Comments on: Science writers: You have great powers.

By: Cats Have Parasites That Make Them Attractive to Rats | ThePooperScoop

Cats Have Parasites That Make Them Attractive to Rats | ThePooperScoop — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 02:25:15 +0000

[...] author of Parasite Rex, is the best journalist on this beat. Update: And, it turns out, his work inspired House to study [...]

By: Sweta

Sweta — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:53:40 +0000

While I’ve always had an interest in pursuing graduate school in the sciences, parasite rex cemented my desire to specifically study insect neurobiology. I loved the stories of the various parasites that were able to change the behaviors of their insect hosts! I’m in my 2nd year of grad school now and loving it.

Great blog, great books, please keep writing!

By: UK science interest spiking? Blame Cox

UK science interest spiking? Blame Cox — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 23:32:22 +0000

[...] It’s not hard to see why The Guardian — and the people interviewed in that article — might say Brian is behind this recent jump in sciencophilia. His impact on the culture of science in the UK is both wide and deep. It’s probably not possible to know the exact influence he’s had, but when you look at how many people were drawn into science by Carl Sagan 30 years ago, it’s not out of the question that Brian really has taken up that mantle. as have many others, as I’m sure my Hive Overmind Discover Magazine co-blogger and science writer Carl Zimmer would agree, too. [...]

By: Boris

Boris — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:46:49 +0000

All I got from reading Parasite Rex was a fear of brain parasites and strange looks as I clean children’s hands after petting cats.

Only joking, it is an amazing book. Not quite up there with The Selfish Gene, but absolutely the sort of science writing that amazes, inspires and delights. If I had read these books earlier in life I might have endured the Biology curriculum and become some sort of biologist.

By: Chris Farnsworth

Chris Farnsworth — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 13:10:35 +0000

As a middle school science teacher I’ll say any science teacher not using science journalism in class is missing the point. The awesomeness of science told by a talented storyteller. It almost teaches itself. I was showing a video clip of Lynn Margulis last year and she said she is interested in science if it tells a story, and I was yelling out “YES!” and scaring my students. I remember an intro of Best American Science Writing maybe 4 years back when the writer said “I wonder if any teacher actually teaches just using science journalism”. Well, some of us do. A former student now using x-ray technology to authenticate artworks in San Antonio just mentioned her time in 7th grade and how she loved “Level 4:Virus Hunters of the CDC”. All of my students have read excerpts of, and several have read in their entirety, Genome by Matt Ridley (Chromosome 4!) and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and all of them know the names Carl Zimmer and Ed Yong. And they love it! Full disclosure requires me to admit some of them like 2 fictitious writers named Ed Zimmer and Carl Young! If you can help them break it down, they learn the science by trying to understand the story. Carl and Ed pay it forward to us, we pay it forward to our students and if we are lucky, they return the favor to the next generation. ps- For teachers, Sean Carrolls free lectures on Evolution on the HHMI website are indispensable and Carls article “And Now: The Rest of the Genome” and “Microbial Overlords” are must reads for life science students, and I’m not just kissin’ up. Kiss, kiss. Hope that wasn’t a humblebrag, but I’m afraid it might be.

By: Jim Mauch

Jim Mauch — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 01:13:56 +0000

The science writer does inspire future scientists but they do more. They change the attitudes of the american public. We come to look at scientists not as the anti-Christ but rather as admired professionals. We come to respect the ability of scientific inquiry to gives us answers.

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:27:58 +0000

Science writers: You have great powers.

I can’t believe that no-one has quipped something like, With great power comes great responsibility.

By: UK science interest spiking? Blame Cox – Americas Review

UK science interest spiking? Blame Cox – Americas Review — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 08:44:24 +0000

[...] It’s not hard to see why The Guardian — and the people interviewed in that article — might say Brian is behind this recent jump in sciencophilia. His impact on the culture of science in the UK is both wide and deep. It’s probably not possible to know the exact influence he’s had, but when you look at how many people were drawn into science by Carl Sagan 30 years ago, it’s not out of the question that Brian really has taken up that mantle. As have many others, as I’m sure my Hive Overmind Discover Magazine co-blogger and science writer Carl Zimmer would agree, too. [...]

By: Steviepinhead

Steviepinhead — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 04:10:46 +0000

Dang, Carl! You must be bustin’ your britches with pride…!

Deservedly so!

Keep it up…

By: UK science interest spiking? Blame Cox | Space Travels - Space Turism

UK science interest spiking? Blame Cox | Space Travels - Space Turism — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 03:09:07 +0000

[...] It’s not hard to see why The Guardian — and the people interviewed in that article — might say Brian is behind this recent jump in sciencophilia. His impact on the culture of science in the UK is both wide and deep. It’s probably not possible to know the exact influence he’s had, but when you look at how many people were drawn into science by Carl Sagan 30 years ago, it’s not out of the question that Brian really has taken up that mantle. As have many others, as I’m sure my Hive Overmind Discover Magazine co-blogger and science writer Carl Zimmer would agree, too. [...]

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:58:34 +0000

Congrats Carl. It is a great feeling to know you’ve had such an impact.

By: Claire

Claire — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:30:54 +0000

Agreed, completely. I had been a political junky throughout high school, before my older brother essentially challenged me to read Guns, Germs, and Steel. From then on, I was hooked on environmental history and science. Your own books, Carl, helped steer me further towards the biology side of things. Although through a somewhat circuitous route, I can trace my career from reading that book, now to being a PhD student in a marine science program. Books written for lay people and science reporting have an enormous impact!

By: Maryn

Maryn — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 16:39:46 +0000

That is just wonderful; and so awesome that they wrote you. (When my first book came out, several students hold me it made them want to become epidemiologists. I wish I knew whether they followed through!)

By: Cory Gross

Cory Gross — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:52:27 +0000

I work as an educator in the Museums and Heritage field, including teaching about geology, mineralogy and natural resources at my city’s museum and ecology and palaeontology at my city’s zoo, and the responsibility of good science education impresses itself upon me all the time. I’m fully aware that I have a real chance to provoke the interests of children and adults to investigate science and to bring solid information to them, whether it’s explaining the evidence for climate change to a denier in front of a crowd of 80 or discussing the possibilities for resurrecting woolly mammoths. I was going on about the discovery of colour in dinosaur feathers the same day it was announced.

It’s an awesome responsibility, but an amazingly fun one as well. Hopefully those seeds I helped plant sprout up!

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:25:05 +0000

Carl:
I just started an internship at a parasitology lab, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Parasite Rex. Thanks for inspiring me!

By: Twitter home page Aug 18 | Fadograph's Weblog

Twitter home page Aug 18 | Fadograph's Weblog — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:57:09 +0000

[...] Florida 3 hours ago carlzimmercarlzimmer Loom: Science writers: You have great powers. bit.ly/ne37q8 3 hours ago BryllarsJBryllars Let’s find a way to give money not to banks but to [...]

By: Dr. Matt Bonnan

Dr. Matt Bonnan — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:53:26 +0000

Carl:

Your book, “At The Water’s Edge,” inspired me in graduate school to consider more closely the embryonic development of the hand in tetrapods and its implications for hand weirdness in sauropod dinosaurs. Reading the chapter on the development of the hand clicked some switch in me, and vertebrate development and evolution became more entwined in my research ever since. This has culminated in a number of papers on sauropods and their relatives.

Science writers do have great powers!

Matt

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:46:26 +0000

Congratulations on such a successful influence! I feel like an academic butterfly at the moment, everything I read I want to work with. Combined with overthinking what I want to do with my life means I haven’t had that kind of eureka moment – I’m envious of those that have the good fortune to have it.

By: Rob Knell

Rob Knell — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:08:23 +0000

Couple of emails like that and you can retire: “My work is done”. FWIW I tell all my undergrads taking my 3rd year parasitology course to read Parasite Rex, and a fair few of them have gone on to careers in the business, as it were, so you can probably claim a few of them too.

Rob K

By: Michel

Michel — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:58:40 +0000

the blog’s great, I follow it everyday, but really, I think that there’s a lot of unnecessary self-pity and petty griping among the scientific media on this stuff, and this post is an opportunity to point some things out:

1) what a candidate for a party presidential nominee says or believes is, in itself, utterly inconsequential to anything about the state of science; so rather than news these days being grim, its just what it always has been.

2) it’s a fun debating point, and a convenient node for focusing broader cultual frustrations, but even if creationism were explicitly taught in schools there would be very little measurable impact. If what is taught in schools had a measurable impact on what students learn and retain, most americans could would know at least algebra, be conversant with the nation’s history, and able to recite the major themes of Faulkner or Wright. Obviously they cannot. Again, frustrating, but not very grim.

3) Whether one ‘believes in’ evolution or not surely is an effect, rather than a cause, of deeper ignorances and biases. The explosion of research into motivated reasoning, misfiring cognitive heuristics, confirmation bias, etc., should persuade anyone who claims to represent science that surface beliefs (the kind of sentences you assent or dissent from in a poll or survey) are meaningless in terms of predicting or explaining behavior.

4) The disillusion registered by Tyson is a lamentable trend, but it’s been going on well nigh three decades now and has little to do with conservative dunderheads. The reasons are: a) the obvious next ‘dream’ would be mission to mars or the asteroid belt or moon colony or something, but the technology just isn’t there yet and people get tired of waiting; b) budget contraints–it is Obama, after all, who is cutting NASA, the NIH, etc., and not because he’s a trog, but because it’s easy to cut that stuff in times of budgetary panic. I don’t like it, but again, while things are in this case grim, it has little to do with conservatives.

[CZ: Thanks for your comment--I appreciate it. Here are some thoughts in response to each point. In general, I think you're making sweeping points without explaining the reasoning behind them well enough, and without presenting evidence.

1. Rick Perry has backed up his statements about creationism by appointing a self-avowed creationist at the chairman of the state board of education. Scientists in Texas have been struggling with some members of the board to preserve sound educational standards in the state. I fail to see how this is inconsequential.

2. The question of what is taught in school, and how well it is taught, are two separate questions. You are conflating them. According to your reasoning, it doesn't really matter what teachers teach. Forgive me if I don't agree.

3. I'm not sure what this has to do with what I wrote in the blog post. I dont' actually agree with it. Would you say that your own understanding of, say, gravity, is the result of cognitive biases?

4. Did I say that these trends in science were solely the fault of "conservative dunderheads"? No. So don't turn me into a straw man.]

By: Mason Inman

Mason Inman — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:24:12 +0000

I’ve thought for a long time that teachers—for college and high school, and perhaps even younger students—should do more to incorporate reporting on science into their teaching. It seems like an easy way to make cutting-edge science understandable, and to fire up students about learning the nitty-gritty so they can fully understand the bigger picture, gee-whiz stuff.

I’m not really up on the latest pedagogy…. Does anyone regularly use science news articles as part of the curriculum? I think it could be especially useful in college. If there are great examples of using science news articles for teaching, I’d love to find out more about how journalism might be helping science.