Many biologists were saying from the start that Felisa Wolfe-Simon and colleagues never supported their 2010 claim that they’d discovered a life form that could substitute arsenic for phosphorus in its DNA and other biomolecules.
Since then, several published papers have refuted that claim, which was...
Many biologists were saying from the start that Felisa Wolfe-Simon and colleagues never supported their 2010 claim that they’d discovered a life form that could substitute arsenic for phosphorus in its DNA and other biomolecules.
Since then, several published papers have refuted that claim, which was published in Science and touted in a NASA press conference that led to worldwide headlines about rewriting textbooks and evidence for a so-called shadow biosphere. If there was an award for the all time most extreme example of NASA hype, that press conference should win.
The latest paper appeared in this week’s issue of Nature, and was picked up by a number of science writers. Nature news writer Daniel Cressey covered it here. Carmen Drahl of...
In...
In a thoughtful post Friday, Gary Stix at Scientific American reported on a study of six British newspapers by researchers at University College of London. The study found that “research was being applied out of context to create dramatic headlines, push thinly disguised ideological arguments, or support particular policy agendas.”
We might be hard put to find any area of science coverage that hasn't been subject to those kinds of distortions. Coverage of Lipitor and its ilk was certainly as likely to contain dramatic...
The Web today is loaded with stories on one piece of news and containing such phrases as "for the first...
The Web today is loaded with stories on one piece of news and containing such phrases as "for the first time," "an important achievement," "a major step," "a groundbreaking achievement." Science journalists can imagine why; some editor asked why they should run this story now, and the hype machine had to be cranked up.
The news was that a research team found a new way to create something that resembles an embryonic stem cell without using in-vitro fertilization and confronting moral objections from some people. Unfortunately, the resulting cells cannot be used to treat anybody. The main reason is that they contain one entire extra set of 23 chromosomes. Just a single extra chromosome causes Down Syndrome. That's not an entirely apt comparison, but it makes the point...
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