We scorn “headline science” because of what it says on its tin: The headline comes before the science. That’s just wrong, we think — but not just wrong: It’s venal, anti-science, and sometimes even fraudulent.
Sometimes, it’s true, headline science is all those things.…
ChatGPT from OpenAI debuted more than a month ago, and you’re probably already sick of it, and that’s just wrong, because it can really help what so many public experts struggle with: getting started with writing.
I blame Twitter for this.…
I keep thinking about “Overlooked Problems,” a column written this spring by an occasional Substack writer about whom I know nothing except that they are a scientist doing research into organ generation and regeneration. The column is a list of problems the author doesn’t “think get enough attention but are worth solving.”…
US readers: Before heading into Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, you might want to read science writer Julia Belluz’s new piece on what science has discovered doesn’t cause obesity.
In a word: You.
Just don’t expect Uncle Chester to understand.
Rates of obesity have risen sharply across the world over the last four decades.…
If you haven’t yet heard about “the global polycrisis,” it’s coming for you.
“The global polycrisis” has caught fire in policy and pundit circles as a shorthand way of saying the world today is, not to put too fine a point on it, uniquely screwed.…
Doing good content consistently for non-specialists — that’s hard.
But we make it much harder, because our support mechanisms suck so badly.
By mechanisms, I’m not talking about annual objectives, or encouragement from your board or director or chair, or ad hoc nudges, or altmetrics, or science communication workshops.…
Friend, scientist and longtime reader Jon Fisher alerted me to the following tweet by Jim Elser, a limnologist, field station director, faculty member at two universities and member of the National Academy of Sciences:
The Arizona State professor Ted Pavlic responded that he’d made a similar point on Twitter five years ago about a similar State of Arizona sign:
Anyone who hangs with scientists knows they often love to make nerdy fun of how the world interacts with their fields.…
True story: A well-known, must-read climate journalist quit their job last year to join an NGO and start a newsletter — and the newsletter is boring.
“Their stuff used to be so good,” a colleague said to me. “Now it’s dull.…
One thing I find hard to take about the storytelling industry is its insistence that you need something called “storytelling” to tell a great story.
In your public expert’s role, you want to begin engaging with people over new research or the application of research-based expertise to a problem.…
How odd: Researchers who are otherwise exquisitely aware of the inequities power causes in the world — and in science — are often blind to those inequities when it comes to who gets to talk about research and who makes that happens.…