Science and the media: 5 - 11 March

Steve Corneliussen’s topics this week:

• A rationale for revamping federal research as outlined in a Nature commentary
• Media coverage of a congressional hearing on climate
• Hands-on engineering competitions for science outreach to students
• A pair of articles about global vulnerability to solar effects
• A pair of celebrations of women in science around the world

Daniel Sarewitz in Nature: Transform civilian research on DOD model

Has “the nation’s civilian research and development enterprise . . . been built on a foundation of hidden assumptions and unsubstantiated claims”? According to Daniel Sarewitz’s latest column in Nature, that’s the implication of the famous 2005 observation by John Marburger, President Bush’s science advisor. Marburger declared that “the framework . . . that we use to evaluate policies and assess strength in science and technology” is “primitive.”

Sarewitz is based in Washington, DC, but is co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. He argues that although we haven’t realized it, in the nation’s technoscience efforts of past decades, the Department of Defense has had the winning formula—unlike the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and NASA.

He characterizes the DOD formula this way: “close and persistent ties [with] private industry,” plus investments “in emerging fields such as computer science, sub-atomic and solid-state physics, and materials science,” leading to “waves of innovation” that have “created whole industries that helped to fuel the US economy.” He sees both ARPA-E, with its focus “on high-risk R&D and collaborations between universities and private firms,” and recent NASA,with its new outreach to private-sector spaceflight, as confirmations of his view.

Sarewitz closes by asserting what he calls “an inescapable reality":

The question of balance in climate reporting, cont.

How should the New York Times, or any newspaper, report climate-science claims like those made by Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia, a freshman Republican, at a March 8 congressional hearing? If opponents have tried time and again to rebut the claims, and if the claims nevertheless keep recurring without apparent engagement of the rebuttals, should an impartial reporter say so? (And if the reporter does say so, can the congressman’s side then justly assert some symmetrical, corresponding call?)

The hearing carried the formal name “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations.” In the Times article “At House E.P.A. Hearing, Both Sides Claim Science,” John Broder reports that Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on energy and power “demanded the hearing in the hope of slowing the inexorable progress [of] the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, which enjoys the near-unanimous support of the Republican House majority.” Broder explains:

Here’s how Broder reported Rep. Griffith’s comments:

“That’s a list of nonsense that has already been dealt with and debunked a bazillion times,” responded one blog posting . It went on to criticize Broder for failing to say so, and offered a link to a web site that catalogs answers to commonly heard objections like the congressman’s. At the liberal blog Science Progress, a posting called “A science-free Congress” calls the hearing part of an effort “to overturn a science-based determination absent any scientific justification for doing so.”

At RealClimate , Gavin Schmidt found the prospect of the hearing important enough to undertake “Live-blogging the climate science hearings,” the headline on the RealClimate posting that he offered in advance. There he began by predicting that as “usual, this hearing will likely be long on political grandstanding and short on informed discussion.”

Neither the Washington Post nor the Wall Street Journal covered the hearing at all.

Engagement model: Student robotics as sport

If you like the bidirectional “engagement model” of technoscience outreach—as opposed to the “deficit model” merely involving unidirectional information conveyance—you might want to read a recent Wall Street Journal piece by Robert P. Crease, the Stony Brook professor who writes the “Critical Point” science-and-society column for Physics World.

It’s a book review. Crease presents Neal Bascomb’s The New Cool as the story of a burgeoning hands-on high school robotics program called FIRST, which seeks to change large numbers of American teenagers’ tendency to worship sports and entertainment idols while not even knowing the name of a single living scientist.

But FIRST—For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology—doesn’t try to teach the names of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Greene, or, for that matter, Henry Petroski (who has been called a Carl Sagan of engineering). Instead, it means to enthrall teenagers in hands-on robotics engineering competitions.

Still, the inventor Dean Kamen (insulin pump, Segway) is centrally involved. Crease explains that Kamen launched FIRST two decades ago “to bring some sports-like hoopla to science and engineering” and notes that while “the initial event, in 1992, drew 28 entries . . . this year’s competition has nearly 2,000 teams in three leagues for elementary, middle and high schools.” Crease says Bascomb’s book is “about the ways in which Mr. Kamen has used robotics to create a cachet of geekiness among students"—and that Bascomb presents it not as a science-outreach story, but as a sports story.

“It is inspiring,” Crease writes, “to see these kids work so hard and achieve a certain level of engineering expertise and high-school celebrity.” Crease reports Bascomb’s focus on a robotics team from “a suburban public high school of about 2300 students that struggles with apathy, drugs and dropouts.” The students engage a competition requiring them to design and build robots to collect balls from a slippery surface. Crease declares that the book “offers a lesson in how American kids can thrive when faced with daunting challenges.”

But Crease concludes with an anecdote illuminating the daunting overall science-outreach challenge. At a FIRST event, he writes, Kamen “brought out rapper Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas,” gave him a FIRST cap, and “suggested that if Will wanted to look truly cool he should wear it a few weeks later during the group’s half-time show at the Super Bowl.”

“I watched the game and the half-time performance,” Crease continues. “Didn’t notice the cap, did you? There’s still work to do.”

Holdren, Beddington: “Celestial Storm Warnings”

Two news commentaries late this week asked readers to add space weather to their worry lists.

With a relatively lower media profile, the Washington Post‘s “Capital Weather Gang” blog offered the first part of a series of posts aimed at informing readers about the space-weather threat. With a relatively higher media profile, the science advisers to President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron published the op-ed “Celestial Storm Warnings” in the International Herald Tribune.

John P. Holdren and John Beddington cautioned that “the world’s reliance on electronic technology—and therefore vulnerability to space weather—has increased substantially since the last peak” of solar activity roughly a decade ago, and that with another peak expected in 2011-2012, it’s important now “to identify, test, and begin to deploy the best array of protective measures practicable, in parallel with reaching out to the public with information explaining the risks and the remedies.”

And indeed the authors do some of that explaining. “From sporadic solar flares to ethereal shimmering aurora,” they write, “manifestations of severe space weather have the power to adversely affect the integrity of the world’s power grids, the accuracy and availability of GPS, the reliability of satellite-delivered telecommunications and the utility of radio and over-the-horizon radar.” They cite the possibility of consequences “on the order of $2 trillion during the first year in the United States alone,” with recovery taking from 4 to 10 years.

“History is rife with warnings,” they declare, and then they do some itemizing. They list an 1859 disruption of compasses and telegraphy, a 1921 space-weather incident that “wiped out communications and generated fires” in the American northeast, a 1989 geomagnetic storm that “caused Canada’s Hydro-Quebec power grid to collapse within 90 seconds, leaving millions of people in darkness for up to nine hours,” and two intense storms in 2003 that “traveled from the Sun to Earth in just 19 hours, causing a blackout in Sweden and affecting satellites, broadcast communications, airlines and navigation.” One study, they say, foresees how a “loss of power could lead to a cascade of operational failures that could leave society and the global economy severely disabled.”

Holdren and Beddington stipulate that with recent science, “we now have a better understanding of the causes and frequency of these events.” But they warn that “scientists also indicate that the severity of future storms could be much greater than those experienced in recent decades, pointing to the critical need for careful monitoring of the Sun and its effects on the Earth.”

They mention “wide-ranging” international “cooperation and data sharing in the space-weather domain.” They report that much “can be done to reduce risks,” with possibilities that include “back-ups for crucial systems such as GPS, tougher protective shielding for satellites . . . blocking devices to harden power grids, and replacements for aging scientific satellites . . . to provide advanced warnings.” They close with an assurance that “commitment on both sides of the Atlantic” exists for taking the needed steps.

Another recent space-weather article might also merit mention—for the way that it’s hyped. In the UK, MailOnline this week offered “Get ready for a ‘global Katrina': Biggest ever solar storm could cause power cuts which last for MONTHS.” The piece begins by asserting that the “world is overdue a ferocious ‘space storm’” and that “mankind is now more vulnerable to a major solar storm than at any time in history.”

International views of women in science

A pair of international views of women in science appeared this week: the annual L’Oréal–UNESCO Awards for Women in Science and the posting “Women in science in the Arab world” at Nature Middle East’s “House of Wisdom” blog.

L’Oréal–UNESCO celebrated its 2011 honorees in a full-page ad on the back of the 8 March Science Times section of the New York Times. “Unesco and L’Oréal are convinced,” the ad says, “that science is the source of progress for society and that women have an essential role to play in that progress.” The honorees are Anne l’Huillier, an atomic physicist in Sweden; Vivian Wing-Wah Yam, a chemist in China; Faiza Al-Kharafi, a chemist in Kuwait; Silvia Torres-Peimbert, an astrophysicist in Mexico; and Jillian Banfield, an American geophysicist.

Faiza Al-Kharafi’s name also appears in the “House of Wisdom” posting. It identifies her as president of Kuwait University and vice-president of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. “Today is the 100th anniversary of the International Women’s Day,” the posting begins, “and there is no better time to celebrate the amazing influence that some women scientists are having in the Arab world.”

The posting offers three more examples: Nadia El-Awady is the founding president of the Arab Science Journalists Association and the first Arab president of the World Federation of Science Journalists. The posting notes that during “the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, she was on the front lines as a revolutionary protester.” Nagwa Abdel Meguid, an Egyptian geneticist, was the first Arab L’Oréal honoree. She’s reportedly known “for her research in same-blood marriages (very popular in the Arab region) and their effect on the higher rate of birth defects and genetic disorders.”

Finally, Hayat Sindi, “the first woman from the Gulf States to receive a PhD in biotechnology from Cambridge University,” is “a nanotechnology researcher working to deliver affordable point-of-care diagnostic solutions to the developing world through the not-for-profit Diagnostics For All,” and “has invented a machine combining the effects of light and ultrasound for use in biotechnology.”

Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for “Science and the media.” He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.