Earlier this week, Jeffrey Brainard sent me an email asking whether I’d look at a series on sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay, produced and published jointly by the Chesapeake Quarterly and the Bay Journal. “I think this is a good example of emerging, hybrid platforms in science journalism. Our two publications joined forces […]
Some GMO advocates say Bill Nye isn’t the Science Guy.
Climate scientists and evolutionary biologists love Bill Nye. Keith Kloor, at his Discover blog Collide-a-Scape, describes him as a “stalwart defender of evolution and climate science” who “relishes verbal debate” and has “become known for taking on creationists and climate skeptics.” But Nye hasn’t fared nearly as well with defenders of genetically engineered foods. According […]
You won’t believe what the AARP published about breast cancer!
Pardon the clickbait headline, but I honestly could not believe what the AARP published about breast cancer in the cover story in the current issue of AARP The Magazine. Here is a sampling from one breast-cancer survivor: This was my own doing, and I take responsibility. When I got my body back into balance, the […]
Fish jokes? This one isn’t funny.
After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week on a case in which a fisherman is charged with violating evidence for destroying undersize fish caught illegally, many news sites took this as an occasion for fish jokes. Sam Frizell at TIME reported that “fish and crime have long been two arms of an octopus,” […]
Beware Fake Heather: A writer’s tale of identity theft.
Last Friday, Heather Boerner, a San Francisco-based medical writer, got an email from someone who said he had hired her through oDesk, a web marketplace where employers and freelancers can connect. Boerner, who has written for The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, and others, has never used oDesk. She quickly realized that she had […]
Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight improves its science coverage in a single stroke.
Nate Silver‘s data site FiveThirtyEight.com has improved its faulty science coverage in one single master stroke: It has hired the widely respected and admired science writer Christie Aschwanden. Silver, justly acclaimed for his analysis of election data, has not shown the same skillfulness in his coverage of science. He hired an academic economist to be […]