Among the more pleasant aspect of being a journalism critic, which I was told I am before I realized it myself, is that it’s okay to make things up. As long as it is done transparently. I look at news stories and can hypothesize away about how they got to be the way they are without the need for, uh, journalism. That is, to contact the writer and ask a question or two.
I am smitten at the moment by Carl Zimmer‘s piece on viruses, below the fold p. 1 of the NYTimes’s science section. It is about a Columbia University man who personifies the incredibly fast development of tools and of trains of logic for identifying viruses lurking in living (or recently living) tissue. It is a grand stroll through a busy research complex on campus, building narratively an appreciation for how cleverness and hard work have paid off in almost magical ways for ferreting out from a soup of human or animal cells the tiny admixture in them of viral genes and, with them as clues, for deducing the viruses’ identities. It’s a lot like finding novel bacterial or archaean microbes in the ocean when one cannot culture them, which is pretty amazing in itself but this virus parallel looks way harder.
It’s a lovely story by this almost frighteningly productive reporter, Mr. Zimmer (I wonder – does Carl EVER get the yips, writer’s block, middle of night paralyzing anxiety attacks, mad hours or days of frantic procrastination doing anything but write…???? ). About two thirds of the way through is an arresting passage, on autism and a program to see if it can be at least partly viral in origin. So here’s what I made up. I elect to suspect that Zimmer started with that autism aspect as an intended news story, but while reporting discovered a chance to portray a bigger scene. A lot of reporters such as I might stick with the spot news while regretting inability to give the back story its due. Have we here the alternative, a deliberately buried news story, and lede, for the greater cause of explaining one deep for- instance on how science gets done?
Yes indeed, I am procrastinating when I ought to be looking at the rest of this section….
Other notable headlines:
- Benedict Carey : Virtual Healing for the Real World ; I’m convinced. Virtual reality glasses and digital avatars provide shrinks with powerful new tools for treating social and behavioral disorders, phobias, obsessions, and more. But a question: While the video game industry asserts that violent combat and crime enactment doesn’t warp personality by much if at all, some psychiatrists say here that rather mild social simulations can significantly change behavior – how can it be both?
- Natalie Angier: Reptile’s Pet-Store Looks Belie Its Triassic Appeal ; If you put ‘tuatara’ in this site’s search engine, you will find that I once called it a lizard. That generated fast come-uppance from a reader in New York who commented on this New Zealand reptile’s phylogenetic charms. Angier really gets into it. She blessedly doesn’t call it a living fossil but does, deftly, call it a ‘so-called living fossil.’ Result: nice sketch its natural history, its protected status, and some of the fast evolution underway inside a creature little changed outwardly from its early Mesozoic ancestors.
- Dennis Overbye : He Was Mr. Universe, but He Was Really n Love With the Stars ; A reminiscence of astronomer and cosmologist Allan Sandage, passed away last week. Overbye wrote the book on Sandage. He tells here a warm, writerly tale of how things went between them.
- Erik Olsen: Florida Keys Declare Open Season on the Invasive Lionfish ;
- Nicholas Wade: An Exhibition That Gets to the (Square) Root of Sumerian Math ; One suspects Mr. Olsen put on scuba gear himself to get this story. And maybe even vegetarians would deign to eat this creature’s flesh – and thus spare a lot of other Atlantic reef residents from trips down their eager alien gullets. Watch for it on restaurant menus?
- Karen Barrow: Behind the Facade, Post-Traumatic Stress ; It’s not just for soldiers. Victims of violence and rape, too.
As always, lots more. Whole section (and the link inlcudes plenty of stuff not in the science section itself).
– Charlie Petit
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