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Category: About Journalism
Introduce or comment on journalism topics
Earlier this month, the Slate science writer Dan Engber noticed a story circulating in the British media regarding the so-called "five second rule" - the idea that if dropped food is only on the floor for a few seconds, bacteria don't have a chance to swarm it.
Wait, he thought, hasn't that whole idea been discredited? But then he noticed that the...
Several members of an email group discussion among...
Several members of an email group discussion among science writers and bloggers with interest in enviro matters for the last two days have gone into full obsession, fulmination, and a dash of meditation on a letter to this week's Nature Climate Change. The paper is in Grist below. It's roughly about stupidity not being why many people deny that human-caused global warming is important to everyday life and gov't policy.. Several news outlets also have relayed the basics of the NSF-funded study, if not the vindication, consternation, and other emotions rattling around among people who write a lot about global warming as science and as an urgent reason for difficult policy decisions.
The news is not...
30May 2012
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About ten days ago, the University of Buffalo released a peer-reviewed study - or so it described it at that moment - which seemed to cast a positive light on the way regulators were able to managing the risks of the controversial method of gas extraction known as fracking.
The researchers at Buffalo's Shale Resources and Society Institute had...
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Last week, the journal Cell Metabolism published a study in mice exploring the interactions between the compound resveratrol (which some research indicates may promote health) and genes associated with longevity.
That it produced a virtual flurry of coverage owes much, I think, to our journalistic love for research...
10May 2012
Earlier this week, on my blog at Speakeasy Science, I wrote a piece criticizing the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for sloppy reporting and writing in his anti-industrial chemical columns. As it relates to science media peer review, I'm going to cross-post it here (with the kind...
Earlier this week, on my blog at Speakeasy Science, I wrote a piece criticizing the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for sloppy reporting and writing in his anti-industrial chemical columns. As it relates to science media peer review, I'm going to cross-post it here (with the kind permission of Charlie Petit and Phil Hilts).
But I also want to make a couple of points about reaction to the piece. I had expected an irate response from Kristof supporters. But almost all the comments on the post were supportive of my main point - that we need to do a much better job as journalists in communicating risk in general and chemical risk in particular. Over at Slashdot, the post generated a 400-plus comment thread titled "The...
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Last week, while most of the trackers at ksj were scampering here and there but posting only in frantic, short windows, came word from Tulare County in California that a cow in a slaughterhouse had BSE, aka bovine spongiform encephalopathy aka mad cow disease. We missed it. Good call, even if it was accidental.
Fortunately at the...
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If you don't know the website, Double X Science, I'd like to bring it to your attention. Its self-declared emphasis is on women in science and/or women interested in science - and you'll find that there, ranging from profiles of female scientists to a...
25Apr 2012
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Last week, I wrote a piece here, On the Corn Syrup Theory of Autism, which took a critical look at a Grist story concerning a scientific paper proposing that high fructose corn syrup consumption was responsible for the rise in autism cases in the United States. My point was that the author, Tom Laskaway, was...
This Tracker is taking the week off for meetings and business, but must...
This Tracker is taking the week off for meetings and business, but must pause to give a shout out to the superlative, star-laced "Science Writing in the Age of Denial" program that the University of Wisconsin-Madison's crew of science writing department and communication specialists put on today, continuing with workshops tomorrow. It even got a full-on flame blogpost from the contrarian and angry side of the room. So it's not just the expected group that paid attention to its existence. Tweets, at last...
Ed Yong, ...
Ed Yong, prolific science journalist and almost certainly the most active tweeting science-oriented blogger in this or most any other solar system, has some admiring things to say about another tower of science writing power. He provided an analysis of Carl Zimmer's style in the Guardian yesterday. His aim- which includes a nod to the monumental Tim Radford - is to give some hints to amateurs how a pro does it. The occasion is the annual Wellcome Trust science writing...
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I want to take a moment to call your attention to a fascinating discussion on what defines good science journalism resulting from a conference earlier this month at the Royal Institution in London.
The meeting, on March 13, was billed as a...
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Ohio State University is highly-regarded in science journalism circles, and not just because it has an iconic glaciologist and polar research center and many other centers of excellence. It has also had for decades the redoubtable, ever so slightly lugubrious in opinion, and ever-thoughtful Earle Holland at the helm of its research-oriented PIO work - demanding straight-shooting by his team and integrity in explanation...
Last January, the Public Radio International show This American Life broadcast a program on the harsh treatment of workers in Chinese factories that produce iPhones and other...
Last January, the Public Radio International show This American Life broadcast a program on the harsh treatment of workers in Chinese factories that produce iPhones and other Apple products. The show, called Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory, was an excerpt from a theatrical production by Mike Daisey called "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." On Friday, This American Life, and its host, Ira Glass, devoted an entire show to broadcasting an extraordinary retraction, in which Glass said that Daisey had lied to him, and that "the most powerful and memorable moments in the story all seem to be fabricated."
Science...
Science journalists and others interested in the business, looking for some talking points on any expected conversations about the state of the craft, ought to take a look at a collection amassing at the UK's Guardian newspaper. On March 13 the Royal Institution, aka Ri, which is different from the Royal Society but similarly old & distinguished and that's about all I know offhand (Sir Joseph Banks is in the mix), is sponsoring a public discussion about science journalism and the art of getting things right. Nobody suggested this plug to us. I just got lost jogging along the links that the Guardian has in blogposts helping to rev up the audience in advance and figured there's no...
22Feb 2012
It's been almost a year now since the Canadian Science Writers...
It's been almost a year now since the Canadian Science Writers Association posted an open letter to their national government citing "numerous examples of instances where Canadian journalists have been denied access to government scientists doing research in areas of public interest."
Two examples from that letter:
1) After radiation releases from Japan's crippled Fukishima power plant, journalists asked for information from the country's sensitive radiation monitoring network. They were denied all reports and found out about levels in Canada only from a global sampling report released by Australia.
2) In...
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