Comments on: "New" bacteria from Lake Vostok is not actually new (or from Lake Vostok)

By: timquinn

timquinn — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:26:00 +0000

exactly.

By: mr_bloo_sky

mr_bloo_sky — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:09:00 +0000

I remember other scientists warning about this for _years_ before they actually broke through.

By: Matt Riches

Matt Riches — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:46:00 +0000

What I am trying to say is …

By: Sharni Day

Sharni Day — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:28:00 +0000

bloody idiots couldnt wait to get it right..

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:42:00 +0000

Before they even started, the rest of the world was screaming at them that they were going to contaminate the lake and to wait until they could do it properly.

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:49:00 +0000

I invoke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge’s_law_of_headlines

By: timquinn

timquinn — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:01:00 +0000

Looking at this as though it isn’t really anyone’s ‘fault’ you might say the problem is there is no ground between a yes and a qualified yes. Either you notice and report the qualification or you don’t. Headlines require brevity. Reporters do not write headlines. Scientists speak in a different more careful way than the rest of us. All these things are contributors to the entropic dissolve of the idea as it wends its way through the multiple skeins that naturally occur in communication. What I am saying is that it becomes the readers problem to know how much to credit the source or not and take away what is there to be had. The comment become a public version of the internal dialogue. We hash it out. Each of us playing our roll as skeptic or fanatic or what have you. Ideally, we all come to some understanding, public dialogue or not, that is not an exact duplicate of what we have read. Communicators communicate and readers read. We do our jobs with the tools at hand and compete in the agora to see which ideas survive,. Culture inches forward, like the shell of a clam growing epitaxially along an edge no one can even perceive.

By: timquinn

timquinn — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:48:00 +0000

Oh, but what a feeling if you -are- first!

By: Aaron Gilliland

Aaron Gilliland — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:33:00 +0000

I guess it depends on how complicit the scientists are in building expectations and not maintaining context.

I read an article this weekend about an rTMS device developed by a local company. The real story was that it had a longer service life and lower operating cost than existing products, but the article (from a national news organization up here) focused on the use of Kickstarter-style fundraising and some off-the-cuff remarks from the CEO. There was one mention of the fact that rTMS is only FDA-cleared (although they said “approved”, not technically correct) for Major Depressive Disorder, but the rest of the article (including the headline) made it sound like this was an approved and effective treatment for anything “depression” related and that it could replace drug therapy. The CEO actually said that rTMS, and his device in particular, could be applied to Autism, Parkinson’s, and PTSD… That was incautious, bordering on fraudulent since it was part of the pitch to investors.

This was published for mass consumption, so I can understand how some of the necessary context was left out, but the CEO is a PhD and I would expect him to be more cautious and precise by nature.

By: Nathan Hornby

Nathan Hornby — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:13:00 +0000

Exactly, perfect example of irresponsible reporting.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:12:00 +0000

Stop press! “Thousands killed in earthquake. Maybe.”

By: Aaron Gilliland

Aaron Gilliland — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:59:00 +0000

We’ve all been in that situation. What are you going to do – get out of the lake and use a bathroom?

By: Aaron Gilliland

Aaron Gilliland — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:58:00 +0000

You fool! The breeding will keep them warm enough to survive. And breed.

By: Glen Able

Glen Able — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:27:00 +0000

Well yes, but what does “contaminant” mean – stray bacteria from somebody’s grubby hands? Whatever it was, when they tested it they got that 86% figure which says they’re a new variety?!

And as other people have pointed out, they’ve just introduced those into a thousand cubic mile lake. Although hopefully that’s akin to accidentally releasing a breeding group of lions onto Mt. Everest.

By: Nathan Hornby

Nathan Hornby — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:19:00 +0000

Space alien contaminants?

Tune in after the break to find out…

By: Nathan Hornby

Nathan Hornby — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Is this really an issue though? I don’t mind being told that some scientists might have found something. Because they might have, and at the time they also thought they may have found something. Now we’ve had the chance to test it properly and it turns out they didn’t.

That’s what science is all about isn’t it?

Sounds to me more of an issue with the media jumping onto stories and not publishing them with the appropriate amount of uncertainty.

By: Amstrad00

Amstrad00 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:13:00 +0000

When I first encountered the initial story about this lake and the supposed ‘new’ bacteria in it, the first question that jumped to my mind was: How sure are they that they hadn’t contaminated the lake by drilling into it? Guess I was right to think that.

By: Kristian van der Heyden

Kristian van der Heyden — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:59:00 +0000

… and yes that means they contaminated the lake.

By: C W

C W — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:36:00 +0000

“does that 86% figure still mean they’ve found a new variety?”

2 sentences later-

“We found certain specimens, although not many. All of them were contaminants”.

By: Glen Able

Glen Able — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:26:00 +0000

I think I might have missed something here. I understand that their bacteria samples weren’t actually from the lake, but does that 86% figure still mean they’ve found a new variety?

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:19:00 +0000

So does that mean they also contaminated the lake?