As a science journalist, I sympathize with book reviewers who wrestle with the question of whether to write negative reviews. It seems a waste of time to write about a dog of a book when there are so many other worthy ones; but readers deserve to know if Oprah is touting a real stinker. On […]
Last month, two journalists launched a new science and technology journalism project called Matter. Using the crowd-funding Web site Kickstarter, Jim Giles and Bobbie Johnson asked donors to help them raise $50,000 to start a venture that, every week, will publish “a single piece of top-tier long-form journalism about big issues in technology and science.” […]
A lie told for good purposes is not inherently wrong. And besides, Mike Daisey didn’t lie. That’s been Daisey’s defense in the fallout of revelations that he fabricated key details of a now-retracted radio piece on working conditions at a Chinese Apple supplier. Can a person really lie and still believe that he’s telling the […]
When is a sin a virtue? When the sinner is an assasin, and the sin is laziness. In cancer, however, it’s diffiult to know which tumors will be slothful and which will be aggressive. This is the dilemma behind the ongoing controversies in screening and treatment for conditions such as breast and prostate cancer.
2011 is drawing to a close, and what a big year it was…for science! Many interesting and important scientific things occurred, and we hope you were paying attention, because here’s your chance to test your knowledge of the most notable scientific developments of 2011 with our super-scientific end-of-the-year quiz! Did you know you can win […]
A few years ago, Eric Klavins found himself starting at the ceiling of his room in the Athenaeum, a private lodging on the grounds of the California Institute of Technology, in the middle of the night. Unable to sleep, Klavins found himself pondering a question that had been posed to him earlier that day at […]
Van VanderMeer is about to celebrate an anniversary that he’d probably rather forget. In December 2009, VanderMeer thought he had caught his annual winter cough; for a few years in a row, he’d developed a chest cold around this time of year. But this one lingered. VanderMeer was competing in a mixed doubles tournament in […]
The death of Steve Jobs is unfolding as a morality play between mainstream and alternative medicine, with doctors and bloggers blaming Jobs’ untimely demise on his decision to delay surgery while he tried acupuncture and herbal remedies. The reality is that Jobs’ story tells us as much about the limits of conventional science and medicine […]