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Unscientific America: still useless

Mooney is at it again, scrabbling madly to refute my criticisms. It's another ho-hum effort. He claims he did spend some effort criticizing the overt anti-science forces in our country — only it was in his previous book, not this one. No, that doesn't rebut me at all: in a book that purports to be discussing problems and solutions to the science and society divide, there ought to be some effort made to prioritizing the issues, even if it means revisiting points made in other books. Unfortunately, the message here is that we have three problems: the bumbling scientists who don't know how to…

Major Computing Entities as Public Goods

What if you went to drive to work one day and the highway on ramp was closed, and a big sign across it said "Highway is closed. Sorry for the inconvenience." Well, you would find your way to a different highway entrance. But say that one was closed as well.Then, you check around and find out that all the highways in your state are closed because the state decided to close them. No more highways for you. Or, one day you go to check the mail and there is a single post card, and nothing else, in your mail box. The post card reads "The United States Postal Service has permanently suspended…

The Problems of the GRE

A bunch of people were talking about this Nature Jobs article on the GRE this morning while I was proctoring the final for my intro E&M class, which provided a nice distraction. I posted a bunch of comments about it to Twitter, but as that's awfully ephemeral, I figured I might as well collect them here. Which, purely coincidentally, also provides a nice way to put off grading this big stack of exam papers... Anyway, the thrust of the article is that the GRE is a bad thing to be using as an admissions criterion for graduate school in science and engineering, because it has large…

Trapped Antihydrogen

The big physics-y news story of the moment is the trapping of antihydrogen by the ALPHA collaboration at CERN. The article itself is paywalled, because this is Nature, but one of the press offices at one of the institutions involved was kind enough to send me an advance version of the article. This seems like something that deserves the ResearchBlogging Q&A treatment, so here we go: OK, what's the deal with this paper? Well, the ALPHA collaboration is announcing that they have created antihydrogen atoms-- that is, a single antiproton orbited by a single positron-- at low temperatures, and…

Inferring deep history in genes

When Mendelism reemerged in the early 20th century to become what we term genetics no doubt the early practitioners of the nascent field would have been surprised to see where it went. The centrality of of DNA as the substrate which encodes genetic information in the 1950s opened up molecular biology and led to the biophysical strain which remains prominent in genetics. Later, in the 1970s Alan Wilson and Vincent Sarich used crude measures of genetic distance to resolve controversies in paleontology, specifically, the date of separation between the human and ape lineage. Genetics spans the…

Goddam, But I Hate Embargoes

tags: embargoed science, embargoes, publishing, MSM, journalism, science writing Image: Orphaned? Embargoes: you either love them or hate them, and I hate them. No, let me rephrase: I despise embargoes. In fact, science story embargoes have been my daily rant for literally years. No, really. Every f*cking day. Well, except maybe for Sundays, which is devoted to ranting about all those religious wackaloons who have been trying to recruit visiting the previous week and preaching at me when I was absent-minded enough to open the door. But until a few months ago when I finally managed to…

Book Reviews: Born Digital and iBrain

I went to a party the other day wearing the shirt above. I'd seen it online, expressed covetousness, and the staffer actually tracked it down and bought it for me (thus scoring major points for A) an early Christmas present, B) listening to my incessant stream-of-consciousness babble, and C) appreciating his girlfriend's geeky streak.) Anyway, at the party, most of my friends couldn't decipher anything past "OMG, WTF." I was surrounded by "digital immigrants." In fact, I'm a digital immigrant myself: I didn't get my first email account until college, and I never IM'd until a year or two ago…

Book Reviews: Born Digital and iBrain

Review by Jessica Palmer, on Bioephemera Originally posted on: January 12, 2009 8:20 PM I went to a party the other day wearing the shirt above. I'd seen it online, expressed covetousness, and the staffer actually tracked it down and bought it for me (thus scoring major points for A) an early Christmas present, B) listening to my incessant stream-of-consciousness babble, and C) appreciating his girlfriend's geeky streak.) Anyway, at the party, most of my friends couldn't decipher anything past "OMG, WTF." I was surrounded by "digital immigrants." In fact, I'm a digital immigrant myself: I…

How to manage and maintain your electronic identity

This is not a manual or even a how-to blog post, but rather, what I hope to be a few helpful suggestions that may or may not have already occurred to you. I was motivated to write this because of a series of recent events in which it became obvious that a lot of people, myself included in certain instances, were not managing some of the basic information linked to their on-line identity in the best way. Let me give you a simple example, which happens to be the first one I came across in this recent series of encounters with eInefficiency. I was working with a group of people at a non-profit…

Dichloroacetate and cancer: Health scammers never die; they just keep popping up like Whac-A-Mole

It's been a long time, been a long time, Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. - Led Zeppelin Not nearly long enough. - Orac Some rats never die, it would appear. You may recall last year, when I spend a considerable amount of verbiage writing about a promising cancer drug called dichloroacetate (DCA). There were many reasons. One reason was that the drug was being represented as a "cure" for cancer that big pharma wouldn't fund because it was outside of its patent. There was also plenty of fascinating cancer biology there to…

Science journalists, bloggers and the Brave New World we live in

One of the by-products of the brouhaha (here, here) over The Atlantic article on vaccines was some interesting issues raised by the way the Knight Science Journalism Tracker handled it (here, here). If you aren't familiar with KSJ Tracker, it's a site that does "peer review" of science journalism. It's goal "is to provide a broad sampling of the past day’s science news and, where possible, of news releases or other news tips related to publication of science news in the general circulation news media, mainly of the U.S." I don't get a chance to read it as often as I'd like, but when I do I…

To boldly go where FDA has not gone before: vigorous regulation needed for food additives, cosmetics, and dietary supplements

By Myra Karstadt Peanuts, pistachios, peppers (maybe tomatoes too), spinach, spicesâ¦â¦â¦.The list of produce recalled due to bacterial contamination gets longer, and baleful glances are  cast at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN- say siff-san), the part of FDA charged with regulating the safety of those agricultural products. With any luck, sometime during the next few years, the organization within CFSAN that deals with the safety of agricultural produce, the Office of Food Safety, will be moved over to a new food safety agency.  Unfortunately, based on past history…

Adventures in Faculty Searching

The last time I talked about our job search, I got a lot of comments of the form "Why does the process take so damn long?" As the first of our short list candidates shows up today for a campus visit/ interview, I thought I'd go through a sketch of what we do, and why it takes so long. I'm going to be vague about some details, because it wouldn't be appropriate to disclose too much of the process, but I'll try to give you an idea of what goes on and why. I should note that, for all my bitching about the current search (mostly to Kate, but a little bit here), this has actually been about the…

Love Is A Virus

Love demands an explanation. Less than 5% of mammal species live monogamously, with males and females staying together beyond mating, and fathers helping mothers care for babies. We humans aren't the most monogamous species of the bunch, but we're closer to that end of the spectrum than the other end, where mating is little more than ships bumping into each other in the night. A biological explanation for love--as with any biological explanation--has two levels. On one level are the molecular circuits that produce love, and on another level are the evolutionary forces that favor the…

Ward Churchill's going down

Dang it all. I'm not a political blogger by nature, but this week I just can't seem to help myself, and getting this e-mailed to me didn't help. I suppose that I can console myself by reminding myself that this is about academic misconduct. I may not be in the social sciences, but certain practices just aren't right regardless of academic specialty. It turns out that University of Colorado's investigation of allegations of academic misconduct by Ward Churchill (famous for his referring to those in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns") has been published, and it's way more scathing…

Eggplant mania for cancer

As I've said before many times, herbal or plant-based medicines are about the only kind of "alternative" medicine that has significant prior scientific plausibility based on what we know about science. That's because plants often contain biologically active molecules; i.e., they often contain drugs. Of course, the problem with plant-based medicines is that they are, in essence, highly contaminated drugs, the predictability of whose responses is variable because the amount of active ingredient can vary widely. There's also a problem when claims for a plant-based compound become grandiose. It…

What's Bred in the Bones

Last Sunday, my son, who is home for his rapidly waning semester break, and I met a couple of friends in New York City where we enjoyed breakfast at good enough to eat followed by a visit to the nearby American Museum of Natural History. We dedicated ourselves to the fossil halls on the fourth floor of the museum. The halls were teeming with families. While we stopped in front of one of the big cladograms, we overheard a young father matter-of-factly telling his young children that "birds evolved from dinosaurs" as he gestured toward the dino family tree. Even if the museum was…

Another Week of GW News, May 4, 2008

Sipping from the internet firehose... This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H.E.Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup (skip to bottom) Top Stories:Keenlyside, Dead Zones Melting Arctic, Antarctica, Stern, CH4 Rising, Late Comments Global Food Crisis Hurricanes, Nargis, GHGs, Temperatures, Carbon Cycle, Feedbacks, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Satellites Impacts, Forests, Tropical Rainforests, Corals, Wacky Weather Wildfires, Floods & Droughts, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Mitigation, Transportation, Buildings, Sequestration,…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 18 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Also, check out the interview with our Section Editor for Aquatic and Marine Sciences, Craig McClain. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Rare Species Are Valued Big Time: It has recently been postulated that the value humans place on rarity could…

Patient-led "clinical trials" versus clinical research

In 2007, I wrote a series of posts about what I found to be a fascinating yet at the same time disturbing phenomenon, specifically self-experimentation by cancer patients using an as yet unapproved drug called dichloroacetate. If you'll recall, DCA is a small molecule drug that was used to treat congenital lactic acidosis in children through its inhibition of the enzyme pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase. This inhibition shifts the metabolism of glucose towards oxidative metabolism in the mitochondria and away from glycolysis, the product of which is lactic acid. In January 2007, Dr. Evangelos…

An "un-American suppression" of antivaccine views or good reporting?

I've been writing a lot of posts on what I like to call the "antivaccine dogwhistle." In politics, a "dog whistle" refers to rhetoric that sounds to the average person to be reasonable and even admirable but, like the way that a dog whistle can't be heard by humans because the frequency of its tone is higher than the range that humans can hear, most people don't "hear" the real message. However, the intended audience does hear the real message. The way the "dog whistle" works in politics is through the use of coded language recognizable to the intended audience but to which most other people…

Aw Schucks: When the world is NOT your oyster!

This is the eleventh of 16 student posts, guest-authored by Ilze Berzins.  When one hears the words “food-borne illness”, what comes to mind?  For me, I think of a medium rare, pink, juicy hamburger, or something like potato salad that may be made with mayonnaise containing raw eggs, or maybe a fresh green garden salad sprinkled with sprouts.   I am sure we have all heard about outbreaks or recalls surrounding these familiar dishes.  And the usual suspects contaminating these food stuffs are often bacteria with familiar names such as E.coli or Salmonella.   The fear of getting “food poisoning…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Acid, base, or woo (revisited)

As we continue our countdown to having reached one full year of woo (namely, the one year anniversary of Your Friday Dose of Woo), it's occurred to me that there's one form of woo that I've dealt with before, but haven't revisited. It's a bit of woo that's so monumentally silly that it's hard to believe that anyone can take it seriously, although I will admit up front that it is not quite as silly as homeopathy. It's close though. I'm talking, of course, about pH woo, the concept that pretty much every disease (or at least a whole heck of a lot of them) is caused by alterations in your blood…

Open Laboratory 2010 - submissions so far

The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far, as well as buttons and the bookmarklet. The instructions for submitting are here. You can buy the last four annual collections here. You can read Prefaces and Introductions to older editions here. ============================ A Blog Around The Clock: What does it mean that a nation is 'Unscientific'? A Blog Around The Clock: My latest scientific paper:…

How bad is the Templeton Foundation?

Attention conservation notice: ~5600 words about a ~10,000 word article and two others totaling ~7500 words, all examining the Templeton Foundation. If you aren't interested in the ins and outs of the to and fro over the Templeton Foundation's influence, and the question of whether the longer piece â funded by Templeton critics â actually lands any blows on the Foundation, you might want to skip past this. Or read the bit above the fold to get the gist. Since last June, I've basically been sitting out the fights over the Templeton Foundation. The Templeton Foundation has a lot of money…

Trying to avoid the "cancer-causing" label, diesel manufacturers join the club

Tobacco companies did it.  Asbestos-peddlers did it.  Chromium users did it.  The list goes on and on.  When polluters and manufacturers of dangerous products feel threatened by scientific evidence that their pet compound is carcinogenic to humans, they will do everything money can by to avoid the "cancer-causing" label. The latest example comes from diesel-engine manufacturers.   Their efforts come just in time for a meeting of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) scheduled for June 5-12, 2012.  IARC, an agency within the World Health Organization, is convening an expert…

It isn't Waste if You Do It Right

A few days ago, the New York Times ran an article about the problem of manure handling on large farms. . From the title "Down on the Farm, an Endless Cycle of Waste," which completely misses the point that manure is not "waste" to the end, the article failed to ask any of the really pertinent questions raised by really large scale industrial agriculture and its chronic problems with manure handling. In function it is something like a Zamboni, but one that has crossed over to the dark side. This is no hockey rink, and it's not loose ice being scraped up. It's cow manure. Lots of cow manure.…

Gun control Part III - Some final questions for Matt and closing remarks

Go by and check out Matt's second response on gun control. I think this response is a good argument. After all, my arguments are correlative. It is impossible to do randomized controlled trials on whole countries after all. I would ask a few questions in response to this rebuttal, however. Matt, what do you think about about data that demonstrates, within our own country, higher gun prevalence correlates with higher homicide, independent of other risk factors? Can we really dismiss the potential impact of federal gun laws using local gun laws as an example? Its pretty clear from…

One does not simply "believe" in Dark Energy...

This is an enhanced version (with some upgraded images and text) of an article I first wrote over two years ago. It is just as valid today as it was back then, only today, I have a special offer to go with it. Next week, a bunch of cosmologists and myself are getting together and all writing about dark energy. And I want you to have your say. So at the end of this post, ask your dark energy questions. Ask anything and everything you ever wanted to know about dark energy. I'll choose the best one (or, space & time permitting, more than one) and write a special post on it for you then.…

Open Lab Update

The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. Continue to submit your best posts, and the best posts you read online. Especially those art/cartoon posts, and poems! The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far, as well as buttons and the bookmarklet. The instructions for submitting are here. You can buy the last four annual collections here. You can read Prefaces and Introductions to older editions here. Interested in the origins of this project?…

Snakes On The Plain: Kevin in China

Let's see how many people incapable of spelling 'plane' arrive here by the way of Google. But I am talking about a real 'plain' - a big one, in China, and about some very real live snakes as well! A good friend (and ex-neighbor) of mine, Kevin Messenger, is in China right now, surveying herpetofauna (that is - reptiles and amphibians, for the non-biologists here) in a remote area of central China, rarely visited by Weesterners, and never before surveyed by scientists. He is one of those natural-born herpetologists - he lives, breathes and dreams snakes. When I lived in Raleigh I would often…

What is 'Investigative Science Journalism'?

Background When Futurity.org, a new science news service, was launched last week, there was quite a lot of reaction online. Some greeted it with approval, others with a "wait and see" attitude. Some disliked the elitism, as the site is limited only to the self-proclaimed "top" universities (although it is possible that research in such places, where people are likely to be well funded, may be the least creative). But one person - notably, a journalist - exclaimed on Twitter: "propaganda!", which led to a discussion that revealed the journalist's notion that press releases are…

Discussion of the Padian paper

As promised, a discussion on the paper, Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in northern California: results from a ten-year study. First, let's backtrack a bit and see what's already been said, lest I repeat myself. The little summary below can also catch anyone up who's not up to wading through 250-odd comments. Those who've already done so can skip the quoted parts and scroll down... [Note: I've uploaded a .pdf of the Padian paper for anyone to access Here.] Hank Barnes said here about the paper: 1. It was the longest and largest epidemiological study of…

What is the cause of excess costs in health care Part 4 - Time's "Bitter Pill", CEO compensation and the Kafkaesque chargemaster

Steven Brill's extensive piece in Time has generated a good discussion once again on why Americans pay so much more for health care than other countries, and while I agree with most of his critiques, he seems to have gotten overly hung-up on the hospital chargemaster. Readers of this blog know I've also discussed reform in health care, the diverse sources of excess cost including price gouging on pharmaceuticals, defensive medicine, expensive end-of-life care, the high cost of primary care in the ER etc, and both Brill and I appear to have relied on the same sources of data in the McKinsey…

Volcanism and society: What to do about Chaiten

I have never had to leave my home in an evacuation from a natural disaster. I'll put that out there right now. So, I might not fully understand the emotions going through people when they find out that they have to leave their home by no fault of their own because nature has decided that where they live is no longer livable. I especially don't know what it might be like if you are then told you can never go back. You might have a home there. You might own a business there. You might have grown up there. Your great grandparents might have lived there over 100 years ago. Yet, you are told -…

CDC recognizes the blogosphere

Our Flu Wiki partner, DemFromCT, has an important post up at DailyKos today. In June of 2005, Dem (The Next Hurrah), Melanie Mattson (Just a Bump in the Beltway) and The Reveres joined forces in an experiment in community public health planning we called The Flu Wiki. We were joined by our tech guru, the blogger, pogge (Peace, Order and Good Government, eh?), and after a time by anon_22. Anon_22 was "just another" wiki participant who chose her name arbitrarily, not thinking she would become a central figure. Based in the UK, she is a physician and soon became deeply engaged in the…

My picks from ScienceDaily

A cornucopia of interesting science today. As always, check if the press release matches the actual paper... Adaptation To Global Climate Change Is An Essential Response To A Warming Planet: Temperatures are rising on Earth, which is heating up the debate over global warming and the future of our planet, but what may be needed most to combat global warming is a greater focus on adapting to our changing planet, says a team of science policy experts writing in this week's Nature magazine. While many consider it taboo, adaptation to global climate change needs to be recognized as just as…

Expanding the right to know: California workers gain additional access to workplace toxics information as new hazards emerge

"If the California Public Health Department had been able to find out that my company was using a chemical that was killing people, I might never have gotten so sick that I had to have a lung transplant," Ricardo Corona told a California Judiciary Committee last April, testifying in favor of California Senate Bill (SB) 193 that Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on September 29th. The law, which amends California's Hazard Evaluation System and Information Service (HESIS), will become the first in the country to require companies that manufacture and distribute toxic chemicals to provide a…

New Frontiers: the first two years

A couple of years ago, the Templeton Foundation funded the New Frontiers program to pose "Big Questions" in some areas of science. This is a slow liveblog - part II will be tomorrow with more cosmology and life in the universe Seed funding was provided to 20 investigators and small groups to start exploratory research, and, now, it is time to say what they found. This follows up from the New Frontiers kick-off conference back in 2012. The New Frontiers conference to report the hint of the beginning of the draft of the answers is under way... most of the investigators and about half of the…

Post-election thoughts

Scattered thoughts, that is. ---------------------------- On Tuesday night I was teaching. Yup, my BIO101 class for adults. Scheduled for 6-10pm. But it was the mid-term exam day. I made an exam that can be done in two hours. I knew that my students were itchy to get it done and go home to watch the election returns. Many of them are African American as well. I sat there, with the computer on, browser open on TalkingPointsMemo, FiveThirtyEight, CNN.com, FriendFeed...watching as they announced Kantucky and Vermont, refreshing every couple of seconds. At 8pm I kicked the last couple of…

ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Carmen Drahl

Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years' interviews as well: 2008 and 2009. Today, I asked Carmen Drahl, Associate Editor for Science/Technology/Education at Chemical & Engineering News (find her as @carmendrahl on Twitter) to answer a few questions. Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more…

Study: Training parents as immunization advocates a promising approach to vaccine hesitancy

Protecting babies and children against dangerous — sometimes fatal — diseases is a core mission of public health. Everyday, in health departments across the nation, someone is working on maintaining and improving childhood vaccination rates and keeping diseases like measles and mumps from regaining a foothold in the U.S. Fortunately for us, public health has been so successful that it’s easy to forget what it was like just a few decades ago when measles was a common childhood illness. (Though here’s a reminder.) But sustaining vaccination rates that provide population-wide protection against…

The Boston Bombers: Something for everybody

Well, not everybody. First lets talk about some losers. Someday a brave journalist will ask the FBI why they had one of the suspects in sight a couple of years ago but this still happened. Chances are there is a very good answer and we should not be mad at the FBI for this, but at the moment, even asking the question will get people screaming at you. Someday a brave journalist will work out the details of how the State and Boston Police managed to miss the guy hiding in the boat a short distance form their dragnet. Chances are there is a very good reason for this, and we should not be mad…

Does the Internet need an HR Department?

Image from Reddit posted by user Lunam with the text "What my super religious mother got me for Christmass..." When a young girl put a picture of herself, holding a book she had just gotten as a present, on the social networking site reddit, she was immediately subjected to intense verbal sexual assault by reddit readers who aptly demonstrated how awful it can be when boys and young men are left to say and do what they want without the social control of anyone knowing who they are. When Skepchick founder Rebecca Watson casually tossed out some relationship advice for clueless young men…

The Demise of Climate Denialist and Fake Nobel Laureate/British Royal Christopher Monkton

Potholer54 has written a letter to Monkton that you will want to read, and he's also made a video that you will want to see. First the letter (from here): Open letter to Christopher Monckton - please return to the debate Dear Mr. Monckton, A couple of months ago you entered into a debate with me on wattsupwiththat.com (See "Update on the Monckton-Hadfield debate" - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/07/update-on-the-monckton-hadfield-d…) about alleged errors in your public lectures - allegations that I made in a series of videos on my YouTube channel "Potholer54". But as soon as I presented…

A "Conversation" About the Founding Fathers

A couple days ago, I received an email from a correspondent named Nick, a man I've encountered in a political chat room before as well. He's one of those really hardcore religious right types who, as you will see, absolutely glories in his ignorance, and he was bound and determined to "educate" me. His initial e-mail simply said this: I know you are smarter than all of these folks but maybe you can learn something And then it had a link to this article on someone else's webpage. There's nothing original in the article. It is the same article that has been emailed around a million times, so…

Chris Mooney with a New Year's resolution for practicing scientists: engage more with the public and the media

Steve Silberman and Rebecca Skloot just pointed out to me an editorial from science writer Chris Mooney that has appeared online and will be in the Sunday, January 3rd edition of The Washington Post. In the essay, "On issues like global warming and evolution, scientists need to speak up," Mooney continues his longstanding call to scientists to take ownership in combating scientific misinformation, invoking the very weak response of the scientific community to the aftermath of e-mails and documents hacked from the Climatic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia. The central lesson…

Tracking Invasive Plant Species from the Air

How do you track the relative contributions of a plant species in an ecosystem? When you are talking about thousands of square miles of land area this can be an incredibly daunting task, but it is very important because it provides important information related to invasive species that may be displacing their native counterparts in an ecosystem. I remember in a biology course a Stanford we were shown how you perform experiments like this using trees in a nearby nature reserve. In order to a get a sense of the geographic distribution of different types of tree, we would walk around the park…

Ethical Stem Cells?

The press is all in a tizzy about so-called ethical stem cells, but this still indicates a really limited understanding of how embryonic stem (ES) cells work. (Frankly, if I had a dollar for every time I read bad reporting on ES cells, you and I would not be talking. I would be Tahiti...with Natalie Portman.) Anyway, in an article published in advance online in Nature, Klimanskaya et al. show that single cells derived from preimplanation genetic diagnosis (PGD) can be used to grow new stem cell lines. Some background: People go to in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics for a variety of…

So you want to write a pop-sci book, Part 4: Getting the word out

The time has come to wrap-up this blog series, but there was one other topic I wanted to cover before concluding; how do you let people know about the mass of ink-blotted, dead tree pulp that is your book? Promoting Written in Stone will be a tough job. When it hits shelves this fall it will undoubtedly be in competition with numerous other science titles for the chance of being reviewed in the few publications which still review science books at all. Book tours, too, have become nearly extinct, and as a virtually unknown science writer I don't expect many (any?) people to show up at their…