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Issue 253                                                                                            Oct 18 - 24  2013
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In This Issue
Climate case
Bushfires
Media SAVVY
Policy News
Desk guide: uncertainty
Quoted
Sciblogs highlights
New in research
Sci-tech events

Quick Links

SMC Alerts 

Briefings

Calendar

 

Media Registration  


Desk Guide
Sceptics drop climate legal appeal 
A group of New Zealand climate sceptics have abandoned their legal bid to invalidate the climate record maintained by NIWA.

The New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust, an off-shoot of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, had last year failed in a High Court bid to challenge the scientific integrity of NIWA's temperature records. 

High Court Justice Geoffrey Venning had ordered the trust to pay NIWA's legal costs - $118,000. But an appeal by the sceptics, heard this week at the Court of Appeal in Wellington, delayed that process. 

The trust abandoned their appeal after realising a "procedural issue" would make it very unlikely to succeed. The Appeal judges have reserved their decision on costs.

NIWA chief executive John Morgan said the outcome vindicated NIWA's climate science.

"We were not surprised by the outcome in the Court of Appeal, because we were very confident in the High Court's ruling, and never doubted the robustness of our science and the integrity and professionalism of our scientists."    

The appeal was heard just weeks after the biggest climate science update in seven years was released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A video recording of a workshop in Wellington featuring Dr Thomas Stocker and New Zealand lead authors of the report can be viewed here.


This week the Los Angeles Times revealed it had stopped publishing letters from "those who deny global warming".

"The debate right now isn't whether this evidence exists (clearly, it does) but what this evidence means for us, wrote Letters editor Paul Thornton. 

 

"Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying 'there's no sign humans have caused climate change' is not stating an opinion, it's asserting a factual inaccuracy."

 

However, comments left beneath LA Times articles by climate sceptics will still run, thought "inappropriate" comments will be removed.

New South Wales bushfires rage  

Over 100 bushfires raging across New South Wales have claimed at least one life and destroyed hundreds of homes, in what some are calling the worst fire season in the region in a decade.


A man who collapsed battling fire outside his central coastal home has been named the first confirmed casualty of the emergency.

As thick layers of smoke appeared over urban skies, NSW Health has issued a bushfire air pollution health warning
 
It says smoke particles are likely to travel great distances from the location of the fires, and warns people sensitive to them to stay indoors.

"Those with pre-existing heart or lung disease, young children and the elderly are more likely to be affected by the smoke", says Dr Martine Dennekamp from Monash University

Commenting earlier on the likely toll of the bushfires, Justin Leonard, Research leader for Bushfire urban design at CSIRO, said:

"History has shown us that on average one life is lost for every 17 houses. The majority of these lives are lost within a few hundred metres of homes."

His advice for people caught up in the blaze: "When fires are near, use the home as a refuge rather than fleeing at the last minute. 
 
"Monitor the home's condition while you shelter in case you need to exit the house onto burnt ground."
 
For a more in depth look at the issue of extreme bushfires, current research on complex fire behaviour and the psychology of survival, you can listen back to an AusSMC briefing on the topic.
SAVVY workshop returns to Auckland

Researchers keen to improve their media skills are invited to apply for the next Science Media SAVVY workshop.  

 

The two-day SAVVY course is designed to help researchers at any stage of their career gain greater confidence and skills to engage with media - and get their science across effectively. 

 

savvy logo

21-22 November 2013 in Auckland

 

Applications NOW OPEN

 

More than basic media training, this course has been built from the ground up to meet the specific needs of scientists and researchers.

 

We aim to move scientists out of their comfort zone, giving them new tools to connect with different audiences, all while providing direct feedback and support from fellow researchers.

 

The course also offers a unique chance to make valuable media contacts and gain first-hand insight into news media practices during an invited journalists' panel and newsroom tour. New skills are put to the test with the opportunity to pitch research stories directly to interested reporters. 

 

For more information, see the SAVVY web page or contact the SMCIf you'd like to help us spread the word, you can download a flyer here.

 

Applications close Friday 1 November at 6 pm  
Policy news and developments

Census data: Statistics New Zealand this week published detailed population information about regional council, territorial authority, area unit and Auckland local board counts.

Coastal forum: Conservation Minister Dr Nick Smith today announced the establishment of a community-led forum to consider marine protection for the Otago coastline.

MoH Annual report: the Ministry of Health has released its annual report, summarising some of the key health statistics for the nation.

PCE report: The Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has also released its annual report.

Dealing with scientific uncertainty

The eleventh in a series of articles from the new edition of the SMC Desk Guide for Covering Science which is available in full here.

 

desk guide

Uncertainty is part of the process: Science cannot prove a negative - no matter how many carefully designed experiments they've already run, scientists will never be able to say, they're "100% certain" that something is safe. That's because they are always open to the possibility that new research tomorrow could overturn current understanding. This flexibility of approach is one of science's great strengths.  

 

Continued from last week. 

 

Avoid single-source stories: It can be tempting to spin a yarn from a well-crafted press release and the one scientist it quotes, but you need to get views from other scientists, particularly when dealing with uncertainty in results. Scientists are often too close to their work to accurately say how much weight their findings should be given. Check their claims against the peer-reviewed literature and their peers.

 

The flipside - don't exaggerate uncertainty: Sometimes media reports give the impression that scientists can't even agree on the basics. But as you've already read in this guide, science is a process and the big picture changes as new studies are completed and scientists add to the body of work that came before them. Contrasting scientific views should be noted but not beaten up to suggest uncertainty reigns supreme.

 

Be careful about "dueling experts": There's nothing as quote-worthy as a good argument between experts. But two opposing talking heads doesn't mean a rift in the scientific community. Be careful you are not making the science out to be less certain than it actually is by playing up disagreement between scientists. Go to scientific bodies, societies and associations for a big picture view.

 

Don't pit scientist against non-scientist: A science-related story may originate from a politician or a man in the street, but while their points of view are important, save the discussion of scientific uncertainty to scientific experts in the topic under discussion.

 

Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, writes in his paper Interpreting science - implications for public understanding, advocacy and policy formation:

 

"Public opinion is central to policy formation in a participatory democracy: that is why the public requires an understanding of how data can be well-used or misused, how advocacy can create confusion, intentionally or otherwise, and why it is that science can appear to be used or misused by both sides of a contentious argument."

 


"Uncertainty is a sign of honest science and reveals a need for further research before reaching a conclusion. Cutting-edge science is highly uncertain and often flat-out wrong."

 

BOYCE RENSBERGER Science writer, editor and former Director of MIT's Knight Science Journalism Fellowships

 

"The size of our islands, our geography and our skills suggest we may be advantaged most by selling our brains and patents, not shiploads of machines."   

 

 John Evans, research professor, 
University of Otago, Christchurch 
New from the SMC

  

In the News:

Antarctic protection:
Policy makers are hoping an Antarctic conservation meeting in Hobart could lead to no-fish zones in the Southern Ocean, but will the US government shut down throw a spanner in the works?.

Experts Respond:

Air pollution: The specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), has announced that it has classified outdoor air pollution as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1*). Experts comment.
 
Bushfires: Australian experts comment on the bushfires currently ravaging New South Wales

Prion problems:
A UK survey suggests around one in 2,000 people carry an abnormal prion -  a mis-folded brain protein- associated with mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Reflections on Science:

Tuatara climate adaptation: The tuatara fronts up as a test case for shifting species to  save them from climate change. 

 

Sciblogs highlights

 

Some of the highlights from this week's Sciblogs posts:

Physician-assisted suicide - In this guest podcast student Lindsey Horne talks physician from the Netherlands who helps individuals with their end of life directives and we also get an update on the current situation as it stands here in  NZ.
Guest Work

My car is cold - Keeping cars warm turns out to be a bit trickier when they run on electricity rather than pertol, notes Marcus Wilson.
Physics Stop

Eight great technologies - Robert Hickson examines some of the UK Government's latest R&D industrial strategy.
Ariadne

Classifying plankton: more fun than you might think - Amiee Whitcroft gets up close with some tiny critters as part of a citizen science intiative.
misc.ience

A Criminal Cases Review Commission for NZ? Forensic scientist Anna Sandiford discusses the NZ legal system in the wake of the Mark Lundy case.
Forensic Scientst

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Research highlights
Some of the major research papers that made headlines this week...
   
Please note:
hyperlinks point, where possible, to the relevant abstract or paper.

Ocean impacts explored: Climate change isn't just about temperature - ocean warming and acidification will have wide reaching ecological, social and economic impacts. An elaborate new study connects the physical changes in the ocean with the biological impacts and subsequent human costs in terms of lost food and jobs. "The impacts of climate change will be felt from the ocean surface to the seafloor," say the authors. "It is truly scary to consider how vast these impacts will be."
PLOS Biology

Global worming? Earthworms lock up more carbon in soils than they release as carbon dioxide (CO2), according to a new experimental study. This finding contradicts recent claims that earthworm presence in soils leads to a substantial increase in CO2 emissions.


Total cost of war: During the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011, for every three people killed by violence, two died as a result of the collapse of the infrastructure that supports health care, clean water, nutrition, and transportation, according to new estimates in a study. All told, the researchers estimate nearly a half million people died from causes that could be attributed to the war.

PLOS Medicine

Imaging infection, live: A new study shows fluorescently-labelled antibiotics can be used to detect bacterial infection in real-time, using an imaging system to detect the light emitting compounds attached to the antibiotic. The sensitive, specific, and non-invasive method can be used in live animals, as well as in humans post-mortem.


Skull spurs human origins reshuffle: The analysis of a complete, approximately 1.8-million-year-old hominin skull from Georgia, suggests that the earliest members of the Homo genus -- those classified as Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Homo erectus, for example -- actually belonged to the same species. These early human ancestors probably just had diverse physical appearances, according to researchers.

Upcoming sci-tech events  
For these and more upcoming events, and more details about them, visit the SMC's Events Calendar

  • Avoiding global collapse - Allan Wilson Centre 2013 Lecture with Prof Paul Ehrlich - 23 October, Hamilton; 24, Palmerston North; 29, Auckland; 30, Wellington.