An apparently despondent Julie Rovner of NPR posted the following on Facebook this afternoon:

The story she links to, which she wrote for NPR's shots blog, explains her despair. 

Despite her efforts and those by a lot of others, the public, she wrote, "actually knows less about the law now than when it passed in 2010. Oh, and a lot of what people think they know just isn't so." Tough medicine for her and for the others who've been covering Obamacare. 

I'm afraid we can't provide much help for Rovner here; we're not entirely sure what the law will do either. Perhaps she can take some comfort...

NOVA has an unparalleled reputation and track record for excellence in science journalism on television; no other organization can come close. Yet its attempt to extend its brand to a new science news website--if brand extension is what this is--seems to be off to a very soft start.

NOVA Next, as the site is called, invited me to review it. On Feb. 28, Tim De Chant, the editor of NOVA Next, welcomed readers by saying NOVA would bring to the web the expertise and passion displayed it displays in its television show. This is how he described the venture:

NOVA Next will be focused on big stories, the sort you’re used to hearing from NOVA. We’ll have some of the biggest names in science, technology, and engineering giving us the inside scoop on...

Like many complicated concepts in science, the Higgs Boson is a challenge to explain, both for journalists and the scientists who try to help us.  It would be a lot simpler if it were generally accepted that the Higgs Boson was important because it caused the big bang. If that were true it would seem almost justified to call it the God particle.

In a recent Tracker post I expressed surprise that CBS News made the big bang claim in this news story. I wondered where the author got this idea, since there was no direct attribution:  

The Higgs boson is often called "the God particle" because it's said to be what caused the "Big Bang" that created our universe many years ago. The nickname caught on so quickly (even though scientists...

(English intro to Spanish lanf post) Monarch butterflies are experiencing and steady decline, a new report says. Scientists surveyed their habitat in a Mexican Biosphere Reserve, and they found that the insects occupied 59% less land than the previous year (the smallest area recorded in 20 years). The report suggests that the use of herbicides and the loss of favorable fields along their migration route are the main reasons of the decline, along droughts and high temperatures that can affect larvae. In their stories, some journalists preferred to blame the climate change and others the farming practices. Also in Mexico, scientific institutions have received a big amount of philanthropic money to foster biotechnological research on better corn and wheat crops. From Colombia we’ve read a great report about the poor health facilities in rural areas, and from Chile a really interesting story about the beauty and implications of the most common mathematics equations. We review...

Reporters who cover science and medicine often make the mistake, early in their careers, of reporting that somebody who has responded to a treatment has been "cured," or that some medical advance or other is a "breakthrough." After we've made a mistake such as that, or more than one, we generally learn that many, many things called "cures" or "breakthroughs" are anything but. 

Medicine generally advances in incremental steps, not breakthroughs. And there are many treatments that improve the lives of patients but don't wipe out illness in the way that we might call a cure. 

So it's notable that scientists have used the word "cure" twice in recent weeks in regard to treatments for AIDS, something we've generally been told is likely to be, at best, a chronic, manageable disease--but not one that can be cured. Many people with AIDS are now living reasonably healthy lives thanks to a cocktail of...

  Three days ago the NYTimes's Kenneth Chang wrote up in solid style NASA's latest microscopic iteration of its endless parade of water-on-Mars-and-ain't-we-having-astrobiological-fun? press accouncements. At which, after reading not only that story but the 200-plus comments that the Times deemed fit to print that follow it, I find myself shaking head in wonder and dismay. What a stupefying mix of brilliance, dementia, waggish remark, and inability even to recognize humor that this fine newspaper's readership is cabable of generating by the torrent!

   The news is of course worth covering even if the rover Curiosity on Mars has, far as I can tell, not yet profoundly changed the scientific view of Martian astrobiology. Its gist, as Chang summarizes things, is that maybe Mars has or had...

This week, the journal BioScience made available an upcoming paper with the rather unassuming title "Journalism and Social Media as Means of Observing the Contexts of Science".  On first glance, you might think this an unlikely study to generate an angry response.

You have to read a little farther to get to the explosive potential. The paper, published by communications researchers in Germany and the United States, results from a survey of neuroscientists in both countries who were asked to weight the relative value and influence of traditional news outlets versus blogs. Or as the researchers put it in the abstract, to assess "the influence of various types of 'old' and 'new" media on public opinion and political decision making.

Based on the response of some 250 scientists (fairly evenly divided between the countries), the researchers found...