I'm not sure what's more priceless in this video: Attenborough's eyebrows making an abrupt dash for the ceiling, or publicity-seeking scientist Jørn Hurum's hand-wringing grimace. The question? New Scientist's Rowan Hooper asked Hurum whether the team behind the recent Ida fossil farce couldn't "have waited a little longer to do a more rigorous analysis before making their media splash." The response (see video here) was illuminating, and frankly cynical. I'll be blogging about Ida in more detail tonight, after the BBC1 show at 9pm.
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I watched the program last night and it seemed like the scientists spent a lot of time examining the fossil in great detail before announcing to the world what had been found. Obviously excitement over the finding may have made their announcements premature, however, as long as updates on later findings are revealed I don’t see the harm sharing with the world the story of such an amazing find.
They have made a claim in the media that cannot be backed up with their paper as it stands. Perhaps they might back it up with further research in the future, but if they can't - and many other scientists believe they can't - then they will have brought their entire profession into disrepute, and undermined public trust in science. That, in a nutshell, is the problem.
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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