Tabitha M. Powledge reviews coverage of the "bad luck" cancer paper and places blame on the scientists for using those words: "They introduced the term in the abstract, guaranteeing that 'bad luck' would be part of how the paper was explained to others. The authors defined the term precisely enough, but of course their definition — 'random mutations arising during DNA replication in normal, noncancerous stem cells' — isn’t what the rest of the world means by 'bad luck.'"
Science blogs
Tabitha M. Powledge rounds up the last best-of lists, including one from Eurekalert, which said the year's most-visited press release was about disclosing details of wages for public officials: "I don’t quite know what to make of the fact that the most-visited science press release of 2014 was not about Ebola or landing on comets nor indeed anything from the hard or biomedical sciences. To the extent that it was scientific at all, it emanated from the Dismal Science."
Paige Brown Jarreau publishes some results from her recent survey of science bloggers and shows how their blog-reading habits have grouped them into communities. See the social-network map of responses here. Names of the blogs that won the most mentions from the more-than-600 survey participants are listed in larger type. Bloggers that most frequently reference each other, such as those focusing on climate or astronomy, are coded by color.
Scientific American announced this week that it is terminating many of its blogs and has new guidelines for those that remain. Tabitha M. Powledge considers what this means for blogs in general: "SciAm’s quite reasonable rationale is that it’s a news outlet and so its standards must differ. Does that mean we can expect that blogs (at least blogs associated with Serious Publications) will, inevitably, turn into columns?" Also, some lists of 2014's best science stories.
Why did U.S. intelligence agents embrace the use of torture in the war on terrorism when the scientific consensus is that it doesn't yield useful information? Tabitha M. Powledge reviews coverage of the newly released report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and concludes that one reason for their illogical enthusiasm may be television: "The idea that torture is effective is deeply ingrained, surely at least in part because pop culture fictions tell us so."
A graduate student finds some engraved mollusk shells in a museum's collection and an analysis credits them to our evolutionary predecessor, Homo erectus. Is it a hoax? Tabitha M. Powledge thinks not: "The paper reporting this analysis has been getting a generally respectful reception along with the usual few doubts." Also, did our primate forebears share our fondness for alcohol? And a revival for Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview.org.
The comet lander is asleep now, perhaps to awaken later if sunlight strikes its solar panels. Meanwhile, scientists will be busy analyzing the huge amount of data Philae sent back before its demise, Tabitha M. Powledge writes. Also, some thoughts on #shirtstorm: "I don’t want us to forget that this is not a problem just for women in science. It is a problem for women (and, worse, for girls.)" Plus updates on the virus research moratorium and the infamous Jonah Lehrer.
It bounced a couple of times, no one's quite sure where it ended up, and its batteries are dying because its solar panels are in the shade, but Tabitha M. Powledge still cheers the Philae lander: "As Josh Witten observed at The Finch and the Pea, 'No matter what else we might be, we are a species that landed a robot on a comet about 500 million kilometers away for the purpose of scientific exploration.'" Also, #shirtgate and its backlash.
In a post-election roundup, Tabitha M. Powledge discusses what Tuesday's results could mean for the environment, the GMO controversy, and marijuana: "It looks to me as if it will be many years before we have a handle on what marijuana is good for and where its bodily dangers lie. Meanwhile, a vast experiment has been launched by the citizenry on the citizenry. Life being what it is, some bad things are going to happen that might have been prevented if we knew more."
Tabitha M. Powledge discusses new projections for Earth's population: "If Homo sap‘s birth and death rates remain more or less as they are, we will grow from 7 billion plus today to number 12 billion people by the end of this century, according to a semi-terrifying new model of population growth just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Also, a requiem for some long-gone word processing software, and more on sex ratios in lab animals.