Blogs / The Intersection

I get smeared sometimes. As a journalist who has actually written on conflict of interest, it can be amusing to watch–but rarely this amusing:

Chris Mooney’s Pharmaceutical Influence

By Jake Crosby

He is the drug industry’s newer, trendier go-to guy in the media, replacing the role of Arthur Allen, who took a break to write about tomatoes. An ex-patriot of “Science”Blogs who now blogs for Discover, and contributing editor to Science Progress, Chris Mooney is perhaps Pharma’s newest writer who has taken on the task of spoon-feeding its message to the public.

From there it is smears all the way down. You can read the whole thing here. My favorite sentence:

Yet despite the previously described mingling with obvious denialists and plagiarists, Chris Mooney is perhaps most notorious in the autism community….

You complete the sentence. But make sure to include the word “Pharma” at least twice….

PS: Orac has more on Jake Crosby’s endeavors…..written pretty kindly, as I think this particular case deserves.

At the AAAS meeting in San Diego last month, I spoke with EarthSky’s Lindsay Patterson, and the resultant podcast just went up. You can listen here, or by playing the embedded audio below, and I’ve also pasted some transcribed sections below:

And now, the write-up: (more…)

Today I’m off to Portland, OR for the 2010 American Physical Society’s March meeting to participate in this panel:

Science Literacy, the Nature of Science and Religion

Jon Miller: The Development of Civic Scientific Literacy in the United States

Sheril Kirshenbaum: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future

Murray Peshkin: Addressing the Public About Science and Religion

Judith Scotchmoor: Increasing our understanding of how science really works

Art Hobson: Physics Literacy for All Students

Our session will be moderated by Lawrence Woolf and you can read the abstracts online. I’m really looking forward to what I’m certain will be a very interesting discussion.

We were very pleased to come across the following news yesterday about a contest that was held for students of the CUNY system:

Altogether, 12 CUNY undergraduates–out of 101 applicants–received awards for their essays based on 2009 Nobel prize-winning work in chemistry, physiology and medicine, physics, and economics. First, second and third prizes in each category included an Apple iMac Computer, a Dell Mini 10 Netbook, and an Amazon Kindle.

The impetus for the competition, said Vice Chancellor Gillian Small in her opening remarks, came about when the 2009 Nobel winners were announced, and she was reading a recent book of essays titled Unscientific America, How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future.

“There is a distressingly large number of Americans who refuse to accept even the theory of evolution,” said Small, who envisioned the competition’s essays making Nobel work in science accessible to a larger audience.

What a wonderful idea. This is just more evidence–and it is everywhere–that despite some hold-outs, an emphasis on fixing science communication is the new trend within science itself…and these are just the kinds of initiatives that will spur along that change.

See here. We’re honored to be part of such a distinguished list, along with James Hansen, Thomas Levenson, and other writers we admire.

In our book Unscientific America, we devoted an entire chapter to discussing the merits and limitations of science blogging. Here’s an excerpt:

The single-biggest blogging negative, however, is the grouping together of people who already agree about everything, and who then proceed to square and cube their agreements, becoming increasingly self-assured and intolerant of other viewpoints. Thus, blogging about science has brought out, in some cases, the loud, angry, nasty, and profanity-strewing minority of the science world that denounces the rest of America for its ignorance and superstition. This ideological content, which inflames audiences, is often the most likely to draw attention outside of the science-centric blogosphere—meaning that out of the many contributions made by science blogging, the posts that non-scientists (or people who don’t follow science regularly) will probably come across are those skewering religion.

Needless to say, while I was not surprised at the response to Chris’ announcement, I am extremely dismayed. Discussion of each post is anticipated, but baseless personal attacks demonstrate the trouble with blogging.

Chris has been blogging for nine years and I began in 2006. The blogosphere is changing, growing, and evolving. In just the past few years, we’ve watched the number of science bloggers swell, while the tone of much of the commentary changed. Most disheartening, the relationships between bloggers fractured across once cohesive networks as small friendly communities chose sides in a growing culture war. (Those involved understand what I mean).

Science blogs themselves continue to afford a wonderful medium for scientists and science writers to reach broad audiences, but they also tend to result in groupthink and often deconstructive or off-topic, rather than constructive discussions. Recently, several science blogs and popular discussion forums such as RichardDawkins.net have been grappling with how to go forward. Multiple science bloggers I admire have retired their sites after frustration with the status quo. So I’ve been pondering the value of science blogging itself.

Much of the time, the blogs have become sport and spectacle. The highest traffic ensues when shots are fired between folks who like to spat angrily across their sites from behind the safety of their desktop. The funny thing is, we assuredly agree on far more than whatever we’re at odds over on any given day. So in the big picture, I often wonder if all the in-fighting does science a great disservice.

What do readers think? Do the positives outweigh the negatives?

It’s live here, and here’s part of the show description:

For the scientists who study global warming, now is the winter of their despair.

In the news, it has been climate scandal after alleged climate scandal.  First came “ClimateGate,” then “GlacierGate,” “Amazon Gate,” and so on.  In public opinion polls, meanwhile, Americans’ acceptance of the science of global warming appears to be declining.  Even a freak snowstorm now seems to sow added doubt about this rigorous body of research.

In response to growing public skepticism—and a wave of dramatic attacks on individual researchers—the scientific community is now bucking up to more strongly defend its knowledge.  Leading the charge is one of the most frequently attacked researchers of them all—Pennsylvania State University climatologist Michael Mann.

In this interview with host Chris Mooney, Mann pulls no punches.  He defends the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change, and explains why those who attack it consistently miss the target.  He also answers critics of his “hockey stick” study, and explains why the charges that have arisen in “ClimateGate” seem much more smoke than fire.

Once again, the show is here, and you can subscribe on iTunes for further episodes…

Update: The show airs just in time, apparently; Joe Romm documents yet another unfair and bogus attack on Mann, this time from the Wall Street Journal….

My laziness notwithstanding, I will not be outdone by this timely post of Carl’s. Participants in this virtual book party, sponsored by the American Institute of Biological Sciences, may stand the chance to win a copy of Carl’s The Tangled Bank–but I have just confirmed that 3-5 publisher’s copies of Unscientific America will also be on offer.

Let’s quote Carl on all the event details, so I don’t have to try to write them up better than he does:

What’s a virtual book party you ask? In this case, fellow Discover blogger Chris Mooney and I will each give a 15 minute talk about our new books. From the slipper-and-pajama’d comfort of your home or office (if you wear slippers and pajamas at the office), you can listen to us speak and behold our slide presentations in real time. After we’re through, there will be time for a virtual conversation between you and us. The event (which will last about an hour) is hosted by the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Carl speaks first, then me. And my slide show won’t have the usual bells and whistles. But, sign up now, I hear they are going fast….

It was just announced on their Twitter feed, so that’s pretty official.

The subject is vaccination, and I’ll be appearing with Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor.

My segment is around 8:40 am ET.

For those who want to check out my last Morning Joe appearance, meanwhile, you can watch it here.

You can listen here, and I also strongly encourage you to subscribe via iTunes from the same page.

The show introduction starts like this:

Recently, there was another nail in the coffin for vaccine skeptics. The British medical journal The Lancet took the dramatic step of retracting a 1998 paper that lies at the root of modern vaccine denialism. Authored by a doctor named Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues, it was heavily touted as having uncovered a new cause of autism—the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, or, the MMR vaccine.

Not so fast. Twelve years later, there are more problems with the paper than you can count—and yet somehow, it managed to spawn a movement.

In this conversation with host Chris Mooney, Dr. Paul Offit discusses the state of the vaccine skeptic movement in light of this latest news. In particular, Offit explores why the tides may be turning on the movement—as well as the grave public health consequences of ongoing vaccine avoidance.

Again, listen and subscribe here. And don’t forget to buy Paul Offit’s book Autism’s False Prophets if you don’t already own it…