0% 100 200 300 400 500Joint Statistical MeetingsBotanyAmerican Society of Gene and Cell
Therapy Annual MeetingAmerican Psychological Association
Annual ConventionEcological Society of America Annual MeetingPlant Biology Worldwide SummitAmerican Physical Society Division of Atomic,
Molecular and Optical Physics Annual MeetingAmerican Physical Society April MeetingAmerican Association for Cancer
Research Annual MeetingCLEO: Conference on Lasers
and Electro-Optics% Change in attendance from 2019 to 2020SCIENCE sciencemag.orgGRAPHIC: X. LIU/
SCIENCE
SCIENTIFIC MEETINGSDigital gatherings draw crowds
As the COVID-19 pandemic forced many summer conferences to adopt virtual formats,
the option to attend from home—often with discounted or free registration—led to surges
in participation. A survey by Science of 10 U.S.-based meetings of scientific societies
across a variety of disciplines showed that most saw higher attendance than in previous
years. Many also saw increased international participation, the survey revealed.3245
Confirmed cases of brucellosis
in Lanzhou, China, following
a 2019 leak of bacteria in gas from
a pharmaceutical factory.17 7.
August water level in meters
of lakes Michigan and Huron,
beating record highs set in
1986 for the eighth straight month.5.million
Estimated weight in tons
of synthetic microfiber
pollution traced to clothes washing
since 1950. (PLOS ONE)a 1-million-qubit quantum computer at
some unspecified date. Google has its own
plan to build a 1-million-qubit quantum
computer within 10 years but has not
published a timeline.The Lancet tweaks review process
PUBLISHING | Three months after
retracting a high-profile COVID-19 paper,
editors at The Lancet last week announced
policy changes meant to keep flawed
studies using large medical data sets
from slipping past peer review again.
The now-retracted study found serious
risks to the antimalarial drug hydroxy-
chloroquine using hospital patient data
from the small Chicago-based company
Surgisphere. Observers questioned the
study’s large sample size and details
about patient demographics and dosing,
and The Lancet retracted the paper when
Surgisphere declined to make underlying
data available (Science, 12 June, p. 1167).
The new policies include stricter stan-
dards for the data science expertise of
peer reviewers. Authors must now certify
that more than one of them has accessed
and verified their study’s underlying data,
and must detail what data they will share,
the criteria for access, and how data will
be made available.BY THE NUMBERSprize went to an investigation of why so
many researchers in the field are them-
selves afraid of spiders. (Despised traits
included their fast, unpredictable move-
ments and their many legs.) Winners of
the acoustics prize studied the mecha-
nisms of alligator vocalization by sticking
the reptiles in helium-filled chambers to
raise the pitch of their bellows. Nobel lau-
reates presented the awards and joined
professional singers in the debut perfor-
mance of a miniopera called Dream,
Little Cockroach.IBM shares quantum road map
QUANTUM COMPUTING | For 20 years
scientists have said they’ll someday
build a full-fledged quantum computer
able to perform useful calculations that
would overwhelm any conventional
supercomputer. Last week, IBM made its
aspirations more concrete by announcing
a “road map” for the development of its
quantum computers, including the goal
of building by 2023 one containing 1000
quantum bits, or qubits. That machine
would be big enough to spot and correct
the myriad errors that normally plague
qubits. IBM’s current largest quantum
computer, revealed this month, con-
tains 65 qubits. IBM also plans to buildconcerns that testing is being rushed. In
an early September poll of 10,000 people,
released last week by the Pew Research
Center, just 51% said they are certain or
likely to take a COVID-19 vaccine once
it’s available. In a Pew poll in early May,
72% had given similar answers. Three-
quarters of all respondents said it was
very or somewhat likely that a vaccine
would be released before its effectiveness
and safety were fully understood. Both
Republicans (69%) and Democrats (82%)
were more worried vaccine approval
would move too quickly than too slowly.
President Donald Trump has said a
vaccine could be released to the gen-
eral public in October—just before the
November presidential election and far
sooner than predicted by several of his
top scientific advisers.Ig Nobels honor odd science
PRIZES | The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony,
an annual celebration of quirky and
comical discoveries, carried on despite
the pandemic in an online event.
The Annals of Improbable Research, the
science humor magazine that hosts the
event, selected bugs as this year’s theme,
though the 10 winning teams hailed
from diverse fields. The entomology25 SEPTEMBER 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6511 1549