Being Rick Weiss Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

Or Wrong.

In today's Senators Denounce Scientist's Stem-Cell Claims, science reporter Rick Weiss states more clearly than ever that reporters were duped by a false press release on embryonic stem-cell research without acknowledging that he was one of the dupe-ees.

I'm sure that's a word.

PostWatch regulars will remember that on Aug. 24 Weiss wrote New Method Makes Embryo-Safe Cells, a story whose original hed was Stem Cells Created With No Harm To Human Embryos. In that story, Weiss wrote:

Lanza and his team started eight months ago with 16 embryos donated by fertility clinic patients. Each embryo consisted of about eight cells. The researchers took not just one cell from each, but as many as they could get -- destroying some of the embryos and ending up with 91 cells.

Nope, wrong, all the embryos were destroyed, a fact that remains uncorrected in the online archive, uncorrected in the accompanying detailed graphic, and ultimately unexplained by Weiss. Because this is the kind of mistake you can make when relying exclusively on a press release. And who would do that, in a major A-section story?

Today Weiss writes:

But opponents of the research, most prominently representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, quickly attacked that claim as bordering on fraudulent. They noted that, in ACT's experiments, the scientists destroyed the embryos to get as many single cells as possible to work with.

While that fact was clear in the Nature report, it was less than clear to some members of the media and the public.

Specter and Harkin focused on what they said was the main reason for the confusion: the company's news release, which said the team had derived stem cells "using an approach that does not harm embryos."

The approach -- removing single cells -- may be harmless when only one cell is removed, the senators agreed. But in this case, it did harm embryos because the scientists, wanting to make the most of the few embryos donated for the work, took many cells from each.

Similarly, the release quoted Lanza as saying: "We have demonstrated, for the first time, that human embryonic stem cells can be generated without interfering with the embryo's potential for life."

Why do reporters get away with failing to acknowledge their mistakes? Because they can, and because it is deeply embedded in the DNA of editors and reporters to resist printing corrections. It's one of the reasons the press's fixaton on getting President Bush to admit mistakes is so amusing. A little projection goes a long way.

Courtesy of the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, Dennis O'Brien and Jonathan Bor of the Baltimore Sun speak clearly and move on with their lives in Stem cell experiment killed embryos, researchers say:

Many news outlets, including The Sun, reported that the embryos had survived the experiments.

But for practical reasons, the scientists withdrew numerous cells from each embryo, destroying them in the process....

Nature editors have acknowledged that they erred in a news release describing the study as "plucking single cells from human embryos" in a way that generated new stem cell lines "while leaving the embryo intact."

A subsequent clarification noted that the researchers removed "multiple cells" from some embryos. A second clarification acknowledged that the embryos were destroyed in the experiments. The fate of the embryos was not discussed in the paper....

See, it can be done. The Republic, and the Sun, will survive.

Previous posts on this issue:

• Starting With The Hed, Confusion Over Embryos
• Stem Cell Deceit At The Washington Post