INTERNATIONAL
AAAS Science News Web Site Gaining Worldwide Audience

EurekAlert!--a free AAAS science-news service for reporters worldwide--was launched in May 1996 on a shoestring and a good idea. (See www.eurekalert.org.) Today, the site serves more than 4400 journalists from 50 countries, with half working beyond the United States. It also receives some 400,000 visits from 200,000 unique visitors each month. All that traffic includes a growing number of public browsers, plus 2000 registered public information officers or "PIOs" from 1000 institutions--from France and the United Kingdom, to Germany and Japan.

"EurekAlert! is the Swiss Army Knife of science Web sites, offering instant access to new research from an impressive range of influential, peer-reviewed journals," said Robert Lee Hotz, science writer for the Los Angeles Times. "As a journalist who covers science and technology issues, I find EurekAlert! an indispensable aid in ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of my work--and the reading public benefits immeasurably as a result."

International journalists and PIOs also express support for EurekAlert!. The site "has one of the best cross-sections of audiences from around the world," said Jason Major, science communicator at the University of Melbourne, Australia, "and it has proved a valuable resource for us. This release-posting feature allows me to reach an international audience that we could never hope to reach through our own resources."

The reason for the Web site's success

overseas is simple: News is news, wherever it's found. "Geography counts little," noted Josep Corbella, a science writer with La Vanguardia in Barcelona. "I don't mean to suggest the science done in Spain is irrelevant. It is relevant, and science journalists working in Spain cannot ignore it. What I mean is, we cannot ignore the science done in other countries either, and EurekAlert! is an excellent tool to get the job done more efficiently."

Cassio Leite Vieira, a science writer in Rio de Janeiro, remembers the days when he had to wait weeks for the latest science news, hoping for newsworthy faxes, or flipping through U.S. and European magazines at the news stand, looking for story ideas. Now, EurekAlert! offers peer-reviewed journals, laboratories, universities and other research institutions a place to post news releases online, before the news is released to the general public. Under an embargo system, the site allows credentialed journalists access to the information before it is released to the public, so that they can write in-depth, accurate stories that are published the day the institution or the research journal makes the news public.

With the emergence of EurekAlert! some 7 years ago, reporters across all time zones were able to bypass the old paper-faxing methods and quickly assemble much more information in a shorter period of time. Thus, the Web site supports best practices in journalism. "In addition to the United States, we now have 10 countries represented, and they are posting 20 percent of the press releases on the site," said AAAS Senior Program Associate Catherine O'Malley, who manages the Web site.

The site is a real draw for non-U.S. journalists looking for quality science news, said Tom Miller, Media Relations Manager at Imperial College London. "We actually feel there's a benefit to putting our stories in the same pool as the well-known U.S. institutions."

Other public information officers said that they are beginning to get a sense of the impact of EurekAlert! on their efforts to promote their institutions worldwide: Margaret Willson, a science and medical communications consultant in the United Kingdom, runs press offices for international scientific and medical conferences, and publicizes the results of academic research. EurekAlert! helped her to reach science writers "quickly and efficiently, but at minimum cost to my client," she explained.

"A difficulty with large commercial databases," she added, "is that no matter how carefully one tries to isolate the right media for a particular story, inevitably some journalists receive releases inappropriately or are missed. I hoped that EurekAlert! would overcome this problem because of its media registration process and its more refined targeting system. It has."

PUBLIC OUTREACH
Public Also Seeks News on Web Site

In a surprising turn of events, EurekAlert!, the Web site that seeks to provide journalists with breaking science news, is becoming increasingly popular among members of the general public, too.

EurekAlert! is now listed as an official source within Google News, a dominant news search engine. Public traffic, a major component of the 200,000 unique visitors who stop at EurekAlert! each month, includes students, educators, researchers, and others. Each visitor remains on the site for about 12 minutes per visit--"an outstanding ‘stick rate,'" said EurekAlert! Manager Catherine O'Malley.
Duke University's Dennis Meredith, Assistant Vice President, Duke Office of News and Communications, and one of the Web site's founding advisors, said that EurekAlert! has taken on a new and unexpected role.

"It is not that the information on the site is taking the place of research news as reported by journalists," Meredith said. "The news releases on the site complement the media accounts. People know that they can come to the site, and read information that has been vetted by institutions and journals, and approved by the scientists themselves."

HUMAN RIGHTS
New Directory Documents Abuses

A recently published AAAS guide, the Directory of Persecuted Scientists and Health Professionals, documents the plight of scientists and engineers throughout the world who are reported to have been imprisoned and/or harassed for acting on their beliefs. The directory, produced by the AAAS Science and Human Rights Network, also records how the scientists felt when they discovered that colleagues from other countries were taking action on their behalf.

"Your first sensation is of a deep relief, of deep gratitude to the unknown persons who care about your fate," wrote Moncef Marzouki, a professor of public health who was jailed in Tunisia on charges of anti-government activities. "Please keep writing letters... . It has much more effect than you can imagine. It keeps alive the light of a fire refusing to die."

Many of the letters that governments receive in support of Marzouki and other scientists are generated by the staff of AAAS's 25-year-old human rights program, which sends out e-mail "alerts" whenever scientists request assistance defending their rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"The program's work is based on the principle that human rights are preconditions for scientific endeavor and should be defended and encouraged as a matter of scientific freedom and responsibility," said AAAS Program Associate Victoria Baxter.

She noted that the decision to support a request for help is based on corroborated and well-documented information from major human rights and scientific organizations. In 2002, AAAS's human rights program addressed alleged violations of the rights of 59 scientists worldwide, from countries as geographically and politically varied as Egypt, Guatemala, and China. Their case studies are described in the AAAS directory, available on the Web site, http://shr.aaas.org.

SCIENCE POLICY
Behavioral Genetics Forum Planned, 2 to 3 May

As scientists sift through the newly sequenced human genome, hopes are high that they will turn up the basic components of disabling mental disorders. But, is there a flip side to finding a biological basis for human behavior? Might past abuses be repeated? And, what does all this mean for free will?

An upcoming public meeting, organized by AAAS and The Hastings Center, will take stock of experts' latest thinking on the relationship between our genes and our behavior. Leading scientists, ethicists, legal scholars, patient advocates and journalists will take the stage in Can We Talk? A Public Conversation About Behavioral Genetics and Society, 2 to 3 May, 2003. Details and free registration are at www.aaas.org/spp/bgenes/cwt.

Scientists now generally believe that genes do play at least some role in determining our behavior. Dissonance still exists, however, between this view of behavioral genetics and those found outside the scientific arena. "Substantial misunderstandings continue to lurk behind ongoing controversies over behavioral genetics," said Steven Hyman, Harvard University Provost and keynote speaker. "In fact, the nature-versus-nurture debate has no relevance to current science. Instead, we recognize that patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior result from a very complex interplay of multiple genes, environmental factors, and chance."

Behavioral genetics has often gotten a bad rap, and not without reason. Around the turn of the last century, some researchers sought inherited causes underlying a supposed propensity for becoming a naval officer (thalassophilia, or "love of the sea"), as well as "pauperism" and "feeblemindedness." Others proposed that undesirable traits could be bred out of a population ("eugenics"), a horrific concept, notorious during the Holocaust.

More recently, searches for genetic underpinnings of alcoholism, intelligence, and personality traits have sparked controversy over the scientific strength of the data and the studies' perceived implications--i.e., that some individuals may be less accountable for their actions than others. These sensational studies tended to link a single gene with a certain trait. It is far more typical for behavioral geneticists to investigate whether certain traits are heritable, while generally accepting that they won't find a single gene involved.

The potential benefits of behavioral genetics must be weighed against the risk of losing personal freedoms to DNA collectors--a topic that Troy Duster of New York University will discuss. Further, "just having the condition does not mean that you then give up," he said. "There's a kind of myth in the general public that if it is genetic, it's destiny."

The meeting, funded by the National Institutes of Health, will result in resources for lay and professional audiences. See www.aaas.org/spp/bgenes/. –Kathleen Wren