Where’s My Damn Cancer Cure?
Every few weeks, there’s another news story about how we’ve got a promising new drug for cancer. Why haven’t we cured it yet?
There’s a very interesting path that new discoveries take, in moving from a peer-reviewed scientific paper, to science journalism and press releases, to regular news.
Generally, many of the main facts tend to stay there, but the edges become fuzzy and distorted. Important qualifying details are sometimes lost, and the tone of the discovery becomes more extreme.
A great example of this is the recent buzz (sorry) about “murder hornets” from Asia being found in the United States. As the older brother of a bee expert who has written on this topic, I’ve heard about several misconceptions and challenges from how this story’s been reported:
- These Asian Giant Hornets aren’t actually called “murder hornets”, at least until now — this is a new nickname that hasn’t been used by scientific researchers and seems to have come from the press.
- There have been only scattered identification of the new giant Asian hornet species, only in Washington state. They aren’t scattered all across the US.
- Enough stings from these hornets can kill, but that’s not unique to this species. 30–40 wasp stings are enough to kill a person.
