The labs that study lethal organisms may be a greater threat to public safety than the actions of bioterrorists, Tabitha M. Powledge writes in her weekly roundup: "The data argue that we are in far more danger from accidents emanating from well-meant research efforts to protect ourselves. To date there have been no bioterrorists." Also, a milestone for the "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" paper, and how to interpret some new findings on triglycerides.
Science writing news
Nick Diakopoulos reviews patents for some automatic journalism services and makes some informed observations about how they work. Take, for example, a computer working on a story on a baseball game: "The algorithm computes 'win probability' after every play. If win probability has a big delta in-between two plays it probably means something important just happened and the algorithm puts that on a list of events that might be worthy of inclusion in the final story."
The city of Columbus and The Ohio State University are preparing to welcome you to ScienceWriters2014, Oct. 17-21. There’s a lot to look forward to: NASW workshops, awards reception, annual NASW business meeting, lunch with a scientist, CASW’s New Horizons in Science briefings, and after-meeting field trips and tours. From the Spring 2014 ScienceWriters.
In Surgeon General's Warning, Mike Stobbe cites advantages of having a strong advocate for public health as the nation’s doctor.
Retired magazine editor Jack Limpert discusses another bad writing habit — sentences that do too much explaining: "I edited several writers who were savvy researchers-reporters and were good at explanatory pieces," Limpert writes. "Their problem was they couldn't resist scattering topic sentences throughout their stories. A high school or college English teacher had drummed into them the need for topic sentences to help the reader understand what he's reading."
Susan Orlean annotates her 1992 Esquire feature on Colin Duffy, an ordinary New Jersey boy on the brink of puberty: "I like to use quotes sparingly, and to use them when there's a real reason to quote rather than to just write in my own voice. I like quotes that are meaningful for their content but also revealing in terms of voice, language, personality. People think I use quotes a lot, but I really don't — I only like to use them when they serve many purposes."
Tabitha M. Powledge has more news from the Women in Science Writing Solutions Summit, along with some thoughts of her own about the relative scarcity of women among both scientists and science writers: "A lot of these findings are likely to involve that hard-to-get-rid of unconscious bias. But identifying the problem is the first step in getting rid of it. Consciously." Also, Scicurious (Bethany Brookshire) on her life since leaving the lab bench for science writing.
Your social media profile may not impress your publisher as much as you'd like to believe, Sharon Bially writes. Why not? Because raising your profile as an author and promoting your book two different things: "Your Huffington Post articles are not about your novel, so their audience and your book's audience aren't necessarily the same. Ditto your blog posts and webinars on craft, which appeal to a broad group of writers who don't necessarily read your book's genre."
Cristine Russell reports in CJR on survey results and other news from last weekend's NASW-sponsored Solutions Summit for Women in Science Writing: "A science writers' bill of rights, an online clearinghouse on sexual harassment, mentoring networks, updated codes of conduct, and efforts to reduce tokenism were among the practical strategies that attendees at last weekend's conference recommended to help educate both science writers and employers about gender issues."