Supposed signs of aliens, injustices of pandemics, and other stories
Welcome to Ramin’s Space, the newsletter from science writer and editor Ramin Skibba. You can read more about the newsletter here. If you like it, please consider subscribing and sharing this post.
How will scientists know when they’ve discovered alien life? And how should journalists cover it?
Those were among the critical questions my space journalist friends and colleagues—Nadia Drake and David W. Brown and I—discussed on a panel yesterday, at a workshop in Tucson, Arizona, organized by MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program. (Other esteemed speakers included astrobiologist Aomawa Shields, whom I interviewed for a Wired piece in 2023.)
Fresh on everyone’s minds was the supposedly “promising sign” of extraterrestrial life on the sub-Neptune planet known as K2-18b, in the form of a whiff of dimethyl sulfide. There’s plenty of blame to go around: The authors of a new study and the accompanying press release from the University of Cambridge press release gave a misleading and exaggerated picture of the researchers’ findings and their significance, and some reporters, sadly including a veteran science journalist at the New York Times, did not approach such momentous claims with sufficient skepticism. The breathless coverage and subsequent debates resulted in some better takes, including by Ross Andersen in The Atlantic and by astronomer Chris Lintott in the blog Last Word on Nothing (for which I’ve written guest posts as well).
It reminds me of previous debates, such as about claims of a hypothetical “Planet Nine” on the edge of our solar system (which I’ve scrutinized while examining alternative, less-covered perspectives in The Atlantic and Scientific American) and dubious claims of phosphine detected in Venus’s atmosphere (which eventually drew some skeptical coverage as well).
People can and should be excited about this kind of research, and I’m thrilled people are so interested in such findings. If scientists one day do discover compelling signs of life on an extraterrestrial world, it would help us finally answer the profound question, “Are we alone in the cosmos?” It could be as pivotal and contentious as centuries-ago debates about whether the Earth’s the center of the universe. Journalists should tread carefully in such terrain, but we should also continue encouraging people’s fascination with this kind of science.
How Plagues are Intertwined with Social Justice
COVID-19 accomplished one thing that other modern epidemics did not: It reminded everyone of persistent racial and class inequalities in healthcare systems around the world, inequalities that were inevitably amplified amidst exposure and treatment of the contagion. Widespread COVID illness and death, in addition to the economic impacts of the pandemic, were not evenly felt, and their repercussions are still with us today.
In her new book, Edna Bonhomme, an American science historian and writer based in Berlin, eloquently shows how race and class intersected with previous outbreaks too, including cholera, Ebola, and HIV/AIDS. While revisiting critical historical episodes, she demonstrates the discrimination and racism that have been prevalent in plantation medicine, colonial medicine, and prison medicine. I recommend the book, A History of the World in Six Plagues, which I reviewed for Undark magazine.
In other writing…
No, The Dire Wolf Isn’t Back. There was lots of credulous coverage of the claim by Colossal Biosciences that the startup had “de-extincted” the dire wolf. The company does have experts on board, including evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro, but we should always treat bold claims with extra skepticism. At this time, looks like they’ve simply created gray wolf pups with a couple DNA alterations. I recommend this media analysis by Jessica McKenzie for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I agree with Dan Vergano at Scientific American that, as always, the focus should be on conservation efforts.
Anatomy of an Extinction, by Jackie Flynn Mogensen in Mother Jones, about an endangered salamander facing threats from climate change, urban development, and the Trump administration’s anti-conservation policies.
The Decline of Outside Magazine Is Also the End of a Vision of the Mountain West, by Rachel Monroe in the New Yorker
The Worm That No Computer Scientist Can Crack, by Claire Evans in WIRED
Diary of a Spreadsheet, a n+1 magazine essay by Chelsea Kirk, about tenant organizing, landlord greed, and the housing crisis.
The murder, the museum and the monument, by Kori Suzuki in High Country News, about unearthing and remembering the history of the US government’s internment of Japanese-Americans. I also recommend this book review essay, The Secret History, by Harmony Holiday in Bookforum magazine. Seems like many people are writing about this period these days, and it does seem timely, considering all the students and immigrants being rounded up in ICE detention centers in Louisiana and elsewhere.
Lots of interesting new books to check out: More Everything Forever, by Adam Becker about the absurd beliefs of Silicon Valley tech overlords, Malcolm Harris’s What’s Left about humanity’s paths through the climate crisis, and Carl Zimmer’s Air-Borne, about air pollution and disease. I’m also curious about America, América, by Pulitzer Prize-winner Greg Grandin, about the interconnected histories of North America and Latin America since the 15th century.
What I’m reading: Water & Salt, by Arab-American poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Our History is the Future, by Nick Estes, about Standing Rock and Indigenous resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline, a book that’s also relevant to the ongoing Greenpeace case.
Looking back: Seven years ago, I wrote in Newsweek about how solitary confinement, even over short periods, affects people’s brains. Despite the known psychological and neurological impacts, the widespread practice continues unabated in the US and some other countries, including El Salvador, where the Trump administration has illegally deported hundreds of immigrants.
More about me: I’m a science writer, editor, and journalist based in the Bay Area. I was WIRED magazine’s space writer until December 2023, and before that I worked as a freelance writer and an astrophysicist. You can find me at my website, raminskibba.net, and on Bluesky and Twitter. I’m also former president of the San Diego Science Writers Association (SANDSWA) and on the board of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), though the opinions I express are mine alone. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you’re welcome to subscribe too.