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Jun
30
2009

I finally started digging into Nature's special issue on the future of science journalism. The most interesting passage thus far (and the one that also rings most true to me, as a former-would-be-scientist/current-aspiring-journalist/lifetime-reader-of-science):

"But there is a problem: the online world, both in its bloggier reaches and elsewhere, is polarized; people go to places they feel comfortable. Many of the people that Timmer originally hoped to reach when writing about intelligent design and the Dover trial probably go elsewhere for their news, he says, because 'it's easy for somebody to pick their news sources based on their politics, and get that version of scientific issues'. Dykstra worries that in a more fragmented media world, 'environmental news will be available to environmentalists and science news will be available to scientists. Few beyond that will pay attention.'

"Others worry about the less questioning approach that comes with a stress on communication rather than journalism. 'Science is like any other enterprise,' says Blum. 'It's human, it's flawed, it's filled with politics and ego. You need journalists, theoretically, to check those kinds of things,' she says. In the United States, at least, the newspaper, the traditional home of investigations and critical reporting, is on its way out, says Hotz. 'What we need is to invent new sources of independently certified fact.'"

www.nature.com/...458274a.html
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science journalism nature media blogging geoff brumfiel

Jun
13
2008

  • Drew Scott, a field biologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum, put it more succinctly: “A golf course isn't as good as nature, but it's better than a Wal-Mart parking lot.”
  • 70 percent of each course is not in play.
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Jun
11
2008

  • In the study, just published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, researchers stuck 90 co-eds one-at-a-time in an office and assigned them mental tasks. Thirty could look out a window at a fountain and big trees, 30 looked at a plasma screen showing the same thing and 30 faced a blank wall.

      

    They were connected to a monitor and their heart rates tested 60 seconds after stress was induced. The heart rates dropped faster in students who spent more time gazing out the window.

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