Surveying lava flows on the ocean floor and surveying conflicts of interest in clinical research
Pat McCaffrey
Present at the creation: Researchers capture spreading of sea floor
An underwater volcanic eruption that wiped out most of an array of seismometers placed on the Pacific Ocean floor turned into a boon for geologists and biologists studying the formation of the earth’s crust.
Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in Falmouth, MA, were part of a group that got the first look at a new patch of ocean floor after the eruption in January 2006. The event gave scientists their first measurements of seismic activity immediately preceding a major lava flow. Their results, published online in Science, will help them predict future underwater eruptions and study the cycle of events responsible for creating most of the earth’s surface.
Formation of new crust in the deep sea occurs along ridges where two tectonic plates are moving apart, leaving gaps for molten lava to escape. In 2003, Maya Tolstoy from Columbia University led a team to install a dozen ocean bottom seismometers directly on a ridge 400 miles south of Acapulco, Mexico. They had been watching the area ever since an eruption in 1991. Knowing that lava bursts occur roughly every 10 years, they placed the instruments in 2003 in hopes of capturing seismic data leading up to the next event.
When the researchers visited the site in 2005 to service the instruments, they found that almost all the seismometers were dead or stuck in the ocean floor. They immediately guessed that the instruments were victims of a recent lava flow. Water samples showed high turbidity and methane content, symptoms of an eruption.
WHOI scientist Adam Soule and colleagues then participated in two “rapid response” expeditions. In the spring of this year, the scientists towed cameras over the ocean floor, confirming a new lava flow more than 11 miles long and nearly two miles wide. Seismic data from the two surviving instruments showed the eruption occurred over a six-hour period on January 22.
An ocean bottom seismometer stuck in the hardened lava flow. Source: Ridge 2000 research program
Those expeditions gave biologists a unique opportunity to study newly formed hydrothermal vents and complex vent ecosystems. The researchers are now back on site. This time, they’re using a manned submersible vehicle to get a closer look at the new piece of ocean real estate.
IRBs packed with potential conflicts of interest
More than one-third of the members of institutional review boards (IRBs), the committees at research institutions that discuss and approve experiments involving human subjects and new treatments, have financial ties to the drug or medical device industries, according to a new nationwide survey from Eric Campbell and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Institute for Health Policy.
The results of the poll, reported yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that while most IRB members do not believe that having a relationship with industry influences judgment, some reported participating in IRB discussions and votes despite possible conflicts of interest.
The anonymous survey of 574 IRB members at medical schools and hospitals found that 36 percent of respondents held positions as consultants, officers, directors, scientific advisory board members, or paid speakers, or received royalties or research support from industry. Fifteen percent said their IRBs had handled issues where they might have had a conflict of interest, and half of those said they had freely engaged in those discussions and votes.
Rather than being concerned about industry ties, a third of the survey participants reported that having colleagues with firsthand knowledge of the drug industry was a large benefit when discussing company-sponsored experiments. Many were also unfamiliar with their own IRB’s policies. Half of the respondents did not know if their IRB had a formal definition of conflict of interest, and only 67 percent knew of the process for disclosing industry ties.
