science reporting
clock | October 3, 2007Before two papers passed the peer-review and got published, WHO (which was given the data) made its own interpretation of the findings and included it in its press kit, including the errors they made in that interpretation. A complex story - what's your take on it?
clock | October 1, 2007Yes, I'll be there this Friday. Come by and say Hello if you are in the building or close at lunchtime.
clock | September 3, 2007If I was not already scheduled to appear on a panel in Wisconsin at the same time, I would have loved to go to this:
The fourth Image and Meaning workshop, IM2.4, part of the Envisioning Science Program at Harvard's IIC will be held Oct. 25 and 26, 2007, Thursday and Friday, at the Hilles library on the Harvard campus. Application deadline is September 17, 2007
Scientists, graphic designers, writers, animators and others are invited to join us and LEARN FROM EACH OTHER while exploring solutions to problems in the visual expression of concepts and data in science and engineering. This will…
clock | August 24, 2007Dave announced that the contest for the icon for denoting posts covering peer-reviewed research is now open. Use your creative skills and/or spread the word.
clock | August 21, 2007Maxine Clarke:
In printing the statement verbatim every week as we have done, making it clear when it originated, we have hitherto assumed that readers will excuse the wording in the interests of historical integrity. But feedback from readers of both sexes indicates that the phrase, even when cited as a product of its time, causes displeasure. Such signals have been occasional but persistent, and a response is required.
Suzanne Franks:
Who needs outright discrimination? It's so much more pleasant and civilized to discriminate while pretending to be inclusive. It's just one tiny step sideways…
clock | August 20, 2007Video is taking over science communication. And why not? Now that paper is outdated, the limitations of that ancient technology should not apply to scientific publishing any more. Just because paper cannot support movies does not mean that modern scientific papers should shy away from using them.
Last week saw the launch of SciVee, essentially an aggregator of science movies. Now, you may ask - why do we need yet another one of those sites? There are several out there already. Journal of Visualized Experiments is a real journal - the videos are submitted and reviewed first and, if…
clock | August 12, 2007Why are all the cool meetings happening all in the same week? On top of three I will attend, there is another one I just heard of that sound really cool:
The fourth Image and Meaning workshop, IM2.4, part of the Envisioning Science Program at Harvard's IIC will be held Oct. 25 and 26, 2007, Thursday and Friday at the Hilles library on the Harvard campus.
Application deadline is September 17, 2007
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Scientists, graphic designers, writers, animators and others are invited to join us in exploring solutions to…
clock | July 26, 2007Michael Hopkin interviewed Al Jean, the executive producer of The Simpsons show, about math and science, sometimes central, sometimes hidden, in the episodes of everyone's favourite show...
clock | July 21, 2007Duke University, after years of being behind the curve, is now striving mightily to establish itself as a leader in online science communication. As a recent news article shows, the school is activelly encouraging its students to keep blogs and make podcasts.
I have already mentioned Sarah Wallace and her blog about genomics research in Chernobyl.
Nicholas Experience is a blogging/podcasting group working on environmental science (OK, Sheril is their most famous blogger, but she did it herself, without being prompted by the Nicholas Institute).
At the Howard Hughes Precollege Program…
clock | July 4, 2007This post was a response to a decent (though not too exciting) study and the horrible media reporting on it. As the blogosphere focused on the press releases, I decided to look at the paper itself and see what it really says. It was first posted on August 09, 2005. Under the fold (reposted on July 12, 2006)...
I saw this on Pandagon first - a response to an article on NeuroImage about gender-specific voice recognition. Actually, it was not a response to the article itself (behind the subscription wall), but to the MSM reporting about the article. Soon, other bloggers chimed in, notably…
clock | June 26, 2007You probably know by now, but you can access for free (at least for a couple of days) a whole slew of articles about evolution on the Science page of New York Times. Most are excellent, as usual (hey, it's not the front page or some lukewarmly-pro-creationist he-said-she-said op-ed they tend to publish every now and then).
Most of the blogospheric responses are to the article by Douglas Erwin. As always, framing something as conflict sells the paper. I don't think we are all eagerly awaiting a 'paradigm shift' in evolutionary biology. Much of the new thinking has been around for decades…
clock | June 23, 2007So, Anton Zuiker and I went yesterday to the Talking To The Public panel discussion at Duke, organized by Sigma Xi, The Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and The Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy.
There is nothing yet on their websites about it (the 20th century school of thought!), but the entire panel discussion was taped and I'll let you know once the video is available online (in a week or so?). Once everything is online, it will also be easier for me to write in great detail (links help!) about the event.
It was nice to see David Jarmul and Rosalind Reid…
clock | June 22, 2007I am looking in the closet to see if I can find my tie, because I am going to this in an hour - a very bloggable event:
A Lunch and Panel Discussion
TALKING TO THE PUBLIC: How Can Media Coverage of Science Be Improved?
Friday, June 22, 12-1:30 p.m. at Duke University, Bryan Research
Building, Rm 103, 421 Research Drive, Durham
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, The Council for the
Advancement of Science Writing (CASW) and The Duke Institute for Genome
Sciences & Policy invite you to a lunch and panel discussion on science
and the media. Scientists and journalists face challenges…
clock | June 20, 2007You may be aware of the ongoing discussion about the tense relationship between scientists and science journalists. Here is the quick rundown of posts so far:
Question for the academic types--interview requests
The Mad Biologist and Science Journalists
Science Journalists are NOT the Problem
Just don't quote me
Science and the Press
Scientists and Journalists, Part Deux
Scientists in the Media
Science/journalists update redux: Mooney chimes in
Science and journalism
Journalists and scientists - an antimatter explosion?
Madam Speaker, I Yield My Remaining Time to the Paleontologist from the…
clock | June 20, 2007The 2006 Thomson Scientific Journal Citation Reports were released today. Mark Patterson reports on the PLoS journals, three of which have made it to the list for the first time, as they are too new, so their ratings are based on just a portion of the time:
The 2006 impact factors have just been released by Thompson ISI. The first two PLoS journals continue to perform very well: 14.1 for PLoS Biology (14.7 in 2006); 13.8 for PLoS Medicine (8.4 in 2006). The PLoS community-run journals also received their first impact factors: 4.9 for PLoS Computational Biology; 7.7 for PLoS Genetics; and 6.0…
clock | June 18, 2007This one?
Or this one?
Framing Science is not just verbal. Visual aspects are also important.
clock | June 6, 2007Yesterday, PLoS-ONE celebrated the publication of the 500th paper (and additional 13). Here are some quick stats:
1,411 submissions
513 published paper
360 member editorial board and growing
19 day average acceptance to publication
600+ post publication comments posted
I am assuming that the remaining 898 manuscripts are in various stages of the publication process: rejected, in review, in revision, or in the pipeline to appear on the site any day now.
The very first paper was published on December 20, 2006. The 500th paper is this one "Climate Change Cannot Explain the Upsurge of Tick-…
clock | May 31, 2007It is high time a blogger wins this prize, don't you think? If you are in Europe or Israel, and you have a life-science blog, apply for this award:
EMBO Award for Communication in the Life Sciences
Call for entries 2007
DEADLINE 30 JUNE 2007
Description of the award
The award is intended for scientists who have, while remaining active in laboratory research, risen to the challenge of communicating science to a non-scientific audience. The winners of the EMBO Award are nominated for the EU Descartes Prize for science communication.
Prize
The sum awarded is Euro 5.000, accompanied by a silver…
clock | May 30, 2007The Nisbet/Mooney Speaking Science 2.0 talk is now up on YouTube, as well as here under the fold: