Science Critic

What Science can learn from News

Kelley — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:32:02 +0000

Traditionally I’ve focused on daily or weekly news, but this week I’ve shifted gears to read monthly science news magazines. One of my favorite magazines is The Scientist, which is so delightfully targeted to bio-scientists that most of the advertisements are for biotechnology lab equipment and are almost as interesting as the articles.

Today’s issue had a profile/article which could have been printed at any time, but really struck home with me after writing last week’s news article. The article discusses how to write scientific papers more clearly, and uses several, jargon-filled examples (The Scientist); fortunately, the jargon is appropriate for the readership. Jargon aside, it is interesting to note the similarities between good science writing and good news writing; both focus on simple, clear language to illustrate a point.

I have found that many of the resources I have used to improve my scientific writing (Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, Simon and Schuster’s Handbook for Writers) can also be used to improve my news writing. I believe that scientific literature would greatly improve with some adoption of news style.

Rolipram for the masses

Kelley — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:03:38 +0000

A recent Nature paper found that giving sleep-deprived mice the drug Rolipram prevented the normal memory deficits seen following sleep deprivation (Nature News). While sleep deprivation has many affects on the brain, the possibility of eliminating memory impairment would be welcomed by the masses — everyone from students to businessmen. Rolipram was originally intended as an anti-depressant but has been involved in other, similarly sensational news releases over the past 5 years. In 2004 a study published in the high impact Journal of Clinical Investigation found that Rolipram could improve memory deficits in Alzheimer model mice (WebMD News), while an article in Nature Medicine showed Rolipram may be effective in treating spinal cord injury (WebMD News).

Will Rolipram be the next drug of choice for students looking for a chemical edge? Already some experts are suggesting drug tests for students similar to those for Olympic athletes, but testing for “smart drugs” (BBC News). What kind of pressure would this put on students who want to succeed without drugs? As more research reveals ways to improve human cognition, we will likely encounter these dilemmas with increasing frequency.

Thinking about water

Kelley — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:48:31 +0000

It seems we weren’t the only ones told to write about water this week. Over 250,000 residents of Peru’s capital do not have access to running water. In an area which receives only 40mm of rain a year, they have taken to rigging “fog nets” to catch almost 500 L of water a day, which they use to grow vegetables to eat and Tara trees to produce tannins for leather manufacturing, which can be sold to pay for drinking water shipments (BBC). Meanwhile, in China, 330,000 people are being moved by the government to make way for three new waterways to bring water to the arid North — some farmers complain that they’ve been given only half the land they used to farm (BBC). Closer to home, a recent report by World Wildlife Fund Canada concluded that water demands are putting our rivers are at risk (CBC).

Amongst this global atmosphere of fresh water shortage, leaky systems such as those in Ireland, where 180 million L of drinking water are lost per day (BBC), make me wonder about how we are exploiting this natural resource. While Gordon Brown pleads the world to focus on climate change (BBC), as a global community it feels like we’re getting nowhere, as even nations like India are still fighting carbon emission reduction efforts (Reuters India).

50% chance my son will live to be 100

Kelley — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:02:18 +0000

BBC News printed an interesting article this week on the ever-increasing human life-span, stating that half of babies born today will live beyond 100 years of age. I enjoyed reading the article and thought the science was mostly satisfactory; however, two things bothered me. First, the journalist quoted the lead author saying that there was probably no “looming limit to human lifespan,” yet he did not provide an opposing view to this theory, of which there are plenty. Considering the Nobel prize in Medicine was awarded this week to the discovers of telomeres (BBC News), which play an integral role in cell lifespan, you would think this side of the story would be represented. Second, the journalist stated that the “study” was published in The Lancet, and that the first author was the lead author of the study. To me, this implies that this was a respectable, rigorous research study or meta-analysis and that the first author performed the majority of the research. If you actually go to the original article, however, you can see that the “study” is actually just a review of studies conducted by other scientists and contains no new information. While review articles are great reference points to learn about a particular field, I wouldn’t call them newsworthy.

Researchers get lucky in HIV vaccine trial

Kelley — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:00:33 +0000

For the first time, an HIV vaccine has reduced infections by the virus. The vaccine was tested in 16,395 HIV-negative people in Thailand; over a 3 year period, vaccination reduced infections by 31.2%, with 74 infections in the placebo group and only 51 in the vaccinated group (Nature News, BBC, Bloomberg). Researchers gave participants two previously unsuccessful vaccines, hoping the combination would increase immunity. Unfortunately, while the vaccine prevented some infections, it did not decrease the viral load in infected, vaccinated individuals, as one would expect of a good vaccine.

Although these results are encouraging and will lead to better HIV vaccination trials, I can’t help but wonder why the trial was funded in the first place. Let’s pretend we do not have the benefit of hindsight. Human trials should only be conducted on firm scientific ground; however, in 2004 several prominent researchers said the scientific reasoning behind this trial was weak (Science). Why would combining two unsuccessful vaccines be effective? Who decided to wager US$119 million on such little scientific evidence? At a time when top researchers lose funding for scientifically sound projects, funding such risky trials seems backward. Sure, it was the most successful vaccine trial to date, but imagine the headlines if it wasn’t. “US$119 million wasted on scientifically unsound HIV vaccine trial” comes to mind.

H1N1 vaccination for at-risk Canadians

Kelley — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:14:58 +0000

The Canadian government has placed children aged 5 months to 5 years on the priority list for H1N1 vaccination (CBC); however, US studies show the flu is deadliest in school-aged children (Globe & Mail). In the past, seasonal flu struck the elderly, infants, and toddlers hardest — did Canadian policy makers use this historic trend to set vaccination priority instead of the latest research specific to H1N1? Shouldn’t those scientifically most at risk be vaccinated first?

There is also worry that the H1N1 vaccine contains an adjuvant, a substance which enhances immune response, which has not been fully tested in infants, who are set to receive the first Canadian vaccines (CBC). Specifically, the CBC says, “there’s little known about how a baby would react to an adjuvant,” which is not entirely true as adjuvants are present in standard, recommended infant vaccines (Provincial Health Services Authority of BC). In this case, it is important for the journalist to state that one particular adjuvant requires further testing; substituting “an” for “this” can change the reader’s reaction from “adjuvants aren’t usually found in infant vaccines, why are they putting it in?” to “adjuvants are in vaccines, but this particular one hasn’t been tested.”

43 marathons in 53 days: human body “eats itself?”

Kelley — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:14:09 +0000

On September 15, 47-year old standup comedian Eddie Izzard completed a 1770 km run across Britain, the equivalent of 43 marathons, in just 53 days with only five weeks of training (BBC News, Associated Press).

How did Izzard’s body adapt to the dramatic increase in physical demand? The BBC quoted University of Bedfordshire sports Professor John Brewer, who said, “Our bodies are designed to run because that’s genetically how we developed – to catch food and avoid being someone else’s food. We have enough body fat to sustain about 40 marathons.” This remark seems to be off-the-cuff and provides no scientific substance to the article. It does not explain how Izzard was able to run this extreme distance with so little training.

Dr. Brewer is not an expert on human evolution as his statement may suggest, holds no qualifications relevant to the story aside from his professorship in sport, held only since Sept 1, 2009, and has no scholarly publication record on PubMed, a database of over 19 million biomedical articles. Journalists must remain critical of experts’ qualifications: to provide a scientifically relevant perspective a scientist who actively publishes in endurance sport research would have been a more appropriate choice.