Top 10 Scientific Advances of 2004

TarrVetus writes "Science Magazine's The Top Ten Science Breakthroughs of 2004 have been announced. The winner: The NASA Rovers and their evidence of water on Mars. The runner up was the Hobbit species found in Indonesia. Other breakthroughs include cloned human embryos and the first discovered pulsar pair."

Comments

What about the Beagle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Largest man-created crater on the surface of Mars? That's got to count for something!

what about SpaceshipOne?

[hsmith]

I consider that a pretty awesome feat as i assume many others do

Re:what about SpaceshipOne?

[arkanes]

An impressive engineering, technical, and economic feat, but not one that really impacts science. It's not about the coolest applications of science, but rather about the coolest discoveries in science.

How many get debunked later?

[JossiRossi]

Just as a generic curiosity. I wonder how many winners of the past eventually turned out to be false or incorreect? Cause the Hobbits are still debated (although it's not some big controversy). Just to put "breakthroughs" in perspective, because some breakthroughs just lead to empty mineshafts, not gold.

Re:Illegality

[stupidfoo]

Your ignorance is interesting.

It's not illegal. You just won't get federal funding.

Re:Illegality

[stupidfoo]

Prohibition on Federal Funding for Cloning of Human Beings

In case your interested.

Award should go to creation scientists

[Nine Tenths of The W]

For discovering that all previous science and history is false and the world is in fact a giant ant farm created 6000 years ago by a cloud dwelling egomaniac

Just in case the site gets slashdotted

[nizo]

Here is the list:

1. NASA rover finds water on Mars
2. Hobbits discovered in Indonesia, still searching for the one ring
3. Human embryos cloned
4. First pulsar pair discovered
5. Atkins diet proved sound
6. Turmeric found to be highly protective against many forms of cancer
7. Study shows eating chlorophyll will really oxygenate your blood
8. Elusive Batboy located
9. Discovery of hair-straightening treatment that causes water molucules to shrink
10. New condom developed that contains benzocaine to prolong the sex act

what about the remaining days in 04?

[Dreadlord]

If you have a scientific breakthrough, please wait till the next year to announce it, otherwise you won't make it the top 10 list.

No Exoplanet Picture?

[LithiumX]

We have the first actual picture of a planet orbiting another star... not inferential data, not radio info, but optical (not sure about wavelength, but that's irrelevant).

And it's not even on the list? The still questionable "discovery" of a wet Martian past makes the top of the list, but a deffinitive leap of scientific discovery (ie a fuzzy and blurred but very real picture of an extrasolar planet) doesn't even receive mention on the list (even if the article was kind enough to mention it)?

Re:already /.ed?

[Vicsun]

BBC have more bandwidth than God. Slashdot is more likely to get BBCed than BBC is to get slashdotted. =)

Scientific errors

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

The fact it can be done begins to move us away from some of the mysteries surrounding human beings; things like the existence of a soul, which frankly is pure imagination

I don't happen to believe in the soul as it appears in most religions, but I fail to see how a successful cloning experiment completely disproves the idea that helps countless millions cope with their lives. Statements like these hurt the image of the scientific community in the eyes of the public, i.e. the people the science is supposedly trying to improve the lives of.

If he had really disproven the soul or God (which is impossible to to the vague nature of their descriptions) then he should by all means spread this proof, but since he hasn't, then he should just STFU.

He is making scientific conclusions based on his faith that the soul is not real. That's just stupid.

Discrediting mention of junk DNA

[lukesl]

As a biologist, I have to say that I'm incredibly disappointed by the inclusion of "junk" DNA in the list. I don't know what specific research results they're referring to when they say there's a breakthrough there, but the entire concept of "junk" DNA is absurd. I've never met a single molecular biologist who believed that non-coding regions were unimportant, and in fact it's been known for at least forty years that non-coding regions are important in regulation of gene expression. Maybe what bothers me most is the term "junk" DNA, which I've never actually heard another scientist use. It's a fictitious concept perpetuated by science writers so that they can feign surprise every time someone can attribute a function to a non-coding piece of DNA (and claim that the scientific community was surprised as well).

All that aside, I'm sure there are big breakthroughs in our understanding of the role of non-coding regions, and it probably deserves to be mentioned. However, one important point to make is that in spite of all this, there ARE parts of the genome that are unquestionably useless evolutionary vestiges. This is not necessarily mysterious, but it is interesting (for example, providing what is in my mind the most convincing evidence of evolution).

Re:Discrediting mention of junk DNA

[myc]

Here is a reference from the primary literature:

Nobrega et al. Science 302:413- (2003).

Nobrega et al. made 2 knockout mice, deleting 2 Mb and 1 Mb (Mb= 10e6 basepairs of DNA) regions, respectively, of the genome called "deserts", i.e., gene poor regions that nonetheless are highly conserved between humans and mice, but not humans and fish. The authors believed that since this sequence was conserved, it must not be junk, and therefore likely contains cis-acting regulatory sequences that important for gene regulation. When these regions were deleted, however, the mice developed normally and had no apparent defects or pathologies. In other words, what was once thought to be junk, then thought to not be junk, turns out to be junk again (sounds like a Fark cliche).

Here is another link that is informative. One possibility that is mentioned in this blurb is that the knockout mice are just defective in a non-obvious way.

Re:Hobbits?

[wronski]

"If I remember correctly, the finding of the new Hobbit species was discredited as a "dwarf" mutant of a long-discovered human ancestor. Was this discrediting discredited itself?"

Most paleontologist believe this is a new species. The bones (they aren't even fossilised!) were found by an Australian/Indonesian team that was originaly lookng for evidence of the people who first colonized Australia. Apparently a bigshot Indonesian paleontologist got pissed of by being left out (some scientific bigshots expect to get their names papers without having to actually do any work), and then...

One of Indonesia's leading palaeontologists, Professor Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University in Jakarta, has grabbed the hobbit remains and locked them away in his safe, refusing to let other scientists study them.

In addition, he rejected the widespread view that the hobbits are a separate human species, claiming they are a pygmy form of modern humans who suffered microcephaly, a disorder that produces a small brain.

The Australian scientists who dug up the bones of the hobbits, officially dubbed Homo floresiensis, have pleaded with Professor Jacob to return the bones as they may contain vital DNA clues as to their exact ancestry. The seven skeletons were found last year in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores by an Australian and Indonesian team.

Re:Metaphysics

[maxwell demon]

There is no consciousness. All is reaction nuclear, chemical, quantum or beneath quantum. All actions, all events. All.

The second sentence doesn't imply the first. It's as if you said: "There is no music. There are only density waves in the air."

Re:Prof. Higgins

[abigor]

You are making the assumption that we have a purpose. There is no evidence indicating that might be the case, and in fact it is not at all necessary.

1st physical evidence for string theory

[thievery1017]

... seems to blow all that other crap away, even if the news was released in december. evidence of water once being on mars is big... but hardly surprising enough to rank at #1.

Hmm

[mcc]

What's up with this one then?

• Medicines for the World's Poor. "Public-private partnerships" emerged as a force in 2004, according to Science magazine, affecting the way medicines are developed and delivered to emerging nations.

Sounds like applied science to me.

Personally though if I were Science I wouldn't give SpaceShipOne a prize this year, since getting someone into space isn't technically by itself a new development in even applied science. I'd give it to them in a year or two-- once they manage to successfully begin operating their spaceliner business, since that IS going to be a dramatic change in how science is applied...