Science/medical journalism
terrasig | May 10, 2010This is going to be a quick welcome to Deborah Blum (@deborahblum) who has just moved her blog, Speakeasy Science, to ScienceBlogs.
Why quick?
Because I am only 22 pages away from finishing her latest book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. This engaging tale of the race of science and medicine against chemical poisonings for profit and punishment features the true story of NYC chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler. Of course, the other actors are arsenic, methanol, chloroform, thallium, and radium,…
terrasig | January 19, 2010This past weekend's international science communication conference, ScienceOnline2010, also saw the first, final hardback copies of Rebecca Skloot's long-awaited book make it into the hands of the science and journalism consuming public. Moreover, an excerpt of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has just appeared in the new issue of Oprah Winfrey's O Magazine. And already, those online science communicators who left the conference with Skloot's book are registering their praise via this Twitter feed that was so active it was a trending topic at the science aggregator, SciencePond.
The story…
terrasig | January 4, 2010Thanks to the always vigilant eyes of Liz Ditz, Ratbags.com is reporting that pediatric immunologist and vaccine developer Dr. Paul Offit, writer Amy Wallace, and Condé Nast (publisher of Wired magazine) are being sued for libel in US District Court by Barbara Loe Fisher, founder and acting president of the so-called National Vaccine Information Center.
Readers will recall that Wallace's article on Dr. Offit and the fear and misinformation propagated by anti-vaccinationists was the centerpiece of a feature in Wired magazine aptly titled, "Epidemic of Fear."
My short take: The lawsuit is an…
terrasig | December 9, 2009By way of my substance abuse blogger colleague, The Discovering Alcoholic, I learned of yesterday's New York Times article by Sarah Kershaw on Dr. A. Thomas McLellan. McLellan is a psychologist and drug abuse researcher with over 400 peer-reviewed publications to his credit. He held an academic appointment at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and was scientific director of the Treatment Research Institute which he co-founded in 1992 with Jack Durell, MD, and other researchers from Penn's Center for the Studies of Addiction.
However, McLellan is not a career bureaucrat like…
terrasig | October 29, 2009No, this is not the same old beaten horse.
Revere at Effect Measure, one/some of the best public health writers on the web, has written a splendid piece on the difference between the two types of blogging in response to the denial of his registration at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker. Revere has intended to comment on their coverage of the Brownlee and Lenzer cover article on swine flu at The Atlantic.
I was going to pick out some excerpts but the whole post is so clearly written and important in its entire context that I refer you to read it in its entirety.
I don't believe that I…
terrasig | October 28, 2009Just a quick follow-up from our last two posts about Amy Wallace's article, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," in Wired magazine about vaccine developer Dr Paul Offit and the anti-vaccination movement:
Wired has now compiled Wallace's tweets from the last two days into blog-readable narrative.
Only a week after Wired published "An Epidemic of Fear", we've received more reader responses than any other story in memory. Journalist Amy Wallace has received hundreds of messages, weighing in on all sides of the issue, and posted some of those comments on…
terrasig | October 27, 2009
Case in point:
A few days ago, I sang the praises of last week's article in Wired magazine by Amy Wallace on pediatric infectious disease and immunology specialist, Dr Paul Offit, and the anti-vaccination movement in the US.
Wallace's article has been widely heralded by the scientific community but has evoked the wrath of several anti-vaccination groups and individual followers.
When the target is a man, their motives are questioned and their intellect maligned. But when the target is a woman, guess what happens? Here is a compiled thread from a series of tweets yesterday from Amy Wallace…
terrasig | October 25, 2009
One of the most engaging and clearly-written pieces of science journalism over the last year or so was published in Wired magazine last week. Amy Wallace's, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," is part interview with rotavirus vaccine developer, pediatric infectious disease physician, Dr Paul Offit, and description of the anti-vaccination movement in the United States.
Wallace's work is the centerpiece of a collection of smaller articles providing science-based information about vaccination that also refutes common anti-vaccination myths including "…
terrasig | September 29, 2009When writing the other day about how blogging has been of benefit to my career, I neglected to mention my recent invitation to the board of Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC).
Founded in June 2007 by Karl Leif Bates and Chris Brodie, and now headed by President Ernie Hood (Radio In Vivo), SCONC is a group of "science writers, journalists, public information officers, teachers and institutional communicators from academia, government labs, industry, museums and schools -- just about anyone interested in communicating science," who aim to improve public understanding of science…
terrasig | September 16, 2009If you are in the area, this looks really good:
Award-winning author Gary Taubes will speak at next week's Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) Research Conference:
"Why We Get Fat: Adiposity 101 and the Alternative Hypothesis of Obesity"
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
12:00 noon to 1:00 pm
North Pavilion
Lower Level Lecture Hall
Gary Taubes is the author of Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease (Knopf, 2007). He studied applied physics as an undergraduate at Harvard and has an MS degree in engineering from Stanford University…
terrasig | July 17, 2009
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have released a new book entitled, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Mr Mooney and Ms Kirshenbaum also co-author the blog, The Intersection, a Discover Magazine online.
I was fortunate to receive a review copy from the publisher but must admit, sheepishly, that the book has sat unread beside my home office desk because of other responsibilities. The advance paperwork says it is to be released officially on 20 July. So, my plan is to get to it this weekend and get some magnitude of a review written.
During my relative…
terrasig | June 5, 2009
Just a quick note to dial up Ira Flatow's Science Friday show on NPR today at 3 pm EDT. Supporting information and the archived show can be found here.
Guy-who-I-would-kill-to-be, Tom Levenson, will be on with Ira to speak about his new book, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist.
Here is also a link to other appearances Professor Levenson will be having related to the book.
For those of you who don't know Thomas Levenson, he is currently a Professor, Interim Program Head, and Director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the…
terrasig | April 29, 2009Regular commenter and friend of Terra Sig, leigh (the path forward), let us know overnight that Florida State Veterinarian Dr Thomas J Holt officially confirmed that selenium overdose killed 21 Venezuelian polo horses in Wellington, Florida, on 19 April.
An attempt by an Ocala, Florida, compounding pharmacy to reproduce an equine dietary supplement called Biodyl resulted in a toxic dose of sodium selenite to be given to the horses. The pharmacy is cooperating fully with the FDA and other authorities but there is no official word as to whether the pharmacy made a calculation error or were…
terrasig | March 27, 2009Just a quick note of congratulations to friends of Terra Sig (FOTS, if you will) on earning 2008 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism from the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ).
Online
FIRST: M.B. Pell, Jim Morris and Jillian Olsen, Center for Public Integrity, "Perils of the New Pesticides"
SECOND (tie): Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times, The "Well" blog
SECOND (tie): Scott Hensley, Jacob Goldstein and Sarah Rubenstein, The Wall Street Journal Online, The Wall Street Journal Health Blog
THIRD: Randy Dotinga, Voice of San Diego, "Suicide Magnet" [Part I, Part II]
You…
terrasig | March 23, 2009
As I have stated many times before, this blog has brought me some personal experiences and friendships I would have never had in my life as "just" a lab scientist and pharmacology professor.
Among the most cordial relationships I have had online with a professional journalist has been with Scott Hensley of the Wall Street Journal. Mr Hensley is a top-notch print reporter on health issues who two years ago became founding editor of the Journal's foray into HealthWeb 2.0, the WSJ Health Blog. Today, he has announced formally that he is leaving the blog and the Journal.
I have long admired…
terrasig | March 22, 2009I had the happy pleasure of visiting on Friday with Sheril Kirshenbaum and Bora Zivkovic for a panel discussion in a course at Duke University's Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy.
Directed by Dr Misha Angrist, PubPol 196S "Science in the Media" is described in the course catalog as follows:
Those who write about science, health and related policy matters for a general audience face a formidable challenge: to make complex, nuanced ideas understandable to the nonscientist in a limited amount of space and in ways that are engaging and entertaining, even if the topic is far outside the…
terrasig | March 21, 2009Kudos to The Washington Post for publishing an op-ed by author, journalist, blogger, Chris Mooney, on the George Will WaPo global warming fiasco. Author of "The Republican War on Science," "Storm World," and co-author with Sheril Kirshenbaum of the forthcoming "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future."
This is Mooney at his best - first and last paragraph:
A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real…
terrasig | February 27, 2009I've been scarce around these parts and hope to get a Friday Fermentable up before midnight. However, I just wanted to share the following on the last couple of days discussions about Nature Publishing Group's various pronouncements on the importance of science blogging, especially their mention in Nature Methods of ScienceOnline'09, an unconference I co-organized this year with founders and online science visionaries, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker.
Bora has the main stories and DrugMonkey adds commentary and his own personal experiences.
But leave it to Anton Zuiker to capture the whole…
terrasig | February 12, 2009Coolio! I think I would've applied for this. I assume NCI means either recent MS or PhD graduates:
Applications are now open for the July 2009-January 2010 National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Health Communications Internship Program, a 6 or 12-month program for graduate students or for persons who have recently completed a graduate degree interested in a career in science writing. Applications close March 3, 2009. For additional information or to apply, visit: https://hcip.nci.nih.gov.
The NCI, the Federal Government's principal agency for cancer research and training, invites qualified…
terrasig | February 3, 2009Following on the heels of the ScienceOnline'09 conference, I was delighted to learn this morning that our local fishwrapper has launched its own Science and Medicine blog. Led by N&O science editor, Sarah Avery, the Science and Medicine blog will expand upon the surprisingly sparse coverage of one of the most scientifically dense areas of the United States:
The Triangle is home to a wealth of medical and scientific research. While the nature of scientific advancement is incremental, many of these findings help advance our understanding of important diseases, drug therapies and natural…