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Congratulations to David Baron (’90) and Jason Palmer (’14), who each took home top honors in the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Science Writing Awards, the nation’s premier prizes for physics writing.
Baron won in the book category for “American Eclipse,” his story of the total solar eclipse that “crossed the wilds of America’s western frontier” in July of 1878. From AIP’s press release: “The judges had trouble putting Baron’s book down, stating that it was more than an eclipse story. It captured the excitement of a young nation exploring the frontiers of science as well as an entire continent.”
Palmer’s Economist feature, “Here, There and Everywhere,” won Best Article. The judges lauded Palmer’s exploration of quantum information applications, noting that “it allows a general reader to grasp its significance and to distinguish aspects that are already practical from other [aspects] whose promise has yet to be realized.”
Well done, both of you.
The way Ellen Shell (’85) sees it, the U.S. economy has come down with a serious case of “National Work Disorder.” As the workplace has become more automated and mid-skill jobs have declined, a few workers have transitioned into high-level skilled work, but far more have been displaced into low-wage service jobs. Hence, we have a few more people at the top, a bunch at the bottom, and relatively few in the middle.
Alarmed by the parallels between that economic polarization and our current political polarization—specifically, the rise of populism—Shell decided to put her narrative shoulder to the wheel. This fall, her labor bore 400 pages of fruit, in the form of her book The Job: Work and Its Future in a Time of Radical Change.
“I wanted to write a book that would be useful on several levels,” she says of her latest work, which has already earned plaudits from the Wall Street Journal. Yes, there are policy recommendations, she explains, but it’s also a personal journey of discovery. “I spoke with glass workers in Appalachia, ‘makers’ in Brooklyn, worker-owners of a commercial laundry in Cleveland, activists ‘reinventing work’ in Detroit, a convenience store chain magnate in Tulsa, a sausage maker in Finland, the multimillionaire creator of B-corporations in L.A., and hospital cleaners in New Haven.”
The book unmasks a number of myths—the skills gap, the “looming labor shortage,” and the passion paradox, to name just a few. “I even take on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs! So a lot of sacred cows on the chopping block.”
Chloé Hecketsweiler (’17) was part of what might be one of the biggest investigative projects journalism has known. The KSJ alumna was one of more than 250 journalists from 36 countries who spent a year investigating the safety of medical devices — from breast implants to spinal-cord stimulators. Led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the global reporting team filed more than 1500 Freedom of Information requests and analyzed more than 8 million device-related records. They found that more than a million people around the world have been injured by medical devices they assumed were safe.
This month, the results of the investigation were published by The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Guardian, Le Monde, and other publications. “We worked long hours for months,” Hecketsweiler says, “but it was worth it!”
It didn’t take long for the study to begin making waves. Following the investigation, some French parliamentarians asked the government to launch an investigation about the safety of medical devices, said Hecketsweiler. The French ministry of Health also decided to change its recommendations about breast implants. And, on November 26, the FDA announced that it will change the way medical devices are approved.
Says Hecketsweiler, “It’s rewarding to see that journalism can have an impact on such an important public health issue!”
And in case you missed it, Fabio Turone (’17) published a richly informative feature, “The trouble with health statistics,” in Cancer World.
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