cover’s listings, was:

• The Nation – Mark Hertsgaard: Confronting the Climate Cranks ; An extract, with a news update, from Hertsgaard’s book Hot: Living through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. One doubts that taking his advice and just calling the contrarians cranks will improve the climate dialog much, however much one might sympathize with the instinct to do so.

What’s also interesting about Hertsgaard’s piece is its report that a brigade of concerned citizens including a number of college students were to have descended upon the offices of climate-skeptical members of Congress last week. Their aim:  “to confront the climate cranks..and call them to account for the dangers they have set in motion.” It further says the initiative, which Hertsgaard planned to join, “will video all our confrontations and then quickly make them available to the public.”

That could be news. I didn’t recall seeing anything of this counter-contrarian verbal assault in the news. But looking around it did get a smidgen of coverage.

• San Francisco Gate – Michael Brune: Generation Hot ; Yep, another op-ed, in essence. This is the SF Chronicle parent’s website, and Bruneis executive director of the Sierra Club, and it’s basically a review of of Hertsgaard’s book.

Not that the coverage of climate science has been abandoned by professional science writers and other mainstream journalists. A look through this site’s recent postings is enough to demonstrate that. It also remains a beat that gets steady attention and wins awards for reporters. Here are two recent postings to that effect, both at the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media:

• John Wihbey: Global Temperature Reports: A Media ‘Pain’ But Valuable and Important Duty for Scientists ;
• Bud Ward:  Climate Reporting Well Represented Among Journalism Prize Winners ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) After a meeting of science communicators in Nicaragua, SciDev reports that Central America needs to improve science journalism and public awareness of local research. Maybe. But we are not sure if a top-down approach is the best way to stimulate science, health and environmental reporting. Sometimes we feel like too much time is spent talking about plans, ideals and goals, and not enough about specific projects. Here is an example of what might be better, in the form of a participatory initiative at the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. It focusses on research by Spanish scientists. It includes that economic support from a private Bank. An experienced science reporter worked with top Spanish researchers to report news on  industrial chemistry, schizophrenia, computation, economy, cancer, and  paleogenetics, among others. t asks readers are to vote for the  “Vanguardia de la ciencia” prize. This seems to be  a potentially good example for other countries to engage their citizens  and politicians with science.

Un resumen del recomendable artículo de Jorge A. Huete-Pérez “Centroamérica necesita plan de comunicación científica” en SciDev sobre un reciente seminario de periodismo científico realizado en Nicaragua podría ser: “La comunicación científica es una excelente herramienta para conseguir un mayor compromiso político con la investigación. Para ello, en países con escasa cultura científica, las noticias no son suficientes. Deben complementarse con iniciativas que transmitan la importancia de la ciencia a la sociedad, destaquen la labor de investigadores locales, y potencien la apropiación, compromiso y participación social y política en la ciencia”.

Cierto: un objetivo repetido en muchos encuentros es que la ciencia local llegue a sectores amplios de la población. Pero como aquí nos gusta más hablar de casos concretos que de objetivos, planes y programas, proponemos contemplar la iniciativa “La Vanguardia de la ciencia” que ha lanzado el periódico español La Vanguardia, para dar visibilidad a las investigaciones en España, y fomentar la participación ciudadana con la votación del lector para otorgar el premio Vanguardia de la ciencia al grupo de investigación que más lo merezca. Como explica el experimentado y gran periodista científico Josep Corbella, la votación será ponderada con otros investigadores, y la iniciativa está abanderada por el grupo Godó. Como indica el banner de la sección, también se cuenta con la colaboración (suponemos económica) de CatalunyaCaixa.

Enseguida lo comentamos, pero… ¿Qué necesita Nicaragua –o cualquier otro país centroamericano- para realizar –en caso de gustarle- una iniciativa parecida? No mucho: una persona emprendedora que crea en el proyecto, lo lidere, y consiga: un buen periodista científico, el beneplácito de un medio de comunicación cuanto más masivo mejor, y financiación de alguna entidad pública o privada. Con eso ya arranca. ¿Un plan general? Mejor si lo hay; pero no es imprescindible. Además, en ocasiones genera demasiada burocracia y entorpece la misión. Lo imprescindible es que alguien se ponga a entrevistar y escribir, que alguien publique, y que alguien pague.

Sobre La Vanguardia de la Ciencia: Felicidades de nuevo a Josep Corbella por el trabajo realizado. Ya lleva 14 científicos entrevistados (algunos agrupados por parejas) sobre temas como… Química: la síntesis en laboratorio de un material escaso pero con muchas aplicaciones industriales como la boggsita, Neurociencia: qué rol tienen las interneuronas en la aparición de esquizofrenia, Economía: intentar analizar de manera similar a la epidemiología todos los factores que hacen que España tenga más paro que Francia, Medicina: las dificultades y progresos frente al cáncer, Paleontología: el análisis de fósiles de neandertal, Física: un láser que permite atrapar moléculas individuales como si fuera una especie de pinza óptica, o Interdisciplinariedad: física de sistemas complejos y biología molecular para diseñar redes celulares que constituyan la primera computadora biológica. Hay más. De momento, las preferencia de los lectores se decantan por el tándem de químicos, seguidos de cerca por el equipo multidisciplinar. En la sección, podemos encontrar también otras notas relacionadas con la ciencia local.

Excelente iniciativa. Si quisiéramos buscarle alguna pega, creemos que las notas describiendo el trabajo de los investigadores podrían estar un poco más desarrolladas. Son bastante escuetas. Sabemos que al final es cuestión de tiempo que uno le pueda dedicar, y Josep ha realizado un gran trabajo condensando de manera clara y en pocas líneas el objetivo principal detrás de cada grupo de investigación. Pero si pudiéramos pedir, nos hubiera gustado un poco más de detalle.

Y no podemos evitar comentar un debate recurrente ente algunos comunicadores de ciencia españoles: La Vanguardia cuenta con el magnífico trabajo de sus redactores de ciencia, pero en muchas ocasiones da cancha a las pseudociencias en su sección estrella; unas entrevistas muy ágiles que aparecen a diario en “La Contra”. Es la página más leída del diario, imitada por otros periódicos, y un escaparate donde cualquier autor quiere salir. La controversia es que en ocasiones como el sábado pasado publica entrevistas como “El sol, y su luz, es un manantial de salud”, por Ima Sanchís a un “Doctor” en ciencias naturales, defendiendo los supuestos usos terapéuticos de la luz solar, y los falsos casos de gente que dice alimentarse sólo de la luz, sin necesidad comer. “Tal vez energía y materia sean intercambiables”, dice este “doctor”, que también asegura que “Nuestras células comunican a través de la luz gracias al ADN, que funciona como una antena de transmisión de estas ondas electromagnéticas”. Para ser honestos, la primera parte de la entrevista es totalmente coherente, explicando los problemas que indudablemente suscita el tener tan poco contacto con la luz natural. Y los efectos saludables de tomar el sol. Bien hasta aquí; pero claro, esto lo podría decir cualquiera. Es hacia el final de la entrevista donde revela un tono pseudocientífico al hablar de biofotónica que –y aquí está la discusión- según algunos no debería permitir un periódico como La Vanguardia.

- Pere Estupinyà

A cold-hearted cynic might suggest there is just something wrong with pilot whales. Somehow evolution has left them with a faulty instinct for navigation. So often it seems that this one species is the reason for heart-wrenching reports of mass strandings. Rescuers sometimes get them back in deeper water and they head right back toward shore. One thing seems certain – the selection pressures toward more robust method for knowing which way to go, perhaps via resistance to infections or inflammations that throw their sense of direction awry, are intense.

This morning one sees on the wire, and getting wide pickup, a short and refreshing break in the patttern:

• AP: Whales stranded in New Zealand refloat themselves ; This is a saga in eight paragraphs. It does strike a hopeful note, but reports the heavy tolls of other, recent strandings in the area. This dispatch may be updated, but appears to have been first filed Feb. 4.

That was the first I saw while making my usual stop at the feeds from AP, Reuters, and other major services.

Further search for reports of New Zealand strandings from the local press there turns up remarkably diverse headlines over recent days:

• Nelson Mail – Hayley Gale: Whales refloated after second stranding (Feb. 2) ; The short AP dispatch had an air of finality – this suggests the latest is part of a recurring pattern.
• Auckland Newstalk FM (Feb. 2): 70 whales struggling to get out to sea ;
• New Zealand Herald/NZ Press Association – Paloma Migone (Feb. 6) : New bid to free re-stranded whales ;

It is impossible to imagine, with each stranding in most places except perhaps Japan where slaughtering pilot whales is a commercial enterprise, that every time a group swims itself  into trouble good hearted people won’t wade out to help them rather than just stand about as they die. As news, it is legit. But a welcome, standard part of the boilerplate on such stories would be a graf on the species’s abundance (very high)  including  expert opinion whether such strandings, distressing as they may be, pose a significant threat to their existence.

- Charlie Petit