SCIENCEIMAGES: (TOP TO BOTTOM) ESA; FLIP NICKLIN/MINDEN PICTURESEmbattled ecologist pushes back
PUBLISHING | A lawyer for behavioral
ecologist Jonathan Pruitt, whose colleagues
have suggested he fabricated the data
behind provocative results on animal per-
sonalities and social spiders, has cautioned
Pruitt’s co-authors and journal editors
in recent weeks to hold off retracting his
papers. Three have been retracted so far;
in a letter the lawyer has requested that
no more be withdrawn until misconduct
investigations at Pruitt’s current and for-
mer universities play out. In addition, an
online spreadsheet that tracked analyses
of the scientist’s 160 papers has been taken
offline. Its creator—a journal editor who
published Pruitt papers—explains that he
could not guarantee its accuracy. (He did
not reveal whether Pruitt’s lawyer warned
him.) Pruitt, now at McMaster University,
has attributed various data anomalies to
inadvertent mistakes. “I just want the pro-
cess to play itself out, and that will inform
the journals about [which] papers are reli-
able, and which are not,” he said last week.U.S. expands vaquita protections
CONSERVATION | Last year, researchers
found just six vaquitas (Phocoena sinus) in
the upper Gulf of California, where these
small, critically endangered porpoises have
been spiraling toward extinction as they
become entangled and drown in illegal
and legal fishing gear. This month, the
Trump administration expanded an exist-
ing court-ordered ban on seafood imports
from those waters in a bid to protect the
vaquita (below). In 2018, the United States
prohibited imports of shrimp and curvina,
sierra, and chano fish caught in the gulf
using gillnets. Beginning 3 April, the banNEWS“
I think it’s important to destigmatize
Huntington’s and make it not as scary.
”
Neuropsychologist Nancy Wexler, who led the research team that in 1993 identified the gene
for Huntington disease, announcing in The New York Times that she has the gene and the symptoms.T
he launch of a rover that would drill beneath the surface of
Mars for signs of life has been delayed for 2 years until 2022,
the European Space Agency (ESA) and its Russian counter-
part, Roscosmos, announced last week. The joint ExoMars mis-
sion was threatened by parachute troubles, electrical shorts on
its Russian-built lander, and failures of the glue that holds so-
lar panels to Rosalind Franklin, the ESA rover. The coronavirus pan-
demic further complicated efforts to be ready for a July launch, says
instrument team member Francesca Esposito. Although the issues are
expected to be fixed in the next few months, mission planners must
now wait 26 months for the next favorable alignment of the planets.
Instrument team member Valérie Ciarletti is disappointed by the de-
lay, but did not want to risk a repeat of Schiaparelli, a European Mars
lander that crashed in 2016. “The scientific payload is impressive,” she
says. “It would be a nightmare if it just crashed on Mars.” NASA and
China are expected to launch other rovers to Mars this July or August.The Rosalind Franklin rover will look for buried evidence of martian life.PLANETARY SCIENCETechnical woes delay Mars rover
IN BRIEF
Edited by Jeffrey Brainard1284 20 MARCH 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6484