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Doctor you: how data helps you take charge of your health
EDITORIAL
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £143 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2012 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Red Planet revisited Faster, better, cheaper. Can we manage all three? FUTURE historians of Mars Fans of the US space agency and might note 5 August 2012 as the of blockbuster spacecraft may moment when humanity’s long be disappointed, but planetaryrelationship with the Red Planet science enthusiasts should be entered a new era. If all goes well, exhilarated. Now that NASA has that will be the date that the done the groundwork, future Mars Science Laboratory touches missions need not be as lavish, down, after an intricate descent but can be more numerous and which even NASA predicts will be highly targeted, deepening our “seven minutes of terror”. knowledge of Mars (see page 6). This huge rover, better “NASA’s Mars rovers have known as Curiosity, is aimed done the groundwork – at a 5-kilometre-high heap of the new wave of missions sediment that should provide need not be so lavish” information about Mars’s entire history – perhaps including traces of ancient or even current life. We need all the information So the stakes are high. But it’s we can get. Questions abound likely to be the last such flagship about the planet’s geology, expedition we see for some time, hydrology and atmospheric as NASA’s near-monopoly on development. And for the first Mars exploration gives way to time, those answers may be of real a plethora of smaller, cheaper commercial, as well as academic, missions by other countries interest. Some who have set their and, soon, private companies. sights on Mars are planning in
earnest for human exploration – and even colonisation. But much more research is needed first. NASA is by no means out of the race. It has been here before. During the 1990s the agency embarked on 16 varied missions, including several to Mars, that were designed to be less individually ambitious. But a high failure rate meant that programme ended amid derision, its mantra of “faster, better, cheaper” becoming inexorably coupled with the wry rejoinder: “pick any two”. Nonetheless, the basic strategy is sound. Only a handful of these missions have to succeed for the programme to end up more costeffective than a blockbuster like Curiosity. So Mars fans should hope that NASA and its rivals can make the paradigm work this time. Humanity’s relationship with Mars may depend on it. n
Paging doctor you… ASK a medical patient how he feels about the internet and he may well wax lyrical. The web offers copious information about symptoms, diagnoses and treatments – empowering the individual to understand and discuss their illness. Ask a physician, however, and you may well be met with a resigned roll of the eyes. Even if
a patient has tapped into a reliable source of information, their understanding of how it applies to them may be way off-base. One can easily imagine this divide widening thanks to the “self-tracking” movement, which stands to revolutionise doctorpatient relationships (see page 40). Monitoring your own vital signs promises significant
benefits: continual health checks, advance warning of illness and personalised medicine. But here’s the rub. How should a doctor react to someone with no symptoms anxiously brandishing their own analysis of data from a consumer gadget? Equally, will patients eventually be compelled to understand or even conduct such analyses to secure proper treatment? Taking our health into our own hands is about to get a lot more complicated. n
Keep fossils for the future
Australia is invaluable: for its fossil record, its proximity to offshore gas and its place in their beliefs, respectively (see page 8). The gas companies are winning the argument so far: it would be costly to relocate, and they have pledged to avoid known fossils. But the scientifically minded may sympathise more naturally with
the dinosaur-hunters. As this week’s Instant Expert explains, our ability to decipher fossils is still evolving. A fossil lost today is thus knowledge lost tomorrow. Fossils endure for millions of years, but can be erased in a geological instant – along with their unique record of the past. What price can you put on that? n
IT’S a decision few would envy: what to do with a patch of land contested by palaeontologists, gas companies and indigenous peoples? All three groups claim that James Price Point in Western
4 August 2012 | NewScientist | 3
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £143 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2012 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Red Planet revisited Faster, better, cheaper. Can we manage all three? FUTURE historians of Mars Fans of the US space agency and might note 5 August 2012 as the of blockbuster spacecraft may moment when humanity’s long be disappointed, but planetaryrelationship with the Red Planet science enthusiasts should be entered a new era. If all goes well, exhilarated. Now that NASA has that will be the date that the done the groundwork, future Mars Science Laboratory touches missions need not be as lavish, down, after an intricate descent but can be more numerous and which even NASA predicts will be highly targeted, deepening our “seven minutes of terror”. knowledge of Mars (see page 6). This huge rover, better “NASA’s Mars rovers have known as Curiosity, is aimed done the groundwork – at a 5-kilometre-high heap of the new wave of missions sediment that should provide need not be so lavish” information about Mars’s entire history – perhaps including traces of ancient or even current life. We need all the information So the stakes are high. But it’s we can get. Questions abound likely to be the last such flagship about the planet’s geology, expedition we see for some time, hydrology and atmospheric as NASA’s near-monopoly on development. And for the first Mars exploration gives way to time, those answers may be of real a plethora of smaller, cheaper commercial, as well as academic, missions by other countries interest. Some who have set their and, soon, private companies. sights on Mars are planning in
earnest for human exploration – and even colonisation. But much more research is needed first. NASA is by no means out of the race. It has been here before. During the 1990s the agency embarked on 16 varied missions, including several to Mars, that were designed to be less individually ambitious. But a high failure rate meant that programme ended amid derision, its mantra of “faster, better, cheaper” becoming inexorably coupled with the wry rejoinder: “pick any two”. Nonetheless, the basic strategy is sound. Only a handful of these missions have to succeed for the programme to end up more costeffective than a blockbuster like Curiosity. So Mars fans should hope that NASA and its rivals can make the paradigm work this time. Humanity’s relationship with Mars may depend on it. n
Paging doctor you… ASK a medical patient how he feels about the internet and he may well wax lyrical. The web offers copious information about symptoms, diagnoses and treatments – empowering the individual to understand and discuss their illness. Ask a physician, however, and you may well be met with a resigned roll of the eyes. Even if
a patient has tapped into a reliable source of information, their understanding of how it applies to them may be way off-base. One can easily imagine this divide widening thanks to the “self-tracking” movement, which stands to revolutionise doctorpatient relationships (see page 40). Monitoring your own vital signs promises significant
benefits: continual health checks, advance warning of illness and personalised medicine. But here’s the rub. How should a doctor react to someone with no symptoms anxiously brandishing their own analysis of data from a consumer gadget? Equally, will patients eventually be compelled to understand or even conduct such analyses to secure proper treatment? Taking our health into our own hands is about to get a lot more complicated. n
Keep fossils for the future
Australia is invaluable: for its fossil record, its proximity to offshore gas and its place in their beliefs, respectively (see page 8). The gas companies are winning the argument so far: it would be costly to relocate, and they have pledged to avoid known fossils. But the scientifically minded may sympathise more naturally with
the dinosaur-hunters. As this week’s Instant Expert explains, our ability to decipher fossils is still evolving. A fossil lost today is thus knowledge lost tomorrow. Fossils endure for millions of years, but can be erased in a geological instant – along with their unique record of the past. What price can you put on that? n
IT’S a decision few would envy: what to do with a patch of land contested by palaeontologists, gas companies and indigenous peoples? All three groups claim that James Price Point in Western
4 August 2012 | NewScientist | 3