Telegraph: Big bash at the Royal Society for science scriveners and some of their fave sources
The Daily Telegraph in London, we learn here from Richard Alleyne‘s account, sponsors an annual Scientists Meet the Media party. Last week it was at the Royal Society. Paid for by big pharma – Novartis. Dunno if that exactly passes ethical muster, but I’ve spent a few days in my life hitting up not only publishers but industrial sponsors for AAAS science writers’ parties, so I can’t bring myself to tut tut the Telegraph.
Looks like a grand party. If old coots, as in the pic, can go to it and get their arms however briefly around comely women in little black dresses, I would say it was a pretty swell affair (I’d ID the women in question, journalists presumably, but already tried blowing the pic up to read their name tags. No luck).
It also has in here a quote from Lord Rees, head of the Royal Society, as he discoursed on journalism and science. “I know how hard it is to explain some things – and I understand them.” What’s that last bit, Sir Martin? You do and we don’t!? Er…Quite true, too often. That’s a science writer’s secret specialty at deadline: Explaining clearly things about which he or she, should push come to shove, is deeply, hopelessly baffled. By the end of this surely well-lubricated party one imagines that all sorts of arcane things were being explained by the assembled scribes with an impressive gloss of confident, apparent clarity.
- Charlie Petit
