Articles

On science blogs this week: Noble

Hormone therapy in rehab. Again. New hormone therapy data confirm that timing matters. The Nobel Prizes. Chemistry is biology, and biology is physics. Reprogramming stem cells: betcha didn't know it dates to 1962. G protein-coupled receptors: "bio with huge pharma implications." Physics: uhhhh ... But why not the Higgs boson?

First time at a ScienceWriters meeting?

Is this your first ScienceWriters meeting? Do you have experiences to share from previous meetings? NASW Member Michael Newman is once again organizing a chance for first-time meeting attendees to get together and have their questions answered by veterans. Read on to learn more about how you can get your questions answered and meet new colleagues in an informal setting.

Some tips for beginning freelancers

Poynter's Beth Winegarner lists a half-dozen ways for freelancers to build their businesses. Many of them boil down to finding a network and making the most of it: "Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, connecting with fellow freelancers has never been easier. Knowing who’s writing, and who they’re writing for, gives you a good sense of which publications are open to taking freelance work," Winegarner writes. Also, do your homework, and "pitch more than you can write."

Vaidyanathan wins Clark/Payne Award

The winner of the 2012 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, is Gayathri Vaidyanathan. Vaidyanathan received the award and its $1,000 prize for two stories in Nature, “The Wheat Stalker” and “The Cultured Chimpanzees;” one story in Greenwire,“Study ignites fresh concerns about drilling emissions;” and a story in Energywire, “Could risk analysis prevent future deepwater disasters?”

On science blogs this week: Jonah Lehrer again

Jonah Lehrer resurfaces briefly to announce that he's writing about fraudulent science writing. What a surprise. Genetically manipulated organisms, giant rat tumors, and how to promote a book and movie. Scientific research declares that bad science writing is all the fault of scientists.

From ScienceWriters: The institutional annual report as comedy

Sid Caesar once said that comedy has to be based on truth. By that measure, the humorous cover design of the 2011 annual report for Research Communications at Ohio State was based on the truth that the four people then on staff — Earle Holland, Jeff Grabmeier, Emily Caldwell, and Pam Frost Gorder — are, fundamentally, extreme personalities. From the Summer 2012 ScienceWriters.

On science blogs this week: Negative

The mouse retrovirus XMRV does not cause chronic fatigue syndrome, but there's more, much more. XMRV doesn't cause prostate cancer either. But, you heard it here first, maybe some other infection does? Should PLoS have retracted the prostate cancer paper without consulting the authors? Plus, savor the big book of best science blogging.

SciWri12 NASW travel fellows named

NASW is pleased to offer over $10,000 in travel fellowships this year to assist science writers with travel and registration costs for the ScienceWriters2012 meeting. Read more to see the winners.

Tips for finding a journalism mentor

The days when a beginning journalist was surrounded by a newsroom full of experienced colleagues may be gone now, Jillian Keenan writes on the Poynter site: "I fell in love with the freedom and flexibility of independent journalism, but there was one problem: without long-term editors to supervise my work, it seemed like I’d never find those inspiring mentors I had imagined." Keenan offers five tips for freelancers who want to fill the gap by finding their own mentors.

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