Did you see the story about women finding Tour de France leaders better looking than the also-rans? Or the one saying that gossip enhances group cooperation? Paul Raeburn did, and he calls out the Post for what the British call churnalism: "These stories showed up in one of the nation's leading newspapers — and in the science section, no less, where we can assume they were carefully reported. Alas, that would be an unwarranted assumption."
Issues in science writing
Their comments on a cancer patient's social media have now drawn criticism from ombudsmen for both Bill Keller's New York Times and Emma Gilbey Keller's Guardian, and other critics, such as NPR's Linda Holmes: "[Bill] Keller's writing about Adams is full of little code words that downplay the significance of [Adams's] writing." Also: Megan Garber, Christie Aschwanden.
Publishers could take a big hit if the government starts requiring open access, after an embargo, to journal articles based on federal funding, David Wojick writes on the Scholarly Kitchen: "The starting point is that a great many of the downloads of journal articles occur more than 12 months after publication. Making these articles freely available has the potential to reduce the value of journals to a similar degree. Thus revenue losses of 50% or more are possible."
They may not actually be saying that, but New York Times columnist Bill Keller and Guardian writer Emma Gilbey Keller, who are husband and wife, are being scolded far and wide for their recent posts on patient Lisa Adams and her social media activity: Alexis Sobel Fitts, Maryn McKenna, Mathew Ingram, Zeynep Tufekci.
Trudy Lieberman praises an NPR followup on the FDA's approval of sofosbuvir to treat hepatitis C. Unlike most initial reporting, the followup focused on the pill's $1,000 cost: "What makes the story stand out are the interviews with a researcher at the University of Liverpool and a doctor at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, each of whom question the drug’s stratospheric cost. Their remarks provide a much-needed perspective on pharmaceutical pricing."
Suzanne Goldenberg reviews a sociologist's study of the institutions opposing climate change action: "The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change." Also: Should newspapers ban deniers?
James Bennet thinks it's time for a new term to describe journalism's current big trend: "Why make a ripping yarn or an eye-popping profile sound like something you have to file to the IRS?" Bennet writes for the Atlantic. But in CJR, Naomi Sharp quotes New Yorker editor David Remnick: "I think it's fantastic that the first law of evangelical Web theology, that no one would read anything long on the Web, has been overturned thoroughly."
John Bohannon talks to the Scholarly Kitchen about his Science magazine investigation of open access journals and responds to criticism about his study's methods: "The 304 publishers that I probed in this investigation were not a small sample of the population of fee-charging open access publishers, but rather the complete set," he said. "There seems to be widespread confusion about this point." More from CJR.
Apoorva Mandavilli went to ScienceWriters2013 and saw lots of people who looked nothing like her, and that may harm science journalism, she writes in Matter: "If you’re a young, white science journalist with good taste in eyeglass frames and dirty-blond hair, congratulations! You could have walked into any conversation in any room at the conference and felt instantly at home. I was born and raised in India, and look the part, so I wasn’t engaged in any mirroring."
Adrienne LaFrance considers herself a feminist, so it was a surprise when she was told that male sources outnumbered women three-to-one in her stories. In a Medium post, LaFrance analyzes the causes: "I want the best source. Period. That means seeking out the smartest person who says the most interesting stuff. But ultimately this person must also actually agree to talk to me, to speak on-record, and to do it before my deadline, which may or may not be later today."