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This one is intriguing. It's good academic soap opera, but there's a subtext between the lines. The research focus selected was one that supports an anti-coal agenda. The focus that was cast aside, to the surprise, disappointment and anger of some researchers, was one that might have let coal off the hook, at least in terms of food health.
Testing mercury in tuna underlines scientists’ fight
By Darryl Fears
Molly Lutcavage thought she had a deal. For more than a decade, she had collected hundreds of tissue samples from bluefin tuna in hopes of settling a question that has long vexed pregnant women and the parents of young children: Should they eat the big fish, a beneficial source of protein and fatty acids? Or did mercury contamination make them too dangerous?
Lutcavage hoped to test the theory that selenium, a key chemical found in tuna, prevents mercury from being transferred to the people who eat them and that, therefore, the fish are safe to eat. So she gave her hard-won samples to a colleague, Nick Fisher, to analyze in his lab.
But Fisher, it seems, didn’t have as much interest in Lutcavage’s selenium theory. Two years later, he produced a study focused almost exclusively on his own hypothesis: that lowering pollution emissions from power plants reduced the levels of mercury in bluefin tuna.
Lutcavage was furious, and the two scientists went to war. . . .
After three years of research yielded no evidence to contribute to the debate, Lutcavage now wonders why she bothered to contact Fisher and why she relied on only a verbal agreement.
“I blame myself,” she said. “Everyone has different ideas of what a collaboration might be. It’s like a relationship. Get it in writing, like a prenup,” she said.
Scientists who want to better understand the relationship between selenium and methylmercury will have to look elsewhere for answers.
Testing mercury in tuna underlines scientists’ fight
By Darryl Fears
Molly Lutcavage thought she had a deal. For more than a decade, she had collected hundreds of tissue samples from bluefin tuna in hopes of settling a question that has long vexed pregnant women and the parents of young children: Should they eat the big fish, a beneficial source of protein and fatty acids? Or did mercury contamination make them too dangerous?
Lutcavage hoped to test the theory that selenium, a key chemical found in tuna, prevents mercury from being transferred to the people who eat them and that, therefore, the fish are safe to eat. So she gave her hard-won samples to a colleague, Nick Fisher, to analyze in his lab.
But Fisher, it seems, didn’t have as much interest in Lutcavage’s selenium theory. Two years later, he produced a study focused almost exclusively on his own hypothesis: that lowering pollution emissions from power plants reduced the levels of mercury in bluefin tuna.
Lutcavage was furious, and the two scientists went to war. . . .
After three years of research yielded no evidence to contribute to the debate, Lutcavage now wonders why she bothered to contact Fisher and why she relied on only a verbal agreement.
“I blame myself,” she said. “Everyone has different ideas of what a collaboration might be. It’s like a relationship. Get it in writing, like a prenup,” she said.
Scientists who want to better understand the relationship between selenium and methylmercury will have to look elsewhere for answers.
“We fought as hard as we could for our points of view on the science,” Lutcavage said of her research team. “And we lost.”