I was originally intending for this month’s featured topic to be about Yutyrannus, a one-ton feathered tyrannosaur that’s the largest dinosaur (or animal of any sort) to be found with feathers.  But as interesting as Yutyrannus is, this month has also had another piece of dinosaur-related news that’s a little more unusual—although the way in which it involves dinosaurs is pretty far-fetched.

This paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society discusses the concept of chirality, which is the way it’s possible for a molecule with a particular structure to exist in two different “versions”, one of which is a mirror image of the other.  The paper suggests that the reason why amino acids on earth tend to have a particular chirality might be because amino acids with that chirality were delivered to prehistoric earth on meteorites.  For the most part it’s a fairly standard biochemistry paper, but it concludes in a unique way:

An 
implication 
from
 this 
work 
is 
that 
elsewhere 
in 
the 
universe 
there 
could 
be 
life 
forms 
based
 on 
D 
amino 
acids 
and 
L 
sugars, 
depending 
on 
the 
chirality 
of 
circular 
polarized
 light 
in
 that 
sector 
of 
the universe or 
whatever 
other 
process 
operated 
to 
favor 
the 
L
α‐methyl 
amino acids 
in 
the 
meteorites 
that 
have landed
 on Earth. 

Such 
life 
forms 
could 
well 
be 
advanced 
versions 
of 
dinosaurs, 
if 
mammals 
did 
not 
have the good
 fortune 
to 
have 
the 
dinosaurs 
wiped 
out 
by 
an 
asteroidal 
collision,
 as 
on 
Earth. 

We 
would 
be 
better 
off not 
meeting 
them.

Dinosaurs are not mentioned anywhere in the paper besides the closing paragraph, so bringing them up in the last paragraph isn’t exactly well-supported in a scientific sense.  This doesn’t have to be a problem, though.  As long as other scientists understand that this was just meant to be funny, it doesn’t do any harm for a scientific paper to include something fanciful for the sake of humor… at least not until the media catch hold of it.

Here is Google’s list of news stories about this paper.  There are too many to list, but the titles should make it obvious what aspect of the paper they’re exclusively focusing on.  The article at Science Daily is titled “Could 'Advanced' Dinosaurs Rule Other Planets?”, while the article at The Register is titled “Death Star dinosaur aliens could rule galaxy”.  The first sentence of the Register article is one of the best examples of what the media has to say about this paper which was discussing molecular chirality: “Rather than dying out in the dimly lit aftermath of a ginormous asteroid impact, dinosaurs on Earth may have instead spread to other planets and built a terrifying space-conquering empire.”

Of course, the real question is whether the paper’s author, Ronald Breslow, should be blamed for any of this.  In the past I’ve tended to assume situations like this are the fault of the media alone, but there have also been a few situations like this one where scientists have clearly manipulated the media coverage of their papers in order to get as much positive press as possible.  The article’s press release, which appears to be no longer online, clearly emphasized the “space dinosaurs” idea over the actual content of the paper—it’s anyone’s guess whether that was the original author’s idea or not.

In any case, during the weeks since the paper was accepted for publication, there’s been a second problem.  As pointed out here, it was eventually discovered that a large portion of the paper had been copied word-for-word from previous papers that the author had published in other journals.  The same post also points out how surprising this is, when one considers the author’s credentials:  he’s a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the former president of the American Chemical Society, and has won numerous awards.  Plagiarizing one’s own writing isn’t as bad as plagiarizing someone else’s, but what he’s done is attempt to publish essentially the same paper in multiple journals under different titles, which goes against the American Chemical Society’s code of ethics.

Due to the self-plagiarism issue, the paper has now been removed from the website of the journal that published it.  With the original paper vanished, the news media coverage is now all that’s left.  In other words, anyone reading these news articles about space dinosaurs will no longer have any way to look up the original paper and see what it’s actually about.

We’ve had many previous posts about the errors and excesses of science journalism, but in my opinion this particular instance is one of the worst examples I’ve ever encountered.  So here is this month’s question: What should be done to prevent the science media from misrepresenting research in this manner?

In the past, I’ve suggested that one of the solutions is for scientists to write at least some of the news stories about their own research.  However, that doesn’t solve the problem of situations where scientists are deliberately trying to manipulate public perception of their research, as in the case of the arsenic bacteria paper.  In situations like that, scientists writing the popular accounts of their research would not make the problem any better.

Perhaps another solution would be news sources to require science journalists to meet a minimum requirement of training about science.  Most colleges and universities expect that in order for someone to be qualified as a professor, they should have either a master’s degree or a Ph.D in the subject they’re teaching.  Science journalists play just as important a role in informing the public about science as professors do, but the only requirement for someone to be a science journalist is that they be trained in journalism.  Perhaps someday, this double standard can be fixed.