Blog Archives

The state of science writing, circa 2012: The summer of our discontent, made glorious by the possibilities of our time

By Seth Mnookin
Posted: September 14, 2012

Category: Journalism, Media, science, science writing | Tagged ADHD, Ars Technica, autism, Bob Dylan, Brendan Maher, cancer, Cryptogenomicon, DNA, Ed Yong, Emily Willingham, ENCODE, Evolver Zone: Genomicron, Ewan Birney, Gizmodo, hookworms, JAMA, Jesus Diaz, John P.A. Ioannidis, John Timmer, Jonah Lehrer, Leonid Kruglyak, Mike White, Naomi Wolf, Nature, newspapers, PLOS ONE, Sean Eddy, T. Ryan Gregory, The Finch and the Pea, The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vagina, Wired | 7 Comments

SciWriteLabs #6: BMJ editor Fiona Godlee on the Wakefield-MMR fiasco, the problems with peer review, and research oversight boards

By Seth Mnookin
Posted: November 10, 2011

Category: Media, science, SciWriteLabs, Vaccine safety, Vaccines | Tagged Andrew Wakefield, Ben Goldacre, Brian Deer, British Medical Journal, Daily Mail, David Lewis, Ingvar Bjarnason, measles, Melanie Phillips, MMR, Molecular Pathology, Nature, Pace University, Paul Offit, peer review, Private Eye, research oversight boards, Richard Horton, Royal Free Hospital, The Lancet, The Panic Virus, University College London | 19 Comments

SciWriteLabs #5.2: Bhattacharya returns! The MMR debacle and why peer review is no substitute for penetrative reporting

By Seth Mnookin
Posted: November 10, 2011

Category: Media, science, SciWriteLabs | Tagged Alistair Dove, Ananyo Bhattacharya, Cardiff University, genetically modified crops, measles, MMR, Nature, peer review, The Guardian, The Lancet, The Panic Virus, vaccines | 3 Comments

SciWriteLabs #5.1: Nature’s Ananyo Bhattacharya on “Bad Science,” inverted pyramids, and information webs

By Seth Mnookin
Posted: November 7, 2011

Category: Media, science, SciWriteLabs | Tagged Alan Dove, Ananyo Bhattacharya, Andrew Wakefield, Association of British Science Writers, Ben Goldacre, Brendan Maher, David Kroll, Ed Yong, Ivan Oransky, Martin Robbins, MMR, Nature, Reuters, The Guardian, Vincent Racaniello | 5 Comments

SciWriteLabs #4, in which Alistair Dove argues that bad science inevitably gets “overwritten” by good science…and I point out on all the harm that can happen in the meantime

By Seth Mnookin
Posted: October 30, 2011

Category: Media, science, SciWriteLabs | Tagged Alan Dove, Alistair Dove, Ananyo Bhattacharya, arsenic life, Deep Sea News, MMR, Nature, Rosie Redfield, The Daily Beast, The Panic Virus, This Week in Virology, Twitter, University of Michigan, vaccines | 1 Comment