(English intro to Spanish lang post) A group of Spanish researchers announced yesterday the patent of a preventive and therapeutic vaccine against Alzheimer disease. The studies were done in transgenic mice and published in a low impact factor journal. Human clinical trials haven’t even been approved yet...
Category: Rastreador Científico en Español
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A group of Spanish researchers announced yesterday the patent of a preventive and therapeutic vaccine against Alzheimer disease. The studies were done in transgenic mice and published in a low impact factor journal. Human clinical trials haven’t even been approved yet. But it was presented as if the first ever Alzheimer’s vaccine was clearly on the road. Huge hype in TV and some press. We've found titles like “Alzheimer’s vaccine is ready”, or “Spanish researchers design the first effective vaccine against Alzheimer”. We've even read the expression "it's one of the most important medical news of the decade". Only El Pais showed some skepticism. An experienced health reporter clarified that there’ve been many failures in Alzheimer treatments that initially worked in animal models, and that some neuroscientists not involved in the research have serious doubts about the...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Scientific papers published from Latin America increased at a yearly rate of 9% between 2000 and 2010 (world’s average 3%), and collected more citations, as an interesting story in SciDev explains. We read also that Ecuadorian government has allowed a...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Scientific papers published from Latin America increased at a yearly rate of 9% between 2000 and 2010 (world’s average 3%), and collected more citations, as an interesting story in SciDev explains. We read also that Ecuadorian government has allowed a compulsory license for a patented HIV drug, and it will be the second latinamerican country after Brazil to produce generic drugs against AIDS. El Universal (Mexico) publishes a extensive story about the adverse health effects of sugary sodas, and El Tiempo (Colombia) a really interesting one about the technology behind email’s transfer.
Two disappointing news from Spain. First, as Materia denounces, the government has named three new members in its bioethics committee: someone who criticizes embryonic stem cell research, someone who is against abortion, and someone who considers homosexuality to be an “irregular and not in order way of life...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) On Wednesday the European Space Agency said that the asteroid Apophis is bigger than previously thought, and that it is still uncertain how close to the Earth will come in 2036. As a consequence some science reporters wrote stories alerting about the size of...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) On Wednesday the European Space Agency said that the asteroid Apophis is bigger than previously thought, and that it is still uncertain how close to the Earth will come in 2036. As a consequence some science reporters wrote stories alerting about the size of the “threatening” asteroid. These stories got lots of views and spread fast in social networks. Yesterday NASA sent a press release ruling out the possibility of an impact in 2036. The most recent stories say that Apophis won’t contact our planet, but the first and misleading ones are still not corrected.
On another note, this week Jim Watson criticized the “the inherently conservative nature of today's cancer research establishments" and said “antioxidants prevent us from killing cancer cells". Spanish medical reporters did a good job contrasting Watson’s opinions with other researchers. A few interpreted...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Spanish researchers have published in Science Translational Medicine the best-ever results of a therapeutic vaccine against HIV. They used dendritic cells from the original patients to induce HIV-1–specific immune responses that reduced by 90% their viral load. None of the...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Spanish researchers have published in Science Translational Medicine the best-ever results of a therapeutic vaccine against HIV. They used dendritic cells from the original patients to induce HIV-1–specific immune responses that reduced by 90% their viral load. None of the control group showed reductions. The final goal is to control the HIV replication for long periods without anti-retroviral treatment.
Cuba's Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) has also patented a therapeutic vaccine, this case against lung cancer. Researchers say they’ve done clinical trials showing an increase in survival rates among patients and good safety and tolerance levels. They also say the results have been published in a scientific paper, but we haven’t found any reference in any of the stories we’ve checked. We haven’t found the supposed authors in pubmed either. The only source of information seems to be a very vague...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) We found plenty of stories listing the top scientific breakthroughs of 2012 in Latin American and Spanish media. The majority of them simply refer to Science and Nature’s lists. But some science writers have gone further than Higgs and Curiosity and...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) We found plenty of stories listing the top scientific breakthroughs of 2012 in Latin American and Spanish media. The majority of them simply refer to Science and Nature’s lists. But some science writers have gone further than Higgs and Curiosity and included local achievements. We’ve read about supercomputing in Mexico, telescopes in Argentina, advances in dengue and malaria research, archeological findings, artificial heart transplants, epigenetics, and research funding. In fact, most stories from Spain mention the severe cuts that are forcing many scientists to leave the country. We admit that we expected to find more and better stories about specific local achievements from Latin-American countries.
Algunos resúmenes del año tienen un punto facilón, pero sin duda tienen gancho entre los lectores, y si se hacen bien, en ciencia pueden servir para mostrar informaciones que hab...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A consortium of Mexican scientific institutions is conducting a massive online survey named “Civic Agenda of Science, Technology and innovation”. El Universal has just published an extensive report about it. The survey is asking citizens what...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A consortium of Mexican scientific institutions is conducting a massive online survey named “Civic Agenda of Science, Technology and innovation”. El Universal has just published an extensive report about it. The survey is asking citizens what challenges they think science should focus. There are only 10 generic options to choose. For the moment the priorities are food safety, education and access to drinking water, followed by public health, environment, space exploration, migration, energy, climate change and mental health. We are not supposed to discuss here the criteria, shortage of options, and relevance of citizen’s opinions about science policy and decision making, but El Universal should probably have done it.
Today we comment also in three other stories: a fabulous one from Guatemala that explains in great detail the work of anthropologists and forensics to identify victims of the...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Rafael Méndez from El Pais is the reporter who’s doing a better job at covering the UN Climate Talks in Doha. For the whole week he’s been offering a great context to the readers, describing the positions of different countries, explaining...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Rafael Méndez from El Pais is the reporter who’s doing a better job at covering the UN Climate Talks in Doha. For the whole week he’s been offering a great context to the readers, describing the positions of different countries, explaining the reluctances of eastern European countries, the different views in Latin America, the silence of the US, technical aspects of the negotiations, and so on. None other Spanish newspaper has done such an extensive reporting. In Latin America we’ve found good stories in a few outlets from Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Chile, but in general we feel that the coverage is poorer than in previous conferences.
Las cumbres de cambio climático celebradas cada diciembre tienen cada año menor presencia en los medios. También menor interés político y social. Parece obvio que el marco de la ONU no funciona y, s...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A study from the University of Granada suggests that it’s possible to identify people’s lies by using thermography to detect changes in the temperature of their nose. Researchers called it “Pinocchio effect” in a press release, and it...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A study from the University of Granada suggests that it’s possible to identify people’s lies by using thermography to detect changes in the temperature of their nose. Researchers called it “Pinocchio effect” in a press release, and it soon appeared all over the newspapers and TV channels. It became one of the most-read scientific stories of the week. But there’s one problem: the study is not published yet, and nobody has given even the most basic details about the methodology followed by the researchers, or the specific results that they got. The press release from the university only explains that a mental effort makes the temperature of the nose to decrease, that when we are anxious the facial temperature increases, that it’s possible to detect genital arousal with thermography, and that the arms of flamenco dancers get hotter that their butts while they dance. Cool enought, but there...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) In the last few days we’ve read several stories about the effects of climate change in Latin American food resources. A story in SciDev says that bean and legume crops of Central America are being affected by droughts and...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) In the last few days we’ve read several stories about the effects of climate change in Latin American food resources. A story in SciDev says that bean and legume crops of Central America are being affected by droughts and changes in rain patterns. A reporter from Venezuela assures that climate change is involved in the collapse of sardine’s fisheries in the Southern Caribbean. And a Mexican researcher foresees serious declines in food production for the next few years. We’ve read these stories carefully, and we think they don’t present the original data clearly enough. We don't have any reason to mistrust the studies or the reporters, but we really think the stories should be more detailed. As instance, the Mexican one is too generic and it doesn’t specify which areas or what kind of food will suffer the production decline. The impact of climate change in Latin...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A story in the science section of El Mundo says that Obama won the election because he behaved as a bonobo and Romney as a chimpanzee. It might be taken as a joke, or as an original way to explain the differences between these so closely related primates. But...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) A story in the science section of El Mundo says that Obama won the election because he behaved as a bonobo and Romney as a chimpanzee. It might be taken as a joke, or as an original way to explain the differences between these so closely related primates. But the story pretends to be serious and ends up stating that we still behave as primates and that “few things have changed in the last 7 million years”. We mention it because it’s the second story from the same primatologist, who goes to extremes on the relationship between human and primate behaviors. We are not saying that we don’t have many things in common with our primate relatives, but the stories are full of exaggerations. That might be funny for readers, but the claims have little scientific support, and editors should pay attention to it. On another note, researchers reported disappointing results from the large clinical trial of the malaria...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) This is a very tough issue for Colombian science journalists: The charismatic and beloved neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, former chair of the department of Physiology at NYU, and probably one of the most prestigious Colombian researchers ever, has...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) This is a very tough issue for Colombian science journalists: The charismatic and beloved neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, former chair of the department of Physiology at NYU, and probably one of the most prestigious Colombian researchers ever, has announced in a press conference in Bogotá that he is developing a technique that will change the structure of water and would cure all kind of diseases like Alzheimer, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. He’s said that he can’t give any scientific details yet, but that it will be a revolution in the history of medicine. We’ve read expressions like “Llinas is close to cure Alzheimer and cancer”, “by changing the crystals of water”, “optimization of cells functioning by nanomolecules of water”, and many other innacuracies. Llinas is working with a private company to develop the product. He has asked the Colombian...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Six Italian scientists and a government official have been sentenced to 6 years in prison for underestimating the risks of the L'Aquila 2009 earthquake, which killed more than 300 people. Scientific organizations have reacted immediately criticizing the...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Six Italian scientists and a government official have been sentenced to 6 years in prison for underestimating the risks of the L'Aquila 2009 earthquake, which killed more than 300 people. Scientific organizations have reacted immediately criticizing the sentence and defending the scientists. A few very good stories in Spain explain the serious negligence and inaccurate risk assessment made by the scientists, but also the opinions saying that the sentence is exaggerated, unfair and could inhibit researchers to collaborate in similar cases.
Also from Spain, a really interesting study published in Nature Geoscience concludes that groundwater removal created stresses on the fault that initially triggered an earthquake in the Spanish city of Lorca, which killed 9 people in 2011.
Seis científicos italianos y un responsable del Gobierno han sido condenados por homicidio involuntario y...
19Oct 2012
(English intro to Spanish lang post) 60% of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Dominic Republic had already metastasis, according to a story published today, the International Breast Cancer Day. Breast cancer is growing in Latin America, and early detection is maybe the biggest challenge. A...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) 60% of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Dominic Republic had already metastasis, according to a story published today, the International Breast Cancer Day. Breast cancer is growing in Latin America, and early detection is maybe the biggest challenge. A very good story in Costa Rica says that cases in the country have increased since 2000, but mortality is lower thanks to successful campaigns and improvements in the clinics. The exception is a region in the countryside where deaths are growing, in part because women are afraid of doing the checkups. In Bolivia a really detailed story says that cervical cancer deaths are higher than breast cancer ones. We don’t know if it’s a mistake, but if it isn’t, we would really like to read more information about this unusual pattern. We also have some doubts about a reporter in Guatemala saying that there are no statistics in the country, but mortality is estimated...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) It’s a mystery why the New England Journal of Medicine published the silliest study correlating a country's chocolate consumption with chances to win a Nobel prize. The study even suggests that Nobel Panel may have a "patriotic bias" because according to...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) It’s a mystery why the New England Journal of Medicine published the silliest study correlating a country's chocolate consumption with chances to win a Nobel prize. The study even suggests that Nobel Panel may have a "patriotic bias" because according to its consumption of chocolate, Sweden should have produced only 14 Nobel price winners yet it had 32. We’ve seen three different reaction in the Spanish speaking press: 1) the majority of serious outlets have simply ignored the study, 2) Some have joked about it and compared to other associations like sun spots and male depression, and 3) many reporters took it seriously, they bought the flavonoid’s argument, and without any critical spirit they told their readers that “eating chocolate increase the possibilities of winning a Nobel prize”.
On the serious side, we’ve found many other stories related to the Nobel prizes...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) The place on Earth that receives more intensity of solar radiation is not located somewhere around the equator but in the Chilean desert of Atacama, according to a new study. The reason of this unexpected finding is the high altitude of the desert and the...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) The place on Earth that receives more intensity of solar radiation is not located somewhere around the equator but in the Chilean desert of Atacama, according to a new study. The reason of this unexpected finding is the high altitude of the desert and the extremely low humidity in the atmosphere, that doesn’t interfere with the radiation. A story in La Tercera says that 20 Km2 of solar panels in that area would provide all the electric energy that the country consumes. Also in La Tercera, we found a story suggesting that women’s immune system is stronger due to having two X chromosomes instead of one. The reporter makes a good job explaining the mechanism of microRNA gene silencing that supposedly is behind this effect. But she doesn’t provide references of the study, authors, methodology or extraordinary evidences that supports this extraordinary claim. In México, great story about the...
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