Tuesday, 12 February 2008

who can save science journalism readers



Who can save science journalism? Readers

Online Journalism Review writes about the disconnect between

scientists and journalists, with the former rarely able to connect in

an understandable way and the latter focusing purely on conflict. I

think this is generally true, but not always.

And what the article suffers from, in an otherwise fine report, is the

generally false assumption that readers are unable to weed through the

competing voices in science and science journalism on their own to

arrive at their own conclusions.

Can science blogs save science journalism? (By Jean Yung, Online

Journalism Review)

Due to traditional media's budget considerations, a science

reporter is often responsible for several scientific disciplines,

and that inevitably leads to a lack of intelligent, dependable

coverage, or worse, over-coverage of wacky, pseudoscientific

studies such as Jessica Alba's score in an index of female

desirability.

On the other hand, many scientists cannot talk in layman's terms

about what they do. Neither are they trained to do so. 'No effort

has been made to help us reach out or learn to talk to the media

and to the public,' Johnson said, admitting that scientists as a

group are 'very bad' at communicating. More here

Backgrounder

Nano memory: 30,000 movies and nothing on

Serious nanotox reporting, for a change

Wilson Center's nano numbers racket

Nanotech's real danger is the nano con

A response to 'I, Nanobot'


No comments: