Darwinius exaggeratus . . .
As it usually happens in anthropology, the actual scientific importance of the fossil “find” announced earlier this week won’t be decided until years from now. But that fundamental unknown didn’t stop the identification of Darwinius masillae from being the science story of the week, or perhaps the month.
Fueled by a public relations campaign worthy of the next Star Wars movie, a sextet of researchers on Tuesday announced a true rarity in paleontology – a skeleton that they said was “the most complete fossil primate ever found.” Their lengthy paper in the journal PLoS One, an online offering from the Public Library of Science, explained that the fossil clearly showed the animal’s skeleton, an outline of its body and remnants of its last meal.
Discovered in 1983, divided between two private collectors and then sold over the years, the recent merging of the two halves allowed the research team to place the creature where it seems to belong on our species’ family tree. More accurately, it’s more an ancestor of tree-living, rain-forest primates than of the anthropoids that eventually walked across the prehistoric savannahs.
But that distinction was routinely lost in many of the abbreviated news stories touting the discovery. A Google News search produced more than 700 versions of stories a couple of days after the announcement, and Google itself joined the celebration offering its own Google logo depicting the fossil on its web search page for a day.
As interesting as fossil finds are to science geeks – and to much of the public as well – what sets this episode apart from the norm is the extent of machinations involved to hype this discovery before the public.
And also, there’s the underlying question of whether such publicity-mongering is good or bad for science?
The research team partnered with the History Channel, the A&E Network, an independent filmmaker, ABC News and others to tout the discovery at a press conference held at the American Museum of Natural History, as well as to hawk an upcoming film and book about the fossil find. Subsequent stories claimed the discovery as the “missing link” and one of the “most important finds in 47 million years,” the estimated age of the fossil.
A New York Times story reported that at Tuesday’s press conference, one researcher was asked about all the hoopla surrounding this announcement. His response:
“Any pop band is doing the same thing. Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science,” he argued.
No we don’t!
Rock music and athletics are poor models for scientists to emulate when thinking about how to raise public interest. Advocates of that approach forget the simple truth that the public recognizes the appeal in those realms is emotional, and that fans willingly embrace the sensationalism that accompanies them. It’s all part of the game.
But science should be different. The public needs to trust that scientists, when announcing discoveries, are basing their exuberance on the significance of their finds, both to science and to society. Raising rabid interest in announcements that are linked to book sales or TV viewership shouldn’t be part of their job.
The rush of cheerleading stories has died down following the press conference and coverage now focuses more on evaluating how important this research really is. That’s how it should be.
Discussion now centers on how significant the find actually is. Clark Spencer Larsen, head of anthropology at Ohio State and once a student in a graduate course given by one of the Darwinius discoverers said simply, “I think it is being overly hyped.”
Scott McGraw, a colleague in the same department, said,” The exciting element of this story is the completeness and preservation of the new specimen, not the information content of the fossil itself. By and large, the fossil offers little new information . . . So it is – at best – an old and distant cousin – but not a direct ancestor [to humans].”
Assuming that’s a fair statement, this episode seems more inclined towards a publicity stunt than it is an effort at the public understanding of this science.
John Noble Wilford, science writer at the New York Times and probably the most respected American journalist covering archaeology and paleontology, seems resigned about the whole affair. His story ran in Saturday’s issue of the Times, prior to the big Tuesday press conference but only after the Wall Street Journal had reported on the find.
He acknowledged that in fields like archeology and paleontology, where government support for research is scant, “promotion on a modest scale has long been important” for researchers to continue their work.
But, he said, “This exceeded just about anything I had come across in recent years. It was so blatant, and some of the promoters were using strong-armed tactics in negotiations.
“It seems that’s just part of getting science to the public in our modern media age.”
His recognizing that more researchers today seem willing to hype their science doesn’t mean that he supports the practice. But his noting that these episodes are becoming more frequent is a serious warning to all who do research.
Once lost, the public’s trust in science may be hard to regain.__Earle Holland
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I think it was overhyped because of the big social war going on right now. The issue of same-sex marriage is polarizing, and it seems to pit religious people against non-religious people in the public’s mind.
Evolution is very similar. Most don’t understand it, so it is divisive and polarizing. Anything one side gets to support their view is overhyped. A possible missing link that connects lemurs and primates gets overhyped because of the potential support for evolution it supplies. Just a way the “left” sticks it to the “right” so to speak.
Its the same “Science” that connects sexuality to biological factors. This gets overhyped as “proof” the sexuality isn’t a choice or a behavior, but a trait. Any ammunition that either side can get in our modern culture war is going to be used, including this fossil. Pretty sad to see, but just the way it is I suppose…
I have to disagree, based on my conversation with others who follow science communications. This wasn’t a pro-evolution effort — it was an effort largely motivated by the investment in the commercial book and television documentary that was produced about the fossil. That’s why the release of information was so strictly held until the last moment to insure a big splash in the media, largely written by people who have no knowledge of science, much less paleontology. In this case, it appears that the researchers partnered with the book and documentary producers, and the TV channels, to coordinate a big publicity campaign. A detailed reading of the journal paper at the core of the topic shows that the wonder touted pertaining to the fossil is almost totally manufactured. The researchers specifically said in their article that the research didn’t suggest any missing link related to humans and that they weren’t arguing for one. But reports from the press conference clearly suggest that they hinted in that direction.__EH
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Your last comment gave me pause, Earle. I wondered the exact same thing about the public’s trust in science following all this hype.
I would disagree, however, only because I would argue that science never had the public trust to begin with; this media sensationalism will make it much more difficult to convey the nature of science to the public, as well.
Thanks for theintersting post
Not to be confrontational, but isn’t it your current job to “promote” OSU research, including issuing press releases about “interesting” research that may or may not be really significant? For instance, your office recently promoted a study about Facebook and GPA, a study which was not peer-reviewed and which even the scant details in the write-up gave the reader serious reasons to question the validity of the conclusion. This press release was picked up by hundreds of news outlets and thousands of websites. It seems to me that the ratio of hype to significance was even greater in that instance than in the case of the fossil discovery.
As someone with very close ties to the research community at OSU, I truly appreciate the efforts to make sure that the public gets to hear about important and exciting work done here. On the other hand, perhaps you could take this opportunity to explain how this post is not the pot calling a kettle black?
To most of us science is boring. Whatever we don’t fully understand is either scary, boring and therefore ignored, or railed against.
Making it entertaining brings attention to it, and only when attention is brought to a topic does it get the support it deserves.
Sad but true.
Another ill consequence is that this kind of reporting makes it so much harder to get broad media coverage for the next major research finding. Unfortunately, blogalism’s standard for measuring reportability is degree-of-sensationalism and the potential for hyperbole. So after a story about “the missing link”, what what will it take to get national coverage? Well, perhaps another in the long list of “cure for cancer found” stories might do the trick.
Sadly, Earle, people only seem to want the Fox or MSNBC style of reporting, not real news. On the bright side… no one will remember this story by the end of the week.
Well stated, Earl…and Kate.
Jason: It has always amazed me how some people are totally comfortable with assuming that they know what another person’s job actually entails. Clearly, you feel qualified to make that determination and yet you offer no indication of your qualifications that would give you license to make such an assumption. Would that we felt so righteous! Nevertheless, let me address your points:
The job of those of us in Research Communications is to explain research underway here at the university. Usually, that involves disseminating information that does “promote” the institution’s research, but it also involves defending the research when it comes under undue attack. The job also involves providing advice and counsel to researchers on campus as to their interactions with the news media and in communicating about their research. Also, since Ohio State is a leading national research university, we have a role in improving the communications of science broadly and enhancing the public’s understanding and appreciation of science. And since science and research extends beyond institutional boundaries, we feel empowered and obligated to focus on the larger picture of science, thus, the substance of many of our offerings on this blog.
As to your point about the Facebook study, perhaps you should work harder to get your facts straight. The hundreds of stories emerging about that work resulted from a highly inaccurate initial story published in the Sunday Times of London several days before an OSU grad student was to present her paper at a national conference. We released our story [http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/facebookusers.htm] on the work several days after the Times story ran in an effort to clarify the misconceptions of the initial coverage. Our story was extremely cautious and explicit in stating that it was a preliminary study that only showed coorelation and not causation. The news media simply got the story all wrong. While you might be one of those persons suggesting that preliminary work, or the work of graduate students, should not be reported, we disagree vigorously. At OSU, we’re teaching our grad students to be scholars and, with the concurrence of their advisors, when their work warrants informing the public, then we will do so.
If you want to delve deeper into this episode, feel free to reference the piece I did in the Columbia Journalism Review online [http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/facebook_and_procrastination.php?page=all] about it.
As to our comments on the Darwinius episode, stay tuned, there’s more to come.
Josh,
Earle dealt with that in the May 8 Columbia Journalism Review’s edition of “The Observatory.”
You might want to take a look at that. I think you’ll see that the comparison just isn’t there.
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/facebook_and_procrastination.php
Bob
Dale: There’s no disagreement on our part that increasing the public’s interest in science is generally a good thing. We support that! What we don’t support is the misrepresenting of research, either through exaggeration, as seems to be happening in this case, or through inaccuracies. Our view is that there is no excuse for intentional inaccuracies in the reporting of research.
Anyone watch the TV show about the little creature? Too much overblown music, too much faux suspense, way too much repetition. Just give me a good documentary on the subject — or on an aspect of the subject: what about all of that black market trading in fossil and artifacts?
That little fellow (in the fossil) would be dismayed at how much his uncovering has sent his descendants into turmoil. He may not have known much about research (or it’s promotion), and probably did not have Facebook, but he knew what was important…finding what he needed to survive so that he could provide a foundation to build upon that would lead to the curious group of primates that sits around and gets worked up about these things in blogs. By the way, I found one gross inaccuracy that disproves the whole find as it’s represented; they say Lemur Boy is 47 million year old. How can that be if the world is only 6,000 years old? That’s a biblical fact. CHECK and MATE!
here’s no disagreement on our part that increasing the public’s interest in science is generally a good thing. We support that! What we don’t support is the misrepresenting of research, either through exaggeration, as seems to be happening in this case
Very interesting article. I like Google’s tribute to little Darwinius.
Thank you much for that awesome blog post.
This fossil, while spectacular, is being oversold. The hype is bad news, not because the Darwinius is unimportant, but because it detracts from the larger body of the fossil record — I doubt that the media will be able to muster as much excitement from whatever new fossil gets published in Nature or Science next week, no matter how significant it may be.