Council for the Advancement of Science Writing

Climate Desk tracks down its 'most pernicious' troll Curtis Brainard

An Arizona Republic reporter and self-described "water geek" on how to cover western water issues Joel Campbell http://www.cjr.org

The GOP hijacks the transparency debate as the EPA calls for a 'reset' with reporters Curtis Brainard

And that's saying something Ryan Chittum

Egypt Independent's closure a blow for environmental coverage Curtis Brainard

*Chemical & Engineering News*, known for its coverage of research, business, the chemical industry, and related industries, is not known for 10,000-word stories looking at social issues. In the current issue, however, *Lisa M. Jarvis *tackles the orphan drug problem in a long, comprehensive piece [1] with a surprising turn: Orphan drugs, it seems, are no longer orphans. The headline on the piece is "Orphans Find a Home." That's not true for all of them, but it's true for a growing number, as pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and investors, suddenly see that producing drugs for a disease

*Laura Beil* at *Science News* begins her helpful survey of fructose research [1] with an interesting historical footnote.  She reports that two chemists found an enzyme that could turn glucose from cornstarch into fructose, which is sweeter. What's interesting is that the discovery was published in Science in 1957, Beil reports, and largely ignored. It was not until the 1970s that Japanese researchers learned how to use the finding to produce fructose on an industrial scale. And it was not until 2004, she writes, that consumers began to be concerned. Beil does a nice job

/(English intro to Spanish lang post) This Knight Tracker participated last Thu and Fri in the 7th Ibero-American conference of science journalism in Ecuador. With more than 400 attendees and excellent dialogs, the event was a great success. But the tracker felt that apart from words, more action is needed. Many students of journalism came to the tracker with sincere interest in science communication. We need to build specific capacitation and opportunities for them and for journalists working already in the media. Especially now that Ecuadorian government is increasing its investment in

"I expected lots of blog posts about Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy," *Tabitha M. Powledge* writes [1] at *On Science Blogs*. "I didn't expect the torrent we're getting. My unscientific impression is that this is the single most-blogged-about medical topic I've looked at since I began writing On Science Blogs in 2009, going on 5 years ago." Why would that be, we might ask? "Even in mad mediaworld this is an extraordinarily potent mix, involving a super-celebrity superstar who always makes news and sometimes scandal (and whose equally high-profile partner, here somewhat in the background, does ditto),

  This is not a news story but it got my mind into a perplexed state. That is,  until I realized it might be that the question is not the right question the American ear wants to hear: * *The Curious Wavefunction* (Scientific American Blogs) - *Ashutosh Jogalekar*: /Who's the greatest American physicist in history?/ [1]    The writer is a chemist with a biotech company in Massachusetts. His blog site is serious and sober. This essay on top US physicists is worth reading mainly because his personal answer is a name few of us

Joe Farman, one of three British scientists who discovered a ‘hole’ in the ozone layer, died on 11 May (see obituaries in /The/ /Guardian/ [1] and /The/ /Telegraph/ [2]). It was exactly 28 years ago yesterday (on 16 May 1985) that Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jonathan Shanklin published their finding in /Nature/ [3]. It prompted global action to ban chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, the man-made chemicals that were breaking down ozone high in the atmosphere. The ozone hole still appears above Antarctica every spring, but it is on the mend and scientists hope that

/Posted on behalf of Alison Abbott./ A controversial decree allowing severely ill patients to continue treatment with an unproven, and possibly unsafe, stem-cell therapy may be amended, if the Italian parliament’s Chamber of Deputies has its way. Yesterday (16 May) the Chamber’s social affairs committee unanimously passed amendments to the decree that would allow the Brescia-based Stamina Foundation [1], which developed the therapy, to continue administering it. However, Stamina would be required to do so within regular clinical trials, under the oversight of regulatory agencies and using cells manufactured according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP).

US President Barack Obama’s science team gained a new member on 16 May as the Senate confirmed physicist Ernest Moniz as head of the Department of Energy. Lawmakers also voted to advance the nomination of Gina McCarthy, Obama’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The unanimous vote to approve Moniz [1], director of the Energy Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, came after Senator Lindsay Graham (Republican, South Carolina) withdrew his objection to the nomination. Graham had blocked the full Senate from voting on Moniz for nearly a month, citing

If enough eminent people stand together to condemn a controversial practice, will that make it stop? That’s what more than 150 scientists and 75 science organizations are hoping for today, with a joint statement called the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) [1]. It deplores the way some metrics — especially the notorious Journal Impact Factor (JIF) — are misused as quick and dirty assessments of scientists’ performance and the quality of their research papers. “There is a pressing need to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated,” DORA

CANCUN, Mexico — By bombarding a patch of the Honduran rainforest with laser pulses, archaeologists have discovered structures that could be a part of a lost city — or two. In spring 2012, scientists from the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM [1]), based at the University of Houston, loaded a plane with a state-of-the-art lidar system and took it down to Honduras. Lidar bounces billions of laser pulses off of the forest and measures the time they take to return. Though most of the pulses reflect off vegetation, some small fraction reaches

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.