Last month I blogged about the unsavory practices of French scientists who unveiled a study purporting to show that genetically modified corn and herbicide cause cancer in rats. Not only was the study weak, but the scientists required reporters to sign an oath of secrecy to see it in advance. As I explained to the NPR show On the Media, this strategy raised the odds that all those pesky questions about statistical significance from meddling outsiders would be absent from the first wave of reporting.

In Nature today, Declan Butler continues his great reporting on the affair, unearthing additional disturbing parts of the story. My favorite was this passage from the agreement that some reporters–incredibly–agreed to sign:

“A refund of the cost of the study of several million euros would be considered damages if the premature disclosure questioned the release of the study.”

Who knew that doing basic science reporting could land you catastrophically in debt? Well, aside from Simon Singh…

[Update: Link to Nature fixed]

Originally published October 10, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

On Tuesday I’ll be in Hartford to participate in the Science on Screen series. It started in Boston last year, and now it’s spreading across the country. Each evening consists of a science-themed movie paired with a talk about some of the science involved. On Tuesday, Real Artways in Hartford will be screening the virus-zombie movie, 28 Days Later. And I’ll talk about what real viruses can do to their hosts. Details here.

Originally published October 7, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

It’s getting close to two years now since a NASA-funded team of scientists announced they had found a form of life that broke all the rules by using arsenic to build its DNA. It’s become something of an obsession for me. If you want to follow the saga, click here and start back at the earliest post. In July I live-blogged the announcement that other scientists had replicated the experiment and failed to find the same results. In some ways, that was the logical end to the story

My fascination with this story has been tempered from the start by a creepy feeling. As a science writer, I most enjoy reporting on advances in biology: the research that opens up the natural world a little bit wider to our minds. The “#arseniclife” affair was less about biology than about how science gets done and the ways it goes wrong: the serious questions it raised about peer review, replication, and science communication. That fierce debate did some collateral damage. The microbe in question, known as GFAJ-1, went from being the species that would force us to rewrite the biology textbooks to yet another bacterium that offered no serious challenge to the uniformity of life. It became boring.

Continue reading “Weirdly Unweird: A Better End to the #Arseniclife Affair” →