The Power of the Press Release Redux

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about a modern press campaign and its influence on the public understanding of a scientific paper and its relative importance (see here). The paper in question addressed a breakthrough in the study of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which at the time was much in the press. Several press releases hinted and many news articles boldly stated that the research presented in the paper showed CCD was caused by a virus, the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), though I should make it clear the paper's authors did themselves make such a strong claim themselves.

Well, time has passed and the scientific process has tested the IAPV-CCD hypothesis. Subsequent research has been unable to corroborate the original findings and it fallen by the wayside as more convincing evidence arises for other causes (e.g. the microsporidian Nosema ceranae). In short, while the research was an important part of the science behind understanding CCD, it was not the breakthrough that the press juggernaut conveyed.

The IAPV-CCD juggernaut was launched by savvy use of new media technology to publicize science and accelerated by the public need to know more, or at least something, about the cause of the mysterious disappearance of honey bees across the United States.

A more recent example of this phenomenon comes from a press campaign by NASA that seems to similarly have gone awry. Hints of a big announcement from NASA scientists were followed, somewhat anticlimactically (I think many were expecting an announcement of the discovery of extraterrestrial life), by a press release from NASA scientists reporting the discovery of a species of bacteria capable of incorporating arsenic into its DNA structure in place of phosphorous, a finding at odds with prior understanding and which suggested that the search for extraterrestrial life was perhaps too narrowly focused.

This reminded me of the IAPV story because the hype was incredible for a story that turned out to be not nearly as interesting to the general public as, say, the discovery of actual extraterrestrial life. Perhaps even more odd that the IAPV story because it was not in relation to an issue currently high in the public radar as CCD was, and especially as it was hard to explain to the public - so the bacteria use arsenic instead of phosphorous, so what? Important yes, exciting, perhaps not if you don't study bacteria and think deeply about the conditions necessary to support extraterrestrial life. Yet, there it was in the news, on the Internet, on TV and in the newspaper for what seemed like days.

It seems that we've learned how to market science really well on the Internet, now we just need to learn the appropriate intensity at which to do it.

For more details about the bacteria-phosphorous research and its repercussions from a more scholarly angle read this interesting post from RealClimate.org that looks at this story and the controversy it generated as an example the scientific process in action (see here).

If you find this interesting, you might also want to check out another recent article on scientific peer review on the blog Dot Earth: On Warming, Antarctica, Clouds and Peer Review

Cheers.