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

“Freedom is always the freedom of the dissident to express himself”, said the German socialist Rosa Luxemburg, emphasizing the freedom of speech. But how factual does the “speech” have to be? What’s the definition of a scientific fact at a given time, especially during a process of knowledge gain as in climate research? Is it legitimate to personally attack people, who publicly interpret facts differently or even get it completely wrong? And what about the freedom of a scientist to publicly defend his field’s reputation against seemingly unconvinceable sceptics including scientists and  journalists?

An instructive arena for such questions opened in April last year with an article (not online anymore) in the Frankfurter Rundschau. Cologne-based freelance science journalist Irene Meichsner (a slightly different version here, at the Kölner Stadtanzeiger) wrote about an alleged weak point of the IPCC’s report on climate change. Though he wasn’t even mentioned in the article, German climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf accused Meichsner in his blog of such journalistic sloppiness and ethical shortcuts as not reading the IPCC report properly and copy-pasting portions of a Sunday Times article.  Rahmstorf told the editorial board of the Frankfurter Rundschau about what he saw as flaws in the news story, demanding a correction. The Frankfurter Rundschau not only withdrew the article, it printed a different one with a contrary point of view. In return it asked Rahmstorf to delete Meichsner’s name from his blog. It did all this without telling Meichsner what was going on. Seeing her reputation at stake, she took the case to the court and won (at least 2/3, ruling here), including an order that Rahmstorf shall not repeat the allegations against her.

But, naturally, this was not the end of the public story. A detailed recounting and analysis of the affair by Markus Lehmkuhl (English version here), a communication scientist at the Free University of Berlin (and now at the Forschungszentrum Jülich), discussed the case for the Quarterly of the science journalism association Wissenschaftspressekonferenz (wpk.org). Next came a reaction from Rahmstorf’s employer, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, plus a SpiegelOnline article. Then, others picked up the news: Die Welt (Dirk Maxeiner & Michael Miersch) had a short, but aggressive comment in their Maxeiner&Miersch-column, judging Rahmstorf’s behavior as “agitation”. (One should know that Maxeiner – and a couple of other journalists – has his own history of conflict with Rahmstorf, who is long known to publicly square off with journalists critical of the IPCC.) The Potsdamer Neue Nachrichten wrote a short note here, and numerous blogs expressed their views of the case, like Klimazwiebel (here) or wissenschaftkommuniziert, the new blog of the former chief editor of bild der wissenschaft, Reiner Korbmann, who calls Rahmstorf a “missionary” who is convinced he knows the truth and who feels compelled to silence opponents for the “greater good”.

Rahmstorf and Meichsner have high reputations in their fields of expertise. Rahmstorf’s science sticks to high standards, his scientific reputation is bolstered by his citation index, and he is often quoted by media when climate change is in question. Meichsner did not only receive a couple of important science journalism awards (the Holtzbrinck-Award, e.g.), but is also known as one of the few journalists trying to dig deeper and to scrutinize so called scientific “truth” or “common-sense”.

From an outside view (and in terms of climate science, I’m far from being able to judge the facts of this case) it is hard to fully assess the arguments of Rahmstorf and Meichsner. But is this case just about climate theory and facts? It also addresses whether journalists, bloggers, and citizens in general should have to defend their right to report their interpretation of facts, even if the interpretation is wrong from the expert’s perspective. Of course, experts like Rahmstorf have the right to criticize and publicly correct such interpretations, but not via personal attacks and allegations. SpiegelOnline wrote, some years ago, that it is Rahmstorf’s inquisitorial behavior that boosts the profile of climates sceptics and gives them the role of defenders of the freedom of speech – even though their allegations do not fundamentally challenge the IPCC’s conclusions. The case is also an example of forces injecting an unwanted note into climate discussion and the culture of the public debate. Some bloggers, journalists and scientists use more and more polemic or aggressive language. This is true for Meichsner’s article as well as Rahmstorf’s reaction.

Rosa Luxemburg, by the way, justified her view of the importance of the freedom of speech with the thought that the “impact [of political freedom] fails, if freedom becomes a privilege.” Neither scientists, nor bloggers, nor journalists have a stronger right to free speech. This means, in part, that while factual accuracy is still the most important criterion of merit for any form of publication (and it is important to recognize Rahmstorf’s right to criticize weak quality control in editorial boards), it should not be the sole criterion. It should be possible for bloggers, journalists and citizens to challenge scientific hypothesis and theories even with a lack of background knowledge without being attacked personally or becoming the object of agitation from scientists – and vice versa, of course.

Sascha Karberg

Thawing Permafrost (Nature)

Even without the rise of awareness for the climate change due to the UN climate conference in Durban, the news about the influence of the permafrost thaw would surely have made headlines in Germany. The basic message: “Permafrost thaw will release the same order of magnitude of carbon as deforestation, they [the Permafrost Carbon Network, 41 experts] calculate, but its effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger”, according to Nature‘s press release. The amount of carbon released by 2100 will be 1.7–5.2 times greater than reported previously, the scientists said, a “cause for serious concern”. But they also admit, that the “scientific community needs to collect more data and develop more sophisticated models to test the hypotheses presented by this survey.”

The Frankfurter Rundschau used dapd‘s article, which relies solely on the authors of the Nature paper and does not include any other, independent sources. This alone is not a very journalistic way to deal with a topic, in general. There is another reason that this case is even special. The news is not based on peer reviewed science and distinct data.  The scientists Edward Schuur, Benjamin Abbott and the other members of the Vulnerability of Permafrost Carbon Research Coordination Network wrote a comment for Nature, in which they present a “collective estimation” of “how much of the permafrost is likely to thaw”. The dapd article hints, that the calculations are based on “estimations” but it never challenges or approves the accuracy of the estimation with a second, independent source.  The same applies for the dpa-based article of the Financial Times Deutschland and Die Welt, though their article mentions, at least, that the news is based on a comment. Additional to quotes from first author Edward Schuur, the Deutschlandfunk‘s report included a second voice: the climate scientist Victor Brovkin from the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, who puts the message of the Nature comment into some context. But unfortunately Brovin, too, is part of the consortium and not independent.

The permafrost paper also spurred a blog post at the “Klima-Ticker“, where FAZ‘s Joachim Müller-Jung tries to gloss scientific facts and climate politics. With lots of irony, he portraits the “hot Russian” president Putin, who likes the idea of hunting in a much warmer Taiga, e.g.

Also:

Malaria “breakthrough”?
What would you call a “breakthrough” in Malaria research? A vaccine? An effective, low-cost drug with minor side effects? Probably. But what’s definitely NOT a breakthrough – although the Augsburger Allgemeine hyped it as such – is the finding of a bunch of possible new drug targets. An international team found that 36 out of 65 so called protein kinases are essentiell for the survival of the protozoan Plasmodium falciparum, the most common Malaria agent, which is spread via Anopheles moskitos. Of course it is important to search for and find soft spots of the Malaria agent (the Austrian Standard headlined it this way). But this is basic research and far from being a breakthrough. Finding proteins essential for Plasmodium’s survival is just the first step of a probably ten to twelve year long  process of finding, developing and testing a new drug. Neither the AZ’s headline “Malaria could soon be curable” nor the rest of the article emphasized this “minor” fact and instead suggested that a solution for Malaria is right around the corner. I know, this happens all the time, due to an obscure fear that the readers’ interest would need a boost. But in the long run that’s a disservice. It suggests that basic research automatically and directly leads to medical breakthroughs. But the translation of basic knowledge into drugs is more complicated. After readers do not see  such direct, obvious correlations they will react with distrust in  science and particularly “breaktrough”-typereporting. In this case, the Austrian agency APA distributed the hyped news (“Malaria could soon be curable”), but in the end it is in the responsibility of Augsburger Allgemeine, Standard and others not to copy-paste the agency’s article but to edit it in a way, that it represents the real relevance of the scientific work or (if there is time) to talk to independent Malaria experts to put in in context – or one could use Google, for a change: The University Würzburg (also involved in this research project) distributed a far more differentiated press release  with a local voice (news value!) than the agency’s piece.

Sascha Karberg

Almost every year in November a train load of radioactive waste rolls through Germany. Each time it meets considerable public objection. UP to a few thousand protesters  turn out at the tracks to stop the convoy. Police, outnumbering them by far, try to keep the route clear.  Last year it took the shipment 92 hours to go the roughly 800 miles from the nuclear reprocessing plant in La Hague, France, to the destination – the interim storage facility at Gorleben in northern Germany. This year the train, its high-level waste in eleven dry-cask storage cars, started last Wednesday and did not finish before Monday night. That’s a new record  for the protesters, 126 hours, even though their numbers were way smaller than last year’s crowd. Each side complains about the  brutality of the other. The police counted 100 injured officers; protesters said they have more than 350 hurt.

The protests are not aimed primarily at the traveling trash,mostly spent fuel rods from German nuclear power plants that are coming back from reprocessing plants in neighboring countries. The underlying objection is to nuclear power. Germany has decided to phase-out atomic energy by 2022 but that is not soon enough for many. And just over the borders with neighbors such as  France and the Czech Republic nuclear power prospers. Plus there is the still unsolved problem of finding an adequate final radioactive waste repository. Tobias  Muenchmeyer, a Greenpeace activist, criticized in the FAZ the hubris behind that idea that mankind could build a storage facility rigid enough to survive a million years. The news agency dpa describes the alternative (here reprinted in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung) the old salt mine in Morsleben, Saxony-Anhalt, and quotes sources estimating that it’ll take at least 25 years for authorities to conclude they found the best place.

Some newspapers wrote that this transport was the last since there is no German nuclear waste left in La Hague. But as Malte Kreutzfeldt wrote in the taz there is more trash in Scotland waiting for the journey back to Germany. In another piece Kreutzfeldt described how four farmers stopped the train by chaining themselves to the tracks.

Other News: 

50 years after the drug Contergan was taken off the market Philipp Osten in the Frankfurter Rundschau reminds of the thousands of victims of what today is known as the “Contergan scandal” in Germany. The active ingredient thalidomide was introduced as a sedative drug in 1957. Because it was advertised to have no unwanted side effects it was often prescribed to pregnant women. At this time it was not known that one optical isomer of  thalidomide constrains the growth of blood vessels in the limbs of unborn children. Babies whose mothers took the drug during pregnancy were borne limbless or with flipperlike arms and legs. Thalidomide caused birth defects in more than 10,000 cases till it was withdrawn in 1961. The case is a bitter example for the dangers of modern medicine and the limits of drug testing. Thalidomide wasn’t tested sufficiently for teratogenicity.

At least half the cases could have been prevented if only the manufacturer Gruenenthal had reacted faster, news agency dpa quotes a source. The company pays between 300 and 1100 Euro monthly annuity per case. A group of victims – all in their fifties today – is still fighting for more money – and an apology.

There were only a few cases in the US. Thanks to former FDA staff member Frances Oldham Kelsey thousands of newborns were saved from the perils of the drug thalidomide. She refused approval for an application from the Richardson-Merell company to market thalidomide, saying further studies were needed. Last year the New York times told her story. “The thalidomide disaster led Congress to pass legislation giving the FDA authority to demand that drug makers prove their products safe and effective. Moreover, Dr. Kelsey helped write the rules that now govern nearly every clinical trial in the industrialized world, and was the first official to oversee them.”

Hanno Charisius

With the sound of great relief many media outlets welcomed a decision made by the EU commission on Monday. It eventually allowed a sweetener made from the South American stevia plant to enter the European market. A ten-year struggle comes to an end – for now.

Stevia rebaudiana, also called sugar- or sweetleaf, originates from Paraguay and is used there as a sweetener for a long time. But it wasn’t approved for use in Europe because the legislation says, that novel foods need special authorization. According to the definition, novel foods have no history of “significant consumption” in the EU before the legislation became effective in May 1997.

Safety evaluations, initiated by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), established an acceptable daily intake of four milligram per kilogram bodyweight. On the basis of this limitation the EU commission approved stevia, finally. With the beginning of next month the first products could hit the shelves.

The breaking stevia news made it into many major German media. They unisonous appreciated the agencies move, often hailing the sweetener as “natural”, “teeth friendly” and “non-caloric”. Some managed to include the tight margins, within the substance can be used safely. Only Christina Berndt at the Süddeutsche Zeitung put them in context with the maximum amount allowed for artificial sweeteners. She also explained, that the claim “natural” not necessarily guarantees, that the product is harmless. Like Berndt also other writers mentioned, that stevia was already on the European market even without approval. It was sold in some stores, camouflaged as additive for hot baths, “fertilizer” or “mouth wash”. One knows that trick from designer drugs sold as “bath salts” and “air freshener”.

Two outlets told their audience, how much stevia might end in certain products, but they came to very different results. Maria Braun at Handelsblatt quotes a source that the amount of stevia-sweetener necessary to replace the sugar in one liter of soda will be well below the maximum permissible value for an average adult. Whereas Christoph Froehlich at Stern.de found a source telling him, that the soda companies have to exceed the maximum level in a soda by the factor three to replace the sugar entirely. He comes to the conclusion, that the sweet revolution is still far away.

Two points are entirely missing in the swell of stories: The new regulation includes a clause, that the commission might ask the EFSA to perform an exposure analysis for the new sweetener, taking into account its real use.

The other and more important thing is the origin of the plant. Everybody treats it like a common good and does not think about ethical issues of commercializing indigenous knowledge. The EU already spent money to find out how to grow the plant in South Europe.

Also, an unrelated story:

Chicks on drugs

An investigation in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia caused a big stir: Veterinarians found that 96.4 percent of the controlled chicken got antibiotics during their life, which lasts just 30 days. Some of them carried eight different drugs in their blood. This is not only illegal but also dangerous for people. Earlier this year, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment communicated, that  22 percent of the broilers carry germs that are resistant against several antibiotic. Only one year ago, the Robert-Koch-Institute found MRSA in every third frozen poultry sample, writes the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Hanno Charisius

In May and June, an EHEC epidemic started in Germany. According to the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin it was the worldwide most severe EHEC outbreak ever. About 3800 patients were diagnosed with the E.coli-variant bacteria EHEC O104:H4 and developed an enterogastritis or a hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), causing 53 deaths in Germany. The disease also spread over European countries and Northern America, too, mostly via tourists, adding 137 cases (2 deaths, one of them in the US).

As soon as the Robert Koch Institute got knowledge of the outbreak, it started an investigation. The source seemed to be salads, but whether the germ came from cucumbers or tomatoes or other ingredients was not clear, first. Later, through comparisons of recipes of restaurants in Hamburg and their healthy and infected visitors, sprouts were found to be the source – and these sprouts were bred on an organic farm in Northern Germany from seeds from Egypt. The health authorities closed the farm, but so far, they were not successful to detect the pathogenic EHEC strain on the remaining sprouts (using smear samples). So it is still not entirely clear, who is responsible for the outbreak.

Now the Focus (a weekly magazine) had a small report about the possible cause. The article quotes the hygienic expert Martin Exner from the University of Bonn, that the EHEC bacteria, that were stuck to the seeds from Egypt, were in a state of “sleep”, kind of. They were reactivated due to the hygienic conditions at the organic farm, where the restrooms are “near” the water reservoir for the plants. Well, this does not make sense to you or seem to explain anything? Some information seems to be missing here, but that didn’t worry the news agency dapd to pick up this report, which means to reprint it almost identically. And again, Hamburger Abendblatt, Welt, BZ and RP-Online picked it up, with not much editing or efforts to fill the obvious gaps.

Looks like, a radio reporter has to show, how to report about a hypothesis, because that’s what Exner’s statement is. Martin Winkelheide (Deutschlandfunk) actually visited the meeting in Munich, where Exner gave a talk, and made a report with Exner’s quotes. The piece describes the hypothetical scenario in such a way, that readers/listeners can actually understand, what Exner meant: First, some workers ingested some of the seeds with the “sleeping” EHEC bacteria. Second, the bacteria got reactivated in the digestive tract. Third, the workers either used the restrooms in an unhygienic way or some of the revived bacteria found their way from the restrooms to the nearby water reservoir for the seeds. That no EHEC bacteria were detected on the sprouts via smear samples might be due to the possibility, that they fall “asleep” as soon as they do not enjoy the comfortable environment of the digestive tract anymore, according to Exner in the Deutschlandfunk piece. Most important: The articles says explicitly, that this is just a hypothesis, not proven by any scientific standards! (The Allgemeine Zeitung chose to almost copy paste on the Deutschlandfunk report, by the way). The Deutschlandfunk piece would have been perfect, if it included a second, independent voice, who weighs the plausibility of the hypothesis – the Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung and the Umweltbundesamt, e.g., which are the official authorities dealing with food and water related diseases. That’s what the Süddeutsche Zeitung did, months ago (in June)! In his article, Markus C. Schulte von Drach asked the Umweltbundesamt about a quote from Exner about the possibility of a distribution of EHEC via drinking water (which was printed by the Spiegel) and got angry responses like “arbitrary panicmongering”.

Addendum: Apparently, neither the Focus in its original announcement, nor dapd or other “copypasters” actually talked to the expert Exner in person – according to Exner himself (the tracker asked him), who is “aghast” about how he was quoted. He said, that in his talk at the scientific meeting in Munich, he explicitly made clear, that he described nothing more than a hypothesis, which had to be further investigated. The Ärztezeitung took a few more hours time and talked to Exner, and got it right in their report, that this is just a hypothesis.

More about the EHEC epidemic and the way, the German media reported about this outbreak, and what (science) journalists could (and should) learn for reporting about the next epidemic: An interview (in German) with Susanne Glasmacher (Public Relations @ Robert-Koch-Institute).

ALSO:

Should Science rule?

Evidence based medicine? A must! Evidence based management? Would surely improve a lot! Evidence based politics? Sounds great, but I’m not entirely sure after reading the great Tagesspiegel article.

Stone Age Brindled Horses

It’s a nice piece of science to prove via genetics, that stone age artists in the french caves drew brindled horses in a realistic way from naturally existing horses. It’s a good idea to report about this, RP Online. But German scientists lead the whole research effort, so why not talking to them, at least briefly, to get some unique information and convince the reader, that it might be actually worth reading your newspaper/website? A wasted opportunity for reader retention, again.

The forgotten victims of Fukushima

Not much reporting about Fukushima in Germany, anymore. And if so, it is about what’s going on with the nuclear reactors. But Sven Stockrahm (ZEIT), had a piece about the forgotten victims of the Tsunami…

Sascha Karberg

Josef Mengele

The president of the German Medical Association, representing more than 400,000 German physicians, bluntly announced last week: “The truth is: During the Nazi-regime physicians caused, ordered or mercilessly administered death and harm to humans.” And: German physicians admitted their guilt  “late, too late”. Until today, the Medical Association president said the organization had not done enough to acknowledge and understand the role of German physicians within the Nazi Regime. Starting with these quotes, the article in the Tagesspiegel (Rainer Woratschka) reports a scientific research project (independently researched but by order of the Medical Association) that tries to shed light on the many waysup until 1945 that physicians were involved in the violations of human rights. By 1937 about half of the German physicians had been registered as a member of the NSDAP. And they weren’t passive: About 300.000 people were victims of the euthanasia programs, executed by physicians, who had the option to object but most  supported the programs, probably for the pay to perform such procedures as forced sterilizations.

Though German physicians probably tried harder than other professions to come to terms with their past (at least after 1987, when the former president of the Medical Association started the dig in the past), the research report still found hints to even more victims. It urges more effort to understand how the wrongdoings during the Nazi-regime continued to cause harm even after 1945.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung (Nina von Hardenberg)  writes in more detail of 200.000 so called “ballast existencies” had been registered within a program called “action T4″, and 70.000 of them had been murdered by 1941. Merely to be described as “fragile and lonely” in medical records was a death sentence for psychiatry patients at the time. The Süddeutsche also had a commentary piece (Joachim Käpper). Worth reading, because it hints to other professions that should think about a deeper dig into their past.

Die Welt-kompakt,did not spare more than a few lines. But the mother issue had a longer piece. Agencies like AFP reported relatively long (Zeit.de mixed dpa and AFP), as well as physician newspapers like Ärzteblatt (here), Ärztezeitung (here), and Pharmazeutische Zeitung (here, though copied from dpa). The Austrian Standard printed the wire copy of the Austrian Press Agency (APA), which is (I think) based on the German wire dpa. But I think, it misses the hint, that Austrian physicians still did not try to come to terms with their role in the past (as fas as I know).

In his article for Neues Deutschland, Fabian Lambeck describes the reasons, why so many physicians were eager to fulfill the race ideology of the Nazi regime – because the were profiteers of the new system. E.g., it was in favor of German physicians that Jewish competitive physicians (8000 of 52000 in 1937) lost their approbation. He also mentions one of the worst parts of the wrongdoings: experiments with humans for the sake of research. And, by the way: The knowledge, that these “experts” acquired, was valuable enough to convince American officials to use it in the US.

Sascha Karberg

15500 year old stone artefacts hint to an earlier colonization of the Americas.

The ongoing catastrophe in Japan, especially in Fukushima, still dominates the German media. But other topics were able to reconquer some news space last week.

The finding of a pre-Clovis culture in Texas, which antedates the first proven human colonization of the Americas about at least 4000 years, got a lot of press. “Flintstone Family needs to be antedated” headlines the Austrian Standard (Klaus Taschwer) – though the article does not mention the comic characters at all.

Neither dpa (here, or here, e.g.) nor AFP (here), provided any information or quote beyond the Science source.

The article from Stern.de (Lea Wolz) included an independent source (anthropologist Gary Haynes, University of Nevada) who feels there are some residual doubts regarding the dating method (luminescence) used by the archaeologist. The last third of the article explains, that the finding raises a lot of questions – how did the pre-Clovis-culture reached North-America, despite the icy Canadian landscape 15000 years ago? Did they  walk over the Bering land bridge along the American west coast or did they cross the Pacific, like other theories suggest?

Though the Stern article included Haynes it did not mention that he has been for years a prominent defenders of the “Clovis first”-theory – making even more significant his acknowledgment that humans lived in America before the Clovis-culture. Die Presse (Jürgen Langenbach) mentions this in an interesting article, along with other discoveries, that add doubt about Clovis-first, including genetic analysis.

Die Zeit (Nicole Franciska Kögler) quotes Tom Dillehay from the University of Kentucky who can’t understand, why the current discovery merits such. Lots of different discoveries in the past (including his own work in South America) had not merely cast doubt on the Clovis-first-theory but disproved it, he states.

The focus of Die Süddeutsche Zeitung (Hubert Filser) is on the question “by feet or by boat?“. The article starts with a hunting scene from 12000 years ago – on the islands of Santa Rosa and San Miguel offshore from California. That means hunters there  used boats and opens speculation that  America might have been colonized via the Pacific. Furthermore, the article summarizes different research approaches trying to shed light on the early American history. Linguistic research hints to three distinct language families – three different colonizing events? Genome analysis suggests, “that the Indians are not descendants from the first, but a second or third colonization event.”

In summary, none of the articles quoted a source not mentioned or suggested by Science. Not a single German archaeologist was asked about his opinion. Don’t they exist? Did someone actually try to add a European angle to the story? Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a neutral view on the highly controversial debate among US archaeologists?

Also on the plate this week:

“Artificial sperm bred for the first time”,…

Such headlines jumped from a couple of German language newspaper science sections. Well, artificial mouse sperm, actually. Bravely, the Süddeutsche did not try to cover this up in their headline (article based on dpa). Most others did: Focus (here), Spiegel-online (here), Standard (here). The Austrian Wiener Zeitung (Eva Stanzl) mentioned the mouse-source, but got something else wrong, somehow: “Frankenstein from Mouse-Sperm” (Surprisingly, I couldn’t find a hint to any Frankenstein-like creatures in the original Nature paper).

… Baby Grammar,…

Test for grammar learning capabilities of babys via EEG

Even four-month old babies are already able to learn basic grammar rules. The (PLoS-published) research from the Max-Planck-Institute for Cognition and Neuroscience in Leipzig was picked up all over Germany: Welt (here), Die Presse (here), 20 Minuten (here), Krone (here), Freie Presse / dapd (here). And the article from busy Adelheid Müller-Lissner was published at Zeit-Online (here), Handelsblatt (here) and Tagesspiegel (here) (all part of Holtzbrinck Media). Spiegel-Online had a very smart introduction to the topic: The very first sentence included a grammar mistake! Probably, to raise the readers awareness, how difficult grammar is even for adult journalists (“Leipzig – Säuglinge können schon sehr früh die Grammatikregeln einer neuen Sprachen lernen.”). Though this one made me smirk, I was, again, disappointed, that none of the articles included any other opinion or expert than provided by the Max-Planck-Institute (press release). Not that I distrust the Max-Planck-Scientists, but adding the perspective of an independent researcher would make the articles sound less than a rewritten Max-Planck-announcement. My question is, whether it is really journalistic work to just rephrase a press release (more or less) and not put the new research into perspective?

… and finally:

The Financial Times Deutschland (Michelle Röttger, Marion Schmidt) picked up the investigation of public prosecution against a German professor, the head of the European Business School EBS. Breach of trust is the accusation because the professor had multiple sidejobs (as an adviser, e.g.) and interests in a couple of companies. Officially, professor are allowed to work eight hours on the side. The universities know that many professors work more time on the side or that many do not even announce their activities, but they turn a blind eye. The article quotes from the book of the professor Uwe Kamenz (“Professor Untat”, kind of “Professor Misdeed”), who tested his colleagues by offering them a sidejob. Dozens replied, despite the job would have required more than the allowed amount of time. But the article makes clear, that this behavior has its roots in a deeper problem: On one hand, professor should have contact to the “real world”. On the other hand, how far should they be engaged in activities outside the universities? And what consequences do these sidejobs have regarding their scientific results? Worth reading. And worth effort to dig deeper…

Sascha Karberg

The end of the nuclear age - claimed by the Spiegel

With a little bit more time between the bad news from Fukushima, the German language science sections have several interesting, more in-depth stories. Or at least with unique perspectives.

Hartmut Wewetzer (Tagesspiegel) had the right story on the topic for a Berlin newspaper: He reports, that the dye “Berlin blue” (aka “Prussian blue”), which formerly tinted the uniforms of Prussian soldiers, can be used as a medicine to transport cesium and thallium out of the body. Of course, a Berlin company is getting a surge in orders from Japan and other Asian countries for the former dye, now called “Radiogardase”, a “mixture of iron, carbon and nitrogen” (well, actually, its: “ferric hexacyanoferrate(II)”, which contains atoms of carbon, iron and nitrogen ). Wewetzer writes quite early, that there is no need to swallow such pills in Germany in precaution. The pills require a doctor’s prescription, anyway. He also explains the mode of action of the drug. But I wish he wouldn’t have written that the drug has only “marginal side effects”. The company writes that “serum electrolyte levels should be monitored during treatment, particularly in patients with pre-existing cardiac arrhythmias or electrolyte imbalances, as should possible clinical responses to critical orally administered drugs.” And, even more important in a situation like Japan where pregnant woman are particularly eager to keep their baby safe there is this: “Prussian blue’s potential effects on pregnancies have not been studied.” Another point: The article looks a bit like promotion for the Berlin company, to my knowledge the only company providing this medicine. And they were farsighted, or lucky,  enough to establish a Japanese branch office in the autumn of 2010…

Like the Tagesspiegel, other media warned their worried readers about preventively swallow other  pills, too. The Swiss Tages-Anzeiger (here), Zeit.de (here), agencies like AFP (here), Stern.de (here), the Austrian Standard (here), even Bild (here) and locals like Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung (here) and Badische Zeitung (here). But still, some just don’t get it: the news website of the ZDF headlined “Iodine – the only protection”. Only in the last third of the article does the author give Germans any clue to the current needlessness and risks swallowing iodine. (And the headline is not true, anyway, as anyone who reads the Tagesspiegel’s Berlin-Blue-story should know).

The science section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung not only warned about the “moronism” of iodine uptake, but decided to react to the radiation hysteria (“fear of radiation”) in Germany with a very sober-toned piece about the dosage effect of radiation.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung (Christopher Schrader) compared,  in “Pools for Pins” (how I would paraphrase the headline),   the storage of the fuel rods in special pits in Fukushima with the practice in German power plants – and found, that in six nuclear power plants the pits are at the same apparently dangerous position (outside the containment), just like in Fukushima. Schrader explains in detail the risk of such a construction and raises a lot of questions, who should definitely be discussed during the “German moratorium”.

UPDATE (3/25): The weekly Die Zeit (Hans Schuh and Gero von Randow) wrote about the same topic – the underestimated risk of the storage pools for the fuel rods.

The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung had two articles, worth mentioning: “The number-GAU“, first, which sub-headline shouts, that either 56 (IAEA) or 93000 people (Greenpeace) died due to the blow-up of Tchernobyl – depending on the “political agenda” of  study authors. But right in the beginning, the article of Simone Schmid makes clear, that this is also a scientific problem. An example: are the heart failures of the kids of a Ukrainian worker, who helped to control the Tchernobyl catastrophe, a coincidence or result of radiation damage in the father’s sperm DNA? The article goes on to explain how hard it is to get reliable data. “Nuclear power still an option“, is worth to mention, because this would be a headline one cannnot (I didn’t) find in Germany these days. In a rather opinionated, sometimes even polemic style, NZZ editor Andreas Hirstein gazed over the Rhine and wrote, that only hours after the first explosion in Fukushima, “the public’s fuses burned out” and the German news magazine Der Spiegel proclaimed the “end of the atomic age”. By now, the “meltdown” has reached Swiss and Middle-European politics, too, he wrote. And the German chancellor Angela Merkel acts like she aims to found “a new kind of anti nuclear power movement”. Then, Hirstein follows the argument that Germany (and other European nations) just can’t switch off nuclear power plants, because it would fall back behind the plan to substantially cut CO2-emissions. He is right to hint, that the discussion in Germany still lacks explanations, how alternative energies could help to reach the European goal to cut back CO2 emission by 20 % (compared to 1990). He is also right to hint, that the US and China and others keep planing new nuclear plants. But I would like to shout back over the Rhine, that the discussion just began. Two weeks ago, the end of the atomic age (in Germany) was 30 years away, now it is a sudden political reality. Of course Germany (and whole Europe, too) needs a discussion about how to reduce CO2 and exclude the risk of a Fukushima-like event. The article starts the discussion, gives numbers and calculations (as far as they are available) and asks several experts. Though, I wouldn’t have gone so far to already provide the conclusion of the discussion, saying, that the idea of a fast pullout from nuclear power is an “all-or-nothing-gamble”.

Other newspapers are thinking about the future without nuclear power, too. The Kölner Stadtanzeiger explains “Öko-Energie“(“alternative energy”). Die Welt writes, that “Not everything green is really alternative energy” (Nicht alles, was grün ist, ist wirklich Ökostrom)” (Same headline from the Sächsische Zeitung). And Focus sees a “run on alternative energies“.

Sascha Karberg

The German nuclear power plant Isar I

The earthquake in Japan and the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant caused a political aftershock in Germany. It may sound hysterical, that people in Germany are very concerned about the so called Super GAU at Fukushima, more than 8000 kilometres away – some actually started to buy iodine pills and governmental radiation experts got thousands of calls from concerned citizens. But one needs to understand, that Germany has had a very detailed, very emotional public discussion about the “residual risk” (which is not residual at all, anymore) since the explosion at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Tchernobyl and the radioactive fall-out in parts of Germany. It was a decades long political fight about how safe nuclear technology needs to be. Society concluded that nuclear power technology is neither safe enough nor is it the technology for solving a future of drastic climate change. Only a few years back the government of Gerhard Schroeder (social democrat party) and the green party leader Joschka Fischer negotiated an exit plan for the usage of nuclear power plants in Germany and started to invest heavily into alternative technologies. Even the current conservative party did not take back this plan, though it decided to delay the process just a few months ago. Now, in the face of the catastrophe in Japan, the Merkel government decided to delay the delay. A “moratorium” was announced to reconsider the safety of the remaining nuclear power plants in Germany and whether they need to be switched off immediately.

In consequence, the newspapers are full of news about the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, the nuclear emergency in Fukushima, and the political consequences in Germany. Most science sections try to contribute the scientific background information – not only about the goings on in Fukushima but also about the reactor types in Germany, German and Japanese cooling systems etc.

The Süddeutsche, like many others, wrote about the health consequences of radioactive substances. The Zurich Tages-Anzeiger explained, that it makes no sense for Europeans to swallow iodine pills (and that it may cause harm). A Q&A answered the most important questions. The Financial Times Deutschland decided to provide a “nuclear ABC” (based on dpa). And the Frankfurter Allgemeine had a risk assessment, organized in a Q&A.

The Tagesspiegel (Hartmut Wewetzer) explained in detail, how radiation affects the genome.

An article (Süddeutsche Zeitung) about a satirical twitter campagne against the huge lobby organization of the nuclear power companies (RWE, e.g.) might explain, how much the public is involved, emotionally.

But after a few days, we now see the results of some deeper research, too: Die Zeit had a dossier, stating, that Japan’s nuclear power managers knew about the risk in a severe earthquake (Gero von Randow, Hans Schuh). Also: A historical view about Tchernobyl, health related facts, and information graphics about the nuclear power plants in Germany.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine (Joachim Müller-Jung) presented a report about a 10 year survey, that will be presented in five weeks in Kiev, which concludes, that “Tchernobyl was the worst accident in the history of the civil usage of nuclear power.” In the face of the current development in Japan no one knows, whether this will still be true in five weeks, writes Müller-Jung, before he explains the details of the study about the health consequence of the accident – and about the (probably astonishing, but appeasing?) absence of consequences.

The Tageszeitung (taz) had a special article (Reiner Metzger) about the reactors 4, 5 and 6 at Fukushima. In common risk szenarios, the water filled tanks for old fuel rods were never considered to be a problem. But now it looks like the loss of the water cooling the rods at least caused a fire and probably a meltdown.

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote against the hysteria – about “everyday radiation“. And Hanna Wick makes clear, how different Fukushima is compared to Tchernobyl. “Radiation causes big panicmongering“, cites the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Sascha Karberg

According to the wiki guttenplag, 76 percent of the Guttenberg's law school thesis seem to come from other authors. Black: plagiarisms, Red: multiple plagiarisms from different sources on one side. White: pages without plagiarisms. Blue: Contents

Scientific misconduct rarely reaches the political arena. Scientists found guilty of plagiarism, data manipulation or deliberate misinterpretation will quickly find themselves expelled or ignored from the scientific community. But usually the wider public won’t take too much notice of such cases. Is this the reason why or is this because science journalists rarely dig deeper, rarely write about and explain the financial and scientific harm caused by fraud in research to a public, where most do not know much about the work of scientists or their code of conduct?

The story of Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg, a nobleman and (now former) Minister of Defense, reveals just such lack of knowledge about or interest in how  scienceworks. Guttenberg, a young politician from the Bavarian party CSU (Christian Social Union), made a very quick career rise. – with much help from the daily Bild and other boulevard media (summarized brilliantly here at the Frankfurter Allgemeine). His popularity reached heights rarely seen in Germany. This helped him survive a couple of severe crises during his tenure with the ministry of defense.

But then a law professor (featured at the Süddeutsche Zeitung) actually read his doctoral thesis at the Law School of the University of Bayreuth. And found several copy-pasted paragraphs. With the help of the web community (a wiki called guttenplag), Guttenberg was found to have lifted about 70 percent of his thesis without crediting the original authors.

Surprisingly, the broad public in Germany didn’t get the point, didn’t see why such behavior might disqualify Guttenberg from continuing as Federal Minister of Defense in the cabinet of chancellor Angela Merkel. Dozens of polls showed that sympathy for Guttenberg was still higher than for most other politicians. And Dr. Angela Merkel, herself a physicist, declined to fire Guttenberg, claiming, that she distinguishes his work as a politician from his former scientific work.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg

Is this public reaction, to judge scientific plagiarism as a trivial offense, caused by a common lack of understanding how science works, how scientists try to establish high quality, how they handle and value intellectual property? Finally, the sympathy that polls revealed in the public crumbled a bit after scientists and universities started to protest and to explain how important proper citations are in science. And finally, after politicians from his own party criticized him, Guttenberg stepped down. But he still claims, that he copy-pasted “unintentionally” (though, a Bavarian public prosecutor opened a fraud case against Guttenberg, today).

I once heard a speech from the head of a newspaper’s science section say that the public has no interest in researcher’s internal quarreling. So, he won’t report about it at length. Well enough, but people who never saw a book won’t develop interest in a book, right? People will continue to be ignorant about science if no one explains how scientists actually work and how scientific misconduct influences the broader society (wasted money, bad science, bad irrational political decisions, etc.,etc.). Science journalism is not only about the nice impressive blooms of research but also about the fights for funding, the flaws of the review system, the systemic and financial circumstances of innovation transfer to the market – in short, the societal side of science.

Here are a few links, how the German science sections dealt with the “Guttenplag”-topic.

Zeit: How scientists disposed Guttenberg and How scientists deal with plagiarism

Klaus Taschwer (Austrian Standard) summarized cases and causes of fraud and plagiarism in science, internationally as well as in Austria.

Stern.de explained, how one can loose a doctor title. And Frank Ochmann comments in his column “Kopfwelten”, why so many Germans still stick to Guttenberg and trivialize his fraud…. and much much more ink.

- Sascha Karberg

PS: The name  Guttenberg is not a misspelling, but is simply different from that of the famous inventor of printing press Gutenberg…

Egyptian Alchemy - Science has a long tradition in Egypt

The whole world is listening to the news from Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon etc. Political turmoil. The leap toward democracy. So much news. But what about the science in these countries? Isn’t it important to get an idea about the scientific (and technological) background of Egypt and Tunesia and other Middle East/North African countries? How free are scientists in their research? What cultural or legislative hurdles do they face, when they try to do their research?

The question is, how sustainable can a democracy be without a thriving research community, without a societal consensus of acceptance of scientific thoughts? Democracies need independent scientists, because a rational, scientific view is needed for political discussions – especially in hot (emotionally hot) countries like the Middle East.

Actually, I don’t know much about the life of scientists in Tunisia or Egypt, about the funding system, about evaluation of the quality of science, about publication rules and censorship of scientific reports, about the influence of scientists in the political systems etc. But late 2009, I visited a conference about Darwin and evolution in Alexandria. (Perhaps my first biology conference ever, where I saw people praying in the lobby between speeches!). It was interesting and kind of puzzling (for a German) to observe. that biologists from Egypt and other Middle East countries may face  harsh reactions if they speak or even teach about Darwin and evolution. I learned, though evolution may not be literally in conflict to the written word of the Koran, evolution theory is seldom taught in high school and sometimes not even in universities in Egypt and other Middle East countries. This is just a glimpse, but I would like to read much more about the reactions of Egyptian scientists to the revolution and what role science will or will not play for the society and economy in a new Egypt.

Here are some articles from the science sections of German language newspapers dealing with the topic, at least a little bit.

Most science section just dealt with how the turmoils threatened the artefacts within the Egyptian Museum in Cairo: Süddeutsche Zeitung (here) writes very cautiously about the lootings, because different reports about what actually happened hint, that the regime tried to use the incident to discredit the protesters. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung had a short piece. And the Austrian Standard had an early article and one, two follow-ups. With a third one, stating, that some stolen artefacts have been found and brought back to the museum.

Die Zeit took a different path writing about German archaeologists in Egypt and how the revolt influenced their work on site (also: an interview here). Nevertheless, they also had the news about the looting (first, second). Digging a bit deeper than others, Die Zeit also had an article about the historic role of the military in Egypt.

The Tagesspiegel had an article about the fate of Zahi Hawass, the popular Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in Egypt, his amount of companionship with the Mubarak-regime and his unclear role in the looting of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Süddeutsche Zeitung had a piece about the fallen hero Hawass, too.

- Sascha Karberg