Tabitha M. Powledge collects samples of skepticism and enthusiasm regarding the administration's new BRAIN initiative in this week's On Science Blogs.
One reason it's hard to know whether to be enthusiastic or skepical is that nobody yet knows exactly...
Tabitha M. Powledge collects samples of skepticism and enthusiasm regarding the administration's new BRAIN initiative in this week's On Science Blogs.
One reason it's hard to know whether to be enthusiastic or skepical is that nobody yet knows exactly what the initiative will do, so one must rely on faith. I'm going to betray myself as an enthusiast, for two reasons. One, I think that more research is better than less research, and I don't buy the claims that big science is damaging to small science, any more that it was with the human genome project.
And the second reason is that I don't buy the now fashionable claim that neuroscience has been hyped and has been disappointing. All kinds of science gets hyped, and research is often disappointing--until it isn't. That is, nobody cares much about a monk...
It's Tuesday, and I'm remiss in not mentioning last Friday's On Science Blogs by Tabitha M. Powledge, as I usually do on Fridays or Mondays.
I was particularly interested in...
It's Tuesday, and I'm remiss in not mentioning last Friday's On Science Blogs by Tabitha M. Powledge, as I usually do on Fridays or Mondays.
I was particularly interested in her discussion in this issue of a philosophical point that I could summarize, I suppose, by saying that we are all Jonah Lehrer. (He's the disgraced journalist who is trying--and so far failing--to resuscitate his cold, dead journalism career.)
Yes, the crack about Lehrer is an overstatement. But here's the point: We're talking not just about the transgressions of a journalistic fabulist, but of the distortions inherent in all of journalism:
...this is not only a failure of the entire field of science reporting, whether on blogs or in published outlets (or both), but of the very field and profession of journalism itself....
The Knight Foundation on Wednesday said in an unbylined blog post that it "should not have put itself into a position tantamount to rewarding people who have violated the basic tenets...
The Knight Foundation on Wednesday said in an unbylined blog post that it "should not have put itself into a position tantamount to rewarding people who have violated the basic tenets of journalism. We regret our mistake" in inviting the disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer to speak at a Knight conference, the post said.
The admission followed a day of blistering and widespread criticism of Knight and Lehrer on Twitter and elsewhere online.
On Tuesday, Knight paid Lehrer $20,000 to deliver a speech that, in the view of many critics, amounted to a rehearsed apology aimed at rehabilitating his journalism career. It was the first time Lehrer had spoken publicly about the scandal that broke last summer, when he was tripped up by reporters and admitted plagiarizing others, reusing his own material in new...
Standing beside a large screen displaying brutal comments on Twitter, the disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer today delivered a talk that seemed to be aimed primarily at rehabilitating his writing career, rather than offering any insights on his journalistic misdeeds.
...
Standing beside a large screen displaying brutal comments on Twitter, the disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer today delivered a talk that seemed to be aimed primarily at rehabilitating his writing career, rather than offering any insights on his journalistic misdeeds.
Lehrer was paid $20,000 for his talk by the Knight Foundation, according to Andrew Sherry, the foundation's spokesman. Lehrer spoke at a Knight Foundation journalism conference in Miami. (The Knight Fellowships at MIT were established by a grant from the Knight Foundation.)
In his first public remarks since resigning from The New Yorker last summer, Lehrer began by apologizing to his readers and his colleagues. "My mistakes have caused deep pain to those I care about...I am profoundly sorry," he said. "It is my hope that someday my...
Last month, the satiric science website, Collectively Unconscious, published a report from the fictional University of Ingberg about a "brain region that does absolutely nothing."...
Last month, the satiric science website, Collectively Unconscious, published a report from the fictional University of Ingberg about a "brain region that does absolutely nothing." According to the write up, neuroscientists were so outraged by this evidence of uselessness that one offered to surgically remove the structure from any patient wanting to get rid of a "cortical spare tyre."
Underneath the jokiness - this is, after all, a website that also quotes interviews with frozen woolly mammoths- runs the same serious point being raised with increasing frequency by science writers and scientists alike, concerns about an area of research over-hyped by both professions, with the result of actually diminishing public understanding of its most meaningful findings. Or as New York University psychology professor Gary Marcus...
It sounds weird, but that’s what Boris Kachka seems to say in his New York Magazine story, Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist and Neither was Jonah Lehrer. And yet, aside from the unfounded insult hurled at a huge swath of...
It sounds weird, but that’s what Boris Kachka seems to say in his New York Magazine story, Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist and Neither was Jonah Lehrer. And yet, aside from the unfounded insult hurled at a huge swath of the science writing community, the story is pretty gripping, well-reported and full of new details about the rise and fall of Jonah Lehrer and what the episode says about the state of journalism.
The story chronicles Lehrer’s rapid rise, identifying the Wired and New Yorker editors who enabled him. Kachka then offers a detailed account of the events that exposed Lehrer’s fabrications. Especially interesting was the dogged investigation by that Bob Dylan fan - Michael Moynihan, described as a freelance writer who was then guest-blogging for the Washington Post.
Katcha then digs deeper...
Consider this a loud shout out for a recent state-of-science writing post by Seth Mnookin at PloS: The state of science writing circa 2012: The summer of our discontent made glorious by the possibilities of our...
Consider this a loud shout out for a recent state-of-science writing post by Seth Mnookin at PloS: The state of science writing circa 2012: The summer of our discontent made glorious by the possibilities of our times.
Mnookin begins by acknowledging a parade of science communication low notes, the self-induced destruction of the career of Jonah Lehrer; The New York Times decision to promote a proposterous theory of autism in its opinion pages; gullibility at Gizmodo, and, of course, Naomi Wolf's recent elegy to the "thinking" vagina, which ( as far I can tell) seems to only offer evidence that she's thinking about another Big Book.
"Even moments that should have been celebratory ended up leaving many of us who care about science, and science communication, grumpy and dispirited," Mnookin writes, as he launches into an exploration of...
At 7 p.m. Friday night--the time during the week when people release news items they hope nobody will see--Evan Hansen, the editor-in-chief of Wired.com,...
At 7 p.m. Friday night--the time during the week when people release news items they hope nobody will see--Evan Hansen, the editor-in-chief of Wired.com, announced that a "preliminary Wired review" had found that numerous posts by Jonah Lehrer on his Frontal Cortex blog at Wired did not meet Wired's "editorial standards."
Even for a Friday night release on a holiday weekend between two noisy political conventions and after a hurricane, that's pretty tepid language. Here's what Hansen did not say: The review was intended to do much more than discover whether Lehrer violated "editorial standards." It was intended "to determine whether he [Lehrer] recycled, fabricated, plagiarized, or otherwise breached journalistic ethics." And it...
[7:15 pm EDT: Updates with comment from Matt Crenson, managing editor at Science News.]
Several Science News reporters complained publicly on Facebook Thursday about what they say are repeated examples of misappropriation of their stories by UPI.
Here...
[7:15 pm EDT: Updates with comment from Matt Crenson, managing editor at Science News.]
Several Science News reporters complained publicly on Facebook Thursday about what they say are repeated examples of misappropriation of their stories by UPI.
Here's one example. On July 23rd, 2012, Nadia Drake of Science News wrote the following, in a story entitled "Crowd Sourcing Comes to Astronomy":
After performing a Yahoo! image search for photos of Comet Holmes, which whizzed by Earth in 2007, a team of astronomers used the returned images to reconstruct the comet’s orbit in three dimensions — proving that astronomers can take advantage of data provided by an unwitting group of participants.
“I think it’s the beginning...
Drugs used to treat mild high blood pressure have not been found to reduce heart attacks, strokes, or deaths, Jeanne Lenzer...
Drugs used to treat mild high blood pressure have not been found to reduce heart attacks, strokes, or deaths, Jeanne Lenzer reports in Slate. The study "turns medical dogma on its head," she writes, in what seems to me to be a very important story. Some 68 million Americans have mild high blood pressure, she reports. The problem could be something called disease creep, which "occurs when patients with risk factors for a condition or milder cases are treated the same as patients with severe cases." The story seems to have received only scattered coverage: A Google search turned up three stories. Not everyone agrees with the findings, but this study should not have been ignored. A nod to Lenzer for staying on top of this...
I'm not eager to review the latest disclosures of offenses by the neuroscience writer and fabulist Jonah Lehrer, because, frankly, I'm too repelled by it. But if you're looking for a recap (and it's grim, I assure you), you can find it...
I'm not eager to review the latest disclosures of offenses by the neuroscience writer and fabulist Jonah Lehrer, because, frankly, I'm too repelled by it. But if you're looking for a recap (and it's grim, I assure you), you can find it on last Friday's edition of Tammy Powledge's excellent blog, On Science Blogs This Week.
She also reviews the latest on the climate conversion of former skeptic Richard Muller, complete with charts, tables, and graphs.
Powledge's blog--you can find the link every Friday on the home page of the National Association of Science Writers--should be essential reading. I always find something I would have been sorry to miss.
- Paul Raeburn
Last month, I reported that Jonah Lehrer, a noted young writer who covers neuroscience, had recycled material from other stories in his new blog for The New Yorker. Lehrer admitted wrongdoing and...
Last month, I reported that Jonah Lehrer, a noted young writer who covers neuroscience, had recycled material from other stories in his new blog for The New Yorker. Lehrer admitted wrongdoing and briefly appeared able to weather the storm. He was not immediately dropped by The New Yorker, which promised that this sort of thing would not happen again.
Now Lehrer is in ashes, after admitting making up quotes from Bob Dylan, and insisting to a reporter that the quotes were not made up. The fabricated quotes appear in his new book, "Imagine: How Creativity Works," which has sold 200,000 copies, an achievement most authors can only dream of. The sad tale is recounted in this story in The New York Times...
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