I'm Kara Rogers, another of this year's NASW travel fellows and a newbie to the SW conference scene. As a science writer and editor devoted to clear and accurate science reporting, I'm interested in hearing some insider perspectives on the future of science literacy and journalism. Saturday, I'll be tuning into "Civics of Science: Literacy and the Collapse of Science Journalism," a discussion led by Carolyn L. Funk, Jon Miller, Chris Mooney, and NASW's own Nancy Shute.
Event coverage
Coverage begins in 2006 for the ScienceWriters meeting and 2009 for the AAAS meeting. To see programs for past ScienceWriters meetings, go to the ScienceWriters meeting site.
I'm Roberta Kwok, one of the NASW travel fellows. I'll be blogging on Saturday about the session "Great science writing part II: Building the big book," which features science-writing superstars K.C. Cole, Jennifer Ouellette, Charles Seife, Jonathan Weiner, and Carl Zimmer. As a former creative-writing student, I'm excited to hear their insights about how literary devices can be used to communicate science.
The posts on this blog will mostly come from travel fellows, who've agreed to cover specific events at the meeting as they happen. Good stuff in case you have to miss a concurrent session, or if the early morning ones defeat your best intentions to get up, go for a run, and be the first one to crack the valve on the coffee urn.
Nancy Shute, president of the National Association of Science Writers (NASW), asked the new NASW board members (I am one) last week if we would help give assignments to travel fellows who won NASW grants to attend the ScienceWriters 2010 conference.
Kevin Gurney, an associate professor at Purdue University, showed high-resolution animated graphics of the past, present and future of climate change at CASW's 2009 New Horizons in Science briefing at the University of Texas at Austin. Unfortunately, his pictures suggest that carbon emissions may soon look a lot worse.
Self-described as a science writer and the Bush Administration's worst nightmare, physician Bruce M. Psaty told CASW conference attendees what it is like to blow the whistle on the Federal Drug Administration's drug approval process.
Imagine a team of researchers in the U.S. able to remotely track a deployed soldier's reactions to combat stress in Iraq with the accuracy to determine susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the ability to administer quick preventative treatments. That is just one of the potential implications of Michael Telch and his team's research at the University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with 184 volunteer soldiers from Fort Hood.
Unmask plagiarism in PubMed by flagging similar texts. Assess disease risk by finding repeated DNA segments. These are just two applications for new analytical tools from the lab of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center computational biologist Harold "Skip" Garner.
So you finally got around to building a website to showcase your science writing business. Only it just sits there — nobody ever visits or calls. What to do?