Communicating Uncertainty: The Issue of BPA
The New York Times article by Denise Grady, “In Feast of Data on BPA Plastic, No Final Answer” brings up some interesting issues not only on BPA plastic itself, but also on communicating science and how “experts” can become mistrusted when, to the public, the “facts” seem to constantly change.
Bisphenol-A, more commonly called BPA, is a chemical found in some plastics. For over a decade researchers have had inconclusive findings with regard to whether or not it is safe to be exposed to BPA (or in what quantities, in what forms, etc.) yet, most people are constantly exposed to it from plastic bottles, and other products. BPA is a public health concern because the chemical has been shown in studies on lab animals to mimic estrogen, which makes the chemical an endocrine disruptor.
Whether or not exposure to BPA causes harm to humans is still up for debate, and has become a hot topic for researchers, activists, parents, and politicians. Grady’s article does a good job explaining how it is possible for researchers to come up with different results from identical studies (causing all the confusion) but still be good scientists. Research at its core is based on searching for answers, sometimes the answers are elusive, but that doesn’t make the researchers inept. Even in the face of public outcry and demands for answers that won’t seem to come.
I like Grady’s article because I think she does a really good job going through the history of the BPA issue, showing what findings are new and relevant, and explaining the holdups and problems that have caused different research findings. Overall, I think the article is a good example of science journalism, and how to strip down an issue to simplify it, while building it up at the same time to give the audience all of the information they need to understand the topic.
UK Hunt for Invasive Snail
I’ve posted before about invasive species, but this article from the BBC just caught my eye. The UK’s National Trust Nature Conservation recently found out that their own grounds are home to a rare species of snail, native to the Mediterranean.
According to the Nature Conservation, the snails most likely arrived on their grounds more than 100 years ago on stones imported from Italy and Greece. Since then the snails have only populated a small area, but the Nature Conservation is conducting a search to see if the snails have populated anywhere else. They are asking the public to be on the look out for the snail.
One quote from the article actually makes it sound as if finding the snails outside of their natural territory is a good thing: “The Victorians and Edwardians loved importing statues, rock, and brickwork from the Mediterranean,” says Mr. Oates. “The shipping over of this ‘bling’ in large quantities suggests that we could find new species, such as this lovely little snail, in surprising places.”
It doesn’t seem as if the snail has any negative impact on the environment in terms of disturbing the food chain or causing any other disruptions, but I still find it strange that finding the invasive species seems to be more of an oddity than a concern. I also find it strange that it took over 100 years for anyone to notice the snail where it wasn’t supposed to be.
J. Craig Venter: Portrait of a Businessman
The New York Times’ Andrew Pollack just published an interesting article on J. Craig Venter, the scientists and businessman who became a household name (at least around geneticists’ dinner tables) by competing with Francis Collin’s federally funded team to complete the Human Genome Project.
Venter’s company Synthetic Genomics created a sensation in May when they announced the creation of the first synthetic organism. I covered the finding for BioTechniques: Venter Creates First Synthetic Life. Recently Venter has focused on his efforts to use algae as a biofuel. Despite receiving funding from companies like Exxon Mobil and BP, Venter’s algae efforts have generated far less of a media frenzy.
The article takes a look at why Venter’s more industrial aims haven’t generated the kind of success that his research and science based work has. It also gives some interesting insight into Venter himself.
Because the Gulf Hasn’t Had Enough Already…
More problems in the gulf of mexico as another oil platform caught fire. The platform (Vermilion Oil Rig 380) belongs to Mariner Energy. The company released a statement saying that all 13 of the people that were forced overboard due to the fire have been rescued, and that the fire was not started by an explosion. The exact cause is still under investigation, but it did start at one of the platform’s active wells.
The Mariner Energy rig is located in the gulf of mexico about 100 miles off the coast of Louisiana. If you’ve been watching the news at all in the past few months, then you know that Louisiana and the whole gulf region have been dealing with the explosion and oil spill that occurred from the Deepwater Horizon, which exploded April 20th and was finally stopped on July 15th. Owned by BP, the Deepwater Horizon spill is the largest ever recorded in the petroleum industry, spilling an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the gulf. According to Mariner Energy, no oil is leaking from their well that started the fire on the Vermilion Oil Rig 380.
My 19th First Day of School
Counting Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, Undergrad, and now Grad School, today marked my 19th first day of school. I always love the first day of school, I find it exciting and for the most part teachers and professors are in a pretty good mood because they haven’t yet had to deal with students or grade papers.
I had two of my four classes today. The first, literary aspects of journalism – taught by Deborah Blum (a working journalist and science writer whose latest book is The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Science in Jazz Age New York). The course is going to explore journalism as an art form, with an emphasis on story telling. I’m really excited about it, because while I’m pretty confident in my ability to write short news, I’d really like to develop my skill at writing feature stories.
We’re going to be reading a lot in Blum’s class but two books that I’m particularly excited to read are Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (I’ve fallen asleep during the movie starring Johnny Depp at least four times, but I am hopeful that the book will do far more for me), and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. UW-Madison’s Go Big Read initiative is featuring Skloot’s book so she’s going to be coming to campus this semester to give a large lecture at the Kohl Center, and a smaller lecture at the Journalism School. I’m excited about this book because my last article for BioTechniques before ending my internship was on cell line contamination, and was picked up by Skloot on her Twitter page. It was thrilling, so I am really looking forward to hearing another science writer, especially one so successful, speak.
The other class I had today was International Communication with Jo Ellen Fair. The class is focused on “Celebrity Culture, the Media, and International Humanitarian Interventions.” I think focusing on the role celebrities play in generating interest about humanitarian issue will be a really interesting way to look at international reporting.
So far it looks like this is going to be a great semester, I really liked being back in class and I felt comfortable being back in the college atmosphere. I have one class tomorrow that is just a lecture with no work attached to it and then the three day weekend before seriously starting course work next week, I’m pretty excited about it.
Discovery Channel Hostage Situation
Yesterday a man armed with guns and bombs held people captive at the Discovery Channel’s offices in Maryland, before he was shot by police. He was shot and killed after a three hour standoff, when according to police, it seemed like he was going to harm the three men he was holding hostage.
The Washington Post’s article on the shooting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/01/AR2010090103701.html
Among the shooters demands was for the Discovery Channel to alter their programming to do more to improve global warming. Now, I believe in global warming and society’s negative impact on our natural environments, but blaming the Discovery Channel for not doing enough? Really? What about government and industry? If the hostage-taker had lived, I’d be interested to see if he mounted a mental defense because its basically madness.
The Discovery Channel isn’t a news source, they feature science-related programming (some of which is about global warming) but their purpose is to entertain while educating on a variety of topics. The company is a part of the entertainment business. Its like getting mad at Nickelodeon for not going enough to stop domestic violence just because their programs cater to children and families.
Even if the Discovery Channel wanted to do a plethora of news-based programs on global warming, who is to say that anyone would watch them? Part of what I do as a science writer is try to make science appealing to the public, and trust me its not easy to compete with celebrity gossip and the latest sports scores. Global warming is particularly difficult to report on, because the very nature of science and the evidence for a warming trend is open to change. Try to convince the masses that you are absolutely sure that something is happening, when new findings constantly emerge, and well-credentialed “experts” openly disagree on the topic. I think the challenge that has been presented to reporters is to make global warming stories pressing and moving, so the public wants to hear about it.
The Latest in Protein Folding: Video Games?
I wanted to highlight this BioTechniques article (yes, finally showing off something from BTN that I didn’t write lol) by Ariel Elghanayan about an new online video game for protein folding.
The online video game is called Foldit, and was developed by a group from the University of Washington. Recently debuted in a paper in Nature, the game challenges players to compete to manipulate the structure of proteins to create the most stable model. I thought it was an interesting way to make science more fun and approachable, but also to help people understand how proteins fold and re-fold, which is a topic that can be difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t have a science background.
What Killed the Woolly Mammoths?
Last week, Francis and I visited UW Madison’s free geology museum where they have several skeletal remains in addition to fossils and mineral specimens. With the woolly mammoth in my recent memory, this article from the BBC caught my eye.
The article reports on new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that disproves previously held notions about the meaning of nanodiamonds (incredibly small diamonds) found in sediments that date to the period of history 12,900 years ago that saw the rapid extinction of large creatures and human settlers across north america at the beginning of the cooling period known as the Younger Dryas.
The presence of nanodiamonds in the sediment had led researchers to believe that an impact of something from space had disrupted the natural environment and led to the extinction. However, the new research seems to disprove the impact from space theory, as the strongest evidence – the nanodiamonds – have been shown to be just aggregations of carbon, not proof of a collision with a space-rock.
The research isn’t the final word on the issue however, because some proponents of the collision from space theory have claimed that the research from PNAS was looking at the incorrect sediments and didn’t accurately study the nanodiamond evidence.
Truly, the issue is an example of how the very nature of science, that it is always changing and adapting, can cause confusion. Researchers simply won’t always agree based on the evidence that they have witnessed, which can make it very difficult for the public to draw conclusions as new findings are constantly introduced.
On Personal Passions and Journalistic Detachment
An interesting post from Andrew Revkin’s blog DotEarth for the New York Times, talking about how journalists can reconcile the issues they are personally passionate about with the need to be detached and well-rounded in their reporting.
The post is taken from a 2005 speech given by Revkin (when he was still a full-time Times reporter, instead of a blogger) but I think it drives home some interesting points about being a journalist.
Writers are people first, and journalists second but a requirement of the profession is not to insert your own voice into the reporting, unless you are a columnist. Writers have to conform to the style of whatever publication they work for. This can dilute their own voice even more as they adapt to specific structure and standards.
I also found Revkin’s thoughts on how science writers approach content interesting. There is no doubt that it can be difficult to show a new scientific finding in the greater context of all the findings that have occurred before it. I think science writers need to find a balance between skill and instinct that informs how to explain an issue, something that only comes with experience.
Good Thing I Didn’t Choose Colorado
When I was narrowing down programs and trying to choose which Grad School I wanted to attend I was split between the University of Wisconsin Madison and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Michigan State’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism was a big draw, but I didn’t get the acceptance letter until just days before I had to make a decision, making a visit to the school impossible, so that pretty much counted them out. I chose UW because I loved Madison, and I felt like I would fit into the community much better than I would in Colorado.
As it turns out, its a good thing I chose UW instead of Colorado because CU Boulder is closing their Journalism school. It would have been incredibly unfortunate to be stuck there with the program completely restructuring. Most likely, I would have ended up with a graduate degree in something that didn’t reflect my actual interests and job goals (probably information studies or multi media something or another.) I guess I dodged the proverbial bullet on that one.
Thanks to my Mom for this interesting article on the closing and how journalism, despite the massive loss of revenue in recent years, is expanding at an enormous rate due to the rise of new technologies. Universities need to find a way to fit the ever changing role of journalism into their programs.
One quote from the article that I just want to highlight is from David Hazinski an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Journalism and Mass Communication program. Essentially he’s explaining why journalists still have a role to play in a society that has been bombarded by instant opinion and commentary through blogs, twitter, etc. People trained in the technology are not the same as people who are trained in telling the story.
“Journalism isn’t hardware. It is content and context. Someone is still going to have to go to that fire and shoot some video, interview the mayor, and analyze that stock report. Someone is still going to have to package it, if for no other reason than to save audiences time. Writing, interviewing, editing, and working under pressure will still be needed skills. Ethics and standards will become even more important as the sea of opinion grows deeper. The content and context will be distributed over many platforms but someone has to be at the top of the information food chain. Those people will be skilled journalists, not technicians.”