"There has never been a golden age of science journalism, but certainly there were more characters, better writers, more newsgathering zeal, and more originality in the recent past."
Category: BBC
"There has never been a golden age of science journalism, but certainly there were more characters, better writers, more newsgathering zeal, and more originality in the recent past."
So writes a critic on The Huffington Post. Those are fighting words--and tired words. We've heard these criticisms before, and I should probably ignore them, but, as The Dude put it in The Big Lebowski, "This will not stand, man."
The critic is David Whitehouse, whose HuffPo bio says that he is an astrophysicist, a former BBC science correspondent, and the author of four books. Despite those bona fides, his criticism echoes down the line as if it were coming to us via a bad connection from the 20th Century.
He begins his argument with the contention that "science, and communicating science, is too...
Happily for those of us at the Tracker, the supply of stories with powerful conclusions--yet...
Happily for those of us at the Tracker, the supply of stories with powerful conclusions--yet based on no evidence--continues to grow.
We might forgive a writer or a news organization for over-reaching a little beyond what the evidence shows. If we catch wind of it here, we give 'em a ruler on the knuckles and move on. But when writers or broadcasters serve up stories based on nothing--that deserves more powerful condemnation.
Tom Paulson at Humanosphere--one of the new blogs in the National Public Radio Argo Network--has found some lovely examples of conclusions based on nothing.
The subject is the cholera epidemic in...
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