Students got the chance to see frogs with stubby, missing or extra legs, missing or moved eyes and jaw problems at the Cooper Physical Science building Monday.
In a presentation given by William Souder, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated author and journalist, Souder intended to lay out issues that could come up when reporters try to cover science.
A shared goal between journalists and scientists is thinking of a rational portrayal of the nature of existence that may be defined as truth, he said.
Mike Lannoo, anatomy instructor at the Muncie Medical Center, said he invited Souder to give his presentation because it is the job of any university to bring in high quality people who can talk across topics and departments. Too often universities have people who only come to talk about specialized areas, he said.
"No two topics look at the world so differently than scientists and journalists, and it is time to bridge the gap," Lannoo said.
Souder said he did his lecture about malformed frogs because he had seen a couple small newspaper accounts in Minnesota and decided to do an article in the Washington Post about the occurrence. After the article appeared, he did a bigger story and wrote the book "A Plague of Frogs," he said.
In his presentation, Souder said biologists have considered or hypothesized four reasons why some frogs had malformations. The first reason is because of injury or trauma, with something happening when the frog tries to rejuvenate the leg. The second reason accounts for disease or an infectious agent. The third reason proposes a genetic mutation, and the fourth reason is due to a developmental error or the equivalent of a birth defect.
Laura Guderyahn, a second year masters student with the Department of Biology, said she had heard about Souder from her adviser, Lannoo, and was doing her thesis on malformed frogs.
Souder said knowing what happened to these frogs is important because frogs are a vertebrate species with the same genes, hormones and growth factors that are present in other vertebrate species such as humans. If something in the environment is doing this to frogs, the same situations could happen to some other species, he said.
Guderyahn said she was interested in Souder's comments and said he knew a lot about the history of the malformed frogs.
Souder said journalists and scientists are similar in that they both try to reduce complex issues into something more simple. He said the two fields have to get along because science and policy intersect. The journalist is often the mediator for translating science into plain English and having policy makers do something about the issue, he said.
"Everyone should expect the media to commit more resources to science because science is such a part of public life now," Souder said.
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