media and science
sheril | April 4, 2008In the following photo, am I...
a) revealing my secret identity as a spy in the greater NC region?
b) laying low from the ScienceBlog paparazzi?
c) sharing lunch with Bora and Abel after we guest lectured at Duke's Sanford Institute on Public Policy on a sunny Spring day?
d) in the running for which SciBling can sport the dorkiest glasses?
The story behind the image here...
sheril | March 25, 2008As I watch our traffic ebb and flow, I sometimes wonder whether these waves may reveal something deeper about human nature--acting as a microcosm of our broader society's attention span. Of course, we know those engaged in the blogosphere are not representative of the general population, but it's possible we may gain some insight by following the tides...
Yesterday we saw a huge traffic spike. So big in fact, it was the second most viewed 24-hour period in this blog's history trumped only slightly by our coverage of the tragedy as it unfolded in Bangladesh last November when Cyclone Sidr…
sheril | January 29, 2008From the NYTimes:
The secret messages hidden in scientist J. Craig Venter's synthetic bacterial genome have now been revealed. They are -- his name, and that of his research institute and co-workers.
cmooney | January 22, 2008I'm pleased to say that my Columbia Journalism Review piece has started to make some ripples. It was discussed on Slashdot, which is always a big deal. And it was discussed by Andrew Sullivan, which is also always important.
I've also gotten some very thoughtful emails, too--although, alas, I feel like this idea is still a bit too radical for people. Which is unfortunate. What do folks think I ought to do at this point to make more bloggers wake up and act in their own self-interests?
cmooney | January 17, 2008In the latest Columbia Journalism Review, I have an essay that builds upon some blogging I've done here over the past few months--which, in turn, was inspired by the writer's strike out here in LA.
In essence, in thinking about the strike, I have been inspired more and more to make the argument for unionizing bloggers, to help ensure payment and fair treatment. Now, Columbia Journalism Review has published the case--and this may be the most prominent articulation of it yet.
Let me quote a few passages:
...blog traffic is growing. According to Technorati, which compares blogs with mainstream…
sheril | November 13, 2007Okay, I like Rolling Stone. As a drummer, it's kind of protocol. And James Lovelock is an interesting character - the very kind of fellow that I'd probably keep in good company were we of the same generation. I like those intelligent out-of-the-box types with big ideas. That said, I'm seriously not impressed with either in the November issue. Just check out the tagline of the Lovelock article:
"One of the most eminent scientists of our time says that global warming is irreversible -- and that more than 6 billion people will perish by the end of the century."
Sends a shiver down your…
cmooney | November 5, 2007Last week, Sheril got amazing and (to me) unprecedented blogospheric results when she directly took on a troublesome commenter. While I doubt I'll get the same reaction, this post is in response to the same kind of thing.
Last week I wrote about the Hollywood screenwriters' strike and, as a fellow writer, voiced my support. I was really disappointed by some of the resulting comments from folks who didn't seem to understand why unions are important--and most of all, with a comment from "Bi-Liberal." The comment was not only off point, but meanly so:
Uh, no offense, Chris and girlfriend named…
cmooney | November 1, 2007
[Big Media? Or the antidote to it?]
Out here in LA, you can't miss the news that the Writer's Guild of America is on the verge of striking. I'm getting pretty into the drama--reading blogs like Artful Writer (kinda middle ground) and the newly launched United Hollywood (pro-union), for example. Full disclosure: The central reason I'm living every minute of this (or at least, a few minutes out of every hour) is because my girlfriend Molly works for the Writer's Guild. So I understandably have a side in this one.
Not that you can blame me: I'm a writer too, and though I've never tried writing…
sheril | October 28, 2007Last Tuesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency faked a news briefing about their response to the California wildfires. Really. There was a script and questions came from FEMA employees. Turns out no actual reporters were present. So sure, it was the week before Halloween, but I just don't think this is the right venue for make believe.
I'd prefer our government stick with reality TV, but maybe readers have your own answer to this question from the 'conference'...
'Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?'
sheril | August 24, 2007A frightened society is easily kept in check by the powers that be so I suppose someone is benefiting from the news media circus, eh? But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself...let me begin again by taking things back to our formative years:
One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when -- KERPLUNK -- an acorn fell on her head. "Oh my goodness!" said Chicken Little. "The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king."
Hence, 'Chicken Little' has become synonymous with hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. I liken the mentality to that exhibited by the prime time news…
sheril | August 2, 2007Admittedly, I have a little too much fun teasing Chris about being sexiest geek, but hey, he's the only official one I know. I'm a geek too of course (sans title and glory), who gets seriously excited about anything and everything space. That's SPACE mind you.. astrobiology, supernovas, galaxies, wormholes, and Sagan. Not to be confused with being a Trekkie/Battlestar Galactica geek. [Note: THAT is a link worth clicking]. You see, I want to be an astronaut whereas those folks dream of cylons. Two whole different subsets of geekdom altogether.
Now that I've cleared that up, I'd like to…
sheril | July 31, 2007Last night at 8:00, I saw The Simpsons. Rewind four hours and I was sitting at my desk writing about the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Turns out they are very much related. Sort of.
A little Marine Bio 101:
Dead zones are areas of the ocean devoid of fish, shrimp, and marine life. They're basically just what they sound like. Every year, the Gulf of Mexico has this pesky habit of turning into a dead zone when runoff from fertilizers and animal waste in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya River Basins is introduced leading to a state called hypoxia (oxygen depleted water). Excess…
cmooney | June 20, 2007 Well, this has become quite a hot topic, hasn't it? Carl Zimmer thinks I'm too sanguine about this sometimes troubled (although other times quite healthy) relationship between the media and scientists. As he puts it:
"I think, first off, that Chris is a bit off-base. He's not feeling the genuine pain being expressed in the comments to Tara's post. These are people who have had lousy experiences with reporters. You don't have to be a prima donna to come out of the journalistic process feeling queasy."
Sure, that's true. And I want to emphasize: Misquotation is bad bad bad, and that's why I…
cmooney | June 19, 2007Something that makes me very sad is going on over at Tara's blog, I'm afraid. A number of commenters, who seem to be largely scientists, are beating up mercilessly on science writers for various sins, largely misquotation (which wasn't even what Tara's post was originally about). The comments got as nasty as this:
So why should we be interviewed and questioned? Contact us and ask us to write a piece on some topic. If the resulting language is terrible, then have the editor work with the scientist to improve it. I think the journalist is entirely unnecessary.
As someone who has both written…
cmooney | February 17, 2006When I'm speaking about how to fix the politics-of-science problem, I often target the media for special criticism. I point out that if journalists weren't so addicted to the norm of fify-fifty "balance," they wouldn't be so vulnerable to the machinations of science abusers who attempt to create phony "debates" over topics like evolution or global warming.
But when asked what to do about this problem, I don't throw up my hands in despair. Quite the contrary: I think that, at least to a large extent, journalists are amenable to reason. Sure, we need better science education in journalism…
cmooney | January 23, 2006My book was reviewed in the Sunday Times of London yesterday. The reviewer was generally positive. Nevertheless, presumably out of the standard critic impulse to say something, anything negative, he created one of the most staggering strawmen I've ever witnessed:
But the central plank of [Mooney's] argument is the embryonic stem-cell issue. There is no doubt that Bush's solution to his dilemma was based on atrocious science. Exposing that fact is one thing. But to question the right of anybody to oppose experiments on human embryos, as Mooney does, is quite another. [Italics added]
Actually…
cmooney | January 20, 2006DarkSyde over at Daily Kos has been doing yeoman's work to bring information about science and politics to the blogging masses. Today, he's got the latest contribution: A long interview with three of the principals of RealClimate (Mike Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Stefan Rahmstorf). They talk about the basic science of climate, misguided attacks on the "hockey stick," and recent discoveries linking global warming to hurricane intensity. Make sure to check it out.
cmooney | January 19, 2006The Times is reporting today that the Vatican is not so anti-evolution after all--thank goodness--but that's not what's intriguing about the article from my perspective. I couldn't help noticing this sentence from the middle of the piece:
There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth, but advocates for intelligent design posit that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source.
There it is--a clear admission that ID is not a scientific theory. This is not merely a matter of opinion, and…