Science News Review

Science Press: Confusing the Issues and Frames?

Jan 21 at 3:03pm by Aileen

I have discussed previously some of the issues with science press reporting that often seem designed to confuse the science laity (non-specialists in a given field) as well as the general public (non-scientists). Not that there aren’t many topics under the ‘Science’ header that are difficult to present in an easily understood format, or that there aren’t topics that harbor a good deal of conflicting ideas within science itself.

But since this blog is an attempt to present science news in an understandable way to the general public, now is a good time to revisit the issue of confusing science reporting, because a seriously confusing science news article has hit the reporting sources and engendered some confused arguments on both sides of an in-house controversy about evolution.

In my September ‘07 post Who’s Responsible for Irresponsible Science News? the subject was conflicting accounts about foods, drugs and treatments that are good for us one day, deadly the next. I linked Matthew Nisbet’s blog Framing Science and his take on an article in the New York Times on the subject of bad communication of science and how to judge the motivations of those writing the reports.

The story this week is about a multi-national research project examining the development of roundworm vulvas in light of the “astonishing amount of developmental variation” and evolutionary changes present in the ~50 species of roundworm examined. The original research was reported in ScienceDaily back in November of ‘07 in the release, Evolution is Deterministic, Not Random. It was reported that given the amount of variation, researchers had predicted it should have arisen through random mechanisms and ‘genetic drift’. Yet upon closer examination, the development all ended with the basic roundworm vulva with very little variation.

On Sunday, January 20, another report about this same research was published in ScienceDaily (from a press release issued by The American Technion Society), entitled New Findings Confirm Darwin’s Theory: Evolution Not Random (no longer available). If you - as a member of the interested, not entirely ignorant but not professional biologist “public” - are not yet confused, you soon will be…

There have been two “Darwinian” theories of evolution, and today’s amalgam - which includes evo-devo, HGT and other recently examined mechanisms Darwin knew nothing about - is usually referred to as “Modern Evolutionary Theory.” The headline on the Jan. 20th article suggests that Charles Darwin’s ‘Theory’ maintained that evolution isn’t random, and that itself can be confusing. Natural Selection, as in the original “evolution by natural selection,” is a deterministic mechanism. That which does not serve survival and successful reproduction is “selected out” of the gene pool, while successful mutations lead to organismal adaptation and fitness. The ‘random’ aspect to all this being mutation of DNA, which is said to be “random with regard to fitness.”

It is nearly impossible from reading the press stories to determine exactly what mechanisms of evolution have been confirmed or disconfirmed by this research. There is mention of “an opposing theory” that goes unnamed, which one may suppose is the random mutation aspect. Yet an “astonishing amount” of variation was noted by the researchers! Apparently, none of it changed the outcome, and THAT is what confirmed that evolution isn’t random despite random mutations leading to various developmental pathways, etc.

The pro-evolution (pro-Neodarwinism) website Panda’s Thumb noted the situation with this research and its reporting in a thread entitled With friends like these…. These scientists recognize the confusion sown by the press, and bemoan the difficulty of educating the interested public about science if the science is presented in ways that not even scientists can understand!

The original research is available from the journal Current Biology at Trends, Stasis, and Drift in the Evolution of Nematode Vulva Development. For those who can follow the actual science, it may help to clear up confusion. The Public Library of Science [Biology] is doing an admirable job of getting real science news and synopses to the interested public too, but you have to wade through a lot of jargon that is itself confusing to the non-professional.

For those who would like to follow up on this latest science news confusion, check out some of these links and those below, see if you can parse the actual meaning and intent of the researchers toward a better understanding of evolution, and pinpoint the source of confusion in the general public, all of whom had to pass a biology course on evolution in order to graduate high school (and have been getting such courses for the past 20 years as elective for at least 40 years). Should those interested not be able to understand research and developments in the field which confirm or falsify the theory(ies) they learned? Who benefits from public confusion about issues in evolution?

Sigh. This situation is really quite absurd. Stay tuned, we’ll see if things ever get better while evolutionary biologists duke it out over just how random or directed evolution might be, and who wins the contest.

NOTE: It would seem that in view of the confusions sown, ScienceDaily has removed the January 20th article from its archive. We’ll see if they attempt to get clarification to re-publish a more informative and less confusing update!

Links:

PLoS: Recognizing Student Misconceptions through Ed’s Tools and the Biology Concept Inventory

PLoS: The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

Current Biology: Trends, Stasis, and Drift in the Evolution of Nematode Vulva Development

Findings Confirm Darwin’s Theory: Evolution Not Random [American Technion Society]

Evolution is Deterministic, Not Random

Panda’s Thumb: With friends like these…