Wetenschapsjournalistiek met een kritisch oog bekeken.

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Op maandag 15 oktober 2009 14:36 schreef Iblis het volgende:


Vondsten worden opgeklopt, beginnend onderzoek wordt gepresenteerd als een enorme doorbraak, baarlijke nonsens wordt als feit neergezet, en vaak blijkt dat de journalist in kwestie er geen kaas van gegeten heeft.

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Op donderdag 15 oktober 2009 14:36 schreef Iblis het volgende:
Onlangs schreef een trouw gebruiker op dit forum – van wie ik de naam niet noem om privacy redenen: Onze conclusie was eigenlijk dat er kennelijk bar weinig goede wetenschapsjournalisten zijn.

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Op donderdag 15 oktober 2009 14:57 schreef Iblis het volgende:
Het internet ≠ world wide web.

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Op maandag 19 oktober 2009 16:39 schreef Iblis het volgende:

[..]

10 jaar geleden had ik je gelijk gegeven maar nu niet meer. De tekst van het Groot Dictee 2004 had al:
[..]

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AMSTERDAM – Vrouwen zullen in de toekomst iets kleiner worden en langer in staat zijn om kinderen te krijgen. Dat blijkt uit een Amerikaanse studie die er op wijst dat mensen nog steeds evolueren.

© ANP Wetenschappers van de universiteit Yale bestudeerden de medische gegevens van meer dan 2000 vrouwen uit drie generaties in de Amerikaanse stad Framingham.

Ze onderzochten of eigenschappen zoals lengte, gewicht, bloeddruk, hartslag en cholesterol van invloed waren op het aantal kinderen dat de vrouwen kregen.

Uit de studie bleek dat er inderdaad natuurlijke selectie optrad. Zo kregen kleine en zwaardere vrouwen over het algemeen meer kinderen. En ook vrouwen met een lage bloeddruk en een laag cholesterolgehalte zetten gemiddeld genomen meer nakomelingen op de wereld.

Minder verrassend was dat deelnemers aan de studie die op een jonge leeftijd zwanger raakten en relatief laat in de overgang kwamen ook meer kinderen verwekten.

De vrouwen bleken de eigenschappen die van invloed waren op hun vruchtbaarheid ook door te geven aan hun dochters, die daardoor eveneens meer nakomelingen kregen.

“De boodschap is dat mensen nog steeds evolueren”, aldus hoofdonderzoeker Stephen Stearns op de Amerikaanse nieuwssite Physorg.com. “Er is nog steeds een vorm van natuurlijke selectie aan de gang.”

De resultaten van het onderzoek zijn gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijk tijdschrift Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Als de gemeten natuurlijke selectie zich nog tien generaties voortzet, zullen vrouwen in het jaar 2409 gemiddeld 2 centimeter kleiner zijn en een kilo zwaarder, zo hebben de onderzoekers berekend voor het Britse tijdschrift New Scientist.

Ook zal de gemiddelde vrouw haar eerste kind in de toekomst ongeveer vijf maanden eerder krijgen dan nu het geval is en zal ze 10 maanden later in de menopauze komen.

“Er bestaat een idee dat mensen niet meer evolueren, omdat onze medische wetenschap het aantal sterfgevallen zo sterk terugdringt dat er geen natuurlijke selectie meer optreedt”, aldus Stearns.

“Maar de evolutie die we hebben gemeten bij de vrouwen in Framingham is vergelijkbaar met de gemiddelde snelheid waarmee planten en dieren evolueren", verklaart de wetenschapper. "Dat betekent dat mensen helemaal niet zo speciaal zijn als het aankomt op evolutie.”

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Op maandag 19 oktober 2009 18:09 schreef oompaloompa het volgende:
prbleem is dat wanneer je een goede wetenschapsjournalist wilt zijn, je zowel redelijk veel af moet weten van alle vlakken van de wetenschap, als goed kunnen schrijven.

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Op woensdag 21 oktober 2009 12:25 schreef Monolith het volgende:
Hier nog een voorbeeldje van nu.nl.
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Daarnaast is het idee dat voor 'evolutie' per sé natuurlijke selectie nodig is onjuist.

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Op vrijdag 30 oktober 2009 10:35 schreef Lyrebird het volgende:
Deze mag wel eens onder het mes:

Bier wordt fors duurder door global warming

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Food Price Rises, Food Shortages and Food Poverty

The world has already seen the early impact of climate change on food production and food prices, which coupled with other drivers has driven prices upwards at an astronomical pace.
The World Bank points out that global food prices have risen by 75 percent since 2000, while wheat prices increased by a massive 200 percent before falling back recently. The costs of other staples such as rice and soya bean have also hit record highs, while the price of corn is expected to continue to rise far into the future¹².
These price increases result from a complex mix of drivers, including; the new demand for biofuels in the EU and US (rather than demanding radical new car fuel efficiency standards), the global growth in meat consumption, liberalisation of agriculture, declining state support for food production, rising fertiliser costs (as a result of higher oil prices), and poor harvests in countries hit by drought as a result of climate change.
As population growth raises demand for food, climate change will sap the world’s capacity to produce it. Also, climate change is reducing agricultural productivity in many parts of the world especially in the developing world and coastal flooding is reducing the amount of land available for agriculture¹³.

Ironically the food system used and driven by rich countries is a major contributor to climate change, producing between a third and a half of total emissions through its use of fertilisers and energy, and especially through deforestation for production of animal feeds and fuels.
On one hand our food system is causing climate change and on the other it will suffer from it. A four-year assessment of global agriculture – sponsored by the UN, World Bank, World Health Organisation and conducted in the name of 58 nation states, recognised the damage caused by industrial agriculture and last year called for a move towards more sustainable, integrated production methods¹⁴.
Global prices will continue to rise as resource constraints intensify and the world population grows – estimated by the UN to reach over eight billion by 2030¹⁵ – and as climate change reduces agricultural output.
A report published in the journal Science in January 2009 concluded that yields of staple crops like rice and corn could drop by as much as 40 percent in tropical and subtropical regions by the end of the century, based purely on the impact of increasing peak temperatures during growing seasons¹⁶.
In India, climatologists are already proclaiming that there will be no more reliable monsoons on the sub-continent. In 2009 rainfall in India was down by 25 percent and crop yields down by between 20 percent and 40 percent¹⁷.
And the world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production security as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia¹⁸.

China and India are the world’s leading producers of both wheat and rice – humanity’s food staples. China’s wheat harvest is nearly double that of the United States, which ranks third after India. With rice, these two countries are far and away the leading food producers, together accounting for over half of the world harvest¹⁹.
As food shortages unfold, China is almost certain to try to hold down domestic food prices by using its massive dollar holdings to import grain, most of it from the United States, the world’s leading grain exporter. Even now, China, which a decade or so ago was essentially self-sufficient in soybeans, has joined Europe in being one of the biggest importers of soybeans, importing 70 percent of its supply, and along with Europe is helping drive world soybean prices to an all-time high²⁰. As irrigation water supplies shrink, Chinese consumers will be competing with Americans for the U.S. grain harvest. India, too, may try to import large quantities of grain, although it may lack the economic resources to do so, especially if grain prices keep climbing as a result of reducing output coupled with increased meat consumption by the wealthy.
Professor Anthony Costello, of the University College London Institute for Global Health, published a report in ‘The Lancet’ in May 2009 in which a team of multi-disciplinary researchers warned that food, water and sanitation will be under considerable pressure as climate change progresses. The report states that there is now evidence that crops are more sensitive to temperature than scientists originally thought, with estimates suggesting a rise of just 1°C can reduce yields by as much as 17 percent. The report added that falling crop yields in the next 20 or 30 years could trigger a significant rise in food prices²¹.
And the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has warned that by 2030 unchecked climate change and the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences – ‘a perfect storm’, in his words. He said that demand for food and energy will jump 50 percent by 2030 and for fresh water by 30 percent, as the global population tops eight billion. Professor Beddington added that the looming crisis of climate change and dwindling resources would match the severity of the recent crisis in the banking sector²².
In Britain, which currently imports 42 percent of its food, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make most domestically produced food more expensive. Some parts of the U.K. are predicted to become less able to grow crops as higher temperatures become the norm. Most climate models suggest the south-east of England will be especially vulnerable to water shortages, particularly in the summer²³.
Even global supplies of fish, which are already threatened by over-exploitation, will be severely damaged by unchecked climate change. Fish populations in the tropics could fall by as much as 40 percent over the next half century because of global warming, jeopardising a vital food source for the world, a recent study by the Sea Around Us project found²⁴.
For British citizens the price of staple foods is certain to rocket if climate change remains unchecked, and if other drivers are not reduced or reversed.

The World Bank has already observed that wheat prices trebled in the last ten years. Now a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) predicts that food prices could more than triple by the middle of this century as the climate changes.
The report, ‘Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation’, was developed for inclusion in two reports for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in October 2009. Drawing on climate models and crop models projecting changes in production, trade and consumption of the world’s major crops, IFPRI predicts a much worse scenario. It forecasts wheat prices to rise 170 to 194 percent, rice prices 113 to 121 percent, and maize to go up 148 to 153 percent²⁵.
Applying both the World Bank’s historic price observations and the new models on future food pricing developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute, it is possible to project the following price hikes1 for British consumers if global climate change is not mitigated and other drivers are not reduced or reversed:
Thick white sliced loaf, 800 gram – £0.72 – £6.48
Pure corn oil – 1 litre £1.99 – £17.91
Basmati rice – 1 Kgram £1.69 – £15.21
Fusilli pasta, 500 gram – £0.78 – £7.02
Corn flakes, 500 gram – £0.80 – £7.20
Weetabix-style cereal, 24 x 18 gram – £1.78 – £16.02
Home brewed cup of tea (exc.energy) – £0.01 – £0.09
Pint of Pilsner lager – £2.05 – £18.45

(NB. Inflation over 20 years would normally suggest a doubling in the price of food commodities.)
The price of a cup of tea – Britain’s national drink – is already increasing as drought has hit Kenya hard in the past year, as well as Sri Lanka and India, which is the world's biggest producer of tea. The price of tea on the world market has risen over 30 percent in one year, although the price in UK shops has at least temporarily been held down by retailers²⁸.
And evidence on the prospects for future crop yields in tea and coffee is provided by a new report from the Adaptation for Smallholders to Climate Change²⁹. This study reports that there has been a drought-driven record spike in Kenyan tea prices in 2009 and steep falls in coffee harvests across the world, ranging from 28 percent in Ethiopia to 50 percent in Nicaragua, due to ‘extreme weather’. The reports authors also suggest that climate change will render many of the areas in which tea and coffee are grown currently unsuitable for cultivation
And the prospect of the £18 pint of lager is brought closer by reports from scientists at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute who say that the quality of Saaz hops - the delicate variety used to make pilsner lager - has been decreasing in recent years. They say the culprit is climate change in the form of increased air temperature³⁰.
If such dramatic food price rises as these were forced on UK citizens by the world’s export markets millions more could face food poverty. Food poverty today is not the poverty faced by the Victorians where large swathes of the population were unable to eat. Instead it is connected to both the availability of healthy food and the ability to buy it. But price does matter. Researchers have shown that five percent of adults cannot afford fresh fruit daily and one in twenty mothers goes without food to meet the needs of their children.
The poorest in society have the least ability to respond to soaring food prices as they already spend a greater proportion of their income of food than higher income groups and they will also suffer disproportionately from much higher fuel bills.

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Op donderdag 5 november 2009 12:22 schreef speknek het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op donderdag 5 november 2009 12:30 schreef Bosbeetle het volgende:


Dat kilimanjaro voorbeeld is wel schreinend zeg.

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An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.