Class Topics

A course in science writing can include instruction on everything from embargoes to statistics. Follow this link for suggestions.

The NASW quarterly newsletter ScienceWriters provides a wealth of material that addresses many of the topics below. NASW maintains an archive of ScienceWriters that's available to NASW members. (Requires NASW member login and password.) Have a topic to add to this list? Send us email.

Journals: their role, power, and internal politics:

• Altman L (1996). The Ingelfinger rule, embargoes, and journal peer review-part 1. Lancet; 347: 1382-86.
• Altman L (1996a). The Ingelfinger rule, embargoes, and journal peer review-part 2. Lancet; 347: 1459-63.
• "Seminar Addresses Media Coverage of Journal Articles: Invited review of Columbia University School of Journalism's Seminar "Breakthrough? The science and politics of medical journalism," CBE Views (Council of Biology Editors), Vol. 22, No 4, p. 117. (1999).
• "The Hippocratic Wars," by Ellen Ruppell Shell; The New York Times, June 28, 1998.
• The Aftermath of the JAMA Fiasco: Medicine, Politics, and the Scope of Medical Journals, by Leigh Turner, PhD and Jennifer Gold; The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Embargoes

• Journal Embargoes: So Often Impeached Yet Never Convicted by Howard J. Lewis (ScienceWriters, Winter 98/99) (Note: This site requires an NASW login and password)
• "Wall Street wants your peer review."
• See Altman's articles above.

Ingelfinger rule

See Altman's Lancet articles.

Peer-review

See Altman's Lancet articles.

Statistics

• Statistics Every Writer Should Know.
• Stats (A newsletter critiquing the media's reporting of stats. Controversial because of an alleged conservative bias.)

Astroturf organizations (Seemingly grass-roots organizations with a cause that are actually sponsored and/or run by a corporate entity)

• "Grass Roots Seeded by Drugmaker Schering-Plough Uses 'Coalitions' to Sell Costly Treatment," Washington Post.
• Astroturf Troopers: How the polluters' lobby is using phony front groups and New World Order wackos to attack the Kyoto global warming treaty", Mother Jones.
• "Public Relations' Role in Manufacturing Artificial Grass Roots Coalitions," Public Relations Quarterly.
• "Rethinking the Think Tanks: How industry-funded "experts" twist the environmental debate," Sierra Magazine.

Corporate influence over scientific research

• "The Kept University," The Atlantic
• "Failure of HIV Therapy Pits Researchers vs. Drug Maker," Harvard University Focus
• "Pharma Buys a Conscience," The American Prospect.

How to cover a scientific meeting

"Getting the Scoop at Scientific Meetings," BioMedNet

Fact-checking

• "Just Checking," by Jay Matthews, The New Republic, May 18, 1992, p.14
• "Perils and Pitfalls of science reporting," by Stu Borman, Chemical and Engineering News, Jan 26, 1998, p. 37
• "To send or not to send," by John Dudley Miller