Comments on: Rebooting science journalism – thoughts from Timmer

By: Jimalakirti

Jimalakirti — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:19:20 +0000

I am a retired writer/editor/manager with a lifelong fascination with science. I have for years suffered from lousy science and technical writing, and have tried to improve the situation by teaching courses formal and informal about how to research an area, read critically, and write intelligently for a non-expert literate audience.
Watching the climate scientists clambering over each other to get the latest faux pas out into the light of day, and to see the helplessness of fine honest scientists under the onslaught of the TV talk show hosts, I decided to build a blog to showcase scientific writing on controversial subjects: evolution, climate change, and nuclear energy/waste management. The idea is to present a wide range of writing on these subjects and on critical thinking, and then, as time allows, to write critical analyses of select articles. I would hope that eventually other people would post articles and write critical reviews of posted articles for the blog,:Thinking Critically About Science”.
Your site and philosophy provide role models I hope to present to a literate audience.
Long live good science and technical communication!

By: bsci

bsci — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:36:30 +0000

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how radically what pushes and what pulls has changed. When the focus is newpapers and TV, the push is only if a science story is put at a time or place where someone who wasn’t expecting to learn about science was looking. There was/is a pull to things like the NY Times Science section, but that also isolates the stories from anyone who want to ignore them.
Now that articles can be automatically forwarded to friends, aggregated, blogged about, etc, there are many more opportunities for pushes. None of them have a push to everyone, but pieces of science journalism are reaching more people. There are a lot of other things going wrong, but, at least to me, this seems like something that is right.

By: kathy Orlinsky

kathy Orlinsky — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:09:18 +0000

While it’s true that some stories have universal appeal, I’d be surprised if even the most ‘unpleasant and unsexy stories’ couldn’t find a science writer to love them. People do have amazingly varied interests. Maybe the problem (and the solution) is in organizing all the resources available.

By: Josh Axtell

Josh Axtell — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:23:16 +0000

Brian, I like your idea. I think the hardest part would be determining how to limit membership to credible scientists. If you have some suggestions on how to do that, I’d like to hear them.

By: David Dobbs

David Dobbs — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:12:26 +0000

John,
I’ve got a post ALMOST done, but wanted to add 2 cents worth of agreement here on a main point you make: That particularly with “That smells funny” stories (by which I mean, something fishy that needs exposure), push is important, because they often don’t have much pull power. Why so little pull power? Because “This smells funny” stories often tell people stuff they’re not eager to hear, or that is complex. Fraud in science. Overdiagnosis of PTSD. Conflicts of interest in psych researchers. People don’t gravitate toward those, but they’re important. Usually they get attention only if a NY Times or a Science or Nature or a Scientific American puts the story on its front page. (Sometimes, of course, big stories do NOT make it to prominence, reflecting failures on the sort that have drawn deserved criticism.)
So a key worry for me in the new press/journo/info landscape is how important but unpleasant and unsexy stories will get enough play to shape public discourse. Possibly some of the new content partnerships that Jay Rosen and others are working on might help this. I hope to be more hopeful about this too as time passes — that the spirit of energy and innovation that we now see erupting among many journo types and scientists will solve some of these problems. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s a key one to solve.

By: Kat

Kat — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:01:10 +0000

I’m not sure the duck story entirely proves the point for “pull” stories based on science – I think it shows that sex sells, as it always has.

By: Raymond Nakamura

Raymond Nakamura — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:35:46 +0000

My motivation in doing a science blog has been to answer some of the questions my five-year-old asks that I don’t have the answers to off hand.

By: Brian Slesinsky

Brian Slesinsky — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:53:58 +0000

Perhaps the two could be combined somehow? Suppose there were a Digg-like site where membership were somehow limited to scientists?