630 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXr. No. 642 



tinued existence in most of the higher plants. 

 The carbon dioxid given off is sometimes equal 

 in amount to the oxygen taken in, but this 

 ratio is a variable one. Most plants are able 

 to respire for limited periods without taking 

 in oxygen. Some of the lower plants are able 

 to do this for prolonged periods — perhaps for 

 a whole life cycle. This phase of the process 

 is called intramolecular or anaerobic respira- 

 tion and is much the same as certain kinds of 

 fermentation. The steps of the processes of 

 respiration are imperfectly known. 



Charles H. Shaw 



QUOTATIONS 

 'newspaper science' 



In the last number of Science, a corre- 

 spondent, dealing with 'fakes and the press,' 

 urges Congress "by some legal enactment to 

 check the publication of all items that convey 

 erroneous impressions relative to matters in 

 which the whole community is interested." 

 The immediate occasion of this somewhat 

 sweeping recommendation is the wide publica- 

 tion late in January of a paragraph to the 

 effect that the Jamaica earthquake, by disturb- 

 ing the subterranean strata, had increased the 

 flow of oil from the wells of northern Texas 

 and Louisiana, while diminishing that from 

 the southern counties of both states. The tale, 

 it appears, was not true, and certain geologists 

 declared at the beginning that it could not 

 possibly have been true. Nevertheless, the 

 writer is unfortunate in having illustrated his 

 arraignment of ' newspaper science ' by an ex- 

 ample of a plain 'fake,' which is not typical 

 of ' newspaper science ' at all. 



If the term, has any meaning, it applies not 

 to malicious stock-market rumors, or to wild 

 fantasies which no one would pretend to take 

 seriously, but to the journalistic treatment of 

 matters that have really a scientific status. 

 Just now ' newspaper science ' is concerned 

 chiefly with the weight of the human soul. 

 Two days ago some Boston physicians an- 

 nounced that they had demonstrated a loss in 

 weight of from one half ounce to one ounce 

 at the moment of death, or a little later in the 

 case of very slow-witted persons. This morn- 



ing ' an eminent physiological chemist ' adds 

 the information that * a group of German 

 students ' determined years ago that a mouse 

 lost a milligram of weight when it died in an 

 open vessel, but not when in an hermetically 

 sealed bottle. We feel sure that this is not 

 the last, but confidently await the story of the 

 Indiana investigator who found some years 

 ago that the soul of a lizard could be made to 

 keep for years in any climate when contained 

 in a bottle of pink glass. All this will be very 

 interesting, it harms nobody, and at the be- 

 ginning of the serial story there was some 

 definite information furnished by men of 

 standing. 



There is much less guile about newspaper 

 science than the laboratory scientists would 

 have us believe. For instance, last fall, if we 

 may infer causes from results, a newspaper 

 correspondent at a small western lake resort 

 picked up on the beach a defunct specimen of 

 the common ' mud puppy.' He had never 

 seen such a creature before, and took it to a 

 local naturalist, who told him something about 

 its amphibious habits and superabundant 

 breathing apparatus. He also gave the gen- 

 eric name, Necturus, which the correspondent 

 or the telegraph operator afterwards misspelled 

 in the account of the monster — its size was a 

 detail not mentioned — ^which possessed both 

 lungs and gills, four legs, a mouthful of sharp 

 teeth, a long tail, and was ' believed to be the 

 Nocturis.' The finding of a mud puppy would 

 have been no news at all, yet by means of this 

 ingenuous dispatch, some perfectly correct and 

 remarkable bits of scientific information were 

 brought within the reach of a million news- 

 paper readers. 



By and large, there are probably quite as 

 many commonplace and elementary scientific 

 facts thus exploited as there are outright fabri- 

 cations. Set any layman to report the lecture 

 of a scientist who, in going over the field of 

 his own specialty, mingles old with new matter, 

 and he is just as likely to hit upon the former 

 as the latter. If he is looking simply for sen- 

 sation, he will send out an account, like so 

 many which have emanated from the Univer- 

 sity of Chicago, bearing very little relation to 

 anything a competent scientist could have 



