Posts tagged with ‘Media’
Redressing the imbalance between research and outreach, between the creation of knowledge and its sharing.
Science matters, and so does science communication, argue the coauthors. And while advocacy and science are not always easy bedfellows, groups with antiscientific agendas put on awfully good briefings on Capitol Hill.
How to understand how America has changed since the days of the Space Race.
Conservatives have found another ludicrous charge to hurl against the president’s science adviser.
GQ’s new “Rock Stars of Science” campaign should give not just disease sufferers, but America’s scientists, hope.
One Thursday in May, a State Department staffer suggested a simple idea to get U.S. citizens involved in the government’s relief efforts in Pakistan. The following Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a simple text donation program. Sending the word “Swat,” the name of a valley in the relief area, to 20222 sends a [...]
We’ve made some recent improvements behind the scenes here at Science Progress that readers may have noticed. But because today’s big Center for American Progress event focuses on the power of New Media technologies, I wanted to make sure that all our social media channels (some still in development) were visible.
Podcasts
Over the past week, we’ve [...]
Battlestar Galactica is hardly the only place you’ll see science in popular entertainment. Technical issues from physics to biomedicine permeate hit series like CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, and The Big Bang Theory that attract mainstream audiences. The National Academy of Sciences capitalized on the phenomenon when it created the Science & Entertainment Exchange—a program to foster [...]
Tom Paulson, formerly of the Seattle-Post Intelligencer, now a freelance writer, carpenter, and building contractor, epitomizes the story of the science writer in our time.
Nearly 50 years after C.P. Snow’s famous “Two Cultures” lecture, what can we learn from its polemical aftermath, and its author’s savage battles with literary critic F.R. Leavis?
Having just moved his blog from one mainstream outlet to another, our Contributing Editor considers the many hats science bloggers now wear in an era of struggling science journalism.Ch
If a major media outlet can’t even correct facts about global warming, is it still socially relevant?
Good science policy depends upon good science journalism. As Chris Mooney has pointed out, the federal government alone spent $142 billion on research and development last year. But “informed citizens deserve to understand more about what they’re getting from that investment,” he wrote.
CJR’s Observatory recently rounded up two useful discussions on the fragmenting state of [...]
Screenwriter Matthew Chapman, the great-great grandson of the great great scientist, reflects upon science, politics, and culture 200 years after Darwin’s birth.
Over time, various technologies have altered our perceptions of what is essential and original. So how is moving a few pixels around in a photo like altering biological systems?
Global warming deniers believe selective anecdotes about anomalous local weather refute the fact there is a globally averaged warming trend.
All the things I didn’t get to say to Stephen Colbert, and other thoughts on the comedics of science.
Here’s a look back at the most popular features we ran in the past year. Some of them dealt with major controversies over political interference with science at the Environmental Protection Agency, the teaching of creationism, and access to reproductive health services. Others tackled challenges of a networked world, or considered how policy can better harness the talents of a burgeoning scientific workforce.
The news that CNN is eliminating its science reporting team is just the latest blow to mainstream science journalism. But an informed democracy needs good coverage of issues that touch virtually every aspect of our lives.
The move seems strange and unfortunate given the ever-increasing role that scientific and technological issues play in shaping political and economic life in the United States. Curtic Brainard at CJR rounds up baffled experts, but everyone else can let CNN know what they think about the move.
The Science and Entertainment Exchange is a new departure for the scientific community, but precisely the sort of outreach measure that can help it better connect with our broader society.
Earlier this week at The Intersection, Sheril Kirshenbaum offered a look at a new program from the National Academies that will help television and movie makers who want better integrate scientific concepts into their work. The Science and Entertainment Exchange aims to bridge the gap between the research arena and the entertainment industry “and addresses the mutual need of the two communities by providing the credibility and the verisimilitude upon which quality entertainment depends–and which audiences have come to expect,” according to the program’s website.
Divisiveness and the lack of shared purpose have been too common surrounding science issues. It’s time for a change.
His anti-global warming novel was unfortunate. But like it or not, his impact on the image of science in our culture was massive.
The next transition team must make the most of modern information and communications technology to shape, coordinate, and run the process of moving the next president into office. Here are some suggestions on how that can work.
As the media’s interest in covering science declines, the lack of strong advocates for such coverage also comes to light.
It’s entirely possible for research to thrive even as the influence and relevance of science, in policy and to the average citizen, decline. Reflections on a dramatic conversation to elevate science in America.
Just over a year ago, we launched
Science Progress. Our goal was to provide a forum for progressive science policy, a venue in which those concerned about the future of the country could assess the current state of science in America.
When the public hasn’t been monitoring developments in science, people can fall back on Hollywood images of big strange projects that go badly awry. If scientists monitored public perceptions, they could engage before misinformation spreads.
Both presidential candidates have now answered 14 questions about science policy—but it’s not enough.
We should use hurricanes to discuss global warming, but we have to do it with rigorous fidelity to the current state of scientific understanding.
A quick look at the issues making the rounds on the science blogs this week.
Former Time magazine-reporter-turned-environmental-policy-analyst Eric Roston will make his Colbert Report debut tonight talking about his new book, The Carbon Age.
Science Progress featured an interview with Roston earlier this month that ranged across the various scientific fields connected by the carbon atom.
Embryonic stem cell research, strong scientific input on global warming policy, and more federal funding for scientific research: these are all things the American public wants.
Young scientists today have a hunger for outreach training. Here are some concepts, conceits, and lessons learned from an attempt to help them deal with the media.
Rick Weiss argues that the orderly and unbiased testing of reality to see how things actually work—the art and science of science—has ever been the engine of better health, higher productivity and greater economic power, not to mention enhanced entertainment and leisure-time options. It is something of a wonder, he writes, that so many today eschew it, and so openly.
Kicking off an auspicious week at
Science Progress that will culminate in our first public event, the Center for American Progress just announced that former Post reporter Rick Weiss is joining CAP as a Senior Fellow.
The World Science Festival in New York City was a huge success—and that’s because it garnered attention that ranged far beyond coverage in traditional science media outlets. But to communicate science broadly, there’s still a long way to go.
Presidents and candidates for the office voluntarily release their medical records. But with advances in screening and treatment for many kinds of medical conditions, how do we know we’re getting the full story on the health of the Commander-In-Chief? (And do we want it?)
In his new book,
Doubt Is Their Product, Michaels chronicles the “tricks of the trade” that mercenary scientists and product defense firms employ to delay or prevent regulation of chemicals that kill. Their tactics put them in the good company of cigarette companies and global warming deniers.
Two writers claim there is no assault on the scientific information that informs public policy and don’t even bother engaging the facts of the case.
The Science Times section in the NYT today has a short profile on Francisco J. Ayala, author of Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion. Dr. Ayala is an evolutionary biologist and geneticist at the University of California, Irvine. He spends much of his time lecturing on evolution and its compatibility with belief in God.
Art Caplan adds to the string of excoriating reviews of Ben Stein’s
Expelled in his most recent MSNBC column. He points out that if the creationist agenda of the film’s creators aims to attack the biological sciences, then other countries will gladly accept the torch as leaders in research.
Public engagement is not about getting the policy you want; it’s about getting the public input you need to craft sustainable policy that enjoys public confidence.
The organizers of Science Debate 2008 consider the impact of their campaign to convince the major party candidates to talk about science and technology in a national forum in the current issue of
Science.
A quick look at some of the policy-related posts in the science and technology blogosphere: synthetic biology, the lack of science coverage on cable news networks, drug-resistant antibiotics, and rethinking the drug development process.
Members of the
Science Progress advisory board and editorial staff express their support for the Science Debate 2008 initiative and encourage the presidential candidates of both major political parties to devote one nationally televised debate specifically to issues related to science, technology, and innovation.
We need more popular intersections of scientific thinking with the other lenses through which we see the world.
Engineering corn to fight blindness; “Science 2.0″ and participatory journalism; Google gives back, and not just to non-profits.
Scientists on Capitol Hill; National Science Board reports on the state of U.S. science; interview with the Department of Energy Undersecretary Orbach; risks to U.S. leadership in biotech; Columbia Journalism Reviews announces The Observatory.
The Navy must turn off its sonar around whales; Britain readies for new nuclear power plant construction; Illinois will host the first commercial carbon capture and sequestration project; the OPEN Government Act of 2007.
The future of the Hubble Space Telescope, a new map of Antarctica, post-Katrina mental health, and metaphors for the climate crisis: in this week’s Science Times section of
The New York Times, several stories covering science, health, and technology policy.
NASA has a new face on the web; the NIH says gene therapy wasn’t the cause of death in a recent trial; open-source standards and net neutrality can improve global health; and more.
A recent
New York Times Op-Ed on brain response to political keywords has drawn criticism from the neuroscience community for its incomplete findings and its false air of scientific certainty.
In the Minor Cosmic Irony department, the same day that
The New York Times reported the monkey cloning story on the front page, back in obituaries the paper reported the passing of Ira Levin, the novelist whose
The Boys From Brazil became a fairly successful film.
How U.S. media coverage of global warming finally moved past “he said, she said, we’re clueless.”
Journalists who cover scientific and medical “breakthroughs” need to do a better job explaining the complexities of medical research and scientific inquiry.
Among the finalists for the Best Science Blog category in 2007 Weblog Awards is ClimateAudit.org, a site devoted to denying and downplaying the scientific data on global climate change.
Why are we really upset by the editing of Center for Disease Control Director Gerberding’s written testimony to Congress on the health effects of climate change?
Georgia governor Sonny Perdue wants to blame the state’s drought on federal bureaucracy. But the big story is the relationship between natural resources and regional growth.
James Watson’s remarks in the October 14 edition of the Sunday
Times magazine suggesting that Africans are less intelligent than other humans were not just tragic and racist, they were also an abuse of his eminent scientific stature.
Science journalists gathered at USC Annenberg on Monday to address the question, “Does Science Get a Fair Shake in the Media?” Their answer, unsurprisingly, was no.
The University of Virginia is being accused of encouraging doctors to prescribe Johnson & Johnson’s anti-seizure and migraine drug Topamax “off-label” to treat alcoholism. But is the medicine safe for treating alcoholics without FDA approval?
Scientific facts no longer speak for themselves. In the age of the Internet, facts need to be framed for diverse audiences spread across fragmented media outlets.
U.S. labs that handle deadly germs have reported “100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003,”
reports the AP. No one was hurt, but the number of incidents are going up with number of labs approved to handle the pathogens. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a
hearing today.
The most recent issues of two monthly magazines, National Geographic and Wired, boast solid cover stories on biofuels – solid because they make clear the limitations of corn-derived ethanol and focus on the promise of celluloic ethanol – yet the covers themselves present two very different ways of shifting the conversation past corn ethanol and on to cellulose.
