Charlie Petit at Science Tracker has a confession. He doesn’t think he’s the only one, either: A lot of science journalists who cover energy issues have probably gone through an infatuation stage, and then break-up, with a seductive actor: Peak Oil. It appeals to any reporter trying to cover a beat where numbers and natural…Continue Reading…
Bryan Walsh at Time beat me to the punch. I’ll get back to that in a sec. Originally my post was going to lead off with a comment from Orville Schell in the early 2000s, when he was dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, in Berkley and the downsizing…Continue Reading…
Goes to this cautionary flashback: I love the New Yorker and over the years they have published many fine articles on science by bright and knowledgeable writers including Lehrer (e.g., John McPhee, Jonathon Schell, John Hersey, Rachel Carson, Jeremy Bernstein, Atul Gawande, Malcom Gladwell). Despite this excellent record of science translation, it is useful to…Continue Reading…
Earlier this week, Jonah Lehrer responded yet again to some of the criticism leveled at his recent New Yorker article. Orac, who wasn’t pleased with the article, is still not pleased with Lehrer’s defense of it. This is a case of an expert (Orac) thinking that he is the prime audience for a general interest…Continue Reading…
I’m going to nitpick this lament by James Fallows: One of the basic functions of journalism is to say: This is true, and that is false. There are other functions, but establishing bedrock “world is round / sun rises in the east / 1+ 1 = 2” verities is a big one. In today’s political…Continue Reading…
The crusading, hydra-headed anti-vaccine movement deserves more consistent coverage in the media. Here’s the title of today’s press release from the American Academy of Pediatrics: How the anti-vaccine movement threatens America’s children Paul Offit, a pediatrician and the author of “Autism’s False Prophets,” (who didn’t tour bookstores because of death threats he received from the…Continue Reading…
I’m not surprised that Romm goes bananas over this front-page article in today’s NYT by Elisabeth Rosenthal, because it prominently quotes Roger Pielke, Jr. Any high profile story with a Pielke makes Romm all frothy. (I do, however, think the piece leaned too heavily on Roger and that it should have mentioned that he is…Continue Reading…
In case you missed the big news about the Lancet retraction, Daniel Drezner has the best meta post. He hints at the parallels between the anti-vaccine nuts, GMO opponents and climate change skeptics (strange bedfellows, aye?). I see it too, but I believe irrationality underlies the anti-vaccine movement while ideology drives the other two. Regardless,…Continue Reading…
Dwight Garner in today’s NYT: I put down Rebecca Skloot’s first book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one…Continue Reading…
I love it. The blogger who goes on endlessly in blog posts inveighs against tweeting: Journalists simply shouldn’t be twittering on science or other subjects that require more than 140 characters to discuss intelligently, which is pretty much every topic. It makes total sense: it often takes Romm thousands of words to make the same…Continue Reading…