Fantastic stem-cell work was presented at a press conference at the lively Society for Neuroscience meeting — but from the lacklustre Q-and-A session afterwards, you’d never know it, writes Nature reporter Alison Abbott at In the Field.
At the November meeting in Washington DC, stem-cell researchers described work on repairing irreversible inner-ear damage; conversion of frog pluripotent cells into retinal cells that could form functioning tadpole eyes; and intriguing latent stem cells in mice that might aid treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
The authors of these studies were not only over-keen to avoid any semblance of hype, but also declined to comment to journalists on broader issues about US politics of embryonic-stem-cell research, or why there is so much low-quality adult-stem-cell research already being brought into the clinic.
Abbott remarks that it is very hard for journalists to decide how to react to and report new findings in adult-stem-cell research: “There is so much that is good, so much that is trivial, and not a clear enough signal from those in the field of where the difference lies.”
Nature 456, xiii; 11 December 2008.