The research showing that vaccines cause autism is a deliberate hoax, but the arsenic bug tale is self-correcting science. Also, blogger list, top 2010 stories list, Science Online 2011 (#SciO11)
Science writing news
Does Jonah Lehrer's New Yorker piece hurt science? Plus yet another week of the arsenic bug and the spotlight it shines on science writing. Plus blogs as newspapers-of-record.
Last week's news: The bacterium that substitutes arsenic for phosphorus is not, after all, from outer space. This week's news: Many scientists doubt that the bug is even very good at substituting arsenic for phosphorus.
Aliens abduct bloggers! Or did bloggers abduct aliens? And did you hear, they all ate arsenic at a NASA press conference! Anyway, things are a bit better for HIV infection and AIDS.
It’s been a busy fall for NASW: the new website is live, we had over 600 of you attend an energetic ScienceWriters2010 in New Haven. Thank you to everyone who helped out with these projects, attended the meeting, and has volunteered their time. In this season of thanks, we are very grateful for our members.
The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media has a two-part series on leading climate scientists’ and science journalists’ “Lessons Learned” from the climate change controversies of the past 12 months.
It's all brain all the time at the Society for Neuroscience. Celebrities and the brain. Female orgasm and What Women Want: The truth about premature ejaculation. Plus oxytocin, grad students, optogenetics, jet lag, and improving memory.
Can a scientific organization demand coverage in return for admitting writers to its meetings without charge? That was the issue for a freelancer who wanted to attend the American Cetacean Society's annual meeting in Monterey, Calif. Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review writes this about the controversy.
Free online: Wise advice from your science-writing peers, direct from ScienceWriters2010, the NASW annual meeting, Plus waiting for ScienceOnline2011. Plus the truth about Daylight Saving Time: If you spring forward, you might fall back.