The Observatory
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November 20, 2009 10:31 AM
Saving Corwin’s Creatures
MSNBC wades into new territory with environmental documentary 100 Heartbeats
While filming his new documentary, 100 Heartbeats, Jeff Corwin cut off the horn of a black rhino to protect it from poachers, broke four ribs transporting Sumatran orangutans to a wildlife sanctuary, and helped raid a Cambodian restaurant serving endangered species like pangolin and soft-shelled turtle.
“I wanted to tell these stories in a way that hadn’t...
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November 18, 2009 01:31 PM
Trains, Planes, and Carbon Offsets
Times keeps a needed eye on green premiums
This week, The New York Times published two much-needed articles questioning the value of programs that let consumers pay a small fee to ostensibly reduce their carbon footprints.
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The first, by Kate Galbraith, focused on renewable energy certificates, which allow utilities to offer their customers the choice of paying a small premium on their electricity... -
November 17, 2009 01:48 PM
Newsweek, API, and Ethics
What guidelines should govern advertiser-sponsored events?
Last week, news reports revealed that, since 2007, Newsweek has sold advertising packages to the American Petroleum Industry--the oil and gas industry’s largest trade group--“that included the right to co-host forums on energy issues, including two where members of Congress sat side-by-side on panels with the association’s president.”
“Newsweek and API have teamed on four forums so...
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November 17, 2009 12:03 PM
Criticism of Gladwell Reaches Tipping Point
Criticism of Malcolm Gladwell, the bestselling New Yorker writer, seems to be reaching – yes! – a tipping point. The critiques have come from a variety of angles – literary critics lambast his glibness; The Daily Beast doesn’t like his dating habits; The Nation doesn’t like, well, anything about him. The New Republic’s Issac...
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November 13, 2009 04:49 PM
Plimer, “Balance as Bias” Back in Climate Coverage
That old nuisance, “balance as bias,” cropped up in the press again on Thursday in an article in the Telegraph about the theories of climate skeptic Ian Plimer, an Australian geologist.
There isn’t even the pretense of a news peg. For some reason, the paper’s environment correspondent, Louise Gray, decided that Plimer’s controversial opinions needed airing...
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November 13, 2009 11:50 AM
Government Programs Don’t Always Increase the Deficit
The federal budget deficit, it seems, is back on the White House’s agenda. David Brooks, in his column today, asserted in passing that once (if?) health care reform passes, President Obama will "pick some fights with his own party over spending." At Politico, meanwhile, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei have a full article on the new...
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November 12, 2009 04:31 PM
The Fate of Former P-I Employees
Ruth Teichroeb, who worked as an investigative reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from 1997 until its demise in March, is not done investigating. On Wednesday she published a survey on her ironically titled blog, Safety Net, of what has become of her former colleagues in the last nine months.
It’s not reassuring. Seventy-one of the 140 people laid...
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November 11, 2009 04:36 PM
AMNH Hosts 33rd Annual Margaret Mead Film Festival
Science news aficionados that are passing through New York City this week should check out the thirty-third Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, which kicks off at the American Museum of Natural History Thursday night and runs through Sunday.
Named after the famed cultural anthropologist, a former assistant curator at the museum, the annual event will feature over...
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November 11, 2009 02:39 PM
Univ. of Montana Launches Environmental Journalism Program
School cites expansive value of training, diverse job possibilities
At least somebody gets it. The University of Montana in Missoula announced on Monday that it is accepting applications for a new, two-year graduate program in environmental science and natural resource journalism.
The news comes less than a month after Columbia University, in New York, decided to suspend a similar and highly regarded fourteen-year-old program, citing...
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November 10, 2009 05:45 PM
Trash Compactor
The NYT’s “Pacific garbage patch” story: a Spot.us “deliverable” that doesn’t quite deliver
Today’s New York Times features an article about a patch of garbage, estimated to be two times the area of Texas, swirling in the middle of the Pacific ocean. The piece was written by freelance journalist Lindsey Hoshaw, and the travel expenses for her reporting trip were covered by donations from several hundred people—a crowd-funding model--via Continue reading
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November 10, 2009 12:55 PM
AAAS Announces 2009 Kavli Science Journalism Awards
Recipients of the 2009 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards were announced this morning.
“A radio broadcast on probability told through a tale about a drifting balloon, a newspaper series on the impact of a devastating genetic disease on a family in rural Montana, and a group of gracefully written stories about genetics and evolution are among the winners,”...
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November 06, 2009 06:36 PM
Unscientific America Meets Denialism
Mooney and Specter debate causes and cures
Michael Specter and Chris Mooney agree that the United States is full of people who just don’t get science, and that this is a dangerous situation. In fact, they agree about a lot of things.
They are the respective authors of the similarly titled Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives,...
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November 05, 2009 04:03 PM
Reservations about Resveratrol
There is in the science press a kind of gene-of-the-month club for disease cures in which scientists discover that promoting or quieting a particular gene cures this condition or that. One prominent example in recent years has been the claim of remarkable potential for a compound named resveratrol.
Specifically, it has been claimed that resveratrol acts on...
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November 03, 2009 03:48 PM
“Will Work in Copenhagen”
SEJ launches freelancers’ board for climate meeting
The United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen this December will undoubtedly be an international media circus of the highest order. Many of the journalists there will be wandering bards, however, reciting tales on the spot for anyone willing to listen or, God willing, pay them.
In an effort to assist those lone travelers, as well as news outlets that...
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Science Picture of the Day
Junji Kurokawa/Associated Press
On Monday, the Associated Press published an interesting account of Nomura jellyfish – the world’s largest – currently “swarming” the Japanese coastline. This October 14 photo shows one drifting off Kokonogi in western Japan.
“Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand miles of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan,” with this year being one of the worst ever, Michael Casey reported.
Scientists believe the warming of oceans “has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes.
The gelatinous seaborne creatures are blamed for decimating fishing industries in the Bering and Black seas, forcing the shutdown of seaside power and desalination plants in Japan, the Middle East and Africa, and terrorizing beachgoers worldwide, the U.S. National Science Foundation says.”
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About The Observatory RSS
The Observatory critiques science, environment, and medical journalism. Our goal is to encourage clarity, accuracy, and accountability in the coverage all things technical and complex.
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The Observatory Science
- Saving Corwin’s Creatures MSNBC wades into new territory with environmental documentary 100 Heartbeats
- Trains, Planes, and Carbon Offsets Times keeps a needed eye on green premiums
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Greg Craig and Transparency
- Not For All the News in China, Part I Former NYT Shanghai bureau chief Howard French on the coverage of Obama’s trip to Asia
