Journalism
sciencepunk | April 26, 2009
Kathy Sykes, Professor of Sciences and Society at Bristol University has written a provocative article in the latest New Scientist entitled "Science in the media: Put up or shut up"
The star of Rough Science argues that while science communication often leaves a lot to be desired, scientists themselves need to be less rabid in their attacks on the media:
Does ranting do any good? In some cases it does, especially if science is being carelessly mangled or deliberately distorted. But in many cases communicators are passionate about science and are simply trying to communicate it as clearly as…
razib | April 23, 2009Bora points to this report about mega shakeups at Scientific American. The editor for nearly a generation, John Rennie, is out. Nature Publishing Group is now calling the shots. In non-science news Ezra Klein, king of all journolism, is moving to The Washington Post. We live in the age of creative destruction when it comes to media. I'm a dabbler in in writing about science, but as the years go by it seems that the media itself is converging upon my own bloggish means of production. I know that Ross Douthat is going to produce print-worthy column prose for The New York Times, but I have to…
jstemwedel | April 23, 2009Remember earlier this week when we were discussing some of the positions people might hold with respect to the use of animals in research?
These included animal rights positions, which held that animals have inherent rights not to have their bodies transgressed (or that, by virtue of their capacity to suffer, they have rights not to be used in ways that might lead to their suffering), and animal welfare positions, which hold that animal suffering matters -- that it is something to be avoided or minimized -- but do not ground the ethical importance of animal suffering in animals' status as…
amillikan | April 21, 2009
With news headlines prompting readers to question if Twitter causes a decay in one's moral fabric, ScienceBloggers are attempting to set the record straight. As Jessica Palmer from Bioephemera explains, the mainstream media got wind of a press release from the University of Southern California, the author of which jumped to conclusions based on hypothetical speculations in the 'future applications' section of a neuroscience paper unrelated to Twitter. The press release claimed the networking tool "might reduce the frequency of full experience of such emotions, with potentially negative…
drorzel | April 21, 2009I tagged Geoffrey Pullum's rant against The Elements of Style for del.icio.us a few days back, because it struck me as interesting, but I didn't have time to say more. In the subsequent days, I've seen a bunch of "Preach it, Brother Pullum!" responses, most recently from revere. I've also received the copyedited manuscript of the book-in-production, so I've been thinking a bit about grammar and style in my own writing.
Most of the pro-Pullum responses I've seen seem to me to be missing the point. Or, rather, they're criticizing the book because it's not very good as an absolute and…
drorzel | April 20, 2009A couple of physics stories in the last few days have caught my attention for reasons that can be lumped together under the Vizzini Effect-- that is, they say things that involve unconventional uses of common words. Take, for example, the Physics World story Physicists distinguish between the indistinguishable, which starts off:
Spurred on by their work on building one of the world's most accurate atomic clocks from strontium-87 atoms, researchers in the US have now discovered that "forbidden" collisions can occur between these atoms.
Strontium-87 atoms belong to a class of objects known as…
bioephemera | April 19, 2009We all know Twitter can be annoying, but is it really evil? During the past week, you may have heard that there is brand-new neuroscientific evidence proving exactly that. But the hype turns out to be just that: hype.
It all started with a press release from USC about an upcoming PNAS paper by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and Antonio Damasio, entitled "Neural Correlates of Admiration and Compassion." The USC press release, which was picked up by EurekAlert and other outlets, says:
The finding, contained in one of the first brain studies of inspirational emotions in a field dominated by a focus…
bioephemera | April 14, 2009As I put it at a blogging panel last fall, "in science, it is normative to be not sure." It wasn't my most eloquent moment, but at least AAAS' president-elect Alice Huang agrees with me that one of the biggest challenges to public science literacy is understanding the contingent nature of scientific "truth".
But probably the most difficult concept to get across to nonscientists is that we look at data and then use probabilities to judge those data. The public wants an absolute black-and-white answer. We may look at something that is 80 percent likely as being good enough to base decisions on…
bioephemera | April 11, 2009Here's one perspective on why journalism training is a bad idea:
I like to joke that I'm "unqualified" to do my job. But I think it was precisely that total lack of journalism training that gave me an edge. I never worked the cops-and-courts beat. I don't know how to write an inverted pyramid story or even really what that is. I do know how to write for different platforms, be scrappy and break news. I've had zero important alum connections and never got an internship at a big daily. And, in hindsight, that's probably the greatest stroke of luck I could have had. Journalism schools are like…
edyong | April 8, 2009In which, having largely stayed out of it, I wade into the ongoing rivalry between bloggers and more mainstream forms of science writing...
The latest round in this seemingly endless debate was a review by New Scientist of Open Lab 2008, an anthology of the best science blogging from the last year. Others, including Brian Switek and SciCurious, have touched on the specific criticisms levied by the review, but I wanted to pick up on the more general issue it raised - namely the relative merits and pitfalls of science blogs compared to mainstream science writing.
I am increasingly uneasy with…
bioephemera | April 7, 2009There are two interdisciplinary science meetings coming up that you should consider attending, in NYC and DC. Strangely enough, the ubiquitous Chris Mooney is speaking at both of them. Hmmm.
From April 30-May 1 in DC will be the AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy, which is a somewhat wonky look at federal science policy and government affairs. The agenda highlight? A plenary session on the future of science journalism, to which I'm looking forward with both enthusiasm and curiosity, given the wide range of opinions on the blogosphere. I'm sure there will also be lots of discussion…
drorzel | April 7, 2009Via Matt Yglesias, a new CBS/ New York Times Poll has been released, accompanied by quite possibly the stupidest graphics ever. The pseudo-pie-chart at right is one of three, all of which have the same glaring flaw as this one.
Somebody really ought to lose their job for this. There's just no excuse for putting out "pie charts" that are this incompetent.
Sadly, this probably went through two or three people before hitting the web, and nobody noticed. It's hard to think of a better example of how deeply innumeracy has penetrated the media.
bioephemera | April 6, 2009Scibling Bora has expressed his wish "to end once for all the entire genre of discussing the "bloggers vs. journalists" trope," and tried to do so with perhaps the most massive science-journalism-Web2.0 post evah.
Bora says,
the whole "bloggers will replace journalists" trope is silly and wrong. No, journalists will replace journalists. It's just that there will be fewer of them paid, and more of us unpaid. Some will be ex-newspapermen, others ex-bloggers, but both will be journalists. Instead of on paper, journalism will happen online. Instead of massaging your article to fit into two inches…
amillikan | April 5, 2009While the rumor that Google is in "late stage negotiations" to acquire Twitter, the social networking website based on text message-style entries of 140 characters, hasn't been confirmed, the feasibility of such a notion says volumes about Twitter's massive rise in popularity over the past years. Now the third-largest social networking website (behind facebook and myspace), Twitter has revolutionized the way information is generated and communicated. Naturally, ScienceBloggers are no stranger to this micro-blogging phenomenon. Bora from A Blog Around the Clock reflects on how social…
terrasig | April 5, 2009
As of late, I've not been particularly good at responding to those of you who've been so nice to comment on the blog. So, I spent a little bit of this morning going through your comments and looking at your blogs and websites, especially those of you with whom I was not previously familiar.
Among these was commenter Keith, co-founder and editor of an online zine called Today's Drum. Keith was kind enough to write a couple of notes on both our Diversity in Science carnival submission on NIGMS's Dr Geraldine Pittman Woods and the 65th anniversary of the first interracial college basketball…
ddobbs | April 3, 2009What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of long-form, slow-bake, "mainstream" journalism and the idiom we call the blogosphere? As per Bora, the meaning of these terms are shifting as we speak. Last night, using my recent story and blogging on PTSD as a point of focus, I put in my latest two cents on this subject at my talk -- actually a long conversation with host and audience -- at the NYU Science, Health and Environmental Program's "Inside-Out" lecture series.
This was a crowd of writers, journalism profs, and journalism students, and I think we were all surprised at how many…
bioephemera | March 31, 2009
Jacek Utko argues that there is no convincing reason why newspapers should survive - but that good design might be able to transform them into something more successful. In addition to numerous awards, Utko's fearless use of white space, bold color, and dramatic imagery has won significant increases in readership (up to 100%) for several Eastern European newspapers.
A real newspaper redesign involves more than changing the layout. The layout is essential, but by no means the only element. First we define the goal, later the necessary content-changes, and only then do we get to design.…
jstemwedel | March 31, 2009In a pair of earlier posts, I looked at the ethical principles Matthew C. Nisbet says should be guiding the framing of science and at examples Nisbet discusses of ethical and unethical framing. Here, consider some lessons we might learn from the framing wars. I'm hopeful that we can gain insight about the folks interested in communicating science, about the various people with whom they're trying to communicate, and perhaps even about the approaches that might be useful (or counterproductive) in trying to sell scientists on the utility of the framing strategy.
This post is not so much a…
jstemwedel | March 30, 2009If it's spring, it must be time for another round of posts trying to get clear on the framing strategies advocated by Matthew C. Nisbet, and on why these communications seem to be so controversial among scientists and science bloggers.
My past attempts to figure out what's up with framing can be found here:
Movie screening expulsion: whose hearts and minds are up for grabs?
Trying to understand framing.
Trying to understand framing (II): draw me a picture.
Trying to understand framing (III): the example of stem cell research.
Minor epiphany about framing.
The present post has been prompted by…
bioephemera | March 29, 2009Continuing the current discussion of the questionable quality of popular science journalism, British researcher Simon Baron-Cohen weighs in at the New Scientist with his personal experiences of misrepresented research. Baron-Cohen complains that earlier this year, several articles on his work linking prenatal testosterone levels to autistic traits, including coverage in the Guardian, were titled and subtitled misleadingly:
It has left me wondering: who are the headline writers? Articles and columns in newspapers are bylined so there is some accountability when they get things wrong. In this…