Media coverage of the 2017 tax law focused mainly on the creation of lower tax brackets. Receiving scant coverage were significant changes to the deductions for fees paid for preparation of returns and advice on tax planning.
Science writing news
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, launched in 2007 with $3 billion in public funding, has generated 42 therapies now in clinical trials for a variety of incurable diseases. Don Reed, a science writer and advocate for stem cell research, describes the program’s successes in California Cures: How the California Stem Cell Program is Fighting Your Incurable Disease.
“You are smarter than your data,” Judea Pearl and NASW member Dana Mackenzie assert in The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. “Data do not understand causes and effects,” they say. “Humans do.” Their book explores recent developments in the science of causal inference that make such understanding possible.
Are you a journalist who was stopped for extra border screening or had your device searched at the U.S. border at any point in your career? CPJ and RSF have been working to understand the scope of the problems. Read more and report any cases thru June.
How are computer scientists building their army of virtual fact-checkers? What are their models of truth? And how close are we to entrusting their algorithms to cull fake news? Popular Science tried out an automated fact-checker, using a piece of fake news, and compare its process to a human fact-checker.
It’s 2050. Lifelike neuromorphic robots provide domestic, professional, even sexual services for their human owners. Then a rogue engineer programs robots to murder and rob their owners. Dennis Meredith’s sixth sci-fi thriller, The Neuromorphs, explores possibilities and drawbacks of AI. Meredith's nonfiction books include Explaining Research, a guide for scientists and science writers.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announces the launch of SciLine, a new service that will provide journalists with high-quality scientific expertise and context — on demand and on deadline.
The story of development of vaccines against rubella and other childhood diseases in the 1960s pits a daring young biologist against his world-famous boss, testing that used prisoners, intellectually disabled children, and other disenfranchised subjects, political roadblocks that nearly derailed the research, and other elements of high drama. Meredith Wadman covers it all in The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease.
To research and write Wildfire: On the Front Lines with Station 8, Heather Hansen followed the crew of a fire station near her Boulder CO home for two years. She went through training and testing to become a certified wildland firefighter, and joined the crew for emergency calls and planned burns. She provides here an insider’s view of the challenges of addressing increasingly frequent, severe, and costly conflagrations.
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