Changing topics a bit, it seems like two science stories have been underplayed in the general media and the blogosphere (outside of the specialist blogs dealing in these matters.)

The first being the story of the neanderthal bits and pieces in the human genome.

The second is this one:

NASA team cites new evidence that meteorites from Mars contain ancient fossils

NASA’s Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars.

In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life.

“We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life,” team leader David McKay said at a NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology.

There was a time when both of these stories would have made a bigger impact on the American public, I think.