photo by angelin.angelini via Flickr

Dear Reader,

Scienceofthetimes.com is on a temporary hiatus while I begin a new job at Nature Publishing Group, the publisher of Nature and Scientific American. If you have enjoyed Science of the Times, please follow my latest work via Twitter.

And as long as you’re here, take a look around…

Eric R. Olson
Reporter/Editor

If you are looking for an exhaustive, comprehensive list of 2009’s best science stories–you have come to the wrong place. If that’s your cup of tea, I’ll direct you to Scientific American’s incredibly complete and insightful slide show of the year’s biggest stories.*

Instead, what follows is a compendium of the ten stories that I personally found interesting, culled from the mysterious depths of my Facebook and Twitter accounts. These are articles that, for one reason or another, I deemed compelling enough to share with my friends and colleagues–and now with you. And just like the seconds counting down to 2010, we’ll start with number ten and work our way down to number one.

10) The Fish with a Fishbowl Head

Some truly bizarre creatures make their home in the depths of our vast oceans.  However, this bubble-headed fish, whose live photos and video were released for the first time in 2009, has to be one of the strangest discoveries of all time. Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if they discovered that a smaller fish swims laps inside that fishbowl-like head?

9) Shrimp eBayicus

Carl Linnaeus, the father of binomial nomenclature, would probably turn over in his grave if he knew that the naming rights of new species were being auctioned-off for money. Granted, the naming of new species has gotten weird in the last 20 years–who can forget the Garylarsonus weevil or the Darthvaderum mite. However, this represents the first time a scientific name has landed on the digital auction block.

8) Paleontologists Visit The Creation Museum

What happens when real scientists visit a museum of pseudo-science? Hilarity, of course. If you aren’t familiar with the creation museum I’d recommend you save yourself the admission fee and take a video tour. However, be warned that watching it may lead you to conclude that the 1970s TV Show Land of the Lost was historically accurate. One of the paleontogists on the tour was heard to exclaim, “I think they should rename the museum — not the Creation Museum, but the Confusion Museum.”

7) National Science Foundation Blurs Line Between Journalism and PR

News video is expensive and time-consuming to produce, with a diminishing return on investment thanks to an internet-induced loss of advertising dollars. So why not leave it to the deep pockets of the U.S. government to pick up the slack? Apparently, some well-known news outlets, including LiveScience.com and U.S. News & World Report have taken to posting NSF-produced content on their websites. However, this introduces a troubling conflict of interest. It is the role of journalists to hold government agencies accountable, not act as vehicles for PR.

6) Was Lamarck Correct…At Least Sort Of?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was an 18th-century naturalist whose major claim to fame is that he got the mechanism of evolution–entirely wrong. He theorized that an animal’s behavior dictated the traits that would be passed on to each successive generation. The classic example is a giraffe’s neck, which Lamarck believed grew longer as it strained to grasp the highest leaves in a tree. This lengthened neck would, in turn, get passed on to the giraffe’s offspring. But a relatively new field of study–epigenetics–is hinting that Lamarck’s ideas might have had some validity.

5) The Science News Cycle Revealed

Satirical cartoons are usually reserved for the political arena, but this flowchart-esque cartoon from Jorge Cham, skewers the mainstream media’s science coverage. Unfortunately, it’s funny because it’s true. While the scientists live in the world of caveats and qualifications, journalists live in the world of black and white, good and bad.

4) Why Oprah is Bad for Your Health

When you are as wealthy and influential as Oprah, you’re bound to draw some fire for just about anything that you do. However, in recent years Oprah has given air time to some pretty questionable guests, including Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers. The author of this article did a great service by exposing the health claims of these quacks to the light of science.

3) Robot Scientists

It seems that every profession is under threat of automation these days, so why not scientists? In this piece, science blogger Ed Yong takes the time to explain how the robots conduct their robo-science. However, what I’d really like to know is whether these robot scientists will be eligible for University tenure?

2) A Real Road Map to Carbon-free Energy

This little gem (ok, not so little) appeared in last month’s issue of Scientific American.  Environmental scientists Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi lay out a concrete, specific roadmap to get us off the fossil fuel gravy train. Reading the entire article requires a subscription but you can get the jist of it from the free multimedia extra.

1) ACLU Sues Myriad Genetics

In the 1990s Utah-based Myriad Genetics patented the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes. Certain mutations in these genes increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer over her lifetime by about five times. Unfortunately, Myriad has been stingy with its patents and charges around $3000 to test these genes. It also has prevented anyone from developing competitive and potentially less costly diagnostics.

But beyond these breast cancer genes, the BRCA patents represent a larger issue. It is estimated that 20 percent of human genes are patented. If the ACLU wins their case, it could undo every gene patent to-date. And on ethical grounds, it should.

To follow developments in the Myriad vs. ACLU case as they unfold in 2010, visit the Justia.com docket page.

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*A bit of disclosure is in order. I am starting a new job in January as an Audio-Video Editor at Nature Publishing Group, the company that publishes Scientific American.

Artist's rendition of Ardipithecus ramidus. (credit: J.H. Matternes)

Yesterday saw a blizzard of media surrounding the Ardipithecus paper published in the October 2nd issue of Science. A quick Google search reveals more than 600 articles published on the subject since yesterday morning.

If you don’t know already know, Ardipithecus (affectionately known as Ardi by some) is a hominid fossil discovered in Ethiopia some 15 years ago. However, the buzz is not about the fossil discovery itself, but rather the insight that Ardi is an early ancestor of humans–something that wasn’t entirely clear until now. This revelation is making scientists rewrite the book on early hominid history and also their vision of the last common ancestor we shared with chimps, more than four million years ago.

Somewhat reminiscent of the American Natural History Museum’s “missing link” campaign back in May, Ardi also has its own primetime cable television special that airs October 11th on the Discovery Channel. But if you just can’t wait, there is already a wealth of multimedia on-line to quench your Ardi thirst.

For example, Science magazine has produced its own interview video which features Tim White, one of the  directors of the Ardi project.  The video composition and lighting aren’t pretty but the interviewees give a good overview of where Ardi fits into the evolutionary tree–and the sound quality is fantastic.

The New York Times has a basic slideshow with vibrant images of the original Ardi dig. These photos make one appreciate the lengths that paleontological researchers go to in order to find preserved fossils. The Ethiopian desert appears both austerely beautiful, yet inhospitable to any kind of physical activity beyond breathing.

The Discovery Channel website has an interactive multimedia Ardi extravaganza created in Adobe’s Flash program. While I can appreciate the time and effort that went into a project like this,  I’m not keen on the layout or the interface.  In addition, the internet is primarily about connections and a self-contained Flash project like this is essentially a walled garden.

Finally, Science Friday, the popular NPR call-in show will feature paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall, who will discuss how Ardi impacts our understanding of human evolution. If you can’t catch it live on NPR, you can grab the podcast via the official site or from Apple’s itunes.

Have you found any cool Ardi-related multimedia? If so, post your links below, or email me at erolson@scienceofthetimes.com.

source: wikimedia commons

I am currently producing a short, animated video about the flu virus that I intend to either sell, or publish right here on Science of the Times.  I had wanted to include a video interview with a flu virus researcher and had lined up Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, co-chair of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

Last week, a day before the interview was scheduled, Mount Sinai’s  PR department stepped in and killed the interview, citing the fact that I was not contracted by a major media outlet and was producing the video independently. According to Mt. Sinai’s PR person this is their “policy.”

This wasn’t first time I had encountered such a roadblock. As a student in the SHERP program at NYU, I had been shut out by the New York City Health Department for the simple fact that I was a student. This was despite the fact that I was reporting for SHERP’s award-winning website Scienceline.org.

In my opinion, blanket PR policies like these are outdated and ignore the current reality in the media industry.  The truth is that most media organizations are shrinking and many quality journalists are now freelancing and blogging independently.  Wide distribution is no longer limited to a handful of powerful media organizations and anyone could potentially publish a “hit” article or video on the web.

I can understand the viewpoint of Mt. Sinai’s PR department–they want the most bang for their buck. They don’t want to waste their researcher’s time on every Tom, Dick and Harry with a camcorder.  But I would argue that instead of a blanket policy that excludes a growing chunk of the fourth estate,  every interview request should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Despite the fact that I told the PR person that I have academic background in science journalism and have published many science and health-related stories,  I was still excluded because of Mt. Sinai’s  “policy.”  Sure, a news story produced by a big media organization might reach more people, but who’s to say that it would be the kind of high-quality science journalism that Mt. Sinai Medical Center would want to associate itself with?

Therefore, my message to all the science and health PR people out there is instead of creating blanket policies that exclude, look at the background of the person who wants to cover your institution (i.e. what have they produced in the past, who have they worked for, what are their credentials, how fair and accurate are they?)  Don’t ask whether the reporter or producer will reach the most people but whether they will reach them in the right way, on whatever platform is available.

Sure enough, when I got home and looked at the transcript (unfortunately CNN doesn’t make video clips available)  I discovered that the segment was about an antibiotic-resistant strain of clostridium difficile, a gut bacterium that can cause severe infection of the colon when the other gut bacteria that keep it in check are wiped out by antibiotics.  It’s definitely NOT a virus.

This was probably just a gaff on the part of Dobbs’ art department but one that he should be sure to correct in this evening’s broadcast…and probably won’t