It's been seven years since the conservative Canadian government led by prime minister Stephen Harper started to put muzzles on federal employees who stray from the script when talking to the media. This prominently includes scientists and other researchers who might have opinions on interesting things,...
It's been seven years since the conservative Canadian government led by prime minister Stephen Harper started to put muzzles on federal employees who stray from the script when talking to the media. This prominently includes scientists and other researchers who might have opinions on interesting things, such as the nation's energy policies, wildlife and land management, climate trends, medical research priorities, and some things that are interesting just because they are interesting including odd animal behavior or astronomy or autocratic psychological syndromes.
Nonetheless it remains a shock every time when reading again how deeply into its government institutions has penetratede the fervor to put barriers between scientists and reporters or other members of the public. Knight trackers have of course taken note of the disarray in scientists' freedom to talk directly with the Canadia public before (including posts by Deb Blum (...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Argentinean La Nación published and extensive report acknowledging the state of the biotech industry in the country. It highlights the connection between researchers and industry, it describes specific examples, and it says that 124 companies export to more than 120...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Argentinean La Nación published and extensive report acknowledging the state of the biotech industry in the country. It highlights the connection between researchers and industry, it describes specific examples, and it says that 124 companies export to more than 120 countries. In Folha (Brazil) we read that patents will gain value in researcher’s academic cv. Peruvian and Brazilian governments are disputing the use of the '.amazon' domain with online retailer Amazon, arguing the name should be used to promote the protection of the Amazonian rainforest. Colombia launched a $300 million plan to protect its biodiversity, and El Tiempo wrote an enthusiastic editorial about it. Chilean El Mercurio published also a great story about biodiversity, and SciDev reviewed an article comparing the health inequalities in different Latin American Countries (Cuba is the country with less disparities, Haiti has the most). Spanish news...
A careful and important blog post about a new research initiative at the National Institute of Mental Health has become,...
A careful and important blog post about a new research initiative at the National Institute of Mental Health has become, in the hands of New Scientist, a "bombshell" that "denounced" the forthcoming update of the psychiatric diagnostic manual.
This histrionic description seems out of character for New Scientist, which is ordinarily a very good science magazine. Here's the lede:
The world's biggest mental health research institute is abandoning the new version of psychiatry's "bible" – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, questioning its validity and stating that "patients with mental disorders deserve better." This bombshell comes just weeks before the...
Your tracker correspondent must confess to knowing little about Al Jazeera, other than that it's a private company with headquarters in Qatar, has grown steadily into an international news agency with a large staff, and has picked up awards and other accolades. It gets lots of scoops, particularly...
Your tracker correspondent must confess to knowing little about Al Jazeera, other than that it's a private company with headquarters in Qatar, has grown steadily into an international news agency with a large staff, and has picked up awards and other accolades. It gets lots of scoops, particularly from the Arab as well as broader Islamic world, but aims to appeal to a broad audience. (By the way and having nothing to do with this post but it comes to mind: an Al Jazeera man is one of next year's Knight Fellows).
I came across the following story via a tweet-sized squib from Boing Boing's science editor Maggie Koerth-Baker, thought the topic interesting if not quite news journalism, took a look at it and despite my confessed ignorance of the outlet found myself saying, "this is at Al Jazeera?"...
In a page-one story on sharply rising suicide rates in middle-aged Americans, Tara Parker-Pope blames "years of economic worry and easy access to prescription...
In a page-one story on sharply rising suicide rates in middle-aged Americans, Tara Parker-Pope blames "years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers" for making baby boomers particularly vulnerable.
From 1999 to 2010, she reports, "the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7," and "the most profound increases were seen among men in their 50s, among whom suicide rates jumped by nearly 50 percent, to about 30 per 100,000."
Before we get to the speculation about the reasons for this, let's look at the numbers. Why write "nearly 30 percent" when it's shorter and more accurate to write "28.4 percent," which is what the CDC reported in...
3May 2013
In On Science Blogs this week, Tabitha M. Powledge goes viral, wrapping up comments and insights into the H7N9 virus, the new SARS-like coronavirus, the seasonal flu in the U.S., and even a bit about why these viruses cause such alarm.
She points to...
In On Science Blogs this week, Tabitha M. Powledge goes viral, wrapping up comments and insights into the H7N9 virus, the new SARS-like coronavirus, the seasonal flu in the U.S., and even a bit about why these viruses cause such alarm.
She points to a useful guide on how to read the news about these bugs, posted by Maryn McKenna at her Wired magazine blog, Superbug.
If all of that is too much for you, she also sends you to a post with instructions for making a model of DNA out of licorice whips and jelly babies--and if you don't know what they are, you haven't been watching Dr. Who.
-Paul Raeburn
At the National Association of Science Writers' annual meeting in Pittsburgh in 2005, Kendall Powell, a young freelance writer, was "soaking her conference-sore feet with three other writers in a huge jet-tub in the hotel's honeymoon suite" while they did one of the things...
At the National Association of Science Writers' annual meeting in Pittsburgh in 2005, Kendall Powell, a young freelance writer, was "soaking her conference-sore feet with three other writers in a huge jet-tub in the hotel's honeymoon suite" while they did one of the things writers do best: complain.
"I complained that while I met so many interesting colleagues at conferences, and always loved talking shop with them, it was difficult to keep up that camaraderie once we headed home," she writes. Online groups, she thought, were too impersonal. But would a small, more intimate group "serve as a virtual jet-tub"?
Out of that reverie came the birth of an online group known as SciLance, which has grown to 35 members, and out of SciLance came a very good guide to science writing--The Science Writers' Handbook, published this week.
The book, written by the members of SciLance,...
A classy new science magazine called Nautilus makes its debut this week, with the first of what will be monthly single-topic issues released serially in "chapters" each Thursday.
According to its press release...
A classy new science magazine called Nautilus makes its debut this week, with the first of what will be monthly single-topic issues released serially in "chapters" each Thursday.
According to its press release on PR Newswire, Nautilus "weaves leading-edge science, culture and philosophy into a single story told by the world's leading thinkers and writers." It will include "reported features, narrative non-fiction, essays, blog posts and interviews--as well as fiction, graphic stories, and interactive widgets and games," the release says.
"Nautilus connects science to our lives, one mind-expanding topic at a time," the release says. "Join us." It is being launched with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, which funds a variety of projects on science and religion.
So far,...
2May 2013
We've received several messages asking what happened to the daily Tracker email alerts.
Yes, they're gone, lost in a move to a new server. We're working to get them up and running again as soon as possible.
Well, that's not quite right. None of us at the Tracker...
We've received several messages asking what happened to the daily Tracker email alerts.
Yes, they're gone, lost in a move to a new server. We're working to get them up and running again as soon as possible.
Well, that's not quite right. None of us at the Tracker is doing anything except to periodically send short notes to the computer people deep within MIT, who say they are "actively working on this issue."
Wish us luck. And thanks for noticing.
-Paul Raeburn
Johns Hopkins has closed its graduate science-writing program, alerting alumni in an e-mail that there will be no class next year. The program's director, ...
Johns Hopkins has closed its graduate science-writing program, alerting alumni in an e-mail that there will be no class next year. The program's director, Ann Finkbeiner, has resigned from the university.
The program has long been recognized as one of the top science-writing graduate programs in the country, along with others at NYU, Boston University, UC Santa Cruz, Columbia, and MIT. Finkbeiner told me in an email that she began teaching there about 1988 and became the program's director around 2000, although she was never a full-time Hopkins employee.
Finkbeiner told Michael Price...
As regular tracker readers surely all know, something is killing off honey bees across large stretches of the world including North America and Europe. Nobody has shown overwhelming evidence of a specific reason for this die-back, aka colony collapse disorder. But agricultural commissioners in the European Union...
As regular tracker readers surely all know, something is killing off honey bees across large stretches of the world including North America and Europe. Nobody has shown overwhelming evidence of a specific reason for this die-back, aka colony collapse disorder. But agricultural commissioners in the European Union moved this week against one of the prime suspects: a class of pesticides used widely on crops. Farmers soon, if this sticks, will have a hard time getting permits to use these "neonicotinoid" formulations on crops that attract the world's most common pollinating livestock.
The expected ban is not as sweeping as some agri-environmentalists hoped and lacked a strong enough vote to be open-ended in time, therefore is to be in force for two years. It fits generally under the precautionary principle - a tenet of low-risk living. It has more adherents in European governing circles than in those of the US. It means better safe than...
1May 2013
We surely live in remarkable times, when, only a month after Time magazine won the war on cancer, The Telegraph has now cured HIV.
"Researchers believe that there will be a...
We surely live in remarkable times, when, only a month after Time magazine won the war on cancer, The Telegraph has now cured HIV.
"Researchers believe that there will be a breakthrough in finding a cure for HIV 'within months,'" the paper screams under the headline "Scientists on brink of HIV cure."
Danish scientists "are conducting clinical trials to test a 'novel strategy' in which the HIV virus is stripped from human DNA and destroyed permanently by the immune system," writes Jake Wallis Simons. Well, we can't ask for any more than that--HIV permanently destroyed.
The idea, Simons reports, is to release HIV from "reservoirs it forms...
[Update 5/3/13: The Max Planck Institute has released a statement saying that the film is not a documentary, and that the filmmakers intercut different sequences and used different individuals to tell a story that is scientifically accurate. I'm relying on...
[Update 5/3/13: The Max Planck Institute has released a statement saying that the film is not a documentary, and that the filmmakers intercut different sequences and used different individuals to tell a story that is scientifically accurate. I'm relying on a web translation of the German language release.]
A film commissioned by The Walt Disney Company called "Chimpanzees," released in the U.S. a year ago and just now opening in Germany, tells the touching story of an orphaned chimp who was saved by a small male who wandered by and adopted him. It is "a true, one-of-a-kind story that could be written only by nature," the German language press kit says, according to an article...
Sexual harassment by researchers during field expeditions is surprisingly common, with 21 percent of women in a new survey reporting that they had experienced "physical sexual harassment or unwanted sexual contact."
Kathryn Clancy, a bioanthropologist at the University of Illinois, has been...
Sexual harassment by researchers during field expeditions is surprisingly common, with 21 percent of women in a new survey reporting that they had experienced "physical sexual harassment or unwanted sexual contact."
Kathryn Clancy, a bioanthropologist at the University of Illinois, has been using her Scientific America blog (where she goes by Kate) to report confidential interviews with women who say they've been sexually harassed in the field and generally told that any attempt for redress against the perpetrators could destroy their careers. Most have chosen not to name names.
Most recently, she spoke at an ethics panel at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists about a survey in which she and her colleagues found alarming rates of sexual harassment occurring during field research. Clancy...
It's a useful exercise to try to figure out why the Tsarnaev brothers did what they did at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but to Joel Breuklander, such efforts...
It's a useful exercise to try to figure out why the Tsarnaev brothers did what they did at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but to Joel Breuklander, such efforts can too easily sound like sympathy for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, or "a conservative parody of mush-headed liberal thinking." As the subhed on Breuklander's post says, "Pressure from an older brother is no excuse for murder."
But at On Science Blogs, Tabitha M. Powledge is not letting Breuklander get away with this. "Some of the ideas that so exasperate Breuklander might qualify as scientific hypotheses about what lay behind the Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath," she writes. Pressure from an older brother is...
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