Council for the Advancement of Science Writing

Does the UK model help journalists? Fiona Fox and Connie St. Louis http://www.cjr.org

Some recent high points on the "superbug" beat Sibyl Shalo Wilmont

Tips for covering the energy boom in Colorado and beyond Joel Campbell http://www.cjr.org

RFK, Jr. talks journalists' ears off with his vaccine conspiracy theory Curtis Brainard

How much tv weather reporting is news, and how much is just non-contextualized drama? Steven Rosenbaum

In April, I wrote that *Time* magazine had violated advertising standards [1] by placing an ad for the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center right in the middle of a story that extolled M.D. Anderson. Time assured me that it had not violated standards, even though the evidence was there for all to see. Now *The Times* in the UK has jumped on this money-making trend. A recent story [2] on the discovery of Prince William's Indian ancestry featured a company called BritainsDNA, which did the genetic analysis. As *Roy Greenslade* of *The Guardian* reports [3], the

In a post on May 5, 2013, several days after the launch of the new science magazine *Nautilus*, I reviewed the magazine's website and its first issues [1]. I wrote that I thought it was a flashy and promising debut. The magazine was established with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation [2], which funds a variety of projects on science and religion. *John Steele*, the publisher, would not tell me the amount of the grant, except to say it could keep Nautilus running for two years. My repeated requests to the foundation were met

The sharp-eyed *Antonio Regalado* at *Technology Review* noted that* *the *Wall Street Journal* accompanied its story on the Supreme Court gene-patenting decision with a giant picture of DNA--backwards:     The Journal's right-tilted editorial page should be deeply offended that the picture shows a progressive, /left-handed/ DNA. As any proud conservative should know, DNA spirals to the right, like a right-handed screw, making it, I suppose, a deeply conservative molecule. Perhaps the Journal got the picture from another publication with a right-leaning editorial stance, Forbes, which veered left [1]a couple of years ago: There is a kind of

  The twin-barrelled strategy for dealing with global warming has for decades not only included mitigation, as in not emitting nearly so much greenhouse gas, but also adaptation by armoring, retreating, economizing, and broadly learning to live on an increasingly unfit planet. For most of that time mitigation got top billing from technical experts and the general media. Many  have felt that a spotlight on adaptation is a perilous step toward resignation, surrender, and steep decline for our species along with many of the rest of them here with us.    But it gives

The Supreme Court's decision to deny patents on genes but allow patents on synthetic genes was perhaps not as clever as many commentators seemed to think. On the surface, it makes sense: Patents shouldn't be awarded to genes any more than they should be awarded to a block of wood. Genes were not invented by anyone; they exist in nature. The other part of the decision seems to make sense, too: If researchers synthesize something in the laboratory, it's an invention, and it is as deserving of a patent as Edison's light bulb. But did researchers

The complex that includes Angkor Wat, a temple built by the long-gone Khmer empire in Cambodia, is larger than scientists suspected. Flickr: cornstaruk The famous temple complex of Angkor Wat, which draws so many tourists to Cambodia, is but one small structure in a new view of the region. Archaeologists have unearthed more sprawling remains of the once-mighty Khmer empire, which ruled Southeast Asia between the ninth and the 15th centuries. An international team led by Damian Evans, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney, Australia, flew a helicopter over 370 square kilometres of Khmer territory in April

UK researchers are already feeling the pinch from their country’s flatlining science spending, according to a new report. Ahead of a much anticipated funding announcement later this month [1], the group Science Is Vital, which campaigns for increased spending on science, has collected the opinions [2] of 868 researchers on the impact of the government’s decision in 2010 to keep the core science budget funded at a ‘flat cash’ level. This has in effect meant cuts, as inflation reduces the amount of science that can be bought with the same spending every year. Researchers reported that,

Hisashi Moriguchi in a picture from 2012. AP/Press Association Images He’s back. Last autumn, Hisashi Moriguchi stunned the world of stem-cell science by claiming he had become the first person to transfer induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into patients. In a now infamous front-page spread in the /Yomiuri Shimbun/ — which has the largest number of subscribers of any newspaper in the world — Moriguchi said he created a type of iPS cell, differentiated them into cardiac cells and treated six patients with heart failure. One, he said, had already recovered and was living a healthy life. But

NASA There’s no continent like Antarctica, and there’s no science like Antarctic science. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) is now trying to figure out where the field should be 20 years from now — by gathering the 100 most compelling science questions that can be answered in or from the frozen continent. The exercise is called a ‘horizon scan [1]‘, and SCAR officials say that it will lay out priorities for future research and feed into long-term conservation strategies [2]. Of course, there is no shortage of strategy documents for Antarctic science, but

Campaigners for more openness in clinical trial data have doubled down on their opponents, with a promise to produce their own publications of trials they deem ‘invisible’ or ‘abandoned’. In an article in the /BMJ/ [1] Peter Doshi, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues say they have amassed some 178,000 pages of drug company research documents. They say they will give pharmaceutical companies time to publish their own studies on unpublished clinical trials, or to correct trials they consider misreported. If this does not happen within a

No better place to commence this new column on science writing for science writers than with some optimism about clearing up our profession's cloudy future. Literally cloudy, according to Dot Earth's Andrew Revkin, who discusses what he calls "cloud financing" of investigative work by science journalists. Revkin's example is a Nov. 9 New York Times piece by Lindsey Hoshaw on vast trash heaps in the ocean.