#Science Journalism

[geekysteven]

oh dang, it's gonna take them even longer to get home in that

[Image description a news screenshot reading "Physicists make tiny model of Star Trek's USS Voyager that's smaller than a human hair"]

[pandemic-info]

Seriously excellent and even uplifting talk by Ed Yong. HIGHLY worth your time!

Yong is a Pulitzer-winning science journalist who's written (among other great things) some of the best, well-informed and empathetic coverage of COVID and Long COVID since 2020.

—

I can't highlight any one part; the whole thing is great. But one thought I had was that he shares this important anger that's often present in empathetic, deeply caring people — Terry Pratchett comes to mind, for example. Sagan, Miyazaki and others, in other ways. It's an anger that's difficult to carry and should not be romanticized. But I feel grateful to people like this, who are able to funnel into work that helps others and enriches all of our lives.

[strangebiology]

Storytelling environmental issues through photography

I've been talking with my photo mentor (JenGuyton on IG) to help me get better at photography in the hopes of making a photo book companion to my written book, Carcass.

So I'm trying to learn visual storytelling a little better and considering these three images for my portfolio, but none of them are perfect.

The first shows a field of dead sheep, but the issue is you can only see a few in the foreground and some of the ones in the background if you zoom in. The story is striking, 51 dead sheep in a field, and the experience was striking, but I think I failed to capture an image that demonstrated the scale of the deaths.

The second image is more clearly a sheep. There is black plastic in the sheep's stomach but you can't see until you zoom in.

The third image shows the black plastic better but we're back to a less-readable image. By itself, you probably can't immediately tell what's happening.

I love this image of a dead bird filled with plastic which BBC calls "The Photo that Made the Plastics Crisis Personal." Plastic in a stomach tells a story. My mentor says a photographer doesn't want to rely on a caption to tell a story, the photo should get a lot across. I totally get that, as even though I'm a writer first, I know darn well that images capture attention a lot faster than text.

However, I don't think that there is a good way to show the viewer what likely happened to these sheep, and maybe some stories don't lend themselves visually as well as others. I don't know how to use an image to communicate what I think happened to the sheep because it's so contextual. In short, I think it was a harsh winter. Maybe the one who ate the plastic couldn't get to food and ate plastic instead, however, I don't know how often sheep do that, and I did not investigate all of their stomachs (the pictured one was just that way when I found it.) Based on the conversations I've had with sheep herders and the presence of hay and feces in this field, I think the sheep gathered there to eat supplemental feed, died in higher numbers than usual due to the cold and/or snow covering the grass, and thawed at the same time as the snow melted. Perhaps I should return next winter to photograph carcasses covered in snow (if it's another bad one?). But I think captioning is important as well, as I can't get an interview in a photo, and the meaning of the hay and feces isn't super apparent even if you can see it.

So, it's interesting that the issue of animals eating plastic might get more attention than issues of climate disasters because the plastic in the stomach is easier to communicate photographically.

[frc-ambaradan]

And nothing... you see Alberto Angela starting a new science tv program which is the direct heir to his father's Quark and suddenly everything is perfectly fine. Piero Angela never died. Quark never stopped. And everything is just the way it should be ❤️❤️

And he called it "Noos" which was the name of the spaceship Piero used to explore the cosmos in "Viaggio nel cosmo" as if that ship never stopped its journey.

Bless you, Alberto! Bless you! 🥺

[bethanythebogwitch]

There should be a law that says if a headline ever says that "a new discovery has completely changed everything we know about some scientific field" that it hasn't actually.

Turns out "new discovery expands our knowledge of this field but does not fundamentally change our understanding of it" isn't as catchy a headline

[dwarvendiaries]

Article with sloppy research "A study by Amazon Web Services (AWS) researchers suggests 57% of content published online is AI-generated or translated using an AI algorithim (via Forbes)."

Which cites, the Forbes article below, "57% of content translated into a different language on the internet has been done so through AI algorithms."(according to the PS added to the articlenthis has since been corrected to make the claim less definitive)

The original research, instead is saying that 57.1% of the text sample 's sentences they used existed in 3 or more languages, and that given that the number of languages a text is translated into on the internet is strongly correlated with lower quality(based on CometQE), and hence prevalence of Machine Translation.

A news site called WindowsCentral just posted a headline: "57% of all content on the web is AI-generated."

They're misquoting a Forbes article that said, "57% of all text-based content on the web is AI-generated."

Which itself was also a misquote of a study saying "57% of all text translations on the web are machine generated."

Figured I should give everyone a heads up

for all the "OMG dead Internet theory is real!" posting coming up.

[viola-sororia]

first class news paleontologists never disappoint

[onlyslys]

My first pokedex... i mean space-dex entry! Looking at everything from nebulae to jets bigger than our galaxy.

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

SciAm: "What to Know about #Project2025 ’s Dangers to Science

"The [#Project2025] policy handbook is not a light read. It is at turns wonkish, militant and sneering (and sometimes all three at once, such as when it calls for transforming federal institutions into “hard targets” for “woke culture warriors”). It tears down policies to curb climate change, even though a majority of Americans endorse climate action.

“The independence of science is being attacked across the board in this document,” says Rachel Cleetus…"

[emeowwww-blog]

Currently reading a psychology book on linguistic development in children from the age of 3-9 in 8 different countries and 14 different languages let me quickly do this from what I’ve read so far:

Blue = Yes / Checked off

Blue with Purple = Within a bingo(s)

At least the book is interesting though. Kinda.

Bad linguistics journalism bingo

Do you feel like crying every time you read, see or hear anything concerning linguistics & languages in popular media? Does the n-th installment of the Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax™ make you cringe? Are you tired of writing letters to editors correcting them about ling & lang facts? Then this is the game for you. 

If you have suggestions for further sheets, please contact us.

[image edited / replaced]

[pandemic-info]

It’s likely you know someone dealing with long COVID | WBEZ Chicago

Severe fatigue, cognitive impairment and post-exertional malaise are just a few of the many symptoms associated with long COVID. It can last weeks, months and even years. Having this condition is also somewhat common. “It’s generally a minimum of 10% of COVID infections lead to long COVID,” said Hannah Davis, the co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative. With COVID hospitalizations on the rise for the first time this year, we speak with Davis and Pulitzer-winning science journalist Ed Yong. They both say that what frustrates a lot of COVID long-haulers is the lack of public knowledge about the condition… and the misconceptions surrounding it. “If you are listening to this and you find yourself thinking, ‘I don’t know anyone with long COVID,’ I guarantee that you do,” Yong said.

[strangebiology]

This is great journalism on animal welfare!

Germany has now banned "macerating"/grinding up/shredding male baby chicks, who egg farmers typically kill because these "brother roosters" can't lay eggs.

But my first question to that is, "Where will they go instead?"

DW, a German documentary service, looks at the alternatives that people could do, why those options aren't always realized, and they follow the chicks to see where they do tend to end up.

[homeostasister]

This is an interesting take. I’ve always seen commentary from scientists who aren’t involved in the study being reported on more as a mechanism of independent review rather than a sensationalizing tactic. The people involved in the study only have their own perspective, and of course they would be likely to think their discoveries are real and important. Bringing in others in the field who aren’t directly involved allows you to showcase the perspective of someone who is qualified to assess the importance of the findings, but not so deeply invested in the study that they might be inclined to oversell it. Obviously it’s not a perfect system—I guess reporters could just interview a bunch of biologists until they find one who thinks the study is amazing—but I prefer it to not having that outside perspective at all.

They just discovered a new kind of organism that isn't a virus or bacterium