Author Archives: Daniel Cressey

Ban all ivory sales for 10 years, says conservationist

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The international community should ban all sales of ivory — including seized tusks and antique pieces that were created when trade was legal — for at least 10 years, argues a peer-reviewed essay published today in Conservation Biology. Without such measures, the epidemic corruption and high demand will ruin attempts to save African elephants, the author says.

The article comes from Elizabeth Bennett, who is vice president for species conservation at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a non-profit organization based in New York. The WCS has previously voiced opposition to some legal ivory markets, but Bennett told Nature, “This is not a fundamentalist stand that we believe ivory should never be sold”.

She added, “Under current conditions and lack of controls, closing all markets for at least 10 years and after that until poaching no longer threatens wild populations is the only way to get the situation under control and give a break to the elephants.”

Ivory seized in the United States and destroyed in 2013.
Kate Miyamoto / USFWS.

Conservationists have long complained that legal markets, which exist across the globe and can include sales of antique ivory pieces or new carvings of ivory sold legally from stockpiles, are used as a cover for ivory poached from Africa’s elephant herds. Concern has increased as poaching has recently surged in Africa. If a vendor is allowed to trade ivory, it can be difficult to determine whether a given product is actually from a legal source or has been poached and then integrated into the legal market.

But legal markets in other countries have also come under increased scrutiny lately, with New Jersey state banning all trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn this month.

Some countries, including the United States and China, periodically destroy stockpiles of seized ivory to avoid fuelling the growing demand. However some African states are known to be keen keeping limited legal sales, especially of the large amounts of illegal ivory they have seized. Supporters of such ‘one-off sales’ say they can reduce pressure on wild elephants by flooding the market.

In her article, Bennett says legal markets cannot be tolerated because of the level of corruption among government officials in charge of them. She points out that six out of the eight countries identified as the world’s leading offenders in global ivory trafficking are in the bottom half of league of corruption drawn up by Transparency International. And six of the 12 countries in Africa that have elephants populations are also in the half.

“If we are to conserve remaining wild populations, we must close all markets because, under current levels of corruption, they cannot be controlled in a way that does not provide opportunities for illegal ivory being laundered into legal markets,” she writes.

Science shut down at crippled UK Antarctic base

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UPDATE – 12/8

The British Antarctic Survey has confirmed that the problem at the base was caused by a coolant leak in the heating systems, which prompted the generators to overheat and shut down.

“Scientific instruments that are used for atmospheric research remain switched off so that the electrical energy can be used to heat the living accommodation,” said BAS in the 12 August update. “Planned station engineering and research for the forthcoming season is being rescheduled.”

Original story

Science has ground to a halt at the UK’s Halley Research Station in Antarctica in the wake of a mysterious power failure.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which runs the station, says that staff on the site are safe but are still attempting to determine the exact cause of “a serious operational incident” on 30 July that took down both electrical and heating systems.

The Halley Research Station just recorded a record low temperature

The Halley Research Station just recorded a record low temperature{credit}British Antarctic Survey{/credit}

Although some power and heating has been restored, “all science, apart from meteorological observations essential for weather forecasting, has been stopped”, says a BAS statement. Exactly what this will mean for ongoing research is unclear, but the BAS say it is likely that ozone monitoring, meteorology related to climate science and studies of the upper atmosphere used for forecasting space weather have all been disrupted.

As it is currently winter in Antarctica, the base was not fully operational, but still had 13 staff maintaining various functions through the seasonal darkness. Two staff members tweeted that during the power outage, the base recorded its lowest ever outside temperature: –55.4 degrees Celsius.

“Throwing a cup of boiling water into the air resulted in a small explosion as the water instantly turned into a cloud of ice crystals. This obviously didn’t help us on station at the time but it was nice to see a record set!” wrote Anthony Lister, an electrical engineer at Halley, on his blog.

Wellcome Trust looks to youth and ‘high-risk’ research

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C0058571 Jeremy Farrar

Jeremy Farrar
{credit}Wellcome Library, London{/credit}

The United Kingdom’s largest biomedical charity is to shake up the way it forks out its funding, with an increased emphasis on ‘high-risk’ research and stronger support for less-experienced scientists.

The director of the Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar, announced today that his charity would seek to “significantly improve” certain areas of research funding. Farrar took charge of the trust nine months ago, and this is the first indication of how he may shake up grants from the United Kingdom’s largest non-governmental biomedical funder.

As well as boosting support for early- and mid-career researchers, the trust will launch what Farrar called a “major new scheme for collaborative research” and a programme of smaller grants “to promote the development of innovative or high-risk research ideas”.

“Our plans remain a work in progress, and I hope you will understand that we have not yet worked through the details of what they will mean for specific funding schemes,” he wrote on the trust’s website. “I thought though that the research community would find it helpful to know a little more now about our direction of travel.”

Read an interview with Farrar at Nature Medicine.

Imperial College animal research chief steps down

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The official responsible for animal research at Imperial College London (ICL) has stepped down following criticism of aspects of the university’s work with animals.

The move comes a few days after an independent government advisory group, the Animals in Science Committee (ASC), urged the Home Office minister in charge of animal research to “consider whether he can continue to have confidence” in John Neilson, the ‘licence holder’ for animal work at ICL. The university had said that it “fully supports” Neilson, but today it confirmed that he was stepping down.

Neilson will continue as the university’s registrar but will no longer be responsible for animal research.

The ASC’s statement came in a report stemming from allegations raised by the anti-animal research group BUAV, which had conducted an undercover investigation at the university. A separate independent review organised by the university found that animals were well cared for, but that there were staffing and management problems.

Norman Baker, the minister with responsibility for animal research, said in a statement today that he believes Neilson’s move will enable Imperial to “make a fresh start and move forward. I am pleased to note that significant progress has already been made by ICL in addressing the matters identified.”

Imperial College under renewed pressure over animal research

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Government inspections of animal research in the UK should be reviewed, an independent advisory group said today, in a report which also adds to pressure on Imperial College London over its work in this area.

The Animals in Science Committee, a group including respected scientists, lay persons, animal welfare experts and others which advises the government on animal research, says the minister in charge of the area “should consider whether he can continue to have confidence” in John Neilson, the senior figure at the university who is the licence holder for such work.

The Committee’s report also reveals that inspectors from the UK Home Office expressed concerns about animal research at Imperial before allegations of poor practice were made by London-based animal rights group the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in 2013 after an undercover investigation.

In a statement today, the Home Office minister Norman Baker said, “I regard this as a very serious matter and will consider the report carefully. The Government will publish its response as soon as possible.”

Imperial has responded strongly to the report. It says that Neilson, “who has served in this role since May 2012, has strengthened the College’s governance and operational management of animal research”. In a statement, the university added, “Imperial fully supports his leadership and handling of responsibilities as [the licence holder].”

Imperial has already been subjected to an independent review it commissioned in the wake of the allegations. The university has accepted the conclusions of that review — including that animal-research facilities were understaffed and systems related to management, training and ethical review should be improved – and produced an action plan to work on this.

Imperial says it was “surprised” that today’s report did not refer to this action plan, and that it is “disappointed” that its offer to meet the authors of the report was not taken up.

“The College has made substantial progress in implementing changes set out in the Plan,” it says. “These build on the good standards of animal husbandry identified in the Brown Review and are enabling the College to build a new culture around animal research by establishing and promoting best practice, and taking ethical, welfare and 3Rs issues into account at every level.”

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Environmental offsets under fire

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Allowing development of valuable ecosystems in return for protections elsewhere could ruin attempts to protect biodiversity, researchers warned at a major conference in the United Kingdom this week.

Experts have been meeting this week at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) to discuss whether and how a goal of ‘no net loss’ of biodiversity worldwide might be achieved, in the first global conference on the topic. But debate at the meeting was dominated by the controversial issue of ‘offsets’.

Offsets involve protecting or improving certain areas as compensation for development in others. They range from planting trees in return for a road through woodland to designating a whole new park in return for a mining concession. But critics say that offsets are now allowing developments that would previously have been refused owing to the environmental damage they cause.

“It’s no secret biodiversity offsets are controversial,” Jonathan Baillie, the director of conservation projects at ZSL told the meeting.

Baillie stressed that offsets should be a “very last resort” for those attempting to conserve biodiversity. He and others at the meeting also insisted that some areas — notably, those listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites — should never be developed in return for offsets.

One example raised repeatedly at the meeting was the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which conservation groups fear is under threat from oil extraction. “For this, there are no offsets,” said Baillie.

Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, based in Gland, Switzerland, also warned against trying to offset World Heritage Sites and stressed that good science was essential for successful offsets. Not knowing exactly what you are destroying and what you are saving would undermine existing conservation, she said.

But offsets could be useful, she told the meeting, as important biodiversity and valuable minerals and oil have “the common habit of sharing the same spaces in a landscape”.

Others at the meeting though warned that offsets were already allowing projects to be approved that would otherwise have been rejected on environmental grounds. Hannah Mowat, a campaigner at FERN, a Brussels-based forestry non-governmental organization, said: “It is becoming what we are fearing — a licence to trash.”

She made the analogy to someone having their house bulldozed and then getting a new house built somewhere else. Even if the new house was objectively nicer, one still might not view it as a replacement. In essence, says Mowat, nothing is ‘offsettable’ in nature: “Let’s be honest about that.”

More woe for Australia’s science agency

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The staff association at Australia’s government science agency says that research ranging from astrophysics to neuroscience will be slashed and multiple research sites closed, in addition to hundreds of jobs lost, as its management struggle with budget cuts.

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) had AU$111.4 million (US$103 million) cut over four years in the first budget from the country’s new government, released earlier this month. That was predicted to lead to 500 job cuts.

Now the CSIRO Staff Association, part of the Community and Public Sector Union, says that management is planning to stop research in neurosciences and geothermal energy, and cut work on astrophysics, radio astronomy and carbon capture and storage as a result. The details are contained in an annual directions statement produced by CSIRO chief executive Megan Clark, it says.

The statement also proposes the closure of the Aspendale laboratories atmospheric centre just outside Melbourne, the Griffith laboratory irrigation-research centre in New South Wales, and an ‘e-health’ centre at the University of Queensland in Herston, says the association. Some CSIRO sites were already set to close before the budget announcement, and the staff association says that, in total, the organization will go from 56 to 48 sites.

Last week the Australian Academy of Science released an analysis of the country’s budget that warned that other agencies were also under threat, with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s annual funding dropping AU$26 million and the Cooperative Research Centres programme dropping AU$11 million. The government did win plaudits for a new AU$20-billion medical-research fund.

Nature has requested comment from CSIRO.

Climate row pits academic publisher against The Times

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The Institute of Physics, a respected academic publisher, has hit back at claims in a newspaper that one of its journals declined to publish a paper because the results in it contradicted the scientific consensus on climate change.

A story on the front page of The Times in London today described how a study that “heaped doubt” on the rate of global warming was “deliberately suppressed by scientists because it was ‘less than helpful’ to their cause”. The article, which appeared under the headline ‘Scientists in cover-up of “damaging” climate view’, went on to quote an unnamed peer reviewer of the paper as saying it would be “harmful” if it were published.

The paper was written by meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson of the University of Reading, UK, and was submitted to the Institute of Physics (IoP) journal Environmental Research Letters in February. It was rejected in early March.

In response to the story in The Times, the IoP, based in Bristol, UK, released the full comments from the review. Nicola Gulley, the editorial director at the IoP, said in a statement that the rejection of the paper was based on “the content of the paper not meeting the journal’s high editorial standards”. A passage from the newspaper article has been reproduced below, alongside the section of the peer review from which it is based.

“With current debate around the dangers of providing a false sense of ‘balance’ on a topic as societally important as climate change, we’re quite astonished that The Times has taken the decision to put such a non-story on its front page,” said Gulley.

In a statement put out through the London-based Science Media Centre, Bengtsson said he did not believe that there had been a “cover up” of scientific evidence on climate change. But he added: “I was concerned that the Environmental Research Letters reviewer’s comments suggested his or her opinion was not objective or based on an unbiased assessment of the scientific evidence. Science relies on having a transparent and robust peer review system so I welcome the Institute of Physics publishing the reviewer’s comments in full.”

Earlier this month, Bengtsson was announced as having joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) think tank, which describes itself as “open-minded on the contested science of global warming” and is often accused of being a climate-sceptic group. However on 14 May the GWPF announced that the researcher had resigned. Bengtsson said he had been placed under “enormous world-wide pressure” from academic colleagues who objected to his link to the GWPF. He compared the situation to the McCarthy-era communist witch-hunts in the United States in the 1950s.

Benny Peiser, director of the GWPF, said his group had nothing to do with The Times story. But he added that the reviewer’s comments showed that there was a clear political dimension to the rejection.

bengt j

US bee losses drop but not enough

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Colony loss from 1 October to 1 April. Blue area shows acceptable loss, as estimated by survey participants. {credit}Source: USDA{/credit}

America’s beekeepers lost nearly one-quarter of their colonies over the last winter — a dramatic improvement on previous years but still worse than what farmers consider sustainable rates.

Honeybee colonies across the world are under pressure from a variety of threats, including insecticide use, parasites and problems with food supply. In some parts of the world populations have been devastated by a poorly understood and nebulously defined ‘colony-collapse disorder’.

Today the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released the results of an annual survey of farmed honeybees that it has been running for the past eight years to try and get a handle on the scale of the problem. Data from 7,183 beekeepers and 564,522 of the country’s 2.6 million colonies found that 23.2% of hives died over the 2013–14 winter.

In 2012–13 this figure was 30.5%. A loss of 18.9% was considered sustainable by those surveyed (some scientists believe 15% or even 10% should be the acceptable level).

“While we’re glad to see improvement this year, losses are still too high and there is still much more work to be done to stabilize bee populations,” said US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.

Earlier this year a European survey found loss rates ranging from 3.5% in Lithuania to 33.6% in Belgium.

Many environmental campaigners and some scientists blame bee losses on neonicotinoid pesticides — some of which have been banned in the European Union. Friends of the Earth said that today’s USDA figures showed the need to take similar action in the United States. Other researchers believe that parasites, diseases and changes in farming methods are also playing an important part in pollinator declines.

 

 

‘Misreading’ of data led to errors in statin papers

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The BMJ is modifying, and is considering whether to retract, articles that questioned whether many patients should be given cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. The articles made a critical statement about the rate of side effects that were based on a “misreading” of another study, according to the journal’s editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee.

In October 2013,  John Abramson, a medical researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues stated in a review article that around one-fifth (18–20%) of patients on statins experienced side effects. The authors’ main thrust was to re-analyse data by the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists’ (CTT) Collaboration, and they cite evidence that there are no benefits when statins are given to people at low risk of cardiovascular disease — a controversial issue in medicine. But they also noted the 18% side-effects figure. That had come from an observational study that said statin-related events were documented for 17.4% of adults taking the drugs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

But in an editorial published today, Godlee says the side-effects statement was a mistake. It is being withdrawn from the article and from an opinion piece, published at the same time, that also used the figure. It was based on a “misreading” of the observational study, says the editorial (although the conclusion on the lack of benefits stands).

“The true incidence of adverse events from use of statins in people at low risk of cardiovascular disease continues to be disputed. Data compiled by the CTT Collaboration show that rates of adverse effects are similar in the active and the placebo arms in trials of statins,” writes Godlee. She adds, “This editorial aims to alert readers, the media, and the public to the withdrawal of these statements so that patients who could benefit from statins are not wrongly deterred from starting or continuing treatment because of exaggerated concerns over side effects.”

Godlee says that her journal was alerted to the error by Rory Collins, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, UK, and head of the team whose data Abramson re-analysed. Collins wishes both articles to be withdrawn, but the BMJ says this is not necessary, as the error was not the main thrust of the articles. The journal has convened an independent panel to look into whether the articles should be retracted.