Keynote speaker is the neurosurgeon who operated on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Others on the program include British reporter Brian Deer, who uncovered fraudulent research involving the MMR vaccine, and New York Times reporter Walt Bogdanich. It starts Thursday and you can read the program and a preview of the conference from investigative health blogger William Heisel.
Science writing news
The doomed cosmonaut hurtled toward earth in a crippled spacecraft, cursing the engineers who put him there. That gripping story from 1967 was the subject of a recent book and a National Public Radio blog entry. But how much of it was true? Natalie Wolchover reviews the evidence on Life's Little Mysteries, raising questions about whether there are different standards of proof for conventional news stories and blog entries.
Registration is now open for the 2011 World Conference of Science Writers in Doha, Qatar, June 26-30. The event includes multimedia workshops, dozens of sessions on hot topics in science writing, and field trips to explore science and the environment in the Arab world. NASW is content partner for the WCSJ, in collaboration with the Arab Science Journalists Association and the World Federation of Science Journalists. Early bird registration ends April 11.
As Japan suffers through a big aftershock, there are more questions about radiation and other kinds of environmental damage, and online media experiment with telling Japan's story digitally. Another kind of aftershock follows this week's big paper on hormone therapy for symptoms of menopause. It showed that HT appears to reduce the risk of heart disease and even breast cancer in some women. That should have been good news, but it mostly added to the confusion.
Seven recipients of the 2011 Laura Van Dam Fellowships for travel to the World Conference of Science Journalists in June have been selected.
The Templeton Foundation gave its $1.6 million prize Wednesday to astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees. Critics soon reacted. The prize is for "exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension," but one skeptic said it promotes religion "by blurring its well-demarcated border with science." More views here, here, and here. Rees speaks.
The controversial Google book settlement has come undone. Although there is talk of trying to revise it or appeal the court ruling against it, it's essentially back to square one for efforts to create a broadly accessible digital public library. An update from NASW's Jeff Hecht of his December 2008 guide to the now-rejected pact.
Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute presents the case for self-promotion, long anathema to many working journalists, but now a necessity in the era of declining big media brands. "Like everything else in the world of digital media, the old boundary between the writer and the promoter has been erased," Clark writes. "There is no chance that my bosses will pay to put my picture and name on a billboard or the side of a bus. It’s up to me."
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a report on medical institutions paying for air time in local newscasts and editorial space in newspapers and their web sites — including the Post-Dispatch. Said one news director, regarding a cancer center's funding of news segments featuring its doctors: "I fail to see the conflict. Who's against curing cancer?"