For the most part hurricane Irene was not covered by science journalists as a science-rich event, but by weather and disaster reporters who (correctly too) saw it as a government, FEMA, personal tragedy, natural disaster and public service warning package. But there were science angles, such as the connection to global warming that this site has already addressed.

A good summary of broader, overall media coverage, and of accusations from some that reporters and editors at major web, print, and broadcast outlets went way overboard, is at the Columbia Journalism Review by Curtis Brainard. (Note – had wrong link here for a few hours, now fixed) For one thing, Brainard is a specialist on climate reporting and criticism thereof, so is usually squarely focussed on a beat that also is one of ksjtracker’s prime interests. Second, he wades into a fight over the hype some perceive. Particularly notable here and worth taking notes on is Brainard’s review of a NYTImes man’s  “News Units.” These are gauges of story dominance in a day’s news budget. Very handy. Somebody should write some software to calculate it automatically and post the results in real time.

For what it’s worth, I believe the advance reporting was exactly correct. It was no hype that Irene posed a historic threat to the eastern seaboard. Nobody, particularly among meteorologists and other storm authorities, is about to apologize for seeing the storm’s potential for epochal havoc. If an asteroid has a ten percent chance of hitting Earth, that is the biggest natural disaster curtain-raiser for potential news in the history of mankind – even if it does also mean a 90 percent chance Earth watches the rock whiz harmlessly by. Ditto for hurricanes or leaking reactors or armies massing on borders. Preparation and warnings are in order. The storm blew to pieces, in terms of hurricane ferocity, somewhere just south of NY Harbor. Its rains absolutely drowned parts of New England anyway. In the Carolinas it left the full tropical cyclone package of wreckage in its wake. To shout Watch Out! was no hype. The storm was, even if it fell out of hurricane status early, colossal.

However there was a bit too much mindless momentum to the coverage. Even as the winds faded, TV reporters stood on beaches and in the streets of NYC gawking at flooded intersections because that is where the script told them the story would be. In the meantime the unexpected story – almost the definition of news – went unreported for many hours. That was the horrendous rain well away from the shore, particularly in New Hampshire.  NASA has released a satellite image (higher res and original color coding at link, my own photo-edited version up right) taken before dawn on Sunday. By that time the coast was already nearly clear. But check out the deepest hues in the Vermont-New Hampshire area, corresponding to coldest cloud tops and heaviest rain. Surely TV weather guys watch these feeds. A few of them should have been shouting at their assignment desks to get somebody up there or to at least talk about it (maybe some were shouting, for all I know).  I dunno about chances that mere web and print reporters would all be on the ball re satellite weather maps to that extent. But media as a whole ought to have begun pivoting toward rain and not wind by sun-up Sunday. Somehow information on this budding disaster inland should have reached not just the likes of FEMA but the media and the public quicker.

- Charlie Petit

Ford Vox has alternated in life as medical writer and practicing MD, with doctoring his day job (this is his eighth appearance on the tracker and he has written for the LATimes, Reuters, Newsweek, Slate, Salon, and more). He has out this week on CNN’s Opinion page his explanation to sports fans – and sports writers – why the man with no fibulae and not much else below the knee, sprinter Oscar Pistorius, is entitled to run against fully able-bodied runners in regular track meets. That includes in the Olympic Games. Pistorius is famous for his velocity while wearing springy prostheses for lower legs. He’s not the fastest man in the world but he really moves.

Vox is a neurorehabilitation physician in Boston. While he focusses on people recovering from brain injury, he knows his way around the rehab unit generally, one must assume. This piece is something for anybody, whether sports fan, sports writer, or track meet organizer, to ponder. I, as have many, have thought that maybe those elastic blades to which Pistorius has attached the soles of  running shoes might provide unfair advantage -  like mechanical steroids. After all, if some paraplegic entered a sprint in the wind-up chair he or she usually uses and that goes like 60 mph in six seconds after the occupant cranks up its mainspring, that wouldn’t be fair even if it is muscle powered. And rocket chairs would be way over the line – even S. Hawking couldn’t get away with that.

But Vox makes a strong case, arguing from personal experience, that to think this particular equipment is easier, or more dangerous to other runners, or in any other way should be banned is just wrong. Vox does do some reporting, consulting with a physiologist to debunk one critique that concluded Pistorius’s artificial feet and ankles tax his metabolic stores less than do an intact runner’s legs. It has to do with anaerobic metabolism. Then, having an expert in his skin with him, he declares in his voice, “the contention that carbon fiber technology gives an unfair boost seems laughable.”

I’m convinced. No need to screw up a man’s career by solving him out of the race before one is sure there is a problem. If prosthetics consistently start showing up on race winners, then it’ll be time to consider new regulations.

But still, a little voice keeps wondering in my head. The question may not be whether Pistorius could beat everybody at the Olympics, but only whether, if there were a parallel universe where Oscar Pistorius has a full complement of limbs, could that one ever beat the one in our universe in a foot race?

- Charlie Petit

Many of us have read so many bleak stories on bats and white nose syndrome over the last five years or so that, first, we’re sick of reading how little researchers are able to do other than count corpses in wintering-over caves and, second, we think that until something new develops there is not much point in reading another one.

After nearly deciding not to subject myself to yet another such tale, I read in Science News’s current issue the cover story by Janet Raloff. It has a headline of standard not-much-to-report-yet-form: Helping Bats Hold On: Scientists seek a savior as a deadly fungal pandemic explosed through vulnerable colonies. But it’s a welcome surprise. No, not because it relates some hopeful new avenue, but because I get for the first time a deep sense of how horrid this ailment is for the bats themselves, and of the scope of the research into whether or how bat populations might recover. It doesn’t break the mold but it’s considerably deeper and more engrossing than most. (Usual declaration of potential bias: I am a regular, contract contributor to Science News).

An unanswered set of questions revolve around whether, in the longer term, there is any reason to think North America is likely to be deprived of some kinds of bats – particularly the hard-hit little brown bat, for a very long time. Is there good chance their niches will go unfilled for, say, centuries? While Raloff touches on the potential rise of resistance due to natural selection, that merits a deeper look. Ditto for replacement of vulnerable species with closely related bats of similar habits. What are chances for natural in-migration by other species, and has any one started thinking about hybridizing the local bats with their apparently resistant European cousins, or even introducing the latter? Or is this perhaps going to be like the decline of amphibians – affecting whole classes of creature with mass extinction a possibility? One suspects there are a few professors out there entertaining such thoughts – even experiments. What do such experts say?

Minor Puzzle – Raloff reports Nova Scotia as the northern frontier for the syndrome. That map to right, at the Fish and Wildlife Service site noted in Grist below and credited to the PA Game Commission, has a site in Quebec that is farther north. (Hi res).

Other White Nose Syndrome News:

• MASSlive.com – Kathryn Roy: Residents can help Mass Wildlife monitor bats ; They also can help, it says here, by not demandingor or even desiring that bats in their belfries be extirminated. They’re hardly pets, but they do make for decent co-lodgers that stay quiet and mind their own business.
• CapeCodder – Rich Eldred: Decline of bagts worries scientists; Another on the appeal to the public in Massachusetts to report bat colonies – not to eliminate them but to map their distribution and populations. Eldred has little new to report on white nose, and that’s not his fault. But he does let readers know that bat echolocation studies have roots on the cape.
• York Daily Record (PA) – Stephanie Reighart: Bat populations declining as ‘white noses’ fungus spreads ;
• Hants Journal (Nova Scotia) Ashley Thompson: Researchers batty over Central Rawdon ; At Sci News Raloff notes that Nova Scotia’s outbreak is the northernmost one yet seen. Seems odd that Thompson’s sources didn’t tell her, or that for some other reason, she didn’t report the province’s unwelcome distinction.

Grist for the Mill; US Fish and Wildlife Service White Nose Syndrome resources page.

- Charlie Petit

From NASA Watch

The Orlando Sentinel today has a story by Mark K. Matthews that few general interest media are following closely  – the ongoing implosion of NASA’s space science plans. In short, this story and other reports say, the soaring budget for the James Webb Space Telescope – the Hubble’s repeatedly delayed successor, lingering costs of the shuttle, efforts to build a deep-space astronaut-carrier to asteroids or other places, and general slashing of federal budgets are leaving many casualties among long-planned science missions.

Too bad. NASA looms large in American consciousness. Major media ought to pay this more attention. People already highly interested in space science will be up kept up to date by following the right blogs and specialty outlets, but that leaves the greater public largely unaware of the space agency’s troubles with fiscal discipline, adequate budgets, and a culture that has not quite learned to tell Congress it can’t do what it’s told with the money it initially requests. The bogeyman here is not so much the numb skulls of assignment editors and reporters at major media, but the shortage of such people with the time or budget to cover space science. NASA was once a part of regular national conversation. Now there is little national conversation on anything except political gridlock, unemployment, show biz, and the weather.

One exception recently, aside from the Sentinel with its history of close NASA vigilance, and not from domestic media:

• BBC – Jonathan Amos (Aug 23) JWST faces its own hubble, bubble, financial trouble ;

This is not just about one or another NASA program, but the whole magilla – the robot probes off to distant planets, the space telescopes, the astronauts, the satellites that keep track of Earth from gravity fields to energy balances.

Recent, specialty outlet stories:

• ScienceNow – Ron Cowen: Webb Telescope Delayed, Costs Rise to $8 billion ;
• NatureNews – Eric Hand: NASA to share telescope cost ;
• NASA Watch – Keith Cowing: JWST and SLS: Dueling Giant Money Sponges ; The longtime NASA friend and bugbear asks, “So, will someone explain to me how NASA is going to build and launch both JWST (the Webb) and SLS (a new space launch system) and have money left over to do all of the other things that it is both chartered to do – and directed to do – by Congress?
• Bad Astronomy – Phil Plait: Hubble’s successor: doomed or saved? ;

There likely are some other examples of coverage on budget woes at NASA in general interest publications. This would be a good post to update, if so. Please use the suggest stories button up there (or send in a comment) and updates are likely to follow.

- Charlie Petit

Those big space companies and smaller entrepreneurs with blueprints for people hauling services to the  space station may merit more attention now. After the Aug. 24  loss of an unmanned Russian rocket carrying a Progress resupply vehicle, news is that the Soyuz ferry service for astronauts is down for a safety review. There is not a great deal of science aboard the space station – Sam Ting’s cosmic ray and dark matter detector aside – but all facets of space travel remain on journalism’s science beat.

Other than flights to the station to return crewmembers as their shifts expire, a possibly long suspension of flights to take fresh crews and supplies could mean a temporary mothballing of the huge assembly of pressurized habitats, trusswork, and solar panels. Some estimate costs of the program at roughly $100 billion over the last 20 years or so. That’s a lot of valuable surreal estate to leave unoccupied.

Stories:

• Florida Today – Todd Halvorson: Space Station Faces Temporary De-Staffing ;
  
• Wired – Mike Brown: Grounded Soyuz rockets could leave ISS abandoned ; Should mention how, if they are grounded, the crews there now will return. One can only assume they won’t use the back-up Soyus lifeboat.
• AP: Marcia Dunn: NASA: Space station may be evacuated by late November ;
• USA Today – Douglas Stanglin: Space station may be abandoned during probe of Soyuz failure ;
• Space.com – Clara Moskowitz: Report: Russia Identifies Cause of Rocket Launch Failure ;
• BBC – Jonathan Amos: November deadline for ISS crews ; He writes, “everyone knew this was a possibility; Few I suspect thought we’d be in such a position so soon…” He proposes that with the cause pinpointed by location, if not exact mechanism, in the third stage things may be back to regular business soon. One of the longer accounts but still does not explain how the six on board now would return. Only three at a time fit on a Soyuz capsule. They don’t have two of them up there, do they? If not, then this has to be a partial grounding for the vehicles.
• NPR – Eyder Peralta: NASA: International Space Station May Have to Go Unmanned: Hurrah. This report says that two Soyuz capsules are at the station. I should know this but do not. When a Soyuz delivers three people to the station, is it routinely kept there to return them? Apparently so. This says the Russians design the capsules to last at least 200 days in space in good working order – long enough for a work shift.
• NYTimes – Kenneth Chang: Astronauts May Have to Abandon Space Station ; More clarity on the Soyuz routine. Also, one learns here, loss of that Progress resupply mission last week leaves one member of the crew short on clothes and looking to borrow some from cabin mates.

Hardly related at all (except that it’s lurking in plain view, spotted while your tracker gathered tories for this post)

• Space.com -  Benjamin Radford: UFO Found on Ocean Floor? ; Ah, the question mark hed. It has a built-in escape hatch. To the sane, it means no. But lots of less well-hinged readers will jump up and think, AT LAST! The story does say this is among the less likely explanations for a mysterious flat circular object the Swedish treasure hunters detected resting murkily in the Gulf of Bothnia. Radford is id’d as space.com’s “Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor.”

- Charlie Petit

A federal panel investigating medical experimentation by US government physicians on prisoners and others in Guatemala generated headlines yesterday and today -stories in which the word ‘shocking’ is prominent. No wonder. As the AP‘s Mike Stobbe reports, it had already been recognized as among the darker episodes in the history of medical research. Test subjects were often  unaware they were even in an experiment. Many died. Bacteria that cause venereal diseases were often injected into them, in one case, into the eyes. Soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners, and mental patients were often selected for such unethical, often grotesque scientific work.

Reports covered both the revelations of hearings before the panel this week in Washington and in a report by an international subcommittee, and the advisers’ recommendation that a system of compensation be created to benefit people subjected to such medical abuse. In Guatemala, as seen in the post from Spanish language media by Pere Estupinya today, reaction is intense.

Other stories:

• Washington Post – Rob Stein: Compensation system urged for research victims ;
• Reuters – Alina Selhukh: US researchers broke rules in Guatemala syphilis study ;
• Independent (UK) David Usborne: Report on Guatemala syphilis scandal to urge testing reform ; After mentioning the infamous Tuskegee syphilus study, Usborne deals with those who say such things could never happen again by writing, “concerns linder about pharmaceutical companies attempting to test products in foreign countries where protections for patients may be lacking.”
• The Scientist – Christina Luiggi: Lessons From Past Unethical Experiments ;

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang post) The presidential panel that investigates the medical experiments U.S. researchers conducted in Guatemala in the 1940s revealed Monday that the experiments involved 5.500 adults and children. 1300 of them were inoculated with syphilis and gonorrhea, only 700 received some sort of treatment, and 83 people died during the experiments. Members of the commission gave also shocking new details about the horrendous methods used by John Cutler, who lead the study aimed to test new drugs for STD. Guatemalan press shows different levels of resentment about the facts. Prensa Libre is the newspaper that gives a bigger coverage of the issue, locating the story in the home of its website, and publishing an editorial with a comparison with Nazis’ experiments. El Periodico of Guatemala has a story discussing the personality of John Cutler, and doubting that US government was totally unaware of what he was doing in Guatemala. Siglo XXI explains that the Guatemalan commission investigating the case has found 5 individuals in their 80’s that were subjects of the experiments. They are being moved to Guatemala City to investigate about their past and to see if they have any kind of sequel.   

La comisión estadounidense de bioética que está investigando los experimentos médicos realizados por científicos de EEUU entre más de 5000 personas en Guatemala entre 1946 y 1948, anunció este lunes que dichos experimentos dejaron 83 muertos.

La existencia de estos vergonzosos experimentos en los que se inoculó sífilis y gonorrea para probar la eficacia de medicamentos salió a la luz el pasado octubre de 2010, y ya lo comentamos en el tracker. Ahora la comisión que sigue el asunto ha reconocido que se produjeron 83 muertes, que los responsables engañaron deliberadamente a los sujetos, comunidad científica y autoridades, y que representan un capítulo oscuro en la historia de Estados Unidos. La noticia está apareciendo por todos los medios con información de agencias. Pero evidentemente en Guatemala el análisis es más profundo, y crítico. Prensa Libre publica la editorial “Más datos sobre una monstruosidad” diciendo que “capítulo oscuro” suena a demasiado poco, y si bien debe tenerse en cuenta el tiempo en que sucedieron, “no pueden quedar fuera de la historia negra de la humanidad”. En el primer párrafo de la editorial incluso se los compara con los experimentos de médicos nazis sobre judíos y homosexuales tras la segunda guerra mundial. La editorial se equivoca al decir que el Instituto Nacional de Salud está clausurado, dice que no hay supervivientes cuando una nota en su propio diario dice Prensa Libre “Realizarán pruebas médicas a cinco supervivientes de experimentos” y termina con un nefasto “Los descubrimientos de ayer demuestran las monstruosidades que han sido cometidas en el mundo en nombre de la ciencia”. Todavía dentro de Prensa Libre, el texto más dramático lo escribe Leonel Díaz Zeceña sobre las barbaridades que los investigadores estadounidenses llegaron a cometer en niños huérfanos, pacientes mentales, indígenas, prostitutas, enfermos o soldados. Podemos leer frases expresadas por miembros de la comisión como “colocó pus de gonorrea en sus ojos, así como en su uretra y recto; también la infectó de nuevo con sífilis. Días después, sus ojos estaban llenos de pus de la gonorrea y sangraba por la uretra; seis meses más tarde, Berta murió”. O: “A los hombres les hacían raspados y heridas en el pene, quitándoles la piel para inocular el virus”. Escalofriante.

El Periódico (Guatemala) también explica los datos básicos, pero además presenta el texto de Asier Andrés “El doctor Cutler y la hipótesis del científico loco”. En él se explica que el Dr Cutler (máximo responsable de los experimentos) era un joven inexperto de 31 años que iba improvisando su metodología y terminó sin sacar ninguna conclusión útil. La comisión lo describe como una persona sin escrúpulos que engañó deliberadamente a sus superiores, y cuyo trabajo se produjo en plena clandestinidad. Esto podría ser utilizado para “exculpar” parcialmente a EEUU, pero el artículo de Asier incide en que la investigación recibió fondos estatales y sin duda más personas debían estar al corriente. Esta es la pregunta sobre responsabilidad oficial que deja abierta Asier, y por el momento no tiene respuesta clara.

Siglo XXI (Guatemala) refleja las declaraciones de los responsables políticos guatemaltecos. En concreto, Wendy Moctezuma explica que en occidente han localizado 5 hombres de 84 y 85 años que podrían haber participado en los experimentos, y les han trasladado a la capital para realizar estudios médicos. Este aspecto de los 5 posibles supervivientes no está siendo incluido en las notas de agencias que empiezan a aparecer en la gran mayoría de medios internacionales. Sin duda el tema dará para más visiones. Ampliaremos este post.

- Pere Estupinyà

Gina Kolata leads the section with a sensible and dramatic story today about rapid DNA sequencing and detailed identification of bacteria and viruses not only by type but by specific strain. New technology does the job so rapidly and inexpensively that one can, and many agencies probably soon will, survey a town, a county, a region, or just one building or home and make a map showing prevalance of known disease contagions on surfaces, in sewage, in people, and so on. That’s an important development for public health workers eager to spot epidemics in the making and to monitor their spread.

An unaddressed question in the dept. of too much information – one sure to be tackled by companies hoping to sell such mapping technologies to the public – is whether the percentage of germaphobes will go up as people are able to learn just how munged up with microbes their houses are, or go down as people realize that there is no wayto shun the sea of single celled and viral companions in which we live. Some people will feel compelled to find out what’s there and maybe scrub, scrub, scrub. Maybe a friendly business offers to survey your place and its sniffer reveals traces of anthrax, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, canine distemper, and MSRI –” and we haven’t even checked the backyard yet.” One passage in the story relates how a researcher swabbed and tested his place of work and his own house. It is a vivid example of discomfiting but useful discovery.

The story steers clear of phobias so I should now do so too. It lays out what it calls “the start of a new age in microbiology.” It has a clear structure. Following a compelling anecdotal lede it peels off to round up generalities and context, returns to and resolves the anecdote at the top, then presents several further specific examples of real application. The sources all appear to be people of accomplishment. The map up there is a simulated disease-weather map of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Other headlines of note:

•  Elizabeth Rosenthal: Germany Dims Nuclear Plants, but Hopes to Keep Lights On ; On the main front page.
• Amanda Schaffer: Possible Culprit Is Found for Lou Gehrig’s Disease ; Here’s a good way to write about an intriguing hypothesis while minimizing the false hopes usually triggered by writing of any such thing connected to a dangerous disease. The story runs under the categorical overline “In theory,” and it is larded with alternative hypotheses and with potential holes in the one under discussion.
• Donald G. McNeil Jr: Cholera: Climate Change Isn’t a Culprit in Increasing Outbreaks, Study Finds ; Not all that new (see Aug 3 press release). Also doesn’t make much sense to bring this up without at least hinting that some pretty big authorities – such as Harvard’s Paul Epstein and Maryland’s Rita Colwell, former NSF director – have asserted the plausibility of a link between cholera’s spread and global warming, with algal blooms a possible vector.
• Carl Zimmer: How Many Species? A Study Says 8.7 Million, but It’s Tricky; This inference-born estimate got scattered coverage last week (Dalhousie University Press Release) , most of which recounted a PLoS Biology’s study’s findings with quotes from the authors. Zimmer has that and adds a few authorities who see several plausible sources of error.
• Kenneth Chang: Astronauts May Have to Abandon Space Station ; Covered in separate post. But one wonders if “mothball” space station captures better the intent – to leave it untended for awhile, but go back when the taxi service is back up.
• Kirk Johnson: “Smart Collar’ in the Works to Manage Wildlife Better ; In main section, story of technology behind radio tags that keep a full diary on animals’ activities.

As usual, much more: Whole Section.

- Charlie Petit

With New England flooded, New York City wet but undamaged, and the Mid-Atlantic from New Jersey down to South Carolina pretty much hurricane-walloped, Irene is just a bunch of clouds raining in the Maritimes of Canada. No real sense looking through the mass of stories dissecting the skill of meteorologists (Seth Borenstein‘s and Christine Amario‘s piece at the AP pretty much says it all – the track was right, the dissolution of the storm’s circulation as it neared NYC hard to understand), let’s gather up some punditry on the big question. Was the storm a harbinger of global warming’s armful of new planet?

The stories, to no surprise, are a varied lot:

• Forbes – William Pentland: Hurricane Irene Exposes Charlatans on All Sides of Climate Science ; Might as well get this out of the way first. Mr. Pentland’s depiction of the arguments, pro and con, on climate change have scarce foundation in reality. Most problematic is the piece’s unspoken but to me clearly implicit assumption of scientific equivalance in what, say, the National Academy says compared to the American Enterprise Institute. Worse, he supposes that climate skeptics would, if asked about the hurricane, object to the models that meteorologists used to (successfully) forecast its path. No, they would not. They love weather forecasters. And where’d Mr. Portland get the notion that climate change experts, such as at NOAA, would declare martial law for the whole East Coast? Recall that NOAA, the Dept. of Energy, and FEMA – not to mention the White House – are loaded with people who believe heartily that climate is changing and we’re not doing enough about it. Nobody urged martial law. This piece is borderline delusional in its hyperbole.
• Daily Beast – Bill McKibben: Global Warming’s Heavy Cost ; This piece which ran a bit before Irene said an early goodnight is getting a lot of bloggy headwind, some of it from clear-thinking people. His lede says the storm’s middle name was Global Warming, and used the inability of others to see that as an opening on the Obama Administration’s forgetfulness in recalling campaign pledges to make climate an overt priority. He gets into such other affronts as that tar sands pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast. It’s really rather a short piece, says nothing outrageous – but definitely outraged. He never says that nothing like Irene could have happened without a warmed ocean, since it manifestly has happened before. He merely says things like Irene have gotten easier for the planet to produce. Critics say he blindly calls Irene a global warming story. He just uses it as a hook to get into bigger issues.
• New Yorker (blog) Elizabeth Kolbert: Hurricane Irene and Global Warming: A Glimpse of the Future? ; She says yes. Convincingly and calmly.
• Alternet / ThinkProgress – Joe Romm: How Global Warming Will Make Hurricanes Like Irene Worse ; The feisty perfectionist in global warming alarm, for a welcome break from pattern, does not come out guns blazing at those on basically his side but who don’t seem sufficiently panicked. In fact, it’s almost exactly what Kolbert wrote. Romm even takes account of the nuanced idea that a warmer world may have enough turbulence in the air (ie, wind shear) to stifle a rising percentage of tropical cyclones before they reach hurricane stature – but when they don’t get cut off at the knees, the upper bounds of “perfect storm” will be higher than they used to be.
• NYTimes Dot Earth - Andrew Revkin: OnWArming and U.S. Hurricane Strikes ; Andy takes aim at McKibben for leaving out wind shear and other factors that make forecasts for more hurricanes so iffy. He also links to a blog post from Keith Kloor (at Collide-a-Scape)that lays out why hurricane behavior is not a convincing argument why to slow down greenhouse gas emission, expecially when other incentives to do so are so well grounded. But both are too tough on McKibben.
• NYTimes – Justin Gillis : Seeing Irene as Harbinger of a Change in Climate ; Hoo-rah. Not false balance. Real balance.
• Climate Central – Michael Lemonick: Irene’s Potential for Destruction Made Worse by Global Warming, Sea Level Rise ;
• USNews – Paul Bedard: Scientists Slam Link Between Hurricanes and Global Warming ; Sheesh. One of the scientists is Fred Singer. He’s a fine fellow, did cracker jack work on weather satellites and on the potential for testing relativity with clocks on satellites even before there were satellites, but he is a godfather of climate change skepticism, ozone hole skepticism, tobacco and cancer skepticism…Then Bedard mentions the Heartland Institute. Double Sheesh.
• Many more, the hour is late…

- Charlie Petit

I can’t recall The Guardian‘s Alok Jha in the UK being anything but a reliable and sensible science reporter, but this one seems well off to the side of careful journalism. In Friday’s edition he wrote a story on Amazon Basin hydrology under the hed “Underground river ‘Rio Hamza” discovered 4km beneath the Amazon.” The subhead said it’s 6000km long and hundreds of times wider than the Amazon. It is named for the chief scientist of a team that reports it.

First, even if it is there, that’s not a river, but it sure could be an aquifer. Except for being soaked rock deep underground, it is like a lake with an outlet through which it slowly overturns its contents. Drainage does not equal river. Should we call all lakes that have outlets rivers because they have a net flow? One has to respect what readers think when they hear a word. Or, for another clue to careful terminology, one could as well call the Everglades a river. It’s a swamp. Plus, how could something 4km deep drain? It comes out at the foot of the continental shelf? Yep, so it says.

The piece was filed in London but the info is attributed to a paper presented at a geophysics meeting in Brazil. The story has no reference to what other geophysicists and hydrologist think of it, and even says at the end that confirmatory work is yet to be done. Without calling it a river, summoning an image of Xanadu where Alph the sacred river ran, Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea, what’s the story?  None with much punch.  The piece suggests that it could explain anomalously low salinity, presumably at depth, offshore of the surface river’s outlet near Belém. That’s sort of interesting. But even there, fresh water draining out the edges of continental shelves is not a breathtaking discovery. The steep walls of the submarine Monterey Canyon near California’s shore have lots of such seeps. Nobody that I recall ever said this means that a mighty river flows beneath Moss Landing – and if anybody did, I hope its metaphoric nature was explicit. I just looked it up. The Oglala aquifer beneath America’s central plains flows, at about a foot per day, from the west to east. It’s not a river in the common meaning of that word.

A tip of the hat to reader Neil Withers, an editor at Nature-Chemistry magazine, for pointing this story out. NatureNews also ran a blog post by Mark Peplow calling out the Guardian for this bait and switch.

Histories outros: If you read Portuguese better than I do, you may find here some clues to the story’s provenance:

• Boas Noticias: Discoberto um rio stubterrâneo sob of rio Amazonas;
• Publico – Nicolau Ferreira:Há um rio por baixo do Amazonas ;
• Diario de Pernambuco: Pesquisadores descobrem indícios de rio subterrâneo sob o Rio Amazonas;

Plus, in English language press:

• AFP: Scientists find underground river beneath Amazon ;
• BBC – Richard Black: Subterranean Amazon river ‘is not a river’ ; Found this only after writing the whole post.

FURTHERMORE: Even Wikipedia has an entry up already. Says it’s an aquifer.

- Charlie Petit

It’s a cops and..X story on the front page of the NYTimes, but not so much an X=robbers as =suspects story. For years we’ve read that a few time-honored police investigative procedures are dreadfully unreliable. One is the lie detector test. Another,  addressed convincingly in this piece by John Schwartz and Erica Goode, is the reliability of eye witnesses and particularly by the lineup process. Juries often find the most persuasive thing a sworn witness can say is yep that person in the front row did it because I saw him or her do it. Or run away from the scene. Or walk into the building where the dastardly occurred. The story is triggered by a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling on lineups. The story has nationwide heft not only in implication but in  reporting to back it up.

Schwartz and Goode are appropriate, veteran writers for the story too. They are not now on the science beat but have both spend a lot of time – Goode particularly -  chasing professors around to ask them questions about the papers or posters they have their names on (or just fired questions at them at the conference or research site). Goode has been a science section editor and also ran recently the Times’s pod of multi-section enviro writers. They know how the better ways to accumulate knowledge work.

The news won’t surprise most people who keep up on practical but rational thought arising from data. Police lineups may be persuasive. They persuade juries into convicting a lot of innocent people. Done well, they presumably do assist investigations. But many departments don’t even take measures, it says here, to be sure that they are conducted without cues to witnesses as to who the cops think their perps are, and without suggesting merely that witnesses look for the persons whose photos are laid on the table who most resemble whoever their memories tell them dun it. Personally, I don’t think courts should permit eyewitness testimony from anybody who didn’t already know the person (as in, my stinkin’ no-account cousin came runnin’ out of that convenience store), and I’m not completely sure about that. If the cops can’t dig up good arguments from other evidence, after using a witness’s declarations as a lead, then doubt is reasonable. What is dismaying if not surprising is that Schwartz and Goode find one example – with implication that there are many more – of a department adamant that its uncontrolled, un-blinded way of running lineups works well with the local court system. One can almost see it floating there between the lines: that’s the court system where the judge’s nickname is Hang’em High.

One wonders if the anti-science wings of American politics (see Paul Krugman, known liberal, in today’s NYT opinion page) will denounce reform of lineups and other handling of eye-witness testimony as soft-headed lefty nincompoopism more interested in coddling obvious  criminals (why else would they be in jail?) than worried about a crime’s victims. All to get more gov’t grants for professors of criminology and forensics. And to socialize police work. Oh wait, I forgot. It is socialist already.

Related News:

• ABC – Nina Terrero: 400-Pound Criminal Has Conviction Overturned Because of Slim Lineup ; An example of a lineup “set-up”, it says here. Everybody said the perp was immense. Witnesses pointed at the only such huge person the cops presented. One doesn’t need a psychologist to explain the problem with that system.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang post) As Charlie posted yesterday, a SciDev story explains that Mexican scientists were injured due a parcel bomb sent by a radical group that opposes nanotechnology. The story received lot of initial attention in the Mexican press, but most merely described the facts and the idiotic claims that the group released in its manifesto. Asked by email by the Spanish tracker, a Mexican reporter says “most of the stories talk about dangers instead of science”. It was only after a few days that a some science reporters (like Martin Bonfill) started writing columns and blog posts defending nanotechnology in front of the general public. Related to this importance of the popularization of science in Latin America, a story in BBC Mundo explains the success of the Brian Cox-TV program in the UK, and suggests that a similar TV series would be very useful in Latin America.

Other stories: “El Nuevo día” is a Spanish speaking newspaper in Puerto Rico that often allows researchers to write original stories in its pages. Today we find a very good one from a neuroscientist about cellular reprogramming. It explains how scientists have been able to get functional neurons from skin cells. The article is very well documented and it covers many angles. But it’s extremely optimistic. It doesn’t tell us about the several glitches that reprogramming technology has yet, and it presents it as “a real hope for Alzheimer”.

Also of interest, two stories about evolution: A good one in La Nación (Argentina) about a local researcher that studies how many genetic changes are necessary to transform a Drosophila species into another. The scientist presents it as a way to test gradualism in evolution. He has published in Nature that several changes are necessary, and although he recognizes that more examples are needed, he argue that slow and accumulative genetic changes might be more common in evolution than single big ones in order to differentiate new species. The second story about evolution is from a news agency in Mexico that collects several opinions of geneticists and paleoanthropologists, and it wrongly concludes that we are not evolving any more due to our comfortable lives without selective pressure. Bah.   

Nos perdimos esta noticia hace dos semanas, y ahora la recuperamos gracias a SciDev y la nota de Luciana Melesio Friedman “México: atentan contra expertos en nanotecnología”. Resulta que un grupo extremista convencido de que la nanotecnología “convertirá la Tierra en una masa gris donde reinarán nanomáquinas inteligentes” –más que ellos seguro que ya las hay- envió un paquete bomba dirigido a nanotecnólogos del Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, que al ser abierto el pasado 8 de agosto dañó a dos profesores. ¿cómo responder a esta situación? Desde luego condenando el ataque, pero también defendiendo el papel de la nanontecnología, como hace en Milenio y en su blog “La ciencia por gusto” Martín Bonfill “Bombas contra científicos”. Martín añade más idioteces del comunicado donde el grupo reivindicaba el atentado como “los científicos basan sus investigaciones en retorcidas necesidades psicológicas”, o que “la aberrante fusión de la nanotecnología, la inteligencia artificial, la electrónica molecular y la robótica conducirá a la autodestrucción humana”. Y Martín se pregunta “¿Hay algo de cierto en sus advertencias? No. De hecho, la nanotecnología ha sido más bien una decepción”.  Posiblemente lo más inteligente es no dar publicidad gratuita a este grupo, y –en cuanto a difusión pública- zanjar el tema lo más rápido posible. No hemos visto demasiado revuelo en la prensa mexicana más allá de las noticias sucedidas los días después al atentado. Pero sí es una llamada a recordarnos que debemos fomentar la mejora de la percepción pública de la ciencia, explicando todo lo bueno que está aportando el conocimiento científico y tecnológico a la sociedad. Si siguiéramos la absurda máxima “La Naturaleza es el bien, la Civilización es el mal…”, que quiere imponer por la vía violenta el grupo radical de malinformados, todavía tendríamos una esperanza de vida de 35 años y solucionaríamos los conflictos a pedradas en lugar de dialogando.

Convencer a la población de ello es lo que persigue la divulgación científica. En Internet, libros, radio y televisión. ¿televisión? El medio más influyente pero el más caro de producir. Una verdadera lástima que no haya un único programa televisivo de ciencia a nivel latinoamericano. Esto es lo que pide el texto de BBC Mundo “Cómo lograr que más jóvenes estudien física”. En él se sirven del ejemplo de Brian Cox, un joven científico guapetón, sonriente, con desparpajo y vestido a la moda que ha logrado empatizar perfectamente con el público joven de Reino Unido. Claro que también es un buen divulgador y sabe de lo que habla. Pero eso es quizás secundario. En televisión no sirve de nada ser didáctico con aspecto de aburrido. Sin duda, un modelo a tener en cuenta en la efervescente Latinoamérica, y a mejor manera de responder a radicales anti-ciencia. Pero corramos un tupido velo, y vayamos a comentar otras noticias en América Latina.

El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico) tiene una sección de ciencia donde acumula buenos artículos aparecidos en otros medios, pero de tanto en tanto nos sorprende con muy buenas piezas originales. Generalmente escritas por investigadores. Es el caso del texto del neurocientífico Irving E. Vega “En la piel, una esperanza real para el Alzheimer”. Ojo con el “real” del titular, que es lo que realmente queremos comentar. El Dr. Vega hace un gran trabajo explicándonos el hito que ha supuesto reprogramar células epiteliales a neuronas funcionales que pueden fusionarse con las de un cerebro de ratón y empezar a establecer conexiones. Es  un logro científico impresionante. La reprogramación celular sin duda alimenta muchas esperanzas. Además de como transplantes, también para conseguir cultivos celulares del propio paciente con fenotipo de Alzheimer sobre los que probar diferentes tipos de fármacos y observar cual va mejor. Esta es una de las aplicaciones más novedosas, y la explica perfectamente el artículo. Pero ocurre una cosa que no presenta el artículo: todavía hay enormes fallas a solventar antes de aplicaciones en humanos. Desde aparición de tumores, hasta garantizar funcionalidad. Especialmente en el cerebro, que es un órgano muchísimo más complejo que el músculo cardíaco del corazón o incluso los islotes del páncreas. Los expertos en células madre reprogramadas (iPS cells) no son ni de cerca tan optimistas como muestra el Dr. Vega. Su artículo está genial, pero si lo hubiera escrito un periodista, sin duda sería tachado de exagerado y de dar esperanzas antes de tiempo. Quizás no hay para tanto, pero no lo comentaríamos si no estuviéramos sensibilizados por los ataques de prudencia que a menudo nos exigen los científicos en el área de la biomedicina

Dos notas sobre evolución: Una que saca la agencia Notimex recogiendo varias impresiones de genetistas y paleontropólogos sobre si la especie humana está evolucionando o no. Debate que les gusta repetir, pero que saben es absurdo. La hipótesis de que la vida cómoda no nos hace evolucionar no tiene ningún sentido en tiempos geológico. Primero la evolución no está dirigida ni va hacia algo “mejor”, pero segundo es que no opera a escalas de decenas de años sino de miles. Claro que hay épocas de mayor presión selectiva que otras, pero no viene de un par de generaciones. Ni de diez. El titular de La Jornada “Evolución humana se detuve por avances de la ciencia”, es engañoso. Continúa habiendo presión selectiva. Y es que incluso si en una época el entorno estableciera que un cerebro demasiado desarrollado es poco conveniente para dejar descendencia e hiciera a la especie humana menos inteligente con el paso del tiempo, continuaría siendo evolución hacia una mejor adaptación al entorno.

La otra historia sobre evolución nos viene de La Nación (Argentina)  por Susana Gallardo “Muestran cómo funciona la evolución”. Susana no acierta con la frase en el primer párrafo “no se conocen los mecanismos que generan la diversidad de organismos que habitan nuestro planeta”. Ella se refiere –por el contenido del artículo- a si los cambios morfológicos son más repentinos o menos (el típico gradualismo popularizado por Dawkins versus el equilibrio puntuado creado por Gould). Es un debate abierto, pero de aquí a lapidar que no se conocen los mecanismos que generan diversidad hay un gran trecho. También es un poco exagerado concluir que el único ejemplo del investigador argentino estableciendo que son necesarios varios cambios genéticos y no sólo uno para transformar una especie de mosca en otra, respalda la hipótesis del gradualismo. Faltan más ejemplos, y eso sí lo explica muy bien el artículo, que a pesar de estos comentarios del tracker, está muy, pero que muy bien y logra hacer interesante tema que sí es un poquito trivial; reconozcámoslo.

- Pere Estupinyà