Articles

Meredith Wadman: Vaccine Race

The story of development of vaccines against rubella and other childhood diseases in the 1960s pits a daring young biologist against his world-famous boss, testing that used prisoners, intellectually disabled children, and other disenfranchised subjects, political roadblocks that nearly derailed the research, and other elements of high drama. Meredith Wadman covers it all in The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease.

Heather Hansen: Wildfire

To research and write Wildfire: On the Front Lines with Station 8, Heather Hansen followed the crew of a fire station near her Boulder CO home for two years. She went through training and testing to become a certified wildland firefighter, and joined the crew for emergency calls and planned burns. She provides here an insider’s view of the challenges of addressing increasingly frequent, severe, and costly conflagrations.

From ScienceWriters: Writers expound on taxes

Writers will soon be facing the deadline of IRS 1040 forms, an annual chore that is one of the few constants in our continually changing society. In recognition of that shared ordeal, here are some quotations (invariably negative; seldom positive) about America's tax system that bring to vibrant life a dry subject that has long been the source of fierce political contention.

Crume: Environmental Health in the 21st Century

An estimated 60,000 or more chemicals on the market have never been safety tested. Many of the roughly 2,000 new chemicals introduced every year are used daily by the general public. New technologies, such as production of nanomaterials, may contaminate the environment in novel and unexpected ways. We often learn about toxicity of various substances only after they cause problems, Richard Crume reports in Environmental Health in the 21st Century: From Air Pollution to Zoonotic Diseases.

About the NASW Peggy Girshman Idea Grants

Since its inception in 2010, almost 600,000 has been awarded by NASW's Peggy Girshman Idea Grants program for projects that benefit science writing and its practitioners. Read more to see a list of all the awardees and their exciting science writing projects.

From ScienceWriters: Why it is so hard for foreign journalists to get published?

When the Zika outbreak swept Brazil in 2015, Brazilian journalists were the first to cover the event. But it can be a challenge for them to place stories like that in U.S. and European publications. Editors and freelance writers were asked about the challenges writers face in working across international boundaries.

From ScienceWriters: Talking science

UC San Diego's Divisions of Biological and Physical Sciences have launched a Research Communications Program designed to help scientists advocate for and communicate the relevance of their work to the public, political representatives and the news media.

From ScienceWriters: Grappling with a new reality

The current media landscape is a confusing swirl of reality, misinformation, and so-called fake news. How can science communicators navigate a political climate that's increasingly hostile to both science and journalism? Experts from several related disciplines addressed the situation at a day-long conference hosted by the Rockefeller University.

From ScienceWriters: David Perlman's lifetime covering science

David Perlman is retiring from journalism. He's been a science writer through it all: The discovery of Lucy, Dolly the Sheep, the identification of exoplanets, the AIDS epidemic. He has a clip of his first story about AIDS on his office wall. It's maybe 12 or 15 inches long and was published in June 1981, around the start of the global scourge.

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