*%^$*@% Liars (aka The Disgruntled Episode)
Biotech CEO Hypes His Research
Boy am I ticked! It turns out that Robert Lanza, the CEO of Advanced Cell Technologies pretty much lied in the clip I played for you in the last episode. Here's what he said: "What we have done, for the first time, is to actually create human embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo itself." Yeah, well, that's pretty much just a straight out lie.
Very quickly it became apparent that the company had destroyed the embryos during the experiment. The good news was that as a registered member of the press, I received the correction from Nature Magazine almost immediately, and Nature also published an article on their website describing the discrepancy. Still, I was really surprised that Nature didn't mention it in their next podcast. Their podcast was my source for the audio clip, and given that the podcast is where Lanza made his bogus statement, I would have expected them to make a correction in the podcast.
Here's the bottom line. The paper itself appears to be accurate, showing that they took cells from blastocysts that were destroyed and used single cells to make stem cell lines. In theory, this implies that it should be possible to take single cells from blastocysts and make stem cell lines without destroying embryos, but they haven't actually proved that yet. They haven't done it. They've just shown that it should be able to be done. The problem is that in every communication other than the paper itself -- in the abstract, the press release, and the interviews that Lanza gave -- they misled the public.
It's a really stupid, annoying move on the part of the company that just contributes to the erosion of public trust in scientists, and casts a shadow of suspicion on all stem cell research that comes out in the future. So, way to go Robert Lanza and Advanced Cell Technologies, you've done a big disservice to your entire field.
Interview/Listener Question
John in Helendale asked, "How can researchers really know what the climate was like so far into the past?" With thanks to Bruce at ORNL, we hooked up with Dr. Reid Bryson, a Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin, to answer that question.
News
Cervical Cancer Vaccine
Remember Merck's cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, was hailed as a major breakthrough? Supposedly doctors in the U.S. are waiting for insurance companies to start covering the vaccine before recommending it to patients. Way to put money ahead of health people. Article (sub. req.) - Source Fierce Biotech
Stem Cells
Here's another stem cell story. Honestly, I'm getting tired of stem cells. OK, the BBC reported that British authorities have had to warn people against going to other countries, supposedly especially the Netherlands, where companies are making extravagant claims about miracle stem cell cures. They warned that the treatments for conditions like multiple sclerosis were dangerous and unproven. But here's what really gets me: The final quote in the article quotes a Professor Colin Blakemore, as saying that patients who seek these treatments are endangering the field of stem cell research because if they get cancer or something from the treatment, it could set the whole field back. Yeah Blakemore, it's the patients who believe the false promises who are going to hurt the field, not the scoundrels who make the claims in the first place. God, let's just hope he was quoted out of context, because if not that's really ridiculous.
Shout Outs & Administrative
I apologize, I don't have any shout outs this week. My computer crashed and I lost the file where I had been saving everyone's names. But do know that we really appreciate it when you write in and I do still have any questions and topic ideas that you submitted because I keep those in a separate file.
Also, we're not podfading, but I just can't tell you what kind of schedule the show is going to be on for a while. It could be one a week or it could be once a month, it kind of depends on Adam's availability and our both of our work schedules. So thanks for sticking with us, while we get back on track.
Calendar Contest
Here's a happier thing to end this disgruntled episode! We've gotten a couple of great submissions to the 2007 calendar contest, but we still need more. Remember to send your cool science pictures to absolutescience [at] welltopia.com, and the deadline is November 15. Also, I want to get the word out on this so we have the very best pictures to choose from. If there's an email list at your university that goes out to graduate students or postdocs, could you drop me and email and let me know who to contact to put an announcement on the list?
Also, Absolute Science got reviewed by a couple of different podcast reviewers, and they all seem to agree that we're great, but that well, I'm not terribly funny.
Podcast Fanatic
Upon Further Review
They encouraged me to keep trying, but for this week I'm going to combine our comedy section with our music section and leave you with a funny science song called Hooray for NRM Spectroscopy by Science Groove. I've had this in my playlist for a long time and it has really grown on me.
Boy am I ticked! It turns out that Robert Lanza, the CEO of Advanced Cell Technologies pretty much lied in the clip I played for you in the last episode. Here's what he said: "What we have done, for the first time, is to actually create human embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo itself." Yeah, well, that's pretty much just a straight out lie.
Very quickly it became apparent that the company had destroyed the embryos during the experiment. The good news was that as a registered member of the press, I received the correction from Nature Magazine almost immediately, and Nature also published an article on their website describing the discrepancy. Still, I was really surprised that Nature didn't mention it in their next podcast. Their podcast was my source for the audio clip, and given that the podcast is where Lanza made his bogus statement, I would have expected them to make a correction in the podcast.
Here's the bottom line. The paper itself appears to be accurate, showing that they took cells from blastocysts that were destroyed and used single cells to make stem cell lines. In theory, this implies that it should be possible to take single cells from blastocysts and make stem cell lines without destroying embryos, but they haven't actually proved that yet. They haven't done it. They've just shown that it should be able to be done. The problem is that in every communication other than the paper itself -- in the abstract, the press release, and the interviews that Lanza gave -- they misled the public.
It's a really stupid, annoying move on the part of the company that just contributes to the erosion of public trust in scientists, and casts a shadow of suspicion on all stem cell research that comes out in the future. So, way to go Robert Lanza and Advanced Cell Technologies, you've done a big disservice to your entire field.
Interview/Listener Question
John in Helendale asked, "How can researchers really know what the climate was like so far into the past?" With thanks to Bruce at ORNL, we hooked up with Dr. Reid Bryson, a Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin, to answer that question.
News
Cervical Cancer Vaccine
Remember Merck's cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, was hailed as a major breakthrough? Supposedly doctors in the U.S. are waiting for insurance companies to start covering the vaccine before recommending it to patients. Way to put money ahead of health people. Article (sub. req.) - Source Fierce Biotech
Stem Cells
Here's another stem cell story. Honestly, I'm getting tired of stem cells. OK, the BBC reported that British authorities have had to warn people against going to other countries, supposedly especially the Netherlands, where companies are making extravagant claims about miracle stem cell cures. They warned that the treatments for conditions like multiple sclerosis were dangerous and unproven. But here's what really gets me: The final quote in the article quotes a Professor Colin Blakemore, as saying that patients who seek these treatments are endangering the field of stem cell research because if they get cancer or something from the treatment, it could set the whole field back. Yeah Blakemore, it's the patients who believe the false promises who are going to hurt the field, not the scoundrels who make the claims in the first place. God, let's just hope he was quoted out of context, because if not that's really ridiculous.
Shout Outs & Administrative
I apologize, I don't have any shout outs this week. My computer crashed and I lost the file where I had been saving everyone's names. But do know that we really appreciate it when you write in and I do still have any questions and topic ideas that you submitted because I keep those in a separate file.
Also, we're not podfading, but I just can't tell you what kind of schedule the show is going to be on for a while. It could be one a week or it could be once a month, it kind of depends on Adam's availability and our both of our work schedules. So thanks for sticking with us, while we get back on track.
Calendar Contest
Here's a happier thing to end this disgruntled episode! We've gotten a couple of great submissions to the 2007 calendar contest, but we still need more. Remember to send your cool science pictures to absolutescience [at] welltopia.com, and the deadline is November 15. Also, I want to get the word out on this so we have the very best pictures to choose from. If there's an email list at your university that goes out to graduate students or postdocs, could you drop me and email and let me know who to contact to put an announcement on the list?
Also, Absolute Science got reviewed by a couple of different podcast reviewers, and they all seem to agree that we're great, but that well, I'm not terribly funny.
Podcast Fanatic
Upon Further Review
They encouraged me to keep trying, but for this week I'm going to combine our comedy section with our music section and leave you with a funny science song called Hooray for NRM Spectroscopy by Science Groove. I've had this in my playlist for a long time and it has really grown on me.
posted by Mignon at
10:41 AM
8 Comments:
I think you let your ideology guide you in the way you addressed the controversial topics of stem cell research and global warming.
Your views about Robert Lanza and Nature bordered on the absurd. Think of what you are saying. Lanza demonstrated that it was possible to create a new stem line from a single cell from a blastula. You are surprised that he didn't let the embryo develop into a child? Lanza is not funded by the US government or the Catholic church. The innovation was in growing a new line of stem cells from a sample. The same sampling technique is used in fertility clinics to assess the genetic health of embryos, some of which are allowed to go to full term. That part of the experiment has already been done. Last I checked Lanza does not work at fertility clinic. What else could he do but destroy the embryos?
Your choice of Reid Bryson was also disappointing. Basing views about global warming on the Domesday book and Viking navigation directions seems ludicrous. I became hopeful when you asked about ice core samples. He got it right about assessing atmospheric composition from gas bubbles, but said nothing about how temperature can be derived from the relative concentration of heavy isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen in the ice. Why not ask somebody who is still in the field like Lonnie Thompson? Glaciers are and the polar ice cap are melting extremely fast. The arctic tundra is thawing, releasing methane gas stored over tens of thousands of years. In the meantime the coal and oil industries sow doubt about whether over consumption of fossil fuels requires changes in policy. I recommend that your listeners watch An Inconvenient Truth and listen to the other side of the debate.
By
Anonymous, at 7:19 AM
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Mignon, at 9:14 AM
Thank you for taking the time to comment, but I think you have misinterpreted my ideology.
Stem cells first: I support stem cell research, but it was widely reported that Lanza lied in his press statements hyping his research. Yes, he proved that it should be theoretically possible to create stem cell lines without harming a blastocyst, but his team didn't put the pieces together as he stated. He implied they took only one cell from each blastocyst and then allowed it to develop further before destroying it, but instead they really took multiple cells from each blastocyst and destroyed them in the process. In a field where there is such great controversy, it is critical that scientists be precise in their statements. When Nature has to reissue a press release with an explaination and write a follow up article covering the controversy, something has gone wrong. It confuses the public and gives anti-stem cell groups ammunition. Lanza (and Nature) should have been more careful and precise. Here is the follow up article from Nature explaining the problems.
Next, global warming. I am a big supporter of efforts to curb global warming and we have discussed it before in our show, including recommending An Inconvenient Truth in our 7/5/2006 show, Episode 30. There are new papers out almost weekly showing how global warming is threatening to alter our planet. Although Dr. Bryson wasn't as conversent as I would have liked on how scientists measure climate going back millions of years, I thought he did a decent job giving examples of how scientists can use means other than written weather records to infer climate, and generally answered the listener question. (He was heartily recommended as a guest by a listener/scientist who had just attended a climate conference.)
I hope that you will listen to our other episodes and see that we try not to let ideology interfere with our show. Ideology has no place in science.
By
Mignon, at 9:20 AM
Note: I deleted my 8:14 a.m. post because it had some typos.
By
Mignon, at 9:25 AM
I don't think your climatologist expert answered your listener's question. The question was asked about how scientists can determine climate conditions as they were prior to written record.
Your expert's (I'm sorry, his name escapes me at the moment) first reply is entirely based upon written record. How does that even come close to answering your listener's question?
Next, he refers to plant life in the soil record, and in reply to your question about pollen, indicates that such is an excellent indicator, as grasses vs trees determines climate, etc. Next, you ask about ice core samples, and he tells you that it's a little too region-specific.
How can pollen be good, but ice core samples be too region-specific?
In summation, he cautions that global climate is always in flux, and we cannot therefore conclude a global warming, as it's cold in places on the globe when it's warm on others.
How can he say that, after he informed us that the planet was colder between the 1500's and 1850 than it has been between 1850 through 1950? Wouldn't that be a global conclusion?
I hope your listener was pleased by the reply, but I came away more confused by your expert's statements.
By
J. Hazelip, at 3:09 PM
What can I say? Sorry.
By
Mignon, at 5:14 PM
Well...you could say that you'd endeavor to take more control of an interview rather than letting a guest ramble on unimpeded and unquestioned. You could have questioned him on the very points on which I commented. Didn't his statements strike you as a bit contradictory?
By
J. Hazelip, at 5:22 AM
I would agree that there were some challenges in the interview with Dr. Bryson, and I hope folks will come back and listen to the subsequent interview. I certainly understand and agree that there is general consensus that there at minimum an anthropogenic component to warming and I was a bit disappointed that Dr. Bryson didn't make that point very well. However, the research he talked about is valid and provides some information about climate.
As to the choice of Dr. Bryson, I will take heat on that one. Mignon and I discussed the listener's question and I went to colleagues to are in climate research to ask who they would recommend to answer this question. That's where Dr. Bryson's name came from. So, it wasn't some random choice, but a recommendation from colleagues of mine who are knowledgable.
By
B. Wilson, at 8:41 AM
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