Research Communications

Meat & Expertise

Insights, Moving from Expert to Public Expert / By Bob Lalasz

I wish I could feel vindicated by those five new super-controversial meta-analyses just published by the Annals of Internal Medicine contradicting nearly everything we’ve ever heard about the health risks to individuals of eating red and processed meats. (Good overviews here and here.)…

For the Birds

Insights, Moving from Expert to Public Expert / By Bob Lalasz

Researchers: just passive participants in those terribly misleading media campaigns for their papers?

Michael Schulson writes in Undark about the hyping of that big bird-decline Science magazine study I wrote about last week. In Schulson’s retelling, it was

A) Overenthusiastic science communicators +
B) A big journal hungry for media that offers very little space to the paper itself (hence, for scientific nuance) that led to
C) a sensationalist media storyline to take advantage of a growing public taste for apocalypse.

…

Greta’s New (Old) Rules

Insights, Issues Public Experts Face / By Bob Lalasz

I don’t know if Greta Thunberg is going to change the world.

I know that she and her fellow under-20 climate activists have already changed research communications.

But I don’t know if it’s for the better.

Greta Thunberg argues that politicians and private-sector leaders — Davos and UNGA types — need to “listen to the science.”…