Ayer A.
The Secret in Your Veins: The History of Blood Transfusion. Illinois Science Council's Science Unsealed Blog [Internet]. 2019.
Publisher's VersionAbstractBlood transfusions are an essential component of modern-day medicine, saving lives in a variety of situations, ranging from genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia to road accidents. But, the history of blood transfusion is a rocky one. For instance, did you know that a German physician founded the world’s first blood transfusion institute in 1926 because he believed blood transfusions led to immortality?
Dr. Alexander Bogdanov started some crude blood transfusion experiments on himself by injecting blood of other young men into his own system. After 11 such transfusion sessions, he claimed to have improved vision, arrest hair loss, and produce youthful skin. This led him to believe that blood transfusion was the path to immortality and eternal youth. But, as you can expect, this practice, combined with poor understanding of the blood transfusion process at that time, killed him years later.
Carnovale M.
Science or science fiction? The still-open questions about the #CRISPRtwins story. CASW Newsroom [Internet]. 2019.
Publisher's VersionAbstractKiran Musunuru was shocked. In a few days, on Nov. 27, 2018, scientists from all over the world would meet in Hong Kong to set standards for the use of the CRISPR gene-editing tool on human embryos. Yet the paper in front of him suggested that in China, gene-edited twins were already growing in their mother’s uterus, with the help of scientist He Jiankui.
“I was horrified,” Musunuru recalled as he spoke to science writers gathered in State College, Pa. 11 months later, for the ScienceWriters2019 conference. “This is an historic event, the first gene-edited babies. And this is a horror show.”
That day, Associated Press reporter Marilynn Marchione had requested the opinion of three experts in genetics on an unpublished paper. Musunuru, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, was one of them. The claims made by He, the paper’s lead author, were grandiose and terrifying: he had implanted gene-edited embryos.
Albuquerque L.
P-values and statistical significance: New ideas for interpreting scientific results. CASW Newsroom [Internet]. 2019.
Publisher's VersionAbstractWhen statistician Nicole Lazar published an editorial in The American Statistician earlier this year advocating changes in the way scientists handle the troublesome issue of statistical significance, her father—who trained as a sociologist—asked her, "Are you getting death threats on Twitter?"
Lazar, a professor of statistics at the University of Georgia, doesn't use Twitter, but the question reveals how contentious the issue of statistical significance is. "You don't often think about statisticians getting emotional about things," Lazar told an audience of writers attending the Science Writers 2019 conference held in State College, Pa.,"but this is a topic that's been raising a lot of passion and discussion in our field.” Lazar spoke on Oct. 27 as part of the New Horizons in Science briefing organized by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW).
Many scientists determine whether the results of their experiments are “statistically significant” by using statistical tests that result in a number known as the “p-value.” A p-value of less than 0.05 is commonly considered significant, and often erroneously characterized as meaning the findings are not likely to be the result of chance. What the number actually reveals is less straightforward, and even scientists have trouble explaining the precise meaning of the p-value. Using the threshold of p < 0.05 has been shown to be problematic, misleading, and even dangerous. Lazar’s editorial, “Moving to a World Beyond 'p < 0.05',” discusses several possibilities that will give researchers alternatives to an arbitrary p-value cut-off.
Tindell RK.
Rising seas: Ice sheets pose uncertain, startling risks for the planet. CASW Newsroom [Internet]. 2019.
Publisher's VersionAbstractBeneath the ocean waters off Antartica, massive buried shelves of ice function like buttresses, supporting the continent’s massive ice sheets.
If those buttresses fail, Richard Alley told science writers at a recent conference in State College, Pa., global sea levels will not rise by inches, as predicted by recent climate reports—but instead by as much as 186 feet.
Alley, professor of geosciences at Penn State University, discussed the perilous consequences of rising sea levels, and society's options in the face of an uncertain future, on Oct. 27 during the New Horizons in Science briefing organized by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, part of the ScienceWriters2019 conference.
“We can either treat climate change science like a tweet—pretending like it’s an evil liar—or we can use knowledge,” Alley said.
As climate changes, rising sea levels are a concern for countries that border the world’s oceans. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—also known as the IPCC—sea levels will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.
Marvin C.
Drug resistance: Can targeting evolution be the solution?. CASW Newsroom [Internet]. 2019.
Publisher's VersionAbstractScience has given doctors more and more powerful drugs to deploy against infectious diseases and cancers in recent decades, and yet many new therapies have failed to live up to their promise. Andrew Read has some ideas about how to change that.
As an evolutionary biologist, Read views much drug therapy as an impossible game of "whack-a-mole," where microorganisms and cancer cells evolve and change to resist drugs and survive. Speaking to writers at the New Horizons in Science briefings presented by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing during the ScienceWriters2019 conference in State College, Pa., on Oct. 27, Read suggested that more and powerful drugs may not be the solution. Instead, he called for managing evolution to prevent the emergence of drug resistance in the first place.
Dulka BN.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence: A “neglected” quest no longer?. CASW Newsroom [Internet]. 2019.
Publisher's VersionAbstract“I’m an observer,” said astronomer Jason Wright. “I’ve always enjoyed the little corners that are being neglected.” In recent years Wright has been exploring one such neglected corner—the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. He is optimistic that it will soon be full of activity.
Wright, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, expressed this hope to science writers visiting State College, Pa., for the ScienceWriters2019 conference. Speaking as part of the New Horizons in Science briefing organized by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing on Oct. 28, he shared a vision for SETI’s future.
That future, Wright pointed out, hasn’t always looked promising. The official SETI program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was frequently a target of congressional ridicule and was terminated in 1993. Since then, other branches of SETI have suffered and dwindled owing to a lack of federal grant funding. SETI research has survived thanks to philanthropic donations.