A panel at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco met today to discuss the media circus surrounding the recent announcement about so-called ‘arsenic-based life’ (see Nature’s news coverage here and here, our editorial, a good timeline of events by Dan Vergano, and the listing of AGU press briefings). 
The incident makes a fun analysis for those interested in how the media / science relationship is changing, thanks to everything from the rising canniness of press offices, a decline in specialist reporters at serious news outlets, and the rise of bloggers and tweeters in the dissemination of news. As panel-member Charles Petit, lead writer of the Knight Science Journalism Tracker based in Berkeley, California, noted, this isn’t a case of fraud or scandal — “no one is going to jail” — but of whirl-wind of science promotion and blow-back.
(more below the fold)
The questions of whether the science is right or not, or was well-done or not, were set aside. Instead the discussion covered the problems caused by NASA’s apparently inflammatory ‘teasers’ and press releases that made it seem, at first, as if NASA had actually found extraterrestrial life; the mayhem of ill-informed bloggers writing on sometimes-well-established websites with over-blown statements about ‘entirely new forms of life’; the wild enthusiasm of some of the scientists on the original press panel; and, intriguingly, the complete lack of participation of senior scientist Ron Oremland (also on the panel) with either NASA or Science about any of the press teasers or releases (the person who did the work and was lead author on the paper, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, handled this side of things). “I find that astonishing,” said panelist Robert Irion, director of the science communication program at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and former correspondent for Science’s news section. This raises the interesting question of whether all scientists listed on a paper should have buy-in to not only the final paper but also the press releases.
Irion was particularly scathing about the press materials in this case: “NASA’s advisory was ill-advised and clearly fed the rumour mill,” he said. In the Science press material, he adds, “The material was much too definitively stated.” Indeed, he noted, Science has a reputation for putting out “daring” papers in astronomical fields, and researchers tend to take material in the Astrophysical Journal much more seriously.
The difference in new-media savvy between Oremland and Wolfe-Simon is striking. Wolfe-Simon wasn’t part of the panel but, as was pointed out in the question period, she was watching the webcast and tweeting her reactions (though some might say she’s more technology savvy than media savvy). Oremland on the other hand said: “My feet are firmly planted in the 20th century. I’m used to dealing with the print media. I have no idea what to do about the blogosphere, and I apologize for any errors I made.”
Oremland emphasized several times that the paper was peer reviewed, by both the USGS and by Science. He and others have decided to stick to peer-reviewed channels for the ongoing science discussion, rather than airing everything in public — an overwhelming and even frightening venue for some. “If you told me a month ago what I was getting into, I would have been hiding under the bed,” said Oremland. “You can wind up in a Jerry Springer situation before you know it, with people throwing chairs.”
One big questions left hanging at the end of the session was whether peer-reviewed channels need to change in response to the new social media world, and whether choosing to stay out of the fray ever actually does any scientists any good. As panelist Andrew Steele — a scientist at the Carnegie Institute of Washington who attended via telephone — put it: “If you stick to the peer review system are you being elitist?” That question went unanswered.
UPDATE:
Although Wolfe-Simon and Oremland initially indicated that they would stick to peer-reviewed channels for discussing their work, they have now released a statement that responds to some of the most commonly raised concerns “as a public service, and to clarify their data and procedures”. The researchers also describe their experience since the paper was published as “unimaginable”.
They add: “We freely admitted in the paper and in the press that there was much, much more work to do by us and a whole host of other scientists…We look forward to working with other scientists, either directly or by making the cells freely available and providing DNA samples to appropriate experts for their analyses, in an effort to provide more insight into this intriguing finding.”
University of British Columbia microbiologist Rosie Redfield, one of the first scientists to criticize the work, has already responded to the statement on her blog.