Comments for Knight Science Journalism Tracker

Comment on Medical stories: Writing for the core audience by breastfeeding

breastfeeding — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:43:31 +0000

breastfeeding…

[...]Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » Medical stories: Writing for the core audience[...]…

Comment on Telegraph, Reuters, BBC, etc: Royal Academy urges gene-modified crop use. Some enviros still scowling at such an idea… by weding

weding — Sat, 19 May 2012 07:46:39 +0000

weding…

[...]Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » Telegraph, Reuters, BBC, etc: Royal Academy urges gene-modified crop use. Some enviros still scowling at such an idea…[...]…

Comment on IEEE Spectrum: Not your usual place to find a good feature story. It’s a weighty one (think kg in Paris) by Mary Beckman

Mary Beckman — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:10:01 +0000

A Watt balance is basically how much electricity (or power — whatever a watt measures) it takes to hold up a kilogram of mass in the gadget they’re making. Like, you stand on a scale, and electricity powers something to lift you up, and they measure how much it takes to do that, and there’s your electronic kilogram (assuming you weighed one kilogram). Does that make sense?

Comment on Lots of Ink: In the stygian mud, sealed under the deep sea, old slow microbes live on remains of a Lost World. by awitze

awitze — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:46:39 +0000

I also had a recent Science News feature that dealt with the bigger context of this discovery:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/337918/title/Deep_Life

Comment on Grist: Japan’s Move to Resume Commercial Whaling Picks Up Steam by ajaxme

ajaxme — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:23:56 +0000

The Tracker was asleep at the wheel and missed a rising tide of stories on whaling. But luck struck in the form of a happenstance look at today’s online Grist Magazine site. It has a fine roundup of news reports, with links to them and the outlets carrying them, on Japan’s drive to renew commercial hunting of some whale species. Grist’s post on this contentious issue is the last item in its Daily Grist feature.

Comment on Nobel Week, Day 1: Medicine Prize has three winners, two alive. One passed away 3 days ago by ajaxme

ajaxme — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:21:41 +0000

“It has been an easy call at most news outlets – and the right one. First a focus on this ironic and melancholy angle of an untimely death, then the science. An angle like this will leave the science all the more vivid in the public mind.” – I could definitely agree with that.

Comment on Does Sugar Make Journalists Stupid? Not as Much as You Might Think. by Deb Blum

Deb Blum — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:24:26 +0000

Just wanted to call your attention also to this very smart piece
from David Despain: Does sugar really make you stupid? (http://rdd.me/eaaz3zsu) which picks up on some other issues in poor reporting of this study.

Comment on TWiM 32: A microbiology chat with Monolakian arsenic buster Rosie on scientific error, sci journos, and a submission to Science by carmendrahl

carmendrahl — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:32:47 +0000

Thanks for highlighting this discussion- someone ought to follow up on Rosie’s suggestion and write a science communication thesis on the saga. When I covered Rosie’s work in January, I was fascinated by the other scientific projects that got their start in arsenic based life’s wake. Like the Harvard postdoc who’s trying to figure out how long arsenic nucleotides really last. Wolfe-Simon’s adviser sent out dozens of samples and I hope those packages’ stories make it out into the literature too. You never know what’s going to inspire a scientist- clearly this brouhaha did. http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/01/Arsenic-Based-Life-Aftermath.html

Comment on New Scientist, Pop. Science, Discover Mag: Push the button and duck – Laser shoots up, lightning (almost) shoots back down. by Shawn Bridgeman

Shawn Bridgeman — Fri, 18 May 2012 05:02:40 +0000

Shawn Bridgeman…

[...]Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » New Scientist, Pop. Science, Discover Mag: Push the button and duck – Laser shoots up, lightning (almost) shoots back down.[...]…

Comment on (UPDATED*)Yale e360: How come Manta rays are shunning the plantation? (Bonus: other news from non-profit publishers) by nswigginton

nswigginton — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:18:41 +0000

Hmm, I don’t think Nature is a non-profit.

Comment on Lots of Ink: Crippled by stroke, man and woman use brain waves to drink with robot arm by Deb Blum

Deb Blum — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:13:50 +0000

Just wanted to call your attention to an Atavist single, The Electric Mind by Jessica Benko, which is the behind the scene story of one of these stroke victims. It was released, also, when the research embargo was lifted. It’s reviewed here by Ed Yong at Download the Universe: http://www.downloadtheuniverse.com/dtu/2012/05/how-a-locked-in-woman-took-control-of-a-robot-arm.html

Comment on Does Sugar Make Journalists Stupid? Not as Much as You Might Think. by Deb Blum

Deb Blum — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:05:58 +0000

Agreed, Lila, and that’s definitely the pieces I’ve selected which are mostly blog like analysis rather than news reporting. I picked them because I thought they did a very nice job of putting of the story in perspective. The depressing counter to that – and I only brushed over that here – is that most of the “news stories” were reincarnated press releases. But that’s a bigger problem than science news coverage.