Sometime last week, I was directed to Chris Wilson's article in Slate, which comes with the provocative subtitle "Why can't science journalists just tell it like it is when it comes to particle physics?" I flagged this as a good jumping-off point for a blog post about how hard it is to communicate science to the general public, and set it aside for later, because I had a lot on my plate at the time.
Now that I read it carefully, though, I honestly don't see the point. It's not about the challenges of communicating difficult concepts, it's a lengthy complaint about "purple" prose in science journalism.
This basically amounts to the media-critic version of "Why do Thomas Pynchon/ David Foster Wallace/ Neal Stephenson write such long books? Why can't they be more like Hemingway/ Heinlein? What do they need all those extra words for?" It's a pointless gripe about perfectly legitimate stylistic choices. Dennis Overbye writes colorful prose because that writing style works well for Dennis Overbye. Period, end of sentence. If you don't like that style, read something else. Or write something else, and put it out there for people to read.
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I think he was just arguing, in a verbose manner, ironiocally, for journalists to tell more about the science and show off less. But we already know that. Maybe you should have read Hart Seely's "The Poetry of Sarah Palin", or read the article on why Sarah Palin attended five colleges, instead?! No purple prose there; it was more of a sickly yellow-green.