Biotech Encounters
Science journalist Emily Anthes has a book coming out in March that I’m eager to read. Great title, cool cover! Virginia Hughes recently talked with Anthes about her book. Here’s an excerpt from that interview:
Monthly Archives : February 2013
Is There a Slant to Climate Reporting?
Here’s a trick question: Is climate journalism slanted? Before you answer, let’s look at a series of tweets by atmospheric science researcher Ryan Maue, who clearly has an opinion on this. We’ll start with this one from today: Every AP story on weather starts fine then at end includes climate change advocacy … it’s “left…Continue Reading…
Annals of Amplification in Journalism
In recent years, we’ve seen episodic waves of hysteria over reports of brain tumors and other cancers allegedly caused by cell phones and WiFi. If I had to trace this legacy of electromagnetic fear back in time, I would credit a 1979 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology and a series of articles in the New Yorker (under…Continue Reading…
Whose Side Are You On?
My eight year-old son is not a disinterested sports fan. He knows as much about European soccer as I do (which is zilch), but when we’re in a barbershop for 15 minutes and Manchester is playing Barcelona, he asks me who we should root for. Ditto for the NBA All-Star game, which I let him…Continue Reading…
Is the Media Simplifying a Complex Story on Disease Outbreaks?
In recent years, there has been an outbreak of media stories on early childhood disease outbreaks. The press has reported a spike in cases of measles, mumps, and whooping cough in communities from Seattle to Vermont. In many of the stories, a cause-and-effect relationship to lower childhood vaccination rates has been explicit. (Some journalists, however,…Continue Reading…
The Polluted Keystone Pipeline Discourse
When a social cause gains momentum and becomes symbolically important, partisans inevitably hijack it for their own ends. They do this by trying to define and control the meaning of the cause and how it should be perceived. We’re seeing this play out now with the Keystone XL pipeline, which has become a touchstone for environmentalists…Continue Reading…
Why Facts Don't Matter
In a perfect world, every conversation we have about childhood vaccines, GMOs, alternative medicine, and global warming would be based on a set of facts agreed on by a majority of scientists working in those spheres. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so many conversations on the aforementioned subjects are often driven by…Continue Reading…
Adapting to Climate Change Doesn't = Raising the White Flag
Remember when: Just a decade ago, ‘adaptation’ was something of a dirty word in the climate arena — an insinuation that nations could continue with business as usual and deal with the mess later. That’s Olive Heffernan, reminiscing several months ago in Nature. She goes on to say: But greenhouse-gas emissions are increasing at an…Continue Reading…
How to Judge the Merits of the Keystone Pipeline Fight
Does it matter if a social movement hitches its wagon to the wrong horse? For the food movement and its embrace of the GMO labeling cause, I argued yes in Slate, because it is predicated on junk science and blind, simplistic mistrust of multinational corporations…The pro-labeling camp wants people to believe that eating “frankenfood” is dangerous…Continue Reading…
Why Scientists Should Never Try to Intimidate Journalists
A good way to capture someone’s attention is to start off by saying, “I have a few things to get off my chest…” This is how science writer John Horgan begins his latest post at Scientific American. It works. I was leaning close to my laptop by the end of the first sentence, eager to…Continue Reading…