[Portrait of an HIV virus by Dominic Alves via Creative Commons & Flickr] Y’know that feeling when you stumble across a study that makes you think, “Holy s***! Scientists actually did this!!!!”? And then like two weeks later, another team of scientists manages to kind of upstage the first team’s finding? It’s been that sort …
Yesterday, I wrote about why many pieces about the need for investigative science journalism don’t acknowledge the factors behind its scarcity. Conversations about investigations in science journalism often seem to assume that reporters don’t see critiquing science as important, but journalists’ individual interests don’t set the tone for journalistic coverage all by themselves. In journalism, …
[^^”How do you know?”: The question that science journalists must not forget to ask.] One night about a month ago, I was at a friend’s birthday party, knocking back tequila and rum with assorted MIT-affiliated twentysomethings. Somehow I ended up talking about tardigrades with a post-doc from an uber-spiffy genetics institute. [This is what a …
Today is a big day for me, and not just because my 1st byline for The Atlantic went live today. Although seriously, go check it out. It’s also special because I just went on record announcing my intention to compile a quarterly “Best Shortform Science Writing” roundup, so that us science writing whippersnappers can see …
[Photo by Yale Rosen, via Creative Commons] “Pitch Imperfect” is a series of blog posts where I highlight stories that I pitched but didn’t quite sell and discuss why it was tough to sell them. The goal is to share both interesting research stories and some of the obstacles in getting them into the news …
[Photo courtesy of David Scheel via Current Biology] “Pitch Imperfect” is a series of blog posts where I highlight stories that I pitched but didn’t quite sell and discuss why it was tough to sell them. The goal is to share both interesting research stories and some of the obstacles in getting them into the …
Two days ago, I got my lovely copy of the splendiferous new book Science Blogging: The Essential Guide. I immediately commenced to reading it, annotating it, and beating the hell out of it. So far, my biggest takeaway is: I gotta get this goddamn blog on a consistent schedule. (Also, the authors of the book– …
The Talk: Uncharted Waters: Novel Ecosystems in the Marine Environment (part of the Ecological Systems in the Anthropocene series) In Plain English: Humans have messed up the ocean, so Harvard asks marine biologists, “What are you excited about?!” The Speaker(s): Mary O’Connor of University of British Columbia, Jeremy Jackson of Scripps Institute for Oceanography, Trevor …
A year and a half ago, during the height of my brown-bag lunch crashing & recapping phase, I caught a talk by a young, charismatic Princeton researcher named Jason Lieb. His talk was awesome. He made gene regulation, a topic that very few people can discuss for an hour without lapsing into what sounds like …
About the “Under the Radar” series: Some scientific concepts come up again and again in interviews with scientists but never find their way into newspaper headlines. Each post in this series follows one of those biology “bogeys” that fly under journalism’s radar through 3 different mini-stories. Story #1: Scientists splice up a CRISPR chicken…and find …