More on Magnus; Bard reprised

Further to the Magnus statement:

``It's deeply disturbing,'' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. ``But I think it speaks to why we need state and federal funding of this research. Otherwise, we're dependent on small, underfunded companies like Advanced Cell Technology [ACT] to do the work. They have a history of making somewhat spurious announcements when they're in need of cash.''

Flashback to the year 1999:

In a guest editorial in the September 6, 1999 issue of Chemical &
Engineering News n10 (at the invitation of Madeleine Jacobs), Professor Allen J.
Bard observed that there is a trend in scientific writing in which
"applications are implied to be just around the corner and, generally, the tone is more appropriate to Madison Avenue than sober science" and "in which, all
too frequently, the obstacles to real world applications are never
mentioned." Bard further noted: "As the pressure has increased to show applications of research, scientists who are doing sound and interesting basic research feel it
is necessary to tie these studies, however tenuously, to possible
applications. The danger here is that unfulfilled promises can lead to good programs
being canceled when practical systems aren't immediately forthcoming."

from Lawrence B. Ebert, Inherent Difficulties, Int. Prop. Today, p. 28 (Nov. 1999), available LEXIS.

The recent discussion about ACT (eg, AP and NYT on 2 Sept 06) pertains to inaccuracies in the press release on the ACT work made by the journal NATURE.

Separately, on the use by newspapers of information in press releases (rather than the use of the primary source), see

Lawrence B. Ebert, Anatomy of a Superluminal Technical Story;
FASTER THAN A SPEEDING PHOTON?, Int. Prop. Today, p. 14 (Sept. 2000), which included the text:

The coverage by Associated Press n15 stated: "Scientists have
apparently broken the universe's speed limit . . . Researchers say it is the most
convincing demonstration yet that the speed of light - supposedly an
ironclad rule of nature - can be pushed beyond known boundaries, at least under
certain laboratory circumstances."

(...)

[Bob Park noted] The letter in Nature seemed to say no revolutionary physics was involved, describing the result as: "a direct consequence of classical interference between different frequency components in an anomalous dispersion region." But I doubt if many journalists read it in Nature.

IPBiz notes that the ACT reporting problem is "same old, same old." Once again, one doubts if many journalists read the ACT account in Nature.

[IPBiz post 1927]