Lab report

Perhaps you’ve never have heard of wheat rust, but it may soon be as common a term as swine flu—and at least as worrisome. Wheat rust has returned to threaten the breadbaskets of the world. The disease has been known about since antiquity: a fungal infection manifesting as red pustules on the stems of wheat, which destroy the plant. The spores, spread by wind, can travel up to 160km in a day, and outbreaks can decimate crop yields. It was apt to cause havoc worldwide, until crossbreeding experiments in the 1960s created a seed stock resistant to the fungus, thanks to a single gene: Sr31. That seemed the end of the problem. Yet in 1998 a new form of the disease, immune to Sr31, was discovered in Uganda. This form, called Ug99, has spread through Kenya and Ethiopia to Yemen and Iran. Now there are fears it will reach Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, where it could affect food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. And the new variant has been accompanied by the spread of a related infection called wheat stripe rust or yellow rust, which is also immune to Sr31. New strains of wheat with several genes that confer resistance to Ug99 have been developed, but disseminating them fast enough—and persuading nervous farmers to adopt them—is a challenge. If the biomolecular mechanisms of wheat rust can be understood, genetic engineering might speed up the process. But the Ug99 form of the fungus is cunning. “It’s going to take a long time to understand this organism,” says Les Szabo of the US department of agriculture. If proponents of GM crops want a killer app, this is surely it. CLIMATE CARELESSNESS Few investigations into scientific misconduct will be less salutary than the “climategate” inquiries at the universities of Pennsylvania and East Anglia (UEA) following the hacking of UEA scientists’ emails at the Climate Research Unit (CRU). Both panels confirmed what most objective observers had already figured: the scientists were careless and cavalier but committed no serious offences, nor did their dissembling have any real bearing on their conclusions. The Pennsylvania inquiry focused on climate scientist Michael Mann, who was implicated in the CRU emails. He is the Mann behind the infamous “hockey stick” graph, showing recent global temperatures rising sharply after 1,000 years of steadiness. In 2006 the US National Research Council found the graph to be flawed, and climate sceptics have used it ever since to attack the “scientific consensus” on climate change. But in February Mann was cleared of the most serious accusations of fraud and data manipulation, and in July another committee found “no substance” in the misconduct charge. The episode highlights an issue relevant to any field of science: the ambiguity of rules over sharing data and manuscripts before publication. Mann was accused of passing on data sent to him by colleagues without explicitly asking their permission. Although he claimed that their consent was implicit (and they have confirmed this), the committee judged this “careless and inappropriate.” That it was deemed a minor solecism will relieve all the scientists who do similar things. The panel investigating UEA has similarly exonerated former CRU director Phil Jones and his colleagues of the most serious allegations of suppressing and manipulating data. While “their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt,” says the report, “there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness.” The UEA inquiry stresses that this does not alter the CRU’s conclusions about climate change. So all the inquiries have really done is deliver a wake-up call to the climate community: their intense public scrutiny demands higher standards than are typical in science. Inevitably, climate sceptics are already dismissing the decisions as a whitewash. But their job is done: the number of people who believe in global warming has dropped significantly in the past two years, and fewer people trust climate scientists.

BITTER MEDICINE With epidemics and global health so firmly on the agenda, Michael Marmot’s appointment as the new head of the British Medical Association (BMA) looks auspicious. Marmot is an epidemiologist specialising in the effects of social inequality on health, and he has made this his theme for the year. But he may find himself fighting battles closer to home. The BMA has opposed key aspects of the Tories’ 12th July white paper on the NHS—which could result in private-sector involvement and 30,000 job losses—and expressed alarm over the breakdown of improvements to the capital’s hospitals that led the NHS London head, Richard Sykes, to resign in May. Killer crop diseases aside, Marmot has his work cut out.