SCIENCE sciencemag.orgCREDITS: (GRAPHIC) J. BRAINARD/
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IENCE
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) INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY;
WO
RLD ENERGY OUTLOOK 2019
Society policy targets harassers
SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES | Members of
the Society for American Archaeology
(SAA) have voted to allow its board to bar
attendees who have committed sexual
harassment or other misconduct from
society events. The vote to change SAA’s
bylaws, announced on 22 November,
was a response to a scandal sparked
when an archaeologist banned from his
university for sexual harassment was
allowed to attend the society’s annual
meeting in April. The new policy, written
by SAA’s board, also covers bullying and
other forms misconduct. But some SAA
members are concerned the wording is
not strong enough because it states the
society’s board “may” bar offenders from
events; they had proposed an alternate
bylaws amendment that offenders “will be
barred.” That measure failed in the vote.Off-shore wind power grows
ENERGY | By 2040, off-shore wind turbines
could produce about as much electricity as
those onshore and, with solar cells, supply
much of the renewable energy required
to reduce global warming, says a forecast
published last month. To date, more wind
turbines have been built on land, but
turbines placed in coastal waters offer the
advantage of steadier winds, and costs
could become competitive with fossil fuels
in the next decade, says the International
Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook
2019. The European Union and China will
dominate off-shore wind power through
2040, the report says. But it also warns
that current growth in wind and other
renewables won’t reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by enough to limit the increasein global temperatures to less than 2°C;
even larger growth in wind and other alter-
native energies is needed.Disgraced surgeon sentenced
MISCONDUCT | A court in Italy has sen-
tenced surgeon Paolo Macchiarini to
16 months in prison for forgery and abuse
of his office. Macchiarini became famous
a decade ago while at the Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm for transplanting
artificial windpipes “seeded” with stem cells
into patients. The transplants failed and
nearly all the patients died; Macchiarini
was found guilty of scientific misconduct
and charged with manslaughter in Sweden.
Those charges were dropped in October
2017, but now, an old case in Italy has
apparently caught up with him. In 2012,
Macchiarini was charged with taking bribes
from patients. After years of appeals and
counter appeals, on 8 November a court
found him guilty of minor infractions:
providing treatment for a friend who was
not eligible for care and manipulating the
patient’s records. Macchiarini’s lawyer
said he will appeal the sentence. An Italian
newspaper reports the surgeon is now
working in Japan.U.K. pushes for AI accountability
COMPUTER SCIENCE | Businesses and
government offices that use artificial
intelligence (AI) to help make decisions—
to predict health outcomes, extend credit,
or even determine criminal penalties—
will soon be required to explain how
their technology functions to individuals
affected by it, according to draft guidance
from the United Kingdom’s Information
Commissioner’s Office this week. The
guidance, thought to be the world’s first,
is meant to “get out ahead” of potential
abuses, says David Leslie, an ethics fellow
at the Alan Turing Institute in London
and a co-author of the draft. The expla-
nations of the software’s methods and
reliability must be comprehensible by
lay people, who could use existing data-
privacy or antidiscrimination laws to
challenge how the AI is applied. The office
is accepting comments on the 165-page
draft until 24 January 2020.Elsevier inks open-access deals
SCHOLARSHIP | Publishing giant Elsevier
last month signed two new “transforma-
tive” deals allowing researchers to read
its journals and publish in subscription
ones on an open-access basis. Its deal with
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,m Mighty wind
Off-shore wind power is growing quickly—but needs
to expand faster still to help control global warming.0100200300400500600 GigawattsUnited States South Korea Rest of worldEuropean Union China2018 2040,
current
policies2040,
required to help
limit warming48
U.S. states in which
mortality rates among
25- to 64-year-olds increased
from 2010 to 2017(JAMA).million
Hectares in Indonesia that burned
this year, according to Sentinel
satellite data, an area half the size
of Belgium. That figure is twice
the Indonesian government’s
estimate, based on lower resolution
LANDSAT data (Center for
International Forestry Research).BY THE NUMBERSPennsylvania, is Elsevier’s first of this
kind with a U.S. institution. Its other deal
is with the Bibsam Consortium, which
negotiates such agreements for Sweden’s
universities; they gave up subscriptions
to Elsevier journals in 2018 after Bibsam
unsuccessfully sought a new, open-access
agreement. Carnegie Mellon did not
disclose the cost of its deal; Bibsam said
its outlay will depend on uptake by its
library members.Arab scientists want to emigrate
WORKPLACE | Although many Arab
countries want to develop “knowledge
economies” to diversify their petroleum-
based industries, 91% of their researchers
would like to emigrate for professional
opportunities elsewhere, a survey has
found. The findings come from an online
poll of 650 researchers working in
22 countries of the Arab League, reported
this week by Al-Fanar Media, a nonprofit
news organization that covers research and
education. Of the survey respondents,
232 work in science, technology, engineer-
ing, and math (STEM) fields, most of them
at universities. Poor funding was a frequent
complaint about their current jobs, but so
was the professional environment. Among
STEM workers, 87% of those wanting to
move desired to improve their research.
Other incentives included better research
facilities (67%), more salary (43%), and
more academic freedom (40%).6 DECEMBER 2019 • VOL 366 ISSUE 6470 1175
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