This spring brought a bounty of dubious headlines. There was the mildly outrageous claim that NASA secretly invented warp drive and the more believable one that using gay canvassers changed minds on gay marriage. And we heard a claim by journalist John Bohannon that he “fooled millions” with a hoax alleging that chocolate aided weight loss.
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People who experienced a limb amputation may perceive pain or other sensations that seemingly arise in the missing limb, a disorder known as phantom limb syndrome. Other people deny that healthy limbs or other bodily parts belong to them, and sometimes beseech surgeons to amputate these parts, or even attempt that act themselves. Anil Ananthaswamy explores these and other disorders that alter our sense of living in our own body in The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Seattleites decided the city’s Denny Hill was too high; they leveled it, carting away millions of tons of earth they then used to create a waterfront area at the city’s harbor. Large-scale engineering projects continue to reshape the city’s landscape today, Seattle native and urban geologist David Williams reports in Too High and Too Steep. As one reviewer observes, “Williams explores the irony that the Emerald City, surrounded by blue water and forested mountains, may be the most engineered metropolis on earth.”
We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Science in Society Journalism Awards, sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers.
WCSJ2015 provided a forum for science journalism to discuss the demands of our changing times, forge new and renewed professional networks, and savor Korean culture. Undeterred by an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the 9th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) took place June 8 to 12, in Seoul, South Korea.
The winner of the 2015 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, is Madhumita Venkataramanan, now head of technology coverage for the Telegraph in London. Venkataramanan received the award and its $1,000 prize for two stories in Wired (“My Identity for Sale” and “Welcome to BrainGate”) and one story for the BBC (“The Superpower Police Now Use to Tackle Crime.”)
In A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, Meera Subramanian explores India’s efforts to address environmental and social challenges through five focused reports: the Rainman of Rajasthan’s quest to bring water back to a rural community, an engineer-turned farmer’s determination to promote growth and consumption of organic foods, local manufacturers’ struggles to develop and market smokeless cook stoves, scientists’ race to keep native vultures from becoming extinct, and a young woman’s dedication to teaching teenage girls about reproductive health.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel science and medical reporter Mark Johnson, a career newspaper journalist whose work is marked by its scientific breadth, human impact and storytelling verve, is the recipient of the 2015 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting.
"We moved three times the first 10 years, and, honestly, it posed no hardship because two moves brought us to the vicinity of Washington, D.C., where there’s a large science writing community, as well as lots of writing jobs that generally pay well," Brittany Moya del Pino writes. "However, when we moved to the Hawaiian island of Oahu last summer, the situation was quite different. This is the story of how I’ve been dealing with that difference, which at times was so great that it felt as if I had moved to a foreign country."