ScienceInsider

by Michael Balter

Last week, attorneys for biologist and author Jared Diamond and Advance Publication Inc., publisher of The New Yorker, filed papers in New York state court in response to a lawsuit filed against them last April by two tribesmen from Papua New Guinea. The plaintiffs, Daniel Wemp and Isum Mandingo, claimed that Diamond and The New Yorker had defamed then in an article Diamond wrote for the magazine in April 2008, entitled "Vengence is Ours," about a tribal war that allegedly took place some years earlier

On Friday the plaintiffs filed an "Amended Complaint" (pdf) in court which gives the details of their accusations. The 30-page document summarizing the charges against Diamond and The New Yorker, which allegedly "falsely accus[ed] plaintiffs of criminal behavior, including complicity in multiple murders and in the case of Wemp promoting prostitution and/or rape."

The document goes on to quote extensively from The New Yorker article, responding to each passage with a section entitled "The truth." For example, in response to Diamonds description of Daniel Wemp as the main organizer of the revenge war, the document states:

Daniel Wemp was not a participant in this war at all. At the time of the fighting, Wemp was working some 200 miles away at the coast, in a city called Madang. He only learned of the fighting after it was over.

The defendants are now demanding a total of at least $45 million in damages for the injuries they have allegedly suffered to their reputation. No trial date has been set.

Ed. Note: This story, which was removed on 19 October due to an editorial miscommunication, is being republished in its original form.

by Cheryl Jones

CANBERRA—Just days after Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, became the first Australia-born woman to win a Nobel Prize, for work on telomeres, a report released here today has revealed that most of her female compatriots are low on Australia’s science food chain.

Women accounted for about 22% of full-time professionals in design, engineering, science, and transport in 2009—faint improvement over the roughly 18% tabulated in 1996, according to the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, which commissioned the “Women in Science in Australia” report.

Lighting up the Internet in India are bizarre allegations that a researcher at the country's premier defense lab was attacked with an ax in a bungled attempt at human sacrifice. But in a press release today, the Defence Research and Development Establishment in Gwalior labeled the allegations "baseless" and noted that it has tasked a committee to report back on the matter by 28 October.

—Pallava Bagla

by Dennis Normile

As expected, Japan's new government announced yesterday it is ordering ministries to rethink the 2010 budget requests they submitted on 28 August—a process that could have an impact on science-related spending. New requests, due 15 October, are expected to reflect the policies of the Democratic Party, which won a 30 August election and took power on 16 September. The biggest changes are likely to be in expanded social services and cutbacks in public works projects. But the Democratic Party's campaign platform also called for developing renewable energy technologies and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.  

By Jon Cohen

A large clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine has, for the first time, yielded positive results. But researchers immediately questioned the relevance of the data, which indicated that the vaccine offered only modest protection against infection by HIV.

The controversial trial, conducted with more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand over the past 6 years, tested the effectiveness of two AIDS vaccines used together as a one-two punch. Researchers randomly assigned an equal number of participants who were at average risk of becoming infected by HIV to receive either the two vaccines or a saline placebo. At the end of the study in June, 51 of the vaccinated people had become infected within 3 years of receiving their last shot, compared with 74 people in the placebo group. The p value, which indicates whether results are due to chance, was less than 0.039, just below the widely accepted but arbitrary “significance” cutoff of 0.05. Surprisingly, the vaccine did not appear to suppress levels of the virus in the 51 people who became infected. No serious adverse events were seen in either group.

Many AIDS vaccine researchers had predicted that the study would fail, and its sponsors are thrilled by the efficacy, marginal though it may be. “Although the level of protection was modest, we think the study is a major scientific advance,” said Colonel Jerome Kim, HIV vaccines product manager for the U.S. Army, which collaborated with the Thai Ministry of Health to conduct the efficacy trial. “We were all pretty energized by the results.” The U.S. military and Thai officials will announce the results of the trial, the largest ever held of an AIDS vaccine (see table on other AIDS vaccine trials after the jump), at press conferences today in Thailand and the United States.

Several longtime critics of the study, which cost $105 million, were dumbfounded—and circumspect—when they learned the results.

by Richard Stone

Earlier this summer, South Korea merged three science agencies to form the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). The new body will control a $2 billion pot of money, roughly 20% of the government’s annual R&D spending. Science recently caught up with NRF’s first president, computer scientist Chan-Mo Park.

Q: By any measure, Korea is a technology powerhouse, but its achievements have come more from emulation than innovation. How will NRF change that?

NEW DELHI—India’s maiden moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, has come to a shuddering and unexpected halt. On 29 August, the Indian Space Research Organization lost all contact with the spacecraft after a catastrophic failure of its electronics, said ISRO Chair G. Madhavan Nair.

TOKYO—The Ministry of Education's budget request for the next fiscal year has some welcome news for research, including a new teaching assistant program to employ graduate students, dramatically expanded funding for the space program, and a big increase in support for grants to researchers. But there’s a catch: In recent years the ministry, which funds the bulk of Japan's public research, has been encouraged to aim high, only to have its requests cut down by science advisory bodies, politicians, and the parsimonious Ministry of Finance.

TOKYO—Research involving human embryonic stem (ES) cells will become easier in Japan as a result of new ethical review requirements that take effect today.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA—The Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC) hopes that a new business plan will help it regain momentum in the last 2 years of its term. The plan, announced today, would shift ASCC’s emphasis from commercialization to research. “I’m extremely pleased,” says Ernst Wolvetang, who directs ASCC’s program on induced pluripotent stem cells. “It’s a testament to the revamped ASCC that it’s truly inclusive of a wide range of new initiatives.”

ASCC, a $90 million government-funded center of excellence, was created in 2002 to get Australian stem cell researchers working together and to commercialize their findings. Differences of opinion on how to achieve those dual goals have roiled the center since its inception. With 2 years and $25 million of funding left, the stakeholders—nine universities and institutes—earlier this year drafted a plan that called for forging large-scale collaborations.

With the government’s stamp of approval, ASCC this week unveiled a revised plan with collaborations in four broad research streams as its centerpiece: