(English intro to Spanish lang post) We often notice recurrent exaggerations in the headlines on scientific news in Latin America. The reason seems to provide a more appealing and “important” shine on the scientific research. But sometimes the result can be distortion. We find illustration in the several stories about vaccines published this week inEl Universal (México). We focus on them to analyze that while the contents are fine  the titles are not. For example, we read the assertion “new vaccine against cancer is created” (when it refers only to experiments in mice). We also read “a Mexican scientist identifies a protein that makes tumors disappear” (cell culture studies). And a categorical “the vaccine against malaria doesn’t immunize”, regarding the promising results of the Glaxo/Gates foundation vaccine presented last October after a phase III study in Africa. These three titles are misleading. The vaccine’s week in El Universal has two more stories: one about a new approach to create a cheaper TB vaccine by UNAM scientists, and tests in Mexico to inoculate vaccines through breathing aerosols instead of injections. From Colombia, a good story criticizes the new list of medicaments presented by the government to be included in the countries’ public health system.

Que no se molesten los amigos de El Universal, pero aprovechamos que esta semana han publicado varias notas sobre vacunas e investigación biomédica, para mirarlas con ojos críticos y rebuscar algunas conclusiones. Empezamos por una historia que más medios han comprado: Alguien de EFE entrevistó a un investigador relacionado con la vacuna de la malaria cuyos resultados se hicieron públicos el pasado octubre, saliendo en todos los medios (también en el tracker), y la agencia envía una nota como si fuera gran novedad. Recordemos que la vacuna logró inmunizar a la mitad de niños. Esto es poco para hacerla comercial, pero un verdadero hito en la carrera por conseguir esta que sería primera vacuna contra un parásito. Los resultados fueron anunciados con mucho optimismo, incluso varios contaban los centenares de miles de vidas que se salvarían en caso de aplicarla (no es posible todavía, está en fase 3). Sin embargo, El Universal decide titular “Vacuna contra la malaria no inmuniza”. Aparte de que –como ya hemos dicho- los resultados se presentaron en octubre, el mensaje no es el correcto. Claro que debe mejorar todavía, pero la noticia es tremendamente esperanzadora. De hecho, en el texto se califican como “un hito en la historia de la medicina”. ¿Quién pone los títulos a las notas? Parece que alguien un poco descuidado, y que quizás no entiende muy bien cómo funciona la experimentación científica.

Fijémonos si no en estos otros dos titulares: “Crean vacuna efectiva contra el cáncer” (EFE/El Universal). ¿Qué entendéis aquí? Pues que tenemos una nueva vacuna contra el cáncer. Es muy claro, no? Pero con una salvedad: los estudios están hechos con ratones. Y esto no es baladí. Cualquiera que sepa cómo avanza la ciencia sabrá que la inmensa mayoría de resultados positivos en ratones se estancan en fases posteriores, ya sea porque no se reproducen, por efectos secundarios, o porque el modelo animal no es el adecuado. Vale que el texto dice que los experimentos se realizaron en ratones, pero en la época que estamos de leer Internet rápido y muchas veces sólo en titulares, debemos ser mucho más rigurosos en el título. No está probado que la vacuna sea  efectiva contra el cáncer. De hecho, el propio investigador principal reconoce mostrarse cautelosamente optimista porque a veces los resultados en ratones no se reproducen en humanos (incluso el original de EFE parece ser “científicos desarrollan una vacuna que ataca el cáncer de mama en ratones”).  Además de esto, el texto debería hacer un esfuerzo en explicar que este tipo de vacunas es muy diferente al de la malaria, por ejemplo. La de la malaria es preventiva, inmunizando al cuerpo antes de la llegada de un invasor, y la del cáncer es terapéutica: activando el sistema inmune una vez ya ha aparecido la enfermedad para que reaccione sobre ella. Son dos estrategias muy diferentes, que la gente suele confundir, y que no estaría mal hiciéramos el esfuerzo de explicar.

El segundo titular que queríamos comentar es “Mexicano identifica proteína para desaparecer tumores” (EFE/Universal). Realmente, el único motivo por el que publicar esta nota en El Universal es la palabra “mexicano”. Claro que será un buen paper científico de investigación básica. Por esto lo publica Cell. Pero si antes nos quejábamos de los ratones, imagínate de los cultivos celulares… esto está lejísimos pero lejísimos de una posible aparición terapéutica. Y que unas celulitas cancerígenas en medio de cultivo reaccionen diferente que otras celulitas no cancerígenas, no implica necesariamente que en el tumor vaya a ocurrir lo mismo, como afirma el título de la nota. Está bien que el científico se sienta entusiasmado con sus resultados, pero arriesga mucho al decir que esto podrá generar terapias para todos los cánceres. Y lo que dice el pie de foto “Torres estimó que dentro de 5 o 10 años estará listo el tratamiento que funciona en laboratorios contra algunos tipos de cáncer” es una insensata afirmación que nosotros debemos saber filtrar. Una vez más, nos falta ser críticos con la ciencia. No podemos creernos todo lo que nos dicen.

Quizás porque está preparada en redacción, sin la imperiosa necesidad de ser comprada por medios, la nota “UNAM desarrolla vacunas transgénicas contra tuberculosis” (Universal) es un mejor ejemplo de cómo presentar la información. Dudamos de que sea necesario el calificativo transgénico, debido a la susceptibilidad al tema que hay en México. Pero el título no promete nada exagerado. Ni el confuso cuerpo del texto tampoco. Por último, interesante la nota “México busca usar vacuna en aerosol triple viral” (Universal), sobre un método que sustituye pinchazos por inhalaciones. Las ventajas en aplicación serían obvias. El texto dice que frente al sarampión es incluso más efectiva. No lo dudamos, pero sí nos gustaría haber visto alguna referencia de estudio o datos publicados.

Tres nota para terminar. Dos de El Espectador que nos han gustado. La primera, aunque no sea escrita por un periodista, es un fabuloso resumen de lo acontecido en la cumbre de cambio climático de Durban: “Durban nos ofrece motivos de esperanza y de preocupación” (Sandra Besudo). Gran titulo, pero además excelente por lo clara y concisa exposición de los principales puntos de la cumbre: cómo afecta a Colombia, qué ocurre con el fondo verde, rol de la mitigación y adaptación, y valoración del mediocre compromiso de las principales potencias. Merece echarle un vistazo rápido. También interesante la nota de Fernando Ruíz Gómez “El nuevo POS no convence” sobre las inconsistencias de un listado de fármacos presentados por el gobierno. Se plantea como una buena medida, pero con errores a solventar, y dudas por incentivos económicos. Buena oportunidad para el periodismo de salud.

Y  para terminar, La Tercera: “La avispa chilena selecciona a su pareja sexual”. “chilena”, “sexual”… bien por saber llamar la atención, y por un texto ameno. Pero leyéndolo, si uno fuera chileno se preguntaría “¿esto lo pago yo con mis impuestos?”. Las justificaciones expuestas en el artículo son tan rebuscadas e indirectas, que roza el sinsentido. Si realmente la investigación lo tiene, debemos saber sacárselo.

- Pere Estupinyà

Nitrogen fertilizers and nitrogen compounds in general are not topics that easily boost circulation higher or alter the public conversation. Nobody would hence expect much of a news bump for a multi-institution report, led by University of Washington authors in this week’s Science, on the persistent impact on lakes and other wild ecosystems due to  settling of airborne nitrogen from human industry. And there isn’t much of one, important as it may be that   extra, human-caused N pollution (the isotopic ratio gives it away) persists in lakes for more than a century and significantly alters food chains from algae on up.

But the paper got two takers in Canada, land of a lot more than  10,000 lakes.

First up is a highly detailed and perceptive account on the PostMedia wire (its flagship outlet is the National Post in Toronto), running in the Vancouver Sun by Hilary Roberts. She reported this story diligently and well. Reading it one gets a strong sense of a reporter interested not only in getting the news to readers, but hungry herself for answers. She even gets into a little bit on isotopic ratios. Now for the however. As one who riddles readers with flawed and unedited copy here at the tracker, with errors in spelling, usage, and grammar of the sort one is often blind to in one’s own writing, I fear this may seem a bit hypocritical. It’s not – this piece merely needed a copy editor, of which I’ve none, with a keener eye and sharper pencil (or mouseclick). Take the lede: it  is overly long and a tad on the officialese side. Second, too many quotes. A few well-selected quotes break monotony and, if original, prove to editors and colleagues that dutiful reporting occurred. She has some good ones. But to quote, rather than paraphrase, simple declarative explanatory sentences, such as “Chemically, it’s functionally the same. It does the same type of thing in all chemical reactions. It just has an extra neutron, which means we can measure the amount of one isotope versus another,” is unneeded. That passage says something fairly simple but inefficiently. Roberts could have rephrased it and still attributed the explanation to her source. Finally, I see at least two empty modifiers in this. One is that 33 lakes in the study are ‘all situated” far from human development. Another example is that she described nitrogen “originating from” fossils fuels and fertilizer. If one strikes the words “situated” and “originating,” the meanings do not change a whit or get any harder to grasp. If something is somewhere that is named, or is from something named, site and origin are built in.

At the Canadian Press wire service one finds another version. If somebody tells us who wrote this lede, we’ll give due credit. It’s If you ever wanted to visit a pristine Arctic lake, you’re probably about 100 years too late. That’s polished news wordcrafting. It has a hook in the imagery, it implies the general topic has something to do with pollution, and it propels readers into another decent job of reporting. It hasn’t quite the detail of the PostMedia yarn but enough,m plus a relaxed, efficient, and confident style that keeps readers moving.

Grist for the Mill: University of Regina Press Release ; Univ. Washington Press Release ;

Gary Schwitzer‘s Health News Review sets a high bar for what makes a good medical story, as we all should. Not many stories reviewed by Schwitzer and his team come through with a perfect score, and plenty fail dramatically.

But a website redesign now allows Health News Review to play with its statistics, from reviews of more than 1,600 stories. And here’s the good news: When comparing the most recent 800 stories with the 800 previous stories, the stats show improvement in 8 of the 10 categories Schwitzer uses to rate them.

He briefly discusses the bad news first: Stories seem to be relying more heavily on news releases, as indicated by a couple of different measures.

But then he focuses on the good news:

• the 11% improvement over time in the rate of stories adequately quantifying benefits;
• the 9% improvement over time in the rate of stories evaluating the quality of the evidence;
• the 12% improvement over time in the rate of stories avoiding disease-mongering;
• the 7% improvement over time in the rate of stories comparing the new approach with existing alternatives.
• and average grades for four other criteria that all improved to a lesser degree.

Not bad.

Most stories continue to miss some of what Schwitzer considers essential, such as properly qualifying the benefits and possible harm of new treatments, and evaluating the evidence. Still, it’s nice to see some of the trend lines moving upward. And maybe Health News Review, for calling our attention to quality journalism, deserves some of the credit.

- Paul Raeburn

Solar Dynamics Observatory Screenshot

The news yesterday, at the mostly-little outlets that perk up for events such as weird solar storms and odd asteroids, and as we tracked in the previous post, was that a sun-grazing comet just discovered was about to meet its just desserts. Surely, doom awaited via Comet Lovejoy’s “kamikaze” zip just above the Sun’s tangible atmosphere, or photosphere. The route took it through the searing corona of glowing, newborn solar wind and just above a throbbing sea of of magnetically-channeled plasma.

Well, the kamikaze flew right through the fry pot of boiling roil and came out the other side. Several orbiting, solar-observing satellites kept their cameras on it. That screenshot there is from one, a video on YouTube. Hurrah for escapist science and this small news diversions from the Euro crisis, the dull and half-hearted celebration of the end of the American war in Iraq, and the death of Christopher Hitchins and his distinctive voice in journalism.

Stories:

• Discovery News – Ian O’Neill: Lovejoy Lives! Comet Survives Hellish Encounter With Sun ; This has another, eye-popping mage  (actually just the opposite – you gotta squint to see the plucky little thing as it exits the scene) from the SDO satellite, the flaring sun glowing ominously in a baleful, yellow rendition of ultraviolet emissions.
• Daily Mail – Ted Thornhill: Comet survives hellish journey through the Sun – where it’s a toasty 1.1millionC ; More pics from the image-crazed art editors at the Mail.
• Space.com – Mike Wall: Comet survives fiery plunge through sun, NASA says ;

This is so far. Perhaps a few more will pop up. (Use suggest stories function, always easily found on tracker homepage, to tip us off to good ones – mediocre and dreadful ones welcome too.)

UPDATES:

• AP – Seth Borenstein: Take that Icarus: Comet shows you can get really close to sun and survive, amazing astronomers; Where we learn that Comet Lovejoy found neither love nor joy. It lost 90 percent of itself. The tail, its gases ionized presumably and vulnerable to electromagnetic forces, got raked off and stuck in the corona.

- Charlie Petit

It’s called Lovejoy, it’s a small comet that a fellow in Australia of that name recently discovered, and it has a date with a star. Our star. A Kreutz sungrazer it is, member of a family of comets on about the same orbital course and that are apparently remnants of a big comet that got too close centuries ago and sundered itself. This one is due to not quite reach the photosphere , or visible “surface” of the sun. It’ll miss that by about 87,000 miles. But it is apparently doomed by its fate to skim past well within the dazzling and hot corona.

Its likely demise is due at about 7 pm Eastern US time today. That’s after sunset, but we on the West Coast might be able to glimpse things during close approach, and those back East can perhaps take a peek at its home stretch. News outlets warn that staring at the sun, even near sunset, is not smart. Watching a webcast is best. (See Nat’l Geo story below for a link to one).

We’ll update tomorrow if anything newsy occurs. In the meantime, some curtain raisers. The image above is the latest from ESA’s and NASA’s jointly  sponsored 16-year-old SOHO satellite.

Stories:

• Space.com – Clara Moskowitz:Comet to Make Death dive Through Sun Thursday ;
• Discovery News – Ian O’Neill: Comet Lovejoy to ‘Play Chicken’ With the Sun ;
• National Geographic – Andrew Fazekas: Death-Diving Comet May Be Visible to Naked Eye; Ah, usage. This says it will be seen ‘careening through the solar atmosphere..”  Digression alert! Some of you know where I’m going here. Which is alas poor  careen, we knew you well. Once it meant to lean a ship on its stem on a beach for cleaning or repair. Somehow it got mixed up with to career. That became to follow a wildly erratic course. On occasion, one does see the verb “to career” which covers not only wild courses, but mathematically pure ones such as the one due for this small comet. Never mind all that, really, as Mr. Fazekas’s story is otherwise satisfying, and includes a link with continuous updates on the event, at the Sungrazing comet website.
• Space.com via Christian Science Monitor – Mike Wall:Comet’s death plunge into sun will be well-documented ;
• PC Magazine – Tony Hoffman: Watch Online as a Bright Comet Makes a Run at the Sun ;
• Gizmodo

And an excellent blog account of the comet’s discovery by a newspaper’s photo editor:

• Astro Bob – Bob King (Duluth News Tribune photographer/photo editor): Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy discovers rare sungrazing comet, with subsequent updates at the site, the latest one being Comet Lovejoy rages against the dying of the light ;

Grist for the Mill: NASA Goddard Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

The last few days while I’ve been mostly off, Boyce Rensberger expertly tracked the run-up, and the face-plant thud of inconclusive actual results, to this week’s revelations about the road to the Higgs being paved in the interaction chambers at the Large Hadron Collider. Here’s one more, on a topic that perhaps has been covered before but reads fresh to these eyes:

• Reuters – Robert Evans:The Higgs boson: What has God to do with it?; A religionist might crack back that god has to do with everything, what with omnipotenceness etc. But that is exactly this post’s point. If something has to do with everything, it explains nothing in particular. Mr. Evans recounts the regret that Leon Lederman feels for having given the phrase its historic boost, and describes also what Lederman’s preferred term was before a publisher steered him away.

- Charlie Petit

Wow and hazy hurrahs for a tiny bit better glimpse into the misty past of North American civilizations. Science has found the foundational ceremonial stuff placed 2000 years ago on the first layer of stone for what was to become the New World’s greatest pyramid.

If one punches “Aztec architecture” into a search engine’s image function, one is likely to find among its genuine Aztec temples a few pictures of Teotihuacan, home of the massive pyramids of the Sun and of the Moon and other majestic ruins placed along a splendid wide avenue. The word is Aztec, yes, but means merely ‘place where men became gods’ or more simply, City of Gods. It was already old and abandoned, its builders gone from memory, when the Aztecs 700 years ago or so were building their capital at Tenochtitlan to the south. It is among the world’s most splendid ancient constructions because it’s such a mystery, the mark of a genuine vanished civilization. Researchers don’t know much about the culture and empire that built the place, other than that the architecture, while distinctive, is clearly akin to that of more recent pre-Columbian societies including Aztecs and  the early Mayans who were its contemporaries in the jungles of Yucatan and nearby regions. That’s about all I remember and would have to look something up to say more. I’ve not been to the place. It is on the bucket list.

Several news outlets ran with stories yesterday and this morning on a remarkable discovery deep down in the Pyramid of the Sun. Archeologists extended side passages and exploratory wells from a tunnel dug in the 1930s. They found what the earlier tunnel was meant to meet: a ceremonial site where construction of the edifice started. One does not embark on a project like that without some speechifying and placement of time capsules or other ritual material.  Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History announced it. A well-carved greenstone mask, remains of animals, an eagle and the remains of rabbits it was fed just prior to sacrifice, vessels, sculptures … evocative stuff that reveals affinity with religions and myths that survived the builders of Teotihuacan and are echoed in cultures that came later.

Outlets, at least those in English language press outside Mexico, tend all to build their accounts off the press release, in grist below. Few – one that I can find – elaborated with outside input regarding the significance of the find for  Mexican archeology and the nation’s pre-Columbian cultural history. This is not the sort of story that calls, on its face,  for investigative or skeptical reporting.

Stories:

• AP – Mark Stevenson: Original offering found at Teotihuacan pyramid ; Two outsiders comment, both professors (Univ of Florida, and Arizona State). Also notes, without press release prompt, that while the pyramid went up starting about 2000 years ago the city’s roots go 500 years further into the past. By the way intellectual piracy fans, and fyi AP, an outlet called Taiwan News lifted this story with no change I could spot at a glance and ran it under one of its own staffer’s bylines.
• LiveScience – Stephanie Pappas: Ancient Offerings Discovered Beneath Pyramid of the Sun; Short, don’t see info here not in press release ;
• History.com – Offerings Discovered at Base of Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun ; Somebody rewrote it well but looks all press release ;
• Los Angeles Times (blog) Tracy Wilkinson: Mexico archaeologists may have found 1st Pyramid of Sun offering ; Datelined Mexico City, but all press release (it links to AP for those who want an outside opinion).
• Newser – Kevin Spak: Team Digs Up Mexican Pyramid’s First Offerings ; Nice to see another active-voice hed, this and the LA Times’s. But the piece, hmmm. A spritely two paragraphs, with AP credited as its source. For that, a byline? Mr. Spak is listed at the Newser’s staff site as an editor. More interesting is what one sees at its site labeled “What Newser Does.” There it proudly shows “just a few” of the logos of other news outlets from which it derives its truncated stories. It says it helps its readers “cut through the clutter” of machine aggregators and, I suppose, the bother of reading longer pieces at outlets that feature original reporting by their own staffs and correspondents. There must be at least 100 logos there. Executives appear to be mostly out of the promotion and p.r. fields, with some journalism. The outlet boasts that it is above the norm because actual people rather than machines pluck news from the cloud and repackage it. Here’s the irony: it also has a Terms of Use page with the usual boiler lawyer plate including a stiff warning that all its news items that its staff has selected and masticated, bespoke and such like, from the web’s news supply “are protected by applicable intellectual property and proprietary rights laws and are owned, controlled, and/or licensed by Newser. All publication trademarks appearing on the Services are the property of their respective owners. Their display on the Website does not signify authorship or approval of article summaries, which are written by Newser, and serve only to identify the source of the articles linked to from the Newser Website.” I dunno what that means exactly. But it reminds one of a word that starts the same way as hype and resonates with swipe.

Eventually a real reporter or two ought to write this up as a feature. There is more to know. Where are these relics now. What was the first sign to these archeologists that they’d hit the mark. What’s next. Can the detailed history of Teotihuacan ever be known, or is it inherently gone. What’s it like to walk the tunnel and see the heart of hearts in the middle. So much more to say, surely.

Grist for the Mill: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia Press Release (in English)

- Charlie Petit

Wulff and the seven (or so) laureates... (c) Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung)

Last night German president Christian Wulff honored the winners of the 2011 Deutscher Zukunftspreis (German Future Prize award). It is considered one of the most prestigious here and is sometimes regarded as the German Nobel Prize for engineers, worth 250,000 Euros and a dinner with the president. The latter was especially delicate this year after newspapers reported on Wednesday, that Wulff accepted a half a Million Euro loan at an unusual low interest rate from a private donor in his former position as the prime minister of the Federal German state of Lower Saxony.

But back to the “Zukunftspreis”: The award aims to “identify projects, which show not only a high scientific value, but which have concrete applications and are mature enough for commercial markets.” Three projects made it to the finals:

– high efficiency photovoltaic  cells
– an automated visual hazard recognition system for cars
– organic electronics

The third team carried the award home last night. Like in former years there was more reporting about the nominees before the event than the day after. The regional newspapers dedicate long features to their local researchers.

The winning team from Dresden was featured yesterday in the Sächsische Zeitung. Writer Stephan Schoen not only explains the OLED technology, but also explains how the transfer from basic research into a product occurred. “Technology transfer depends on smart brains”, Schoen quotes project leader Karl Leo, a professor of Dresden University, director at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems and founder of six companies – but he does not consider himself to be a businessman. For him the quote works quite literally: He sent two of his PhD students to build companies around the OLED technology.

Members of the team, who developed the driving assistant system, were celebrated by the Süd-West-Presse already in November without treating the reader with useful information on how the system works and when it could be integrated in mass market cars. Today the same paper brought a comforting commentary. This team was winner of the public online poll with 46 percent of the votes.

The Heilbronner Stimme featured the solar team from federal state Baden-Württemberg. The piece left out almost all technical details but explains that the nominated technology is very expensive compared with regular PV-Cells. That’s the reason why Solar cells from the company Azur Space, who commercializes the invention, feed 400 satellites with electricity, but is not common in solar power plants. The Badische Zeitung provided more technical background: A sandwich made from three different semiconductor materials absorbs light from a wider spectrum than ordinary PV-cells. On top of the sandwich are small lenses mounted to bundle the sunlight giving the product an efficiency around 40 percent.

Other stories:

Hair protects from bed bugs

Some outlets picked up a Biology Letters paper with the self-explaining title “Human fine body hair enhances ectoparasite detection”. “Our results show that fine body hair enhances the detection of ectoparasites through the combined effects of (i) increasing the parasite’s search time [for a spot to suck] and (ii) enhancing its detection”, the scientists conclude.

Wissenschaft Aktuell explains that this could be the reason, why humans gave up fur: Parasites are easier to catch from less hairy skin. The piece argues that the leftover hair might be “a compromise” between fur and bald. It speculates about female mate choice for hairy men, “because those are better protected against bed bugs and parasites”. The Ärzteblatt also speculates about a selective mechanism during evolution against fur, but for a fair amount of body hair, and concludes: “The common practice of shaving body hair to raise attractiveness could come with some disadvantages.”  None of them mentioned the fun fact that the bed bugs used in this study “originated from recently field-collected populations that have retained natural behaviours despite being reared in the laboratory”, as the scientists write in the materials section of the paper.

What’s more problematic: None of them confronted independent experts with this new theory for fur loss. Chimpanzees and other apes are doing quiet well with their dense and long hair so why didn’t the selective pressure occur in our relatives? Juergen Langenbach in the Austrian Die Presse tells a more conclusive story. He explains the old theory that early humans started to lose most of their body hair, when they started to stand up, and he adds new research from the current issue of PNAS. Upright walking comes with the risk of overheating – at least in those regions, where our ancestors evolved. Losing hair – or more precisely: shrinking it into thinner and shorter hair – could have been one form of adaptation to this problem. Or as the scientists put it: “Our model suggests that only when hair loss and sweating ability reach near-modern human levels could hominins have been active in the heat of the day in hot, open environments.”

A surreal self-portrait

Already some days old but this piece is still remarkable. The Stuttgarter Zeitung sent one reporter to meet with the heavily criticized plastic surgeon Werner Mang, who claims that he conducted 20,000 surgeries. The newspaper chose an interesting journalistic form: The reporter “recorded” what Mang told him. Which means, that the talk between reporter and interviewee is not written down as Q & A but the reporter writes it down as if it is a self-portrait of Mang. Don’t know how to call it…

Other newspapers like Die Zeit use a similar form to profile celebrities (I have a dream). It can get interesting when the reporter is able to get the subject to open up. But in this case? Recently, the news magazine Der Spiegel and others collected complaints about manipulated patient files, operations without concession, and bungling during surgery. Not one of the over 1300 words in this impressive piece of fluff journalism mentions the accusations.

Hanno Charisius

In a break from my usual pontificating, I thought I’d link to a few recent goodies I found while catching up on Twitter, Facebook, and my Google Reader feed this morning:

–More news on Ötzi the iceman, whose carefully preserved body I saw some years ago in the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology in Bolzano, Italy. (Put it on your list.) Andy Coghlan writes in New Scientist that the ice man, thought to have been pursued and killed by an arrow to the shoulder, “sat down for a leisurely meal no more than an hour before his violent death.” In November, Emily Sohn reported on Discovery News that an incision in Ötzi‘s right eye might have contributed to his demise.

–Chelsea Whyte at New Scientist reports on new findings about snowflakes by Kenneth Libbrecht of Caltech. Check out New Scientist’s gallery of Libbrecht snowflakes, and, at the Wall Street Journal, this video of snowflakes growing.

–Read Why American Medicine Needs a Moneyball Moment by John Miner and Brad Stulberg on Commonhealth to see whether the techniques used in baseball by Brad Pitt Billy Beane could win a championship ring for health care.

–”One of the richest men in the world is going to build the biggest airplane ever.” So writes Kenneth Chang in The New York Times. Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, will break the record set by Howard Hughes with his Spruce Goose. Donna Blankinship and Seth Borenstein of the AP have a nice piece on tycoons taking over space. Get ready for Occupy Solar System.

–Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy gives us his Top 24 Deep Space Pictures of 2011. An early entry in the yearend deluge, and a good one.

–And a technology note for journalists. If you’re already lost in the cloud (I’m adrift in iCloud, Amazon Cloud Drive, Evernote, Google, and Dropbox, at least), you can now add Microsoft SkyDrive to your iPhone. Instead of misplacing your notes on your desk or hard drive, you have a new opportunity to misplace them on a server in, who knows, Uzbekistan. Exciting!

- Paul Raeburn

Thanks to Gergana Koleva of Forbes.com for shining light on a dentist’s rather unusual approach to caring for patients. And thanks to Reporting on Health for calling my attention to it.

According to Koleva’s post, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen in Washington, D.C. has sued Stacy Makhnevich, a Manhattan dentist, over a privacy agreement that allegedly requires patients to “refrain from criticizing the dentist publicly, including on any Internet blogs, online forums or review sites,” and “also assigned the dentist ownership of the comments and the right to have them taken down.” When a patient, Robert Lee, posted negative comments after claiming that she had refused to submit necessary forms to his insurance company, Makhnevich allegedly sent him a letter saying he had violated the copyright, and she started billing him $100 per day for copyright infringement.

For more on the case and the issues it raises, see this memo on the Public Citizen website.

Koleva concludes her nice little post by reporting that Makhnevich is a professional opera singer and that “she has reportedly closed her office temporarily and is evading service of court documents.”

- Paul Raeburn

In an article in JAMA headlined, “What Patients Really Want From Health Care,” Allan S. Detsky says, “patients primarily focus on relieving illness and symptoms rather than disease prevention.”

Interesting if true, as we say. But what is the basis for this assertion? Detsky has an M.D. and a Ph.D., but this is not a scientific article. It’s an opinion piece. And it reads like journalism to me, which is why I’m paying attention to it here. But, sadly, it appears to be based mainly on Detsky’s preconceived beliefs, as far as we can tell. Little of it is footnoted, and JAMA doesn’t do links.

If patients focus on treating illness rather than prevention, maybe it’s because doctors don’t spend much time talking to their patients about prevention, as NPR recently noted. ”Some patients understand the concept of preventive medicine and want the health care sector to provide services such as cancer screening,” Detsky writes. But most do not, he asserts. Is he forgetting about the millions of women who have mammograms and the many who protest noisily when anybody suggests limits to screening? I’m going to assert that most women, at least in the U.S. and Canada (where Detsky lives) understand the concept of preventive medicine. I can’t present any hard evidence for my view, but neither does Detsky present any for his.

Detsky continues with a list of unfounded assertions about what patients want that are either painfully obvious or painfully elitist, making patients sound selfish and unable to really understand what we talk about when we talk about health care.

In the category of painfully obvious: Detsky says patients want “to be offered options that might help,” they “want to be treated with kindness,” they want a doctor “in whom they have confidence” and some seek ‘the best’ physicians.” I’d like to meet the patients who don’t want helpful options, who want to be treated badly, or who are seeking inferior physicians.

In category two–painfully elitist: He says some delay care but those who don’t “want it immediately.” Before health insurance, patients paid for care “that consisted primarily of kindness.” Many patients “prefer not to ‘know’ or ‘try.’”‘ Patients want info on their doctors, but not if it’s “statistical.” And patients prefer treatments that “require little effort on their part.” If I weren’t tracking this, I would have stopped reading long before now.

Detsky continues with patients’ “second level priorities,” including such revelations as this: “No one likes to have an appointment with a physician scheduled for 9:00 am only to be seen at 11:30 am.” Oh, I dunno. It takes a while to get through the dog-eared Aug., 2007 issue of Ladies Home Journal in the waiting room.

When it comes to money, Detsky thinks he has us figured out there, too. Patient have “virtually no interest” in costs they do not bear. I thought I did; my mistake. And the “amount of gross national product (GNP) spent on health care is just a number and has absolutely no relevance for individual patients.” Would you like to know what that number is? Don’t ask; it has no relevance for you and would only confuse you. If you hear something about it on the news, change the channel!

Detsky concludes by saying that “policy makers need to truly understand and appreciate what the public really wants when they undertake efforts to reform health care.” Policy makers will not get that understanding from Detsky’s piece.

 - Paul Raeburn

Przewalski's Horse, by Jeff Kubina via Wikimedia http://bit.ly/uVr8Ng

Retraction Watch has the puzzler of the day this morning, and I think I can safely make that claim even though I haven’t finished scanning the day’s news.

It has to do with Przewalski’s horse, which somehow seems to come up in my reading more often than it should, considering its numbers. According to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., there are about 1,500 of them in zoos and breeding facilities–derived from 14 founders–and some 400 that have been reintroduced to the wild in Mongolia and China.

If you haven’t heard of this creature, here are some “Cool Facts” from the zoo, before we discuss today’s news:

• Przewalski’s horses have never been tamed for riding, which means that they are the last truly wild horse in existence today.
• Przewalski’s horses have 66 chromosomes, two more than domestic horses.
• The Mongolian name for these horses is “takhi,” which means “spirit”. Horses are central to Mongolian culture, and takhi are a symbol of their national heritage.
• The Chinese call the Przewalski’s horse “yehmah.” [PR: Why this is a cool fact is not entirely clear to me.]
• These horses were scientifically described in the late 19th century after Polish naturalist Colonel Nikolai Przewalski obtained a skull and hide of this seldom-seen animal and shared them with scientists at a museum in St. Petersburg.

Now, today’s news. In a post on Retraction Watch, Ivan Oransky writes that the Equine Veterinary Journal has retracted a six-paragraph study on Przewalski’s horse–and has done so for mysterious reasons, adding to the mystique of this rare creature. The editors of the journal write, “The retraction has been agreed due to the identification of several errors and inaccuracies in the information presented in the article.”

Oransky’s take? ”’Several errors and inaccuracies’ seemed like a lot in a six-paragraph paper.” I’m with him on that one. See Oransky’s post for other cool facts on Przewalski’s horse. And stay tuned as the mystery unfolds; we’ll update here.

- Paul Raeburn