Most recently, the attorneys for the mining industry have sent threatening letters to the editors and publishers of scientific journals in an effort to dissuade them from publishing the results of a twenty-year diesel exhaust study which is expected by those involved in occupational health circles to conclude that there’s a link between diesel exhaust in mines and the cancer among those that work in this environment. The Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS), a joint effort between the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), sought to determine whether diesel exhaust was an actual cancer-causing agent. Currently, diesel exhaust is listed by the CDC as “a potential human carcinogen, based on a combination of chemical, genotoxicity, and carcinogenicity data.”

Veiled Threat

It’s important to note that the letter sent by the law firm Patton Boggs doesn’t actually threaten to sue. It’s not even a cease and desist letter. The threats are completely veiled and subtle, however. And the main theme in the letter is, “carefully consider any intent to publish these papers” and “do not act precipitously to

disturb the status quo, or to frustrate, violate, or interfere with the expected Circuit Court’s ruling…”

Clearly, this is an example of corporate interests trying to influence government, but caught in the middle is reality. Scientific journals deal in reality, not rhetoric. They seek to find the closest approximation of truth available. Corporations are frequently interested only in those truths that help them meet their bottom line.

This story was first revealed (as far as I can tell) by Science Insider with Journals Warned to Keep a Tight Lid on Diesel Exposure Data. The letters were sent by Patton Boggs, working for the Mining Awareness Resource Group and they went to at least four journals including Science, Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM), The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, and Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Questions:

Should the editors or publishers of either of these journals worry? Would they not have a good case to argue that the attorneys have it backwards?

The attorneys on either side of the case should be prohibited from making any arguments until the study has been put through the peer-review process of scientific literature. Once the scientific community has had a chance to vet the data, then -and only then- should legal counsel be allowed to argue their claims.

Jennifer Ouellette blogs at Cocktail Party Physics and the writer of several books on science, one of them being The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, which she briefly discusses in the video below. The clip is funny and Jennifer clearly should do more public appearances on behalf of science! Look out Neil Tyson!

Related articles

• Jennifer Ouellette on the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (blogs.scientificamerican.com)

It seemed that everyone had a hypothesis for the cause -or at least some speculations. Some where plausible others not so much and they ranged from an as yet unknown virus or pesticide use to cell towers. A virus could never be pinned down and the problem was too geographically diverse to really pin on any single pesticide. And cell towers… well.. let’s just say that one found favor with many who didn’t understand the science.

Recently, however, some headway has been made in understanding what might be happening to the honey bees. In an article at PLoS One titled, A New Threat to Honey Bees, the Parasitic Phorid Fly Apocephalus borealis (Core et al 2012), the authors describe a fly that was previously known to affect bumble bees, which now parasitizes honey bees. The fly infects the honey bee, it abandons its hive and dies, and within a week larvae from the fly emerge from the dead bee.

The images below depict the fly, A. borealis, itself, a honey bee with a fly depositing its eggs, and the larvae leaving a dead honey bee. Click to enlarge.

(Photos courtesy Core A , Runckel C , Ivers J , Quock C , Siapno T , et al. 2012)

Reference:

Core A , Runckel C , Ivers J , Quock C , Siapno T , et al. 2012 A New Threat to Honey Bees, the Parasitic Phorid FlyApocephalus borealis. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29639. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029639

Related articles

• ‘Zombie’ fly hijacks bees’ bodies and may explain die-off (usatoday.com)
• Study: Parasitic fly could explain bee die-off (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• ‘Zombie’ fly parasite killing honeybees (blogs.nature.com)
• New suspect in bee colony collapse disorder [Life Lines] (scienceblogs.com)

Carl has been gone for decades now, but his legacy continues in his own words and works as well as in that of those that have both preceded and followed him. Lisa Randall, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Phil Plait, Kirsten Sanford, Brian Fagan and many, many more have reached out to the public through books, television, lecture series, blogs, and so on, popularizing science and gaining public support, involvement, and interaction while educating the lay-person and the science-enthusiast alike.

So I started SciCulture as an experiment to start bringing some of this together. And I plan to add some more bloggers, more links to media like podcasts and videos, reviews of books, and real-time science news. Featured articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces are planned and I’m open to other ideas and suggestions. SciCulture is not trying to be the Face Book of science (though someone should!), but it just a place where you can find discussion and links to media, discussion, and news about science, science policy, science education, science and politics, science and religion, and maybe a little science fiction. There is currently an active discussion forum with our partner site, The Science Forum (thescienceforum.org), that has been around since 2004 –though not in its current form or domain.

Science is a uniquely human endeavor and our single best method for investigating and explaining the universe around us. The language of science has the ability and the means to cross cultural boundaries in a way few other human endeavors can. It has the potential to bring individuals, groups, and cultures together for common causes. And, while oft accused of doing just the opposite, science has the potential to solve the big problems humanity faces in global warming, food production, population, disease, aging, and so on. But science isn’t without it’s controversy. Religious believers often find disagreement with scientific explanations; economic challenges cause many to question the conclusions of scientific consensus on things like climate change; ethics questions arise as biologists in the fields of stem cell and cell cloning research make advances; political wrangling affects funding for fields medicine, space exploration, and earth science –and these are just the few things off the top of my head.

My goal was always to launch the site officially on January 1st, so I’m a few days late. And there’s much left to do. I’m adding content to the SciMedia menu with pages for podcasts, video, etc. I’m going to add book reviews and links to places like Amazon or Oxford University Press where additional information or purchase can be made. The news and forum feeds need to be cleaned up a bit, I don’t like the default styling, and I’d like to move The Science Forum to another server where I can more effectively adjust the template style.

Advertisements:

Unfortunately, advertisement is a necessary evil. But I hope to keep them tasteful and unobtrusive –a couple of Adsense units, an Amazon widget with interesting books, and a few text links here and there (probably once every 10,000 words or so). This will help pay for the server space and other miscellaneous costs like specialized templates or extensions. Bloggers at SciCulture control their own ad content and, thus, their own revenue.

Contributors:

If you’re interested in contributing to SciCulture, please feel free to contact me at this email address: cfeagans AT sciculture DOT com. I’m interested in providing blog-space with WordPress on my existing server-space. Alternatively, potential contributors could write feature articles, and book reviews. If you have a book review on Amazon and would like additional exposure, send me the link and perhaps I can reprint it here assuming it relates in some way to science.

Suggestions and Feedback:

Write to me at cfeagans AT sciculture DOT com if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, feedback –whatever

Thanks for visiting and I hope you return!

Carl Feagans