This week's release of the National Climate Assessment prompts Tabitha M. Powledge to propose a new Koch-style ad campaign bankrolled by a couple of rich people: "The Gates-Adelson Foundation could give grants for regular coverage of the Whole Foods parking lot, perhaps featuring monthly measurements of how much higher the flooding gets each time. How long would complacency persist if local media kept harping on local flooding? If TV commercials kept making the point?"
Science blogs
Tabitha M. Powledge contemplates this week's report that male researchers cause stress in lab mice, as measured by the animals' feces production. Is it funny? Does it augur good or ill for female researchers? And what does it mean for the annals of research? "If (Senior author Jeffrey Mogil) is right about human males routinely producing stress in others just by being on the premises, then the effect on research could extend to many other lab animals besides rodents."
It may be the exoplanet most closely resembling earth, Tabitha M. Powledge writes, but that doesn't mean it supports life: "The question of atmosphere is pretty major. Kepler 186f is at the far edge of the star’s habitable zone. It gets only a third as much light as Earth, and it is colder." Also, why did so many reporters get correlation and causation confused — again — in writing about two studies linking marijuana use to heart problems and changes in the brain?
Four leading lights of science wrote a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences editorial calling for an overhaul of U.S. biomedical research support, but there's little news in what they say, Tabitha M. Powledge writes: "The fact that the U.S. is creating an oversupply of scientists has been known for decades, at least to those who will listen. An NAS report from a committee (former Princeton University President Shirley) Tilghman chaired came out in 1998."
Tabitha M. Powledge reviews coverage of the big data release detailing Medicare payments to doctors and find some things to like behind the headlines: "Most writers focused, not surprisingly, on the most eye-popping payments. Heaven knows there were great riches to choose from. But many writers also dove a little deeper." Some big recipients had innocent explanations — including reimbursements for expensive drugs — but even those raised some questions, Powledge says.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report early this week "to a world apparently too exhausted, or distracted, to take much interest in the upcoming calamities," Tabitha M. Powledge writes in her weekly roundup of science blogs. Also: A sampling of tributes to Jane Goodall on her 80th birthday, and a review of the latest debate involving the bones, discovered in a Leicester parking lot, which may or may not be the remains of Richard III.
Tabitha M. Powledge rounds up reviews of Nate Silver's new 538 site and finds little that's good. But she holds out hope for improvement: "Having been through a number of startup pub launches myself … I caution against issuing final judgements about 538 in the first wretched days, or weeks, or even months. I can tell you from experience that if it looks as if the folks at 538 are making it up as they go along, that's because they are. It's what you do at a startup."
Tabitha M. Powledge quotes Faye Flam's headline on the challenge of reporting last week's big physics news: "How to write a lede about a phenomenon most readers have never heard of, the discovery of which backs an important theory most people know nothing about." She then reviews the work of those who tried, noting that most set skepticism aside: "Nearly all the blogging acknowledged perfunctorily that the data need confirming, but there seemed to be few true doubters."
Coca-Cola co-opts the National Press Foundation while the World Health Organization tries — again — to issue dietary guidelines with strict limits on sugar, Tabitha M. Powledge writes in her weekly science blogs roundup: "So you can see why the sugar people are in a panic, and why Coke has seized an opportunity to lobby journalists." Also, integrity at the Office of Research Integrity, gene therapy for HIV infection, and President Obama amid some potted plants.
Tabitha M. Powledge reviews news about a giant virus found in the 30,000 year-old Siberian permafrost, and asks when the next shoe drops: "I can't help wondering what else is going to turn up as the warming Earth releases creatures from the melting of ice frozen many thousands of years ago." Also, the science behind sequencing the Neanderthal genome and dealing with contaminants, and Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner's critique of the system for funding scientific research.