As I start my third week on the Tracker, I’ve begun to learn about some potential hazards. One problem is the risk of overlap. It’s easy to get all excited about a post only to see that someone else on the Tracker has it covered. Luckily there are some issues that can accomodate multiple viewpoints....
Category: About Journalism
Introduce or comment on journalism topics
As I start my third week on the Tracker, I’ve begun to learn about some potential hazards. One problem is the risk of overlap. It’s easy to get all excited about a post only to see that someone else on the Tracker has it covered. Luckily there are some issues that can accomodate multiple viewpoints.
One good example is the Jonah Lehrer saga. For those of us who were never enamored of his science writing, the guy has become much more entertaining now that he’s crashing and burning. He’s the summer blockbuster disaster movie of the science writing community.
So I eagerly devoured the latest revelation – a Slate piece about an investigation into Lehrer’s Wired.com blog posts. The investigator was science writer Charles Seife, and this brings up another...
31Aug 2012
Earlier this week, science blogger Emily Willingham took apart - in elegant detail - an opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times which proposed an infectious disease theory of autism (treatable, apparently, by parasitic worms.) You can read the commentary on both pieces that I...
Earlier this week, science blogger Emily Willingham took apart - in elegant detail - an opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times which proposed an infectious disease theory of autism (treatable, apparently, by parasitic worms.) You can read the commentary on both pieces that I posted on Tracker here.
She followed that up with a post titled, "Writing About Autism Science? 10 Things" which should be required reading in science journalism classrooms - and in newsrooms as well. Although many of her suggestions are focused on covering autism in particular, the essay also makes some vital points about science journalism in general. The list ranges from interviewing suggestions to cautionary lessons about interpreting risk research and correlation studies...
On Sunday, the New York Times published an opinion piece, An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism, by Moises Velaquez-Manoff, the author of a recent book that takes a broad-...
On Sunday, the New York Times published an opinion piece, An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism, by Moises Velaquez-Manoff, the author of a recent book that takes a broad-spectrum look at the role of the immune system in human health.
In it the author expresses his opinion (emphasis mine) that inflammatory disease may account for a large chunk of autism cases: "At least a subset of autism — perhaps one-third, and very likely more — looks like a type of inflammatory disease. And it begins in the womb." I emphasize the word opinion because as you get further into the piece, you realize that there really isn't much science to back up that statement.
Actually, people who study autism aren't sure that it "begins" in the womb, whatever that means. Neither does the rich literature of...
Congratulations and salutations to the four winners (including one semi-anonymous team of editor types) of the 2012 NASA Science in Society Awards. Best way to read up on the details is with the NASW's press release that went...
Congratulations and salutations to the four winners (including one semi-anonymous team of editor types) of the 2012 NASA Science in Society Awards. Best way to read up on the details is with the NASW's press release that went out on Friday. In case you missed it and are in a hurry, here they are:
- BOOKS: Seth Mnookin - Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine ; On the baseless fear of vaccines as an autism gateway.
- SCIENCE REPORTING: Center for Public Integrity and National Public Radio teams: : Poisoned Places with versions at CPI and broadcast by...
Rumblings of discontent and of an inside review at an essential magazine for lay science fans, Science News, are out in the open. Details of reasons are not clear, not to me anyway, but its respected editor (and a pal of mine) Tom Siegfried recently gave...
Rumblings of discontent and of an inside review at an essential magazine for lay science fans, Science News, are out in the open. Details of reasons are not clear, not to me anyway, but its respected editor (and a pal of mine) Tom Siegfried recently gave notice. Tomorrow is his last day. Word is that longtime editor Eva Emerson is in charge until a permanent replacement is found.
Siegfried, editor in chief of the bi-weekly since 2007, is among the most decorated science journalists in the business. On his wall or perhaps stuffed in a drawer somewhere are the awards in science journalism from the AAAS, Nat'l Association of Science Writers, American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, and a bunch more. His short bio is still up at Science News, as is...
30Jul 2012
The Knight Science Journalism program at MIT has launched its new website. The mission of our program is unchanged — to offer training and to stimulate discussion among science journalists — but the new site will have more audio and video, more information on our Fellows, and a gradually-growing set of...
The Knight Science Journalism program at MIT has launched its new website. The mission of our program is unchanged — to offer training and to stimulate discussion among science journalists — but the new site will have more audio and video, more information on our Fellows, and a gradually-growing set of Knight Science Journalism Trackers to follow science and health news daily. We hope to offer more guest posts, articles and multimedia presentations on the practice of journalism as we go forward.
Please note that the Knight Science Journalism Tracker blog's new URL is ksj.mit.edu/tracker. Visitors to the old URL will be redirected automatically. If you previously followed the Tracker via its RSS feed, please visit the subscribe page and update your RSS reader with the new feed URLs.
Please give us feedback; I'm sure we'll need it.
A remarkably cool and removed essay at the Poynter Institute site late last week addressed an issue that appears to be a non-issue for a surprising number of the internet and digital era's "news"...
A remarkably cool and removed essay at the Poynter Institute site late last week addressed an issue that appears to be a non-issue for a surprising number of the internet and digital era's "news" outlets. At stake are practices that have gotten a steady diet of grumping from me among others here at ksjtracker. They stem from the use of information, including supposedly verbatim quotes, straight off press releases.
- Mallory Jean Tenore (Poynter assoc. editor): 6 ways journalists can use press releases effectively
There is much to chew on in Ms. Tenore's rightly link-strewn piece. Speaking of chewing, I'll take a bite out of the article...
Here at the Tracker, we like to take note of the comings and goings of trackers everywhere. If we don't do it, who will?
So I'd like to report that The New York Times ...
Here at the Tracker, we like to take note of the comings and goings of trackers everywhere. If we don't do it, who will?
So I'd like to report that The New York Times has chosen its new tracker. (They call her the public editor, but that's their loss.) Her name is Margaret M. Sullivan, and she has been the editor of the Buffalo News since 1999. She wants to continue the every-other-Sunday column in the print edition, but her main focus will be on supercharging the commentary and criticism online.
That's a good thing, although we don't yet know what that means. Let...
On Time magazine's website you can find all kinds of jaunty Top 10 lists. Top 10 Iconic Junk Foods. Top 10 Zoo Escapes. Top 10 Racy Novels.
But Time has now set a record with one of the most tasteless and repellent items I can remember reading anywhere: ...
On Time magazine's website you can find all kinds of jaunty Top 10 lists. Top 10 Iconic Junk Foods. Top 10 Zoo Escapes. Top 10 Racy Novels.
But Time has now set a record with one of the most tasteless and repellent items I can remember reading anywhere: Top 10 Comas. (Thanks to the science blogger Ed Yong for calling attention to this.)
These are people, some famous, some not, who lingered in comas before dying. The ranking is based on something only Time's editors could possibly imagine. Picture a group of them sitting around discussing whether Sunny von Bulow's coma topped Terri Schiavo's. Or whether either topped that of a 6-year-old girl who lapsed into a coma after anesthesia for an appendectomy.
Time: Take the damn thing down!
...26Jun 2012
Cows grazing in Tifton 85 grass/Source: UGA
On Saturday, a CBS news reporter, Alix Bryan, posted a story out of Elgin, Texas about a herd of cattle poisoned by cyanide. The source of the poison, according to the story, was a "genetically-modified" form of Bermuda grass that was apparently generating the poison.
The problem was that the story was...
Tracker notice
...
Tracker notice
Head Tracker Charlie Petit will be semi-retiring from the KSJ Tracker beginning August 3, completing more than six years at the helm. From the beginning, the Tracker has been a hit with science writers. Its substantial overall readership increases year by year.
Much of the success of the Tracker, I think, comes from Charlie’s unusual abilities as a blogger. He has a sharp eye for interesting material, a sense of skepticism, a light touch as a writer and a continuously-present sense of humor. To my mind, this combination of traits goes a long way to defining the essentials needed for a good blog. Unlike more formal journalism, blogs have a personal voice. But it must...
21Jun 2012
Jonah Lehrer
Two years ago, I posted a piece here calling Jonah Lehrer the next Malcolm Gladwell. I understand that people have differing views of Gladwell, but I intended that as high praise. Like Gladwell, Lehrer had distinguished himself as a writer who could extract sometimes abstruse findings from neuroscience and show, with grace and wit, how they changed the way we think...
...
On Wednesday, the journal PLoS ONE announced a study suggesting that fish seemed to show autism spectrum gene expression when swimming in water that contained anti-depressants.
Oh? the savvy science writer, might respond. What kind of dose are we talking about here? How profound...
*...
*Correction Note: Earlier headline id'd Science Magazine as the platform for the article under discussion. It was its sister AAAS pubication, Science Careers. Copy amended immediately below)
The AAAS's learned journal Science has its own platoon of science journalists who occasionally liven up the news with narrative that is about more than data, hypothesis, error bars and conclusions. One wonders what its members think of their editors (Correction - make that the editor at Science Careers) who published this week a column on the art and craft of science...
©2010 Knight Science Journalism at MIT. All Rights Reserved.