On Science Blogs is rated R this week for sex. Its author, Tabitha M. Powledge, could have earned herself a PG rating if she had limited herself to senseless violence, but she took the more dangerous route....
On Science Blogs is rated R this week for sex. Its author, Tabitha M. Powledge, could have earned herself a PG rating if she had limited herself to senseless violence, but she took the more dangerous route.
She leads with the appeals court decision that allowed one form of the Plan B "morning after" contraceptive to be sold without prescription or age restrictions. She also linked to posts on the legal limbo of another form of Plan B. A New York court said it should be available, but the Obama administration is appealing.
Or it was. That was Friday. Yesterday, the administration announced it was dropping its appeal....
Yesterday, I wrote a post on my Wired blog about a move by the GOP-dominated Wisconsin state legislature to shut down an investigative reporting program in the University of Wisconsin journalism school where I teach....
Yesterday, I wrote a post on my Wired blog about a move by the GOP-dominated Wisconsin state legislature to shut down an investigative reporting program in the University of Wisconsin journalism school where I teach. I wrote the post in protest. Not only because I wanted to protest an infringement on academic freedom but because I wanted to remind people - including these legislators - that clear and determined journalistic inquiry is an essential part of a good democracy. With that in mind, Paul Raeburn, our chief Tracker, and Phil Hilts, head of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship program, have invited me to post my essay here as well. I'm grateful for the opportunity.
For the last four years, I’ve taught an investigative reporting class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Not typical, you might say, for a long-time science writer who spends...
(ALERT - Longish post. If you don't have time to read it all be sure to skip to the video linked at the bottom. Which is, by the way, a long thing too. The reward is a fabulous, ear-scorchingly effective rant on GMO-phobia).
With anti-GMO campaigns and truth-in-GM...
(ALERT - Longish post. If you don't have time to read it all be sure to skip to the video linked at the bottom. Which is, by the way, a long thing too. The reward is a fabulous, ear-scorchingly effective rant on GMO-phobia).
With anti-GMO campaigns and truth-in-GM labeling drives putting so much wind in eco-activist sails, the UK's busiest newspaper (eg - its large New York bureau's scoop on who told on the NSA and revealed its appetite for private phone records) late last week ran a terrific story. In it is a sober and sharp explanation why one ought not to be quick to condemn things for sale in the market just because a few genes got switched in the lab from one species to another. I am unsure whether this ran in the printed paper or just on a website:
- Guardian/Professional - Marc Gunther: ...
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is possibly the best place to go for treatment of some forms of cancer, but the hospital has been regularly in the news over the past year for all the wrong things: misusing research money, hyping cancer cures--and now with the strange case of a breast-cancer oncologist poisoning another...
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is possibly the best place to go for treatment of some forms of cancer, but the hospital has been regularly in the news over the past year for all the wrong things: misusing research money, hyping cancer cures--and now with the strange case of a breast-cancer oncologist poisoning another oncologist with whom she was in "a casual sexual relationship," according to the district attorney.
Todd Ackerman and Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle, who have been keeping close watch on M.D. Anderson and have been responsible for breaking much of the bad news, reported Friday that Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo, a breast-cancer oncologist at M.D. Anderson, has been charged with aggravated assault for putting ethylene glycol in the coffee of George Blumenschein, a...
The blogger David Dobbs, who has covered neuroscience at Wired since 2010, has announced he is leaving the magazine's website today "so I can focus more steadily for a time on finishing my book, tentatively titled The Orchid and the Dandelion."...
The blogger David Dobbs, who has covered neuroscience at Wired since 2010, has announced he is leaving the magazine's website today "so I can focus more steadily for a time on finishing my book, tentatively titled The Orchid and the Dandelion."
He explains his departure with characteristic flair and precision: "I know some people manage it, but I’ve found it hard to reconcile the demands of blogging at a venue like Wired and of writing a serious book that requires deep immersion: a matter of not just the time needed for each venture, but of the mindset and what you might call the focal length of one’s mental lens," he writes at the end of a post that is the first in a series recapping highlights of his time at Wired.
Starting today, you should be able to find...
The first chapter of Nautilus's June issue is out. The month's topic is "Uncertainty," which promises "a new look at an indeterminate world." For those who can't keep up with all the unconventional...
The first chapter of Nautilus's June issue is out. The month's topic is "Uncertainty," which promises "a new look at an indeterminate world." For those who can't keep up with all the unconventional publishing models on the web (see Matter, below), Nautilus has begun publishing one four-chapter story a month, with the chapters being released on the four consecutive Thursdays. I think.
The first chapter contains four feature stories, all written by scientists. The first one I opened was "A Universe Made of Tiny, Random Chunks," by Carl Frederick, who has a doctorate in theoretical physics.
It begins this way:
One of science’s...
7Jun 2013
The teaser for Matter's latest story--the May story, published on May 22--intrigued me enough that I decided to lay down the 99 cents it cost to buy it. The story, "The Charisma Coach," by Teresa Chin (left), is...
The teaser for Matter's latest story--the May story, published on May 22--intrigued me enough that I decided to lay down the 99 cents it cost to buy it. The story, "The Charisma Coach," by Teresa Chin (left), is about an introvert named Olivia Fox Cabane who became a sought-after executive and leadership trainer after reinventing herself as a charismatic and learning how to teach charisma to others.
Part of what grabbed me in the teaser--the first 1,100 words of the story--is that I was skeptical about whether charisma could be taught. "Olivia wasn't born with it," Chin writes. "It took her years to learn how to be a good host, and to do so she had to seek out the science of charisma." That's a little misleading, because, as I later read, she also assembled a trove of self-help books, which are not what you would normally think of as science. Still...
What happened to the epidemic of crack babies who were going to grow up with severe deficits, threatening to overwhelm the schools and cost the country billions of dollars to care for them?
To find out, take a look at this 12-minute video clip ...
What happened to the epidemic of crack babies who were going to grow up with severe deficits, threatening to overwhelm the schools and cost the country billions of dollars to care for them?
To find out, take a look at this 12-minute video clip on the Retro Report page of The New York Times. The department's tag line is "The truth now about the big stories then."
What you will find out is that the hysteria over the crack babies who were "born addicted" was vastly exaggerated, based upon a study of only 23 babies. One critic in the Times video notes that some of the supposed features of crack addiction in infants, such as a rapid shaking of the arms, were a consequence of premature birth, not or crack addiction.
It's fascinating to look back. I found it so interesting that I dug up...
Last week, I wrote that there was a fascinating story waiting to be written on a case out of China that involves espionage, conspiracy, bribery, and even an unnamed co-conspirator identified only as "CC-1".
I...
Last week, I wrote that there was a fascinating story waiting to be written on a case out of China that involves espionage, conspiracy, bribery, and even an unnamed co-conspirator identified only as "CC-1".
I'm happy to report that The New York Times has now taken my suggestion with a Shenzhen-dated page-one story today on this strange case.
This story certainly surpasses the routine stories last week that were coughed up from an FBI press release, but it's not the story I was looking for. The times piece fills in details, but it doesn't give us the cloak-and-dagger story I'd like to read. It wouldn't be an easy story to report, but it's still out there, waiting for somebody to...
It's a standard formula for concocting a feature story: Start with an anecdote that illustrates the story's point, step back for a moment so readers can see the context into which the anecdote falls, carry on with the reporting, and perhaps pick up the anecdote at the end.
It's such a good...
It's a standard formula for concocting a feature story: Start with an anecdote that illustrates the story's point, step back for a moment so readers can see the context into which the anecdote falls, carry on with the reporting, and perhaps pick up the anecdote at the end.
It's such a good formula that it has become a cliché, and poor writers who try to hang weak reporting on this scaffold usually find that the whole thing comes tumbling down.
But Alison Motluk, at the Canadian magazine and website The Walrus, shows us how it is supposed to be done, with a moving story on the scientific controversy over a controversial condition called PANDAS.
That stands for pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections, a weird complication of a strep infection. Motluk's description:
...
An opinion piece by Michele Weldon in The New York Times strikes a discordant note a week-and-a-half before Father's Day.
The piece...
An opinion piece by Michele Weldon in The New York Times strikes a discordant note a week-and-a-half before Father's Day.
The piece, "When Children Are Better Off Fatherless," begins with this: "The 24 million American sons and daughters growing up without fathers are not all doomed."
Who says they are? To whom is Weldon responding? Links, please.
She then elaborates: "Nor are the children of lesbian parents. Nor the children whose fathers were killed in the line of duty as policemen, firemen, soldiers. Nor the children who have lost fathers to disease, accidents or suicide." Some of these are presumably included in the 24 million, so she has confused the categories. She then concludes that "our society must be careful not to...
I gotta take a look at Ria Novosti more often. Past, brief glances at the English language products of this Russian news agency left an impression it's after the same sort of audience as the Daily Mail in the UK, with the same relationship with truth and perspective. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it has revamped...
I gotta take a look at Ria Novosti more often. Past, brief glances at the English language products of this Russian news agency left an impression it's after the same sort of audience as the Daily Mail in the UK, with the same relationship with truth and perspective. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it has revamped things. Maybe both. Maybe I mixed it up with pravda.ru (which really is odd, as see this lunatic rant on its page today). Check out RIA Novosti's science home page. It looks reasonably reasonable with some but not too many extravagant flourishes and the likes of !!!!! in heds. As an old aviation buff I was amazed to read there that the Pentagon is buying 30 Russian Mi-17 military transport helicopters from their state-...
It would be a big surprise if a prominent journal published a study commissioned by the dating website eHarmony showing that people who met through online dating were more miserable than those who met through friends, work, bars, etc. Funny that such results rarely appear.
In fact, this week’s PNAS had...
It would be a big surprise if a prominent journal published a study commissioned by the dating website eHarmony showing that people who met through online dating were more miserable than those who met through friends, work, bars, etc. Funny that such results rarely appear.
In fact, this week’s PNAS had a paper on a study showing that online dating, (surprise!), allegedly leads to happier marriages. Not only was eHarmony behind the funding, but one author had been a member of the scientific advisory board and another had been the company’s director of research.
The potential conflicts of interest here were at least as interesting as the results of the study, which entailed a large survey of couples married between 2005 and 2012. Here’s how the PNAS press blub describes the result: “More than one-third of nearly 20,000 Americans surveyed in a study met their...
[Update, 6/10/13: On Friday, Julie Bosman at The New York Times reported that Jonah Lehrer had signed with Simon & Schuster. As...
[Update, 6/10/13: On Friday, Julie Bosman at The New York Times reported that Jonah Lehrer had signed with Simon & Schuster. As far as I know, nobody has disclosed what Lehrer was paid. The signing by a major publisher is, in my view, an affront to journalists who have been playing by the rules.]
The disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer, who has admitted to lying, fabricating quotes, and other mortal journalistic sins, is now shopping a book proposal--on love.
This news comes from Daniel Engber at Slate,...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Scientists from Europe, the US and Latin America are attending the 3rd World Summit on Evolution celebrated in Galapagos Islands. The University of San Francisco Quito hosts the event and announced the inauguration of a Center for the Study of Evolutionary Biology, which...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Scientists from Europe, the US and Latin America are attending the 3rd World Summit on Evolution celebrated in Galapagos Islands. The University of San Francisco Quito hosts the event and announced the inauguration of a Center for the Study of Evolutionary Biology, which will be directed by Antonio Lazcano, a well-known evolutionary biologists and science popularize from Mexico. During his speech and media appearances Lazcano said that 140.000 religious fundamentalists from the US are spreading creationism through the schools of the developing world and threatening the education of science. That’s the main message that local press picked from the summit. We haven’t read any story discussing the areas of research and projects that will take place in the Center for Evolutionary Biology.
From Brazil we read two stories saying that Amazon deforestation increased significantly during 2012, mainly due to mining...
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