The American College of Cardiology has a story it doesn't want you to cover.
Last week, in anticipation of its annual meeting, it put out a press release that began, "Drinking grape juice improves heart health!" And then it immediately backed off:
Does this seem too good to...
The American College of Cardiology has a story it doesn't want you to cover.
Last week, in anticipation of its annual meeting, it put out a press release that began, "Drinking grape juice improves heart health!" And then it immediately backed off:
Does this seem too good to be true—maybe it is. Results of medical research, especially research that finds health benefits in common foods or activities, can be big news and highly publicized. But not all medical research is as simple as a headline makes it seem. The American College of Cardiology encourages consumers to be proactive in researching medical claims they hear about in the news and discuss such findings with their doctors before making drastic changes.
The release said that a presentation at the meeting "found that 'healthy' smokers who drink Concord grape juice have improved endothelial function." The endothelium is a lining inside blood...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Chilean authorities and international scientific representatives will inaugurate tomorrow the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) of 66 radio telescopes at 5000 meters altitude in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. There will be lots of coverage in...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Chilean authorities and international scientific representatives will inaugurate tomorrow the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) of 66 radio telescopes at 5000 meters altitude in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. There will be lots of coverage in the news, but we highlight two stories that have already presented exceptional written and graphic information about ALMA’s functioning and the research it is going to accomplish. In a funny coincidence, news in Spain explains that the government hasn’t confirmed yet its 40M contribution to the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will build also in Chile. Journalists are talking about it because Spanish astronomers are collecting signatures to defend the country’s participation in the E-ELT. We’ve read the stories, and reporters have simply spread the voice of the scientists. We think...
Last Friday, the leftist television news program Democracy Now ended its Women's Day broadcast with an interview with Vandana Shiva, identified as an Indian feminist, activist, and thinker and the "...
Last Friday, the leftist television news program Democracy Now ended its Women's Day broadcast with an interview with Vandana Shiva, identified as an Indian feminist, activist, and thinker and the "author of many books." She talked about the effects on women of what she called "the world's violent economic order," which included, among other things, the sale of genetically engineered cotton seeds to Indian farmers. The transcript includes this comment:
In India...the collection of royalties from seed has led to Monsanto controlling 95 percent of the cottonseed supply, 95 percent through a monopoly, not through the choice of the farmers, as it’s often made out to be. Farmers are getting indebted because the price of seed jumped 8,000 percent, and there’s no option...
Two hundred and...
On Sunday, a story published in USA Today flagged this problem: "The EPA has not revised key hazard standards that protect children from lead poisoning since 2001,...
On Sunday, a story published in USA Today flagged this problem: "The EPA has not revised key hazard standards that protect children from lead poisoning since 2001, despite science showing harm at far lower levels of exposure than previously believed."
The story, by Alison Young, cites an array of evidence that EPA's standards are some five times higher than what many scientists believe is a safe level; experts also note that "no blood threshold level" has been identified as safe in children. Yet, as the story also notes, realtor associations have fought hard against stiffening the standards, putting political pressure on the agency. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the EPA refused to grant Young an interview for the story...
Among writers who call themselves essayists, creative nonfiction is thought of as a lower form of life. It is defined only by what it is not: not fiction. Tacking "creative" on nonfiction is an attempt to "cloak it with dignity," says the master essayist Phillip Lopate...
Among writers who call themselves essayists, creative nonfiction is thought of as a lower form of life. It is defined only by what it is not: not fiction. Tacking "creative" on nonfiction is an attempt to "cloak it with dignity," says the master essayist Phillip Lopate in his new book, To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction. (Lopate admits that his preference for the term "literary nonfiction" is "a bit of gratuitous self-praise.") When literary awards are passed out each year, he writes, they include "a healthy list of fiction writers and poets" and "one or two nonfiction writers, if that."
What, then, of journalism? Journalism happens to be nonfiction, at least when practiced legitimately, but it...
I'm not sure how many technology writers and commentators would attempt to write a letter to John Stuart Mill concerning the subject of free speech, but Jason Pontin, the editor of MIT Technology Review,...
I'm not sure how many technology writers and commentators would attempt to write a letter to John Stuart Mill concerning the subject of free speech, but Jason Pontin, the editor of MIT Technology Review, chose that as a way to explore the sometimes "vexing" issues concerning free speech in the Internet age. (The Tracker is published at MIT but has no connection with Technology Review.)
Addressing Mill as "pale ghost," he begins by noting that "much has changed since you died in 1873," but "your lucid little book On Liberty (1859) has survived." In that book, Mill lays out the "harm principle," which says that individuals are sovereign except when they must be constrained to prevent harm to others. Free speech, an expression of individual sovereignty, must be...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Two medical doctors from Spain announced that they did an study proving that 90% of the cases of migraine are caused by a deficiency of Diaminoxidase (DAO), which generates high blood levels of histamines, and that ingesting a pill containing the enzyme DAO reverts the...
(English intro to Spanish lang post) Two medical doctors from Spain announced that they did an study proving that 90% of the cases of migraine are caused by a deficiency of Diaminoxidase (DAO), which generates high blood levels of histamines, and that ingesting a pill containing the enzyme DAO reverts the migraine. The announcement was made during a pharma industry meeting, and the news spread through nearly all Spanish televisions and newspapers. There’s one significant problem: The doctors have not published any scientific paper providing details of the study. All journalists have ignored this so important detail, except one from the news agency Materia, who was the only reporting showing some skepticism about these findings, which if true, they should have deserved worldwide recognition. Materia’s reporter asked the opinions of real researchers on headache and migraine, and representatives of the Spanish Society of Neurology, and all...
That's a familiar plot in the illus up top, the familiar Keeling graph from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii,of rising CO2 levels. And it keeps going up as long as one blurs one's eyes against the yearly cycle's ups and downs. A good story now on the wire has the latest - and also illustrates...
That's a familiar plot in the illus up top, the familiar Keeling graph from NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii,of rising CO2 levels. And it keeps going up as long as one blurs one's eyes against the yearly cycle's ups and downs. A good story now on the wire has the latest - and also illustrates the rewards and sometimes complications of diligent beat checks to see what is going on without waiting for a press release or other note to float in with no work on the reporter's part.
If you will pardon a bit of in-house news from Knight Science Journalism at MIT, we are happy to announce the establishment of a new fellowship that will support a journalist for an academic year in the creation of a publishable, digital science...
If you will pardon a bit of in-house news from Knight Science Journalism at MIT, we are happy to announce the establishment of a new fellowship that will support a journalist for an academic year in the creation of a publishable, digital science journalism project.
Unlike the other Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT, which allow journalists to spend the school year studying (and thinking!) at MIT, the new fellowship will put its winner to work. It's an ideal opportunity to pursue a story or multimedia project that requires significant up-front financial support.
The product of the fellowship should be a video, audio, or digital piece, or a written work if it can be published in some digital form. Fellows are encouraged to collaborate with news organizations to develop and publish their projects.
The fellowship begins this August and the final project will be...
Eliza Strickland isn't the first journalist to undergo experimental genetic testing, nor the first to write about the advent of faster, cheaper sequencing machines that could one day become part of routine clinical testing and care. But in...
Eliza Strickland isn't the first journalist to undergo experimental genetic testing, nor the first to write about the advent of faster, cheaper sequencing machines that could one day become part of routine clinical testing and care. But in an article in IEEE Spectrum, where she is associate editor, she weaves her personal story together with reporting that addresses the ethical, business, scientific issues surrounding personal genome sequencing. It's a nice piece.
"I want to learn my own biological secrets," she writes. "I want to get a look at the unique DNA sequence that defines my physical quirks, characteristics, and traits, including my nearsighted blue eyes, my freckles, my type O-positive blood, and possibly some lurking predisposition to disease that will kill me in the end."
Not everybody wants to know that sort...
Chris Mooney, the adept chronicler of the Republican brain and fierce avenger of science denialism wherever he finds it, is unhappy. The reason? A persistent "bad idea that circulates and recirculates with such frequency that once in a while, you just have to dust off your mallet" and...
Chris Mooney, the adept chronicler of the Republican brain and fierce avenger of science denialism wherever he finds it, is unhappy. The reason? A persistent "bad idea that circulates and recirculates with such frequency that once in a while, you just have to dust off your mallet" and give it a whack.
"I'm talking about the idea that when it comes to misusing or abusing science, both sides do it—a pox on both their houses—and the left is really just as bad as the right," he writes at Mother Jones. The idea's latest incarnation, the one that caught Mooney's eye, is a piece by Michael Shermer that appeared in Scientific American recently under the headline, "The...
While critics are still discussing the decision by The New York Times to cancel its Green environment blog, a Times columnist is demonstrating what can happen when environmental coverage is...
While critics are still discussing the decision by The New York Times to cancel its Green environment blog, a Times columnist is demonstrating what can happen when environmental coverage is left to non-specialists who are not well informed.
In January, the Times announced it was dismantling its environmental reporting team, and last week it said it was canceling the Green blog. Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote in January that the demise of the environmental reporting team would make it difficult for the Times to continue to cover the environment adequately. And yesterday, Sullivan wrote, "Something real has been lost on a topic...
A trickle of news from last year is picking up as the first of this year's two upcoming naked-eye comets - called Pan-STARRS and entering Northern Hemisphere after already giving the bottom half of the world a treat - rounds the sun. Another named ISON is still something only for well-aimed telescopes but...
A trickle of news from last year is picking up as the first of this year's two upcoming naked-eye comets - called Pan-STARRS and entering Northern Hemisphere after already giving the bottom half of the world a treat - rounds the sun. Another named ISON is still something only for well-aimed telescopes but could be a true dazzler in November.
Considering that both got some coverage last year (see earlier post) it was a suprise to find one long and well-crafted story on Pan-STARRS didn't even mention its larger cousin expected in eight months.
Story with just one comet:
The Washington Post announced this morning that it is making its website available to "...
The Washington Post announced this morning that it is making its website available to "marketers" who will be able "to offer content to Washington Post users and feature it on The Post’s homepage and throughout the site."
Advertisers (which for some reason the announcement insists on calling "marketers") will get "premium placement throughout our site," the Post writes. The first client to buy into the program, called BrandConnect, is CTIA-The Wireless Association, a non-profit trade group representing the wireless communications industry. (It was originally the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, hence the awkward portmanteau.)
A link to the CTIA content appears on...
Community news, sometimes called hyperlocal news, has become a hot topic among journalism foundations in recent years. You can get a sense of the enthusiasm by browsing the website of Block by Block, a network of online community news sites, or by checking...
Community news, sometimes called hyperlocal news, has become a hot topic among journalism foundations in recent years. You can get a sense of the enthusiasm by browsing the website of Block by Block, a network of online community news sites, or by checking into the work of the Knight Foundation's "$100 million plus Media Innovation Initiative, which seeks new ways to meet community information needs in the digital age." This is big money talking.
This belief in the importance of local news is not new. It reminds me of the old joke about the Los Angeles Times in the 1940s and 1950s, when a critic said that the paper was so locally oriented that ...
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