The Science Reporter

The end of this blog

2010-07-23T01:20:00.000-07:00

Please note that this blog is no longer being updated as it has now been incorporated into the ABSW's new website. Please check there for the latest news, job postings and everything else.

Thanks,

Mike

ABSW Web Manager

DEBATE: Is the mainstream media’s science coverage broken, misleading, dangerous, lazy, venal, and silly?

2009-09-02T05:30:00.000-07:00

FOR: Ben Goldacre , doctor and author of the Bad Science column (in the Guardian) and book

Please note: The authors were asked to submit no more than 500 words and neither author had sight of the other author's copy prior to publication.

Discussions on this problem could easily descend into banal lists of examples. As a starting point, here is my banal list of examples. The irresponsible reporting on MMR – which continues even now – is this profession’s flagship of shame. The endless over-extrapolations from tenuous studies to specific dietary recommendations are absurd, and mislead the public on the specifics of a healthy lifestyle, but also on the very nature of how we know if something is good for us or bad for us. The 'scientists have proven' stories which turn out to be built on a PR survey or some PR 'report' are equally corrosive, and are frequently well-disguised by correspondents eager to affect professionalism. Then there are the distorted studies, sometimes on topics as sensitive as rape. If you want more examples, I’m never short of material for the column.

Neither of us have quantitative data on how much science reporting is flawed. So how much bad reporting is too much? How bad is too bad? Of course there are reasons. Of course sometimes these articles are written by people who you might choose not to identify as science journalists. But these are the people who write about science in the media, and these are the kinds of articles that cause concern.

I’m no absolutist. There is some good reporting, and there are some problems: I think the problems should be addressed, but until then, the key problem is this industry’s baffling resistance to engaging with its flaws.

The background to these two pieces today is, perhaps, an illustration. There was almost no discussion of these problems at the recent World Conference of Science Journalists in London. I suggested a free meeting in a pub to discuss remedies, along with two academics who blog, in an internet post on my website. In response, Steve Connor wrote a column in a national newspaper lambasting us (Lofty medics should stick to their day job, The Independent, 30 June 2009), describing us repeatedly as three medics (only one of us is), accusing us of medical arrogance, and deriding our meeting, which he described as having happened the night before. In fact it was the day after his article was printed. We offered him room to speak, and invited him to attend: Steve said he would try to come, but sadly did not.

Since the spectre of medical arrogance has been raised, let me draw a parallel. All the medical professions today (I wouldn’t give doctors special status) recognise the value of listening to the critical voices of patients. Sometimes it’s frustrating, because we feel we do our best, and because critics from outside a profession may be – we feel – wrong about the mechanisms of how problems arise, or naive about the best solution. But outsiders are very likely to be right about the basic fact that there is a problem. Instead of denying that, space in this journal might better be spent on science writers discussing what to do about it.

AGAINST: Steve Connor, Science Editor, The Independent

Please note: The authors were asked to submit no more than 500 words and neither author had sight of the other author's copy prior to publication.

Ben Goldacre’s columns are often entertaining and in the public interest – two ingredients of good journalism. They are welcomed in the battle against anti-science and the mountebanks of disinformation. I thought we were on the same side in this struggle. However, it seems that Ben sees science journalists as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Of course bad science stories do sometimes appear in the mainstream media, but to tar us all with the same brush is as silly as saying that all doctors are potential mass murderers because of Harold Shipman.

At the time of writing, I’ve not been able to see the justification for his withering words, so I’ll make do with what he’s stated before. He has said, for instance, that there was a “collective failure” of the news media in regard to MMR and the way they ignored “all countervailing evidence” against the claims of Andrew Wakefield. In making such sweeping statements, he is being selective in his use of the facts, a criticism he levels at science journalists.

He must be aware of the Wakefield coverage in his own newspaper, written by its health correspondent on the day of the 1998 press conference [1]. No-one reading this journalist’s account could possibly go away with the idea of this being unchallenged science.

Or take the coverage on the same day in my own newspaper, written by its health editor [2]. The very first words in the front page story came from experts who urged parents to continue vaccinating their children. The coverage in both papers by experienced specialist journalists was loaded with quotes and comments expounding the countervailing evidence – it was not ignored.

For my own part, all stories directly on MMR written over the past 10 years were deeply critical of the Wakefield hypothesis and have emphasised the scientific justification for vaccination. I went out of my way to emphasise the countervailing evidence [3].

Ben has made a second career out of post factum critique. It’s a genre I’ve done myself with a Sunday’s newspaper’s unscientific claims in the early 1990s that HIV doesn’t cause Aids [4], with the bad science behind a daily newspaper’s claims that GM potatoes are poisonous [5], and the terrible journalism of a television documentary suggesting that global warming is a swindle [6]. Two of these were the product of non-science journalists, and the third was written by a health correspondent with an unhealthy interest in Surrey ashrams.

But unlike Ben, science journalists cannot survive on critique alone. Nor could they survive on just keeping bad science stories out of their paper – although I’ve done my fair share of that, such as a flawed story about cellphones and suicides (only to see it appear in another newspaper). To survive, we have to find and write stories that can compete in a busy news agenda. If science is not covered by specialist writers, it will be done by general reporters – or not at all. Does Ben Goldacre really want that?

[1] The Guardian, 27 February 1998, “Alert over child jabs”, p. 1 and “Doctors’ dilemma: damned if they publish, damned if they don’t”, p. 5.

[2] The Independent, 27 February 1998, “Doctors link autism to MMR vaccination”, p. 1 and “Emotive and controversial issue that splits medical profession”, p. 5.

[3] The Independent, 9 February 2002, “Why parents are ignoring the rational experts”, Comment section p. 4.

[4] The Independent, 21 May 1993, “The truth about the growing menace of heterosexual Aids”, p. 6.

[5] The Independent, 15 October 1999, “It is Britain’s pre-eminent medical journal. Now its reputation hangs on a single issue”, p. 3.

[6] The Independent, 14 March 2007, “The real global warming swindle”, p6.

EDITORIAL: Call me the awkward squad

2009-09-02T05:25:00.000-07:00

You'll see a piece about the Templeton Fellowship in this issue, and I don't feel I can let it stand without at least some comment. When Mike Hanlon suggested writing the piece I felt snookered. On the one hand I felt it would be giving the wrong kind of publicity to an organization that seems to me to be both pro-religion and anti-science, and that, it could be claimed, uses wads of cash to bypass the integrity of otherwise decent scientists and journalists. On the other hand, holding this view made it impossible for me to claim that I could make an objective decision on the subject, so I couldn't in good conscience say no.

I'm not going to say anything more about the Templeton Foundation here, except that I will, some time in the next few months, write explaining the evidence behind my concerns.

As far as this issue's debate is concerned, I'm in an awkward position there too. For years I myself had moaned about the poor quality of science journalism, and to this day I'm a bit of a fan of Ben Goldacre's scathing approach. On the other hand, I've seen how a good story can be butchered by a bad editor, and how a bad story can be seized upon by an editor who can only see the shocking headline and increased sales. That's not down to the journalist.

I think there's a link here. We're all incredibly lucky to work in science journalism, but it's only worth doing if we can do it well, if we can make a contribution. If not, there are a thousands of other jobs that are interesting, allow us to use the same skills, earn a decent salary, and not lose sleep at night. I choose only to work for publications where I have respect for the publications and my immediate editors (and they at least pretend to have respect for me). And I know my own limitations in terms of the subjects I can write about well and with insight, and I stick to those (whether they're fashionable or not).That means some years I get more freelance work, others less. I have to make sure that I have other work -- teaching and editing -- to pay the mortgage. But I'm not embarrassed about the work I produce.

Of course I want to be paid well for my journalism. That would be ideal. But I'd rather be paid nothing (I write a blog when I have time) than compromise on the quality of the work that I produce, or be paid to forward the agenda of an organization whose values I know I don't share.

That might sound priggish, but, after attending the WCSJ, I think there are a lot of others out there with the same sensibility. I think there might even be more of us than there are chancers who will write anything as long as they can get a byline and a paycheck. So Steve Connor is right (talking about the former), and Ben Goldacre is right (talking about the latter).

And Mike Hanlon? He could be talking about being funded by any foundation, Templeton or otherwise, but I personally think his piece displays both a cynicism and a casualness about accepting money that make him dead wrong.

Sunny Bains
Editor, The Science Reporter

NEWS: The Creative Rights Alliance recovers

2009-09-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

Despite the sad passing of its chairman, The CRA continues to tackle issues of paramount importance to writers, such as digital copyright and a European Commission attempt to clamp down on any recommendation of rates.

Cometh the hour, cometh the… organisation. As pressure on the rights of authors, journalists and other creators rises, the Creators Rights Alliance appears to have steered itself out of the doldrums which arose from the illness and recent death of its founder chairman David Ferguson.

David, a self-taught musician, had achieved eminence both as a successful composer of music for TV and as a radical advocate of creators’ rights. The loss of his energy and focus hit the CRA a near-fatal blow and it has taken some time to recover. An obituary written by his friend Mark Fishlock appeared in the Guardian on 28 July.

The ABSW has been involved with the CRA since 2001 and has attempted to play a significant part in the development of its policies. A few critics have questioned whether the Association should get involved in the fight to support the rights of such a broad slew of media creators, many not connected with writing or science.

But recent news – Google’s 'opt-out-or-be-dammed' announcement regarding its plan to digitise every book ever published, or the confused debate over the fate of supposedly ‘orphaned’ works, for example – make it clear that there really is nowhere to hide. There are corporate interests out there that will have the benefit of your work free of charge if they can get it.

The CRA met in July under its vice-chairman Mike Holderness, a freelance journalist, policy consultant, and National Union of Journalists activist. The meeting launched a redesigned website, published a manifesto, restructured the organisation and reinvigorated the sense of purpose of delegates of affiliated organisations. There has been a much-needed rebalancing, with a reduction in the perceived emphasis on music interests and the emergence of stronger voices from the other genres, including those of journalism, book writing, illustration, photography and design.

There is also a clearer definition of the role of the CRA which should remove the roadblocks set up by the demand for consensus on every policy issue. It now sees itself as a forum for UK organisations representing creators: both authors and performers, roles that are increasingly merged in the digital world. The CRA’s raison d’être is that organisations can, when they wish, throw their weight behind joint initiatives and statements.

An important new strategy is to seek a high profile representative to take the CRA chair as a figurehead and spokesperson. Ideally, this individual will already be active in some field of creator’s rights so that they can bring in significant networks of contacts. Nominations are being sought from the affiliate organisations.

The current arrangement over chairmanship will probably continue past the organisation's annual general meeting in November, with the vice-chair handling the meeting-to-meeting running of the organisation including setting agendas for meetings under the new chairman.

The CRA’s present administrator, Lucy Weston has decided to move on and will be replaced with a researcher-administrator (see advertisement) who can assist the chair, vice-chair and committee with policy development, lobbying and fundraising. Funding is secure until the end of the current financial year, with a reasonable prospect of support from the Journalists’ Copyright Fund thereafter.

Elsewhere, The CRA has been active in Europe and contributed to The Creators’ Forum, which met in Brussels in June. The European Commission has struck – perhaps unwittingly – at the bargaining power of freelance creators by attempting to use competition law to stop any recommendation of rates – an activity that the ABSW has recently begun, albeit through the legal loophole of characterising it as a historical record. This prohibition of rates advice has already been disputed by the CRA in UK Government policy.

The Brussels meeting agreed to approach the European Commission with a range of proposals for the support of authors’ rights in late 2009. Proposals will draw heavily from the new CRA Manifesto.

The CRA has already demonstrated in its involvement with government departments that a combined voice carries much greater clout than the simple sum of its parts. As the ABSW’s representative, I shall continue to argue that proper protection of the UK’s creative talent – the feedstock of every media sector – will in the long term strengthen UK media and benefit the economy.

Mike Harrison

The ABSW is a CRA affiliate organisation. Mike Harrison represents the ABSW on the CRA’s national committee.

NEWS: Free help for investigative journalism projects

2009-09-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

A new initiative from City University, London, will supply investigative researchers from its Science Journalism Masters Course to working journalists who apply.

The intention of the scheme is to provide research support for in-depth scientific investigative journalism as part of a joint partnership between the Journalism Department at City University London and ABSW.

According to the course director Connie St Louis “Many science journalists often have projects which they are convinced will lead to a great story but often lack the time and resources to commit to it. The scheme will provide an excellent opportunity to address this.”

All of the highly skilled graduates will be mentored through their six-month research projects by the Director of the Centre of Investigative Journalism, Gavin McFadyean.

To apply, please complete the online form and outline briefly what the project entails. The deadline for applications is Friday 25 September 2009.

NEWS: 'PRs have morals,' says study funded by PRs for PRs

2009-09-02T05:10:00.000-07:00

Public relations professionals have higher morals than surgeons, businessmen and accountants, claims a study (and its press release).

A study suggests what many journalists have doubted for years – that public relations (PR) professionals have an effective moral compass.

Renita Coleman at the University of Texas, Austin, and Lee Wilkins at the University of Missouri found that public relations practitioners are more morally developed than orthopaedic surgeons, business professionals, accounting students and veterinary students, but less developed than doctors, philosophers and journalists.

The study looked at 118 PR professionals, working for PR firms whose clients include the likes of Exxon–Mobil, GlaxoSmithKline and Reebok. Using a series of questions from a survey called the Defining Issues Test (DIT), they posed six ethical dilemmas to each subject.

One asked whether to tell experts hired to promote a herbal medicine that there is potential for the product to be abused. Sixty-six percent of respondents said that they would tell their experts about the potential abuses. Seventeen percent said that they would not.

Another scenario asked whether they would confirm or deny leaked information about a school closing. This time 31 percent were in favour of confirming the story, 32 percent said they would deny it, and 37 percent couldn’t decide.

Tallying the responses from each scenario, the researchers calculated an average 'moral development score', which they then ranked against other groups of professionals tested in other studies using the DIT. The PRs ranked seventh out of all groups assessed in the hundreds of previously administered DIT studies (see table below).

The researchers say the study is “the first to empirically measure the moral development of working public relations professionals”.

And it certainly had the audience and backing – the study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Public Relations Research ("examining our understanding of why organizations practice public relations as they do and by studying ways to conduct public relations more effectively," according to the journal's website).

Furthermore, it was funded by a $10,000 grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication – a research centre dedicated to the study and advancement of ethics and responsibility in corporate communication and other forms of public communication. Proof positive that there is a journal – and grant – out there for almost anyone.

Andy Extance is a freelance science journalist.

FEATURE: Faith, reason and the Templeton Fellowship

2009-09-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

The Science Editor of the Daily Mail, Michael Hanlon, gives his take on the Templeton Journalism Fellowships.

Like a former Prime Minster’s aide, I have never ‘done’ God. I went to a soppy Anglican Primary School, with a liberal vicar, no hellfire or brimstone, no guilt-trips nor eternal torments. But even so, all that stuff about fluffy clouds and heaven, people getting nailed to posts and rising from the dead, the tricks with the bread and fishes … it all left me cold. At least the Tooth Fairy was good enough to provide tangible evidence for her existence.

Since childhood my atheism has waned and waxed. I went through a brief, and frankly risible, flirtation with faith in my early teenage years, mostly sparked by a pretty but unforthcoming girl in a bible study class, but that was that. The stony road of atheism for me ever since. But faith is a fascinating thing and so, when the Templeton Foundation approached me in late 2008 to ask if I would consider applying to be a Cambridge-Templeton Journalism Fellow for 2009, my curiosity was pricked.

The Templeton fellowships are run by the Templeton Foundation, a think-tank founded by the late Anglo-American billionaire Sir John Templeton ‘to encourage dialogue between science and religion’. In Sir John’s country of birth, this dialogue has become something of a tedious slanging match, with ‘science’ pitted against fundamentalist Christianity. Here of course things are a tad more subtle.

I went to a Templeton meeting in the 1990s in Washington and was impressed to find not the bunch of religious loonies I was expecting but impeccably secular cosmologists, philosophers and, in short, proper people. People like Cosmologist Neil Turok, protégé of Hawking. Here also Jill Tarter of SETI; if Earth’s alien-finder general could take the Templeton shilling then this had to be half respectable. But even so I had my reservations. The old Sir John died last year, and the Foundation is now headed by his son, John Jr, who is of a far more traditionalist Christian bent than his dad (John Jr has donated money to an anti-gay-marriage campaign in California). Then there is the Dawkins issue. Prof Dawkins, High Priest of the Atheists, actually spoke at a Templeton Fellowship a few years ago but now clearly regrets it, calling the Foundation a berth for ‘scientists who have nice things to say about religion’. More of Dawkins later.

In the end I decided my reservations were not enough to put me off. This sounded interesting at the very least, useful and contact-building almost certainly and, just possibly, intellectually enlightening to boot. Oh yes, and there is cash: $15,000, plus a books allowance and all expenses covered. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. So I agreed to apply.

So what is the Journalism fellowship and how does it work? Set up, I was told, in response to the 2001 Al Qaida attacks it attempts to allow a small group of ten journalists, selected annually, to ‘examine the dynamic and creative interface of science and religion’. No, I had no idea what that means either but I jumped through the hoops of the selection process (which include a rather formal interview and the writing of a studenty essay - in my case on Cosmology) and early this year I was informed that I was in.

The ‘fellowship’ is a curious beast, run jointly between the Foundation and Cambridge University, which was to be our temporary home. Intensive and demanding, it is every bit an American take on ‘English Academia’ – i.e. to a Brit intensely, and fascinatingly, foreign. First of all, it must be said, it is tremendous, rather theatrical, fun. You get to hole up in a posh hotel (the Garden House) for a fortnight at someone else’s expense and spend dreamy summer days in King’s College listening to world-class philosophers, biologists and cosmologists giving their take on the great issues of faith and reason.

In the evenings there is the rather camp air of the 18th Century Salon, with semi-formal dinners in various colleges with guest speakers holding forth on topics as diverse as Darwin’s correspondence and Isaac Newton. On one occasion, the Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees dropped in, no religious nutcase he. My fellow Templetonians were a diverse lot, representing a swathe of upmarket American and Canadian media, from a senior editor at Time magazine to the Literary Editor of the Toronto Globe and Mail. They will have to speak for themselves but I think I can fairly say that we all found the experience delightful and bewildering in equal measure. I certainly learned some stuff.

I found the palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris’s talk on evolutionary convergence truly fascinating. Sarah Coakley’s take on the evolution of co-operation was dense and demanding but all pretty much new to me. The philosopher Richard Swinburne mounted a forensic attack on the interpretation of the famous Libet experiments, which appear to show that free will is an illusion. My fellow Templetonians for the most part found Swinburne impenetrable and incomprehensible, a throwback to the 1930s perhaps. I agreed, but not that this was a bad thing. For me he was one of the highlights of the whole course.

Looming over the whole shebang the shadow of Richard Dawkins, whose name was often invoked. It is true we had some atheist input (from the excellent Simon Blackburn) but I got the impression that the Templeton ‘club’ sees Dawkins as persona if not entirely non grata then certainly rather beyond the pale. Some speakers were better than others. Tariq Ramadan, a controversial Muslim academic, gave a rambling talk on Islam. I found the neurobiologist Steven Rose dogmatic and unconvincing and the cosmologist John Barrow, whose talk I had been much looking forward to, rather impenetrable. But for the most part the speakers had prepared well and gave excellent value for money.

The Fellowship is controversial. When one of the Fellows, Edwin Cartlidge, a Rome-based British freelance, approached Anthony Grayling and Daniel Dennett for cooperation in his project (on materialism) they refused and mentioned the request to Dawkins, who writes about it on his website. Dawkins once spoke at one of the Templeton Fellowships but clearly regrets having done so, stating: “I see him [Cartlidge] as in much the same position I was in when I agreed to go, a victim of exactly the kind of subversion of science that Templeton is making its speciality.”

Well, I don’t think anyone tried to subvert me, nor my belief in reason and ‘science’. There was certainly no overt religiosity, no discernable prejudices espoused. Nobody tried to convert me, to Christianity or any other religion. Most of all (and again I am speaking only for myself) I felt and continue to feel under no pressure whatsoever to write in a particular way or take a particular line on anything whatsoever. We are supposed to get our theses published, in some form or other, in the papers or magazines for which we write but, again, how we do so and in what form any such writing appears is completely left to us and our editors.

As to the people whose shilling I took? Well, I don’t like John Jr’s take on gay marriage, but who can afford to examine the views and prejudices of all the directors and proprietors of the organisations for which we work? For its faults, the Templeton Foundation does at least appear to be encouraging people to think, and to think about some of the most intractable and fascinating problems facing both science and religion. And that cannot, surely, be a bad thing.

Michael’s new book is Eternity, Our Next Billion Years - recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.

FEATURE: Straight Statistics

2009-09-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Director of Straight Statistics, Nigel Hawkes, on the battle to unearth the truth from the numbers.

As any science writer knows, the world is full of duff statistics, bad surveys, false conclusions, and simple muddle-headedness about numbers. Politicians get away with murder, advertisers lie, and medical researchers use pre-packaged statistical programmes to work out their results, without understanding or explaining what they are doing.

Straight Statistics has been set up to do something about it. I don’t pretend we can cleanse the Augean Stables singlehandedly – clearly we can’t – but we can certainly have some fun pointing out the most egregious errors and maybe, with the help of journalists, inching standards upwards.

The idea came from Lord Lipsey, a Labour peer and former political journalist. The campaign’s board consists of journalists and statisticians, including two well-known to many science writers, Professor Sheila Bird of the MRC Biostatistics Unit, and Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University. We are supported by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation.

Since I started digging for examples, I’ve been appalled by how easy they are to find. For example, the recent Research Assessment Exercise – supposedly a gold-standard in the measurement of how good the UK’s academics are – was published without a denominator. Universities were allowed to submit as few or as many of their academics as they wished, without disclosing the size of the pool from which they were drawn. That’s a statistical illiteracy that would shame a woman’s magazine reporting a readers’ survey, never mind the summits of intellectual excellence that the universities claim to be.

Crime statistics are a dog’s dinner. Take Penalty Notices for Disorder, on-the-spot fines for not-so-minor crimes (such as disorderly behaviour) and shoplifting. In order to meet its target of reducing the number of young people entering the criminal justice system, the Youth Justice Board doesn’t count these as crimes. But the Home Office, in order to meet its targets for crime cleared up, does. A carefully-collected statistic is thus either counted or discounted, depending entirely upon how well it suits a particular government department.

The outbreak of swine flu has shown how hospitals fail to gather information that matters, while accumulating tons that doesn’t. Claims that putting a ham sandwich in your children’s lunch box will condemn them to colon cancer are reported uncritically. A court rules that pollution from clearing up an old steelworks in Corby contributed to a cluster of birth defects, when the data do not clearly support any such conclusion.

And how about the claim that Britain wastes a third of the food it buys? Not really true, when you look at the figures, which include a stupendous 11,000 tons a year of pheasants allegedly binned every year. Or the claim recently made by the Home Office that violence against women and girls costs £40.1 billion a year. Abuse is a serious issue, but that’s more than all crime put together.

Straight Statistics does its best to expose such false reasoning, through its website. It is collaborating with Sense about Science in a new report, Making Sense of Statistics, due to appear in the autumn.

I welcome tips, ideas, and articles for the website. It’s impossible for me to spot everything but science writers have a good nose for unsubstantiated claims, so please pass on anything that smells whiffy to me. Anonymity is guaranteed if that’s what you want, but I also welcome signed pieces. Alas, any payment would be token, at best. But think of the good you’re doing!

Nigel Hawkes was Science Correspondent of The Observer 1972-80, and of The Times 1990-2000. He is a former Chairman of the ABSW.

ABSW: Science journalism in crisis? BIS expert group seeks our input

2009-09-02T04:50:00.000-07:00

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) has announced an 'expert group' to look at the state of science and the media in the UK. Your input is sought for an ABSW submission to the panel.

The Science and the Media Expert Group, set up by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and chaired by Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre, has prompted some lively discussion on the ABSW-L.

Sceptics have pointed out a number of limitations with the make-up of the group, its methods and its ultimate goals. As one of those sceptics, I have been asked to put together a ‘robust’ statement on behalf of the ABSW on the state of science journalism and what we can do to enhance it.

The ABSW represents a wide range of science writers, broadcasters and communicators and our members include many (if not most) of the UK’s best science journalists. Although I have my own views on the state of science journalism, and what might be done to improve things, they do not necessarily represent the wider views of the membership.

I am therefore after the views of you, the ABSW members. I am particularly keen to hear from journalists and those with experience of science news, newsrooms and how science is reported.

Please e-mail your contributions by the middle of September so I can put the statement together. The final submission will go to the ABSW Executive Committee for approval before it is submitted to the BIS group. I will also post updates in TSR.

I hope that we will have a wide range of thoughts, views and comments so that I can include as many different points of view as possible and, together, we can put forward the ‘robust’ case that the ‘expert’ group claims to be after.

Richard Hollingham
TSR Features Editor

ABSW: Funding now available for regional groups

2009-09-02T04:40:00.000-07:00

The ABSW Executive Committee is setting aside funds to help establish regional groups for members outside of London.

A recent survey asked ABSW members where you would like to see ABSW events hosted. Overwhelmingly, people wanted to meet in London. But there was a strong call for events in Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford and Brighton. Other individuals requested events in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester/Leeds, and Ipswich.

There has already been one event, an informal pub meet-up, in Brighton and two further events are planned in Bristol and the North (details below).

The ABSW Executive Committee has a small pot of money available for regional members who organise events outside of London. The scheme aims to provide a service for the many members who find it hard to get to events in London. It's essentially an opportunity to have a few drinks and some networking on the ABSW's tab. Organisers of events can also use the funding to pay to invite guests or speakers.

A subsidy of £5 per paid up ABSW member is available per person attending an ABSW regional event. For any event you must let us know in advance that you are organizing it, and a minimum of four members must attend to qualify.

Payment is made in arrears, with the organizer invoicing the ABSW afterwards via Paypal or electronic transfer. We also request a few lines about the event for publishing here in The Science Reporter to help encourage future activities, and that organizers provide a list of members who attended.

The funding for regional events is capped at £300. I would estimate that a third of this is already accounted for, so there is plenty left. If members find this a useful service, the Committee will seek to make similar funds available again next year.

A list of ABSW Regional Coordinators is below. If you live in an area where there is no regional coordinator and would like to start a group up in your area and be put in contact with local members please email.

Natasha Loder
ABSW Chair

ABSW Regional Coordinators

Bristol
Hayley Birch

Brighton
Michael Kenward

Cambridge
Ben Vasler

North
Paula Gould

Regional meetings

ABSW Southwest
The next meeting of the Southwest regional group will be in Bristol at the King Bill, 7pm. Wednesday 16th September 2009.

ABSW North
Helen Gavaghan and Paula Gould are meeting for coffee at The Media Centre in Huddersfield (close to the railway station), at 11am on Monday 7th September. All full and associate members are invited to join for the inaugural meeting of ABSW in the North. The Media Centre is at 7 Northumberland Street, Huddersfield and is only a few minutes walk from the railway station.

ABSW: Tell us what your rates are

2009-09-02T04:30:00.000-07:00

A new online pay survey should help freelancers determine their worth.

It is hard to know how to price your freelance writing and editing services fairly. Am I underpricing myself, or losing jobs because the amount I’m asking is too steep? Pitching for large projects can sometimes feel like a shot in the dark.

For the sake of all freelancers, we need to make sure that we're neither routinely under- or over-charging clients. If ABSW members share the information we have on pay rates, we can all benefit.

So, following discussions at the World Conference of Science Journalists, the ABSW Executive Committee has established an online pay survey to make the most of the ABSW members’ shared knowledge and experience.

All contributions are anonymous. Freelancers can add information on what they’ve been offered, paid, or what they hear the pay is for a particular job for a particular publication or outlet. If you’re not a freelancer you can still contribute by providing information on the standard rates offered by the publication or organisation that you work for.

There’s been a brilliant response to the survey so far. Particularly interesting was the variation in reported offers of pay per 1000 words. For one month this ranged from £85 per 1000 words to £700 per 1000 words!

The results of the survey are being circulated as a spreadsheet every month or so on the ABSW-L, so sign up to receive the regular updates. If you prefer not to subscribe to the list, but would like to receive the spreadsheet, please email and I will send through a copy. Use the same email address if you have any suggestions or comments on the survey too.

Thanks to everyone one who’s contributed so far. Keep it coming!

Chrissie Giles
ABSW Online Pay Survey Coordinator

COLUMN: Fabian's world

2009-09-02T04:20:00.000-07:00

Crystal gazing

Never overestimate the public’s ignorance of science, somebody once said. Perhaps it was me. A strange and startling art work in the form of a council flat in South London totally covered in copper sulphate crystals – walls, ceiling everything – has been attracting 200 people a day.

It was made by waterproofing a ground-floor derelict council flat and pouring 75 000 litres of copper sulphate solution through a trapdoor in the flat above it. An odd thing to do, and even odder to think one day: “That’s what I’ll do this summer. Never mind the sea-side. I’ll just pour some copper sulphate into a flat.” But that’s just an aside.

There was a bath in the flat that got filled with the crystals, but is less full now because of the public’s desire to sit in it and simulate bathing and break a few crystals off to take home. And they have been licking the walls too.

Of course people always lick the walls when they come into a derelict flat. It’s an old Cockney custom. You expect it. But you might expect them to hesitate at a wall covered in copper sulphate crystals.

Ah well. I have a plan to cover the walls of my flat in cow dung next year. You’re all invited.

Maths and cells

Recent TV programmes about maths and cells share the same desperate desire to amuse the viewer. Discoveries in Germany, Italy and USA for instance, must be accompanied by music and images of the country; accordions for France, flags for America and even fat women in bikinis for Italy. Imagine discussing and illustrating the Fibonacci series without a bikini in sight. Impossible.

One stumbling step

It appears that the famous “One small step for man…” might have had its origins in a Brit, Mr Peach, working for Nasa at the time of the Apollo launch; says he thought of it first and passed it along the line until it got through to Armstrong. Peach’s boss at the time doesn’t believe him and wonders sceptically why he waited 40 years to make his claim.

Even so I began to muse about what other phrases other first men or women to step on the moon might have come up with…

Silvio Berlusconi: Come out my little Bambalina and have your picture taken with Uncle Silvio.

Paris Hilton: Oooh lovely! Tons of free face powder.

Neil Kinnock: Well I won’t bore you with a long speech on this historic occasion, but I must first pay tribute to those giants of the Labour Party – Nye Bevan, Clem Atlee, Keir Hardy - without whom we would never have made it here let alone into Westminster. And while I’m at it, let me also point out… Just a moment. I say there. Can you spare me another cylinder of oxygen down here? Anyway, as I was saying…
George W Bush: This is what Iraq should look like when I’ve finished.

Bibi Natanyahu: First of all I must put up a big fence.

Lady Thatcher: Am I still in Grantham?

Prince Charles: This is what happens if you let nano-particles out of the lab.

President Ahmandinejad: I refuse to step on this surface. This is not the Moon; it is a large balloon designed by the Americans to be popped over my country to spread swine flu over honest citizens.
Sir Alan Sugar: If you can’t sell this thing by tomorrow, you're fired.

Pope: Sorry about that, Galileo.

COLUMN: My ABSW

2009-09-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

Reflections on the World Conference of Science Journalists

At the end of June, the ABSW welcomed the 2009 World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) to London. Over 900 people attended, including myself (who had previously volunteered to help with the conference administration) and many other aspiring young science writers who volunteered their time to help steward and organise the event itself.

For me, the questions, debate and controversy were amongst the highlights. It gave us journalists the chance to do what we do best: 'scrutinise and challenge' on subjects from swine flu to the role of embargoes in science reporting and the economic sustainability of current publishing and journalism models.

As Pallab Ghosh, President of the World Federation of Science Journalists said in a speech, “In this time where there is so much free content, our job as journalists is to be constructively critical, ask awkward questions and be confident to have our own take on stories rather than simply trot out the agendas of campaign groups, revered scientific institutions or indeed our news editors."

I believe the significance and value of the conference should not be underestimated. The delegates from all over the world seemed invigorated by the chance to speak out on the long-term impact on the profession. Many acknowledged the need to change and improve the quality of science journalism on an international level. And a frequent mantra arising from sessions was the need to have international links and contacts to get the science coverage needed in an increasingly global news environment – something that events like this can help facilitate.

With all the inspiring discussions and the fantastic people I met, my personal experience of attending the conference was a joy. I volunteered with the conference committee for nine months and seeing the project develop from its early stages into a well-attended and interesting event was a personal delight.

The volunteer scheme encouraged and inspired a new generation of students to work in science journalism. They will tell others about the importance of good investigative journalism in this specialist field, and how science journalists can have their own voice, questioning and challenging any hype and bad science. I for one came away with new ideas and added motivation to make it as a science reporter.

Rachel Mundy

For more information, summaries and reports from WCSJ 2009 visit the WCSJ website and news site, as well as the Best of WCSJ 2009 round up of resources on the ABSW blog.

Got a story about your involvement with the ABSW? Contact us and let us know...

COLUMN: ABSW-L Buzz

2009-09-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

In summer months, the lack of real news can drive a journalist crazy. But you can always rely on ABSW-L members to be pedantic over the finer points of science writing, bringing some light relief to idle minds.

Actually, July and August brought remarkably serious discussions to ABSW-L.

There were long threads discussing the best way to present your CV, as well as copyright contracts, pitching etiquette and how best to break an exclusive. Perhaps it was the World Conference of Science Journalists, bringing dual worries of the credit crunch and the 'death of print journalism' to our minds. Nevertheless, you can never expect the seriousness to play too heavy on the minds of ABSW-L members. Summer is the slow, 'silly season' after all.

So our ears pricked up when one afternoon Jon Turney opened a post with "I have a regrettable habit…". Jon was not, unfortunately, about to come clean about his more salubrious expenses, He was instead drawing our attention to an article on that most heinous, and common, crime of the writer: the cliché.

"I have a regrettable habit of writing "shedding light", knowing I ought to expunge it, then not getting round to it before publication," wrote Jon. "Must try harder."

Simon Hadlington added his sins."Shedding light – guilty; holy grail – guilty; missing link - probably guilty; silver bullet - possibly guilty." Claire Ainsworth added "Achilles Heel" to the list of those that should not be written, and Kat Arney admitted she has a "terrible habit of "paving the way..." for anything and everything".

"Why are all scientists 'leading'?" wondered Diane Stillwell, a term that press officers are particularly guilty of. "'Normal' scientists do experiments in their sheds. Leading ones get clean white coats and posh labs," answered Lucy Rogers, tongue firmly in cheek."Is this why we say 'shedding light'," chimed Hayley Birch, adopting the same pose. "By the time you qualify to be a 'leading scientist' your lab coat stays clean because you are never in the lab," said Mike Kenward. While Ed Yong vowed to "excise "leading scientist" from future write-ups in favour of the non-cliched phrase 'mediocre lab-monkey'".

But it's not just writers who reinforce the cliché. "I'm pretty sure I've used 'holy grail' in a quote from a scientist," said Hayley, and, as if to labour the point, her next interviewee did the same thing (Hayley, incidentally, keeps a word amnesty column on her blog). Julie Clayton wondered how many scientists undergoing 'Media Training' get schooled in the use of such terms.

But are these clichés actually so bad, asked Simon. After all, clichés are 'universally understood' shorthand. Hayley agreed that the use of sports fields and buildings can be a useful shorthand size comparison (there are even websites to help you make those conversions. Hat-tip to Ed Yong for those).

"'Shedding light' isn't actually misleading," said Ed, "it's just a little tired. And regardless of whether they're misleading or not, you could argue that good writers/communicators should try to avoid cliches as a matter of course."

Speaking of tired terms bounded around too much, list members also pondered on the actual purpose of a 'White Paper'. It's document widely used to peddle a line, said Mike Kenward, with the IT industry particularly enthusiastic about their use.

"I always understood a White Paper to be a policy document - something that outlined policy, together with the supporting facts, typically from a government dept, that preceded action in the form of a Bill," said Simon Hadlington. "Now the term appears to encapsulate just about anything: a guide, marketing guff, etc. I find this inexplicably depressing."

"There's also a green paper isn't there?," wrote Mike Nagle. "Comes before the white paper I think. Kind of an opinion gathering exercise." Yes, said Mary Rice, though it doesn't always lead to a White Paper. "In the 19th century there were also Blue Papers, which were very long versions of White Papers." "And don't forget red paper," said Ed. "Used to wrap up all the outcomes from the preceding green, blue and white papers."

"It sounds like the green, blue and white papers should end up wrapped in black plastic," said Justine Davies, clearly as tired as the rest of us at wading through large pdfs of the things. As Lucy Rogers put it, "Surely they need touch-paper at the end?"

Mun-Keat Looi
TSR News Editor

COLUMN: Out and about

2009-09-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

An incomplete and rather random guide to forthcoming events.

The first and foremost upcoming event for any self-respecting science writer is the ABSW's annual party at the BA (now British Science Association) Science Festival. This year's shenanigans are in sunny Guildford (a mere hour from London on the train) and the party starts at 6.30pm at Wates House, open only to bona fide journalists and ABSW members. Press Registration for the British Science Festival 2009 is now open if you'd like to sign up.

If you're in Guildford for the week, there's another interesting-looking event to schlep along to. As science writers we could be said to inhabit the gulf between the "two cultures" highlighted by C P Snow, with one foot in the literary camp and the other in the world of science and technology. A meeting at the British Science Festival will be seeking to resolve the rift by discussing "Culture Clash: The Two Cultures 50 years on". Chaired by Jon Turney and featuring our esteemed former Chair Ted Nield (among others), it promises to be a feisty discussion. At the University of Surrey, 8th September, from 4-6pm. More info can be found on the British Science Association's website.

Members with particularly literary leanings may be interested in getting involved in FictionLab - the monthly science book club at the Royal Institution, hosted by Jennifer Rohn of LabLit.com and dedicated to discussing great fiction with science at its core. The next meeting is Monday 7th September, and the book under the microscope is Turbulence by Giles Foden.

In case you're looking for some fodder for stories, or just to get out of the house for the evening, the Science Museum is putting on a series of Centenary Talks over the next few months, looking at scientific advances over the years. Head to South Ken on the 14th September to hear from Tim Berners-Lee, the daddy of the internet, on the 5th October for a jet-setting celebration of Concorde, or on 2nd November for the Age of Wonder (science and society at the end of the 18th century).

If looking back over a couple of centuries isn't enough for you, then how about the history of human evolution? The Royal Society is hosting a two day meeting covering the first 4 million years of human evolution (quickly, one hopes...) on the 19th and 20th October, culminating in a public lecture on the last 2 million years of our evolution on the evening of the 20th. Also on an evolutionary branch, the Royal Institution plays host to author Christopher Lloyd on 8th October, speaking about his new book "What on earth evolved?" and looking at 100 species that changed the world, from smallpox to slime.

You may find that contemplating 6 million years of humanity is too much to cope with without turning to mind-enhancing drugs - the topic for discussion at the Royal Society on 13th October. Popping a few pills to boost brainpower sounds like fun, but how do they work? Are they safe? And should they even be legal?

Finally, members interested in physics may fancy heading down to the Institute of Physics on the 9th September for the inaugural meeting of a group dedicated to communicating about the subject. Discussing topics ranging from "Beyond the Lecture - Where Next?" to "What makes good communicators?", it will be an opportunity to network and improve skills. More information is available from the IoP's website.

If you know of any upcoming events that might be of interest to members - especially outside London - then please drop me a line.

Kat Arney
ABSW Deputy Chair

Hall of Shame

2009-09-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

For text most deserving of a place in Pseud's Corner:
Drug may kill cancer 'mother' cells (Press Association)

Like the terrifying "mother" in Ridley Scott's Alien films, cancer stem cells are elusive, highly aggressive, and hard to defeat.
And just as destroying the mother Alien prevented more of her brood threatening
humanity, scientists believe tackling tumour stem cells could eradicate a
cancer's source.
Cancer stem cells.

For the most bizarre, unchallenged, scientific extrapolation:
How green is Richard Branson? (Wired Magazine)
'If bio-butanol turns out to be the success we believe it will be,'
Branson says, 'then one achieves making a big difference in the world
and paying the bills. Which the only way it's going to work,
long-term.' Yet large-scale isobutanol production is untested, and
some think it may be harmful. Deepak Rughani of Biofuelwatch says:
'You'd need GM microbes to break down woody tissues. If they escaped,
they would eat their way through our forests.'

Please e-mail us your candidates for the Hall of Shame.

You might suggest categories such as:

Most dubious use of statistics
Most tenuous attempt at balance
Most inappropriate headline

Whatever it is, if it makes you want to laugh/cry/tear your hair out, we'll consider it!

New Members

2009-09-02T03:50:00.000-07:00

Full members

Paul Rodgers is a freelance science, technology and medicine writer. His work has appeared in The Independent on Sunday, New Statesman, The Observer, The Economist and New Scientist. He has written for tabloids, broadsheets and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nadya Anscombe is a science graduate with many years of experience as a magazine editor and journalist. After holding senior positions on national and international technical magazines, she became a freelance journalist in 2002. She has experience in writing about a large range of topics including electronics, photonics, physics, chemistry, nanotechnology, material science, manufacturing, environmental science, medical physics and biotechnology. Since becoming a freelancer, her work has featured in a number of magazines, including New Scientist, Science and Nature Photonics. Nadya has also developed a media training course for scientists and engineers, which has been well-received by several engineering firms and university departments including BAE systems, PERA and the Optoelectronics Research Centre at Southampton University.

Philippa Pigache has covered everything in 45 years as a journalist except crime and sport. She also writes books, plays and short stories. She has worked on local newspapers, women's magazines, national newspapers, radio and television including the Sunday Times, Daily Mail, The Guardian, ITN and BBC science features. She was quiz-queen for Cosmopolitan, an agony aunt for Woman's Realm, and more recently began to specialise in health and medical science for professional readers. Philippa has published several general readership books on medical conditions and health. Her latest, How To Be A Healthy Weight, was published by Sheldon in 2007. She has won awards for her medical journalism, her books and also for her fiction, and is honorary secretary of the Medical Journalists' Association, and editor of its journal, MJA News.

Evelyn Harvey works as a freelance science writer following several years as a biomedical researcher. Her interests include medical research, public health and development, and the effective public communication of science. Evelyn is particularly interested in TB, which was a research interest of hers, and she writes for several non-governmental organizations about issues surrounding TB, HIV and public health policy.

Dr Emily Baldwin completed her PhD in Planetary Science at University College London, and now works for Astronomy Now magazine. Her main role is as the website editor, providing news content. She has recently taken over assistant editor duties, which involves co-ordinating the regular sections of the magazine. Emily also runs the Society for Popular Astronomy’s Young Stargazer section, which is aimed at encouraging under-16s to take up an interest in space and astronomy, as well as co-editing the Starlight newsletter, which is distributed free to schools and science centres across the UK. She was nominated for the Best Space Reporting award at The Arthurs in 2009.

Bella Williams is a freelancer who has written about anything and everything - most of it science, but not all. She started her working life as a pharmacologist, loving science and feeling priviledged to make a living finding out about interesting things. Realising that she enjoyed researching and writing about others' achievements more than working at the lab bench she eventually moved into science communication. From writing press releases at Brighton Science Festival, she gradually became more involved in science writing, including magazine articles, industry publications, policy documents, websites and newsletters. Her key interests lie in communicating medical ethics and science policy issues to lay audiences. For the past two years she has worked as lead content writer and web editor of a science website providing information on the use of animals in scientific research.

Terry Knott is a chartered chemical engineer and chartered scientist, with long experience of researching and writing about the technology of the oil and gas industry, and more latterly about renewable energy, biofuels and carbon capture. As a freelance writer with 25 years' experience, preceded by working as an engineer in the UK and USA, he has been commissioned by most of the leading companies in the oil and gas sector, and for over 20 years regularly reported through Offshore Engineer magazine as senior editor. He has won prizes for his writing from DTI/British Business Press, The Construction Industry Board and the Offshore Northern Seas Foundation. Terry has travelled widely and is also author of the business book No Business As Usual. For the past ten years he has been managing editor of Frontiers, BP's very successful group technology publication - which he launched for BP. This addresses diverse technologies across all of BP's businesses around the world. As managing editor he is responsible for the entire production process.

Marianne Freiberger completed a PhD in mathematics in 2001 and worked as a research mathematician at Queen Mary, University of London until 2005. She then joined the free online Plus magazine, which is about mathematics aimed at the general public. Plus is part of the Millennium Mathematics Project based at the University of Cambridge and covers mathematical angles of topics as diverse as art, medicine, cosmology and philosophy. As co-editor, Marianne looks after the day-to-day running of Plus, writing articles and news items, doing interviews, producing podcasts, copy-editing work by external authors, publishing content online, and managing one-off projects. Between 2005 and 2007, Marianne was editor-in-chief of the Maths Careers website produced by the Council for Mathematical Sciences.

Barry Gibb originally trained as a molecular biologist and neuroscientist. In 2005, he left research to start his own company, digitalis media: a means of exploring science through creative and emerging formats. His book, The Rough Guide to the Brain, was released in 2007. After several well-received short online science films, his 3 Minute Wonders - Life After Coma (Mosaic Films) – were broadcast on Channel 4 in early 2009. Most recently, he filmed, directed and edited eight documentaries for Channel 4 and The Wellcome Trust’s online Routes project, a groundbreaking fusion of genetics, drama, documentary and gaming. He is now working with the Wellcome Trust as their Science Multimedia Editor. (Not one of the Bee Gees then? OK -Ed)

Associate members

Dr Helen Jamison is a Senior Press Officer at the Science Media Centre in London – an independent press office working to promote the voices, stories and views of the scientific community to the national news media when science hits the headlines. Having previously worked in the press office of international science journal Nature, Helen is also a scientist by training with a biomedical science degree from the University of Sheffield, and a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Oxford.

Will Greenacre graduated from the University of Leicester in 2005 with a degree in biological sciences, and went on to complete a Master's degree in Science, Culture and Communication at the University of Bath. Here he volunteered in the press office, gaining experience in media relations and writing. Following a stint as a volunteer at the Science Media Centre in summer 2007, Will started full time as a Science Information Officer the following September. He is responsible for maintaining the SMC's database of experts, and preparing written scientific briefings on news stories as they break.

Michael Regnier studied natural sciences at Cambridge University before running away to join the theatre. He worked as a playwright for six years before joining Cancer Research UK as a press officer. Now a media officer at the Wellcome Trust, he is responsible for publicising the Trust's work in translational research and public engagement with science – including education, arts and medical humanities. Michael still occasionally writes plays, some of which are about science - notably Invitation to a Beheading, performed beneath a railway arch in Bethnal Green, London, which was Time Out Critics' Choice in October 2002, and The Prometheus Experiment, performed at Hoxton Hall in London in 2005.

Ollie Christophers is Communications Officer at the British Science Association, joining from Bell Pottinger Communications. He has previously worked on communications projects for the Department of Health, and has an MA in International Public Relations from Cardiff University School of Journalism.

Zoe McDougall has been working in science communications for 11 years. She is currently working for Oxford Nanopore Technologies, engaging in issues around the prospects for DNA sequencing and its potential impact on personalised medicine. She recently produced a session at the WCSJ: The $1,000 genome is coming. Are we ready? Previous work includes crisis management for BPL, part of the National Blood Service on the vCJD and blood products issue, and work in the clinical areas of asthma, diabetes, CVD and oncology.

Dr Ed Sykes works at the Science Media Centre in London. He is first point of contact for media enquiries and is responsible for the Centre's relationship with external press and PR officers. Ed studied Zoology in Sheffield before heading north to do a PhD in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh. Here, despite the joys of wasps and wonderful fieldwork spent diving in Oman, he began to indulge in a spot of science communication on the side. Whilst running workshops in schools, writing a booklet on evolution and training PhD students to be communicators, he won Famelab's 2007 Vodcast Award for talking about the sex lives of bedbugs.

Tom Sheldon joined the Science Media Centre in April 2008 as the dedicated Engineering Press Officer, and handles any issues in the fields of engineering, technology and the physical sciences that hit the headlines. He volunteered with the charity Sense About Science in summer 2007, contributing to their expose of pseudoscience and blogging for the Guardian along the way. He has degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics, and one day might finish his thesis on protein structure prediction.

Katrina Nevin-Ridley has been working in the field of media relations for ten years. As Head of Media at the Wellcome Trust, she has been responsible for developing a media strategy aimed at raising the institution's profile, including the work of the scientists it funds and promoting the venue Wellcome Collection. Formerly Head of Press and PR at the University of Edinburgh, Katrina was responsible for looking after the profile of the Vice-Chancellor and briefing the press across a broad spectrum of University business. Whilst there, she also implemented a proactive approach to publicising new research. Prior to that, Katrina worked for international development agency, VSO. Katrina is also Chair of Stempra, an informal network set up to bring together people working in science communication.

Philip Connolly was a journalist for 10 years on various trade titles, and edited Education in Chemistry for the RSC. Philip then turned to the dark side to explain science and technology - with their associated issues - to often sceptical audiences for Shell, Glaxo and now Merial. In between he headed up the Coalition for Medical Progress.

Student member

Mico Tatalovic is studying on the Imperial College Science Communication course.

Members' Books

2009-09-02T03:45:00.000-07:00

Professor Stewart's Hoard of Mathematical Treasures Another Drawer from the Cabinet of Curiosities

A new trove of entrancing numbers and delightful mathematical nibbles for adventurous minds.

Ian Stewart, author of the bestselling Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, presents a new and magical mix of games, puzzles, paradoxes, brainteasers, and riddles. He mingles these with forays into ancient and modern mathematical thought, appallingly hilarious mathematical jokes, and enquiries into the great mathematical challenges of the present and past. Amongst a host of arcane and astonishing facts about every kind of number from irrational or imaginary to complex or cuneiform, we find out: how to organise chaos how matter balances anti-matter how to turn a sphere inside out (without creasing it…) why you can’t comb a hairy ball how to calculate pi by observing the stars And we get some tantalising glimpses of the maths of life and the universe. Mind-stretching, enlightening and endlessly amusing, Professor Stewart’s new entertainment will stimulate, delight, and enthrall.

Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Profile Books (8 Oct 2009)
Price: £11.99

To have your book listed in the next issue, please e-mail the following by 19 October 2009: title, author, blurb, art, publisher and publication date, with number of pages and price if known.

DEBATE: Should journalists accept travel expenses from organizations they are writing about?

2009-06-25T02:31:00.000-07:00

FOR: Bill Goodwin, News Editor, Computer Weekly

Ideally, of course, journalists should not accept free flights, free lunches or free anything else from the organizations we are writing about. This is a sound principle, and one, at least in the USA, that is drummed into journalists from an early stage in their training.

In the UK its difficult to be quite so black and white, particularly on travel expenses. Many journalists, unless they have particularly enlightened employers, cannot afford to be quite so ethical. Travel and expenses budgets were never high. But over the past 12 months, the budgets for many publications have been cut back to the bone. Buying lunch or drinks for contacts is tricky, taxis are frowned upon, and when it comes to a flight or a hotel, well, you’ll be lucky.

But in the age of the internet its still true that journalists don’t get their best stories by sitting at their desks. Twitter, and RSS feeds are useful research tools but they can never take the place of meeting contacts in person.

We still need to attend conferences and events, and chat with people informally over drinks. And when overseas travel is involved, the choice is often between failing to cover the event and failing to secure an important interview or accepting a flight and a hotel from the organizers.

I have attended important conferences in the US that I could never have covered, if the organizers had not offered to pay my travelling expenses. By going along, however, I was able to hear, meet and interview, top business and academic experts I would have never encountered otherwise.

Does this mean I felt compromised ? No. I hope I would have interviewed the same people and written the same stories, if the costs had been met by my publication.

American journalists do place greater importance on never accepting travel expenses. And I agree with them in principle. Does it make them better journalists – not necessarily. When I have attended press conferences with US and English journalists, it’s often the English journalists that dare to ask the difficult, awkward questions – regardless of who covers their travel expenses.

But there is a line that should not be crossed. I was once given a bottle of good whisky as a Christmas present from a contact while working on a television documentary. The bottle went straight to a charity shop and I insisted on a receipt. I didn’t want to risk anyone using the gift as a reason to attack the program or undermine my integrity.

Where do you draw the line ? The Private Eye test is a useful guide. If Private Eye found out you had accepted travel expenses from an organization and printed that fact, would you mind. If the answer is yes, its better to stay in the office.

AGAINST: Dan Clery, Deputy News Editor, Science

MPs have, I imagine, been spending a lot of time recently thinking about how the injudicious use of expenses can damage your public profile. It is perhaps time for us journalists to do the same.

Over the past two decades I’ve worked for a couple of magazines that took positions on expenses that could not have been more different. I don’t know what its policy is now, but working for a British magazine in the 1990s there was no restriction on accepting travel and expenses paid for by organisations you were reporting on. I remember on one occasion spending a whole week touring Italy, visiting labs to see technology projects funded by the Eureka program. At the end of the week, Eureka allowed me to delay my return home so I could visit some friends in Naples, and arranged a business class seat home from there.

Very pleasant it was and, although I can’t remember exactly what I wrote at the end of it, I don’t think it was overly gushing or overly critical about Eureka. Like many a journalist, I told myself that my news instinct was immune to the influence of their generosity.

US-based magazines, such as the other one I’ve worked for, often have a strict policy on expenses: accept nothing. You always make your own way there, choose your own hotel, and buy your own lunch, even if it’s just a conference organiser who wants to pay for you to cover their event. Gifts are obviously another big no-no. It’s not only expenses that are out of bounds, other conflicts of interest are also carefully avoided. If I had a friend or relative who worked at the European Space Agency, I would be expected to step aside and let a colleague do European space stories.

Now I realise that the latter policy is the privilege of a successful magazine that has the money to send reporters wherever it wants them to go. Not every publication, especially among the trade mags, has a luxury: especially in the current climate when sales, subscriptions and ad revenues are down. For some journalists it’s a matter of accepting the paid-for trip and getting the story, or being high-minded and left with empty pages.

I’m not taking an absolute moral position on this, but I think junkets should not be the norm and we should aspire to be as independent as we possibly can. Can any of us really say that being wined and dined by a wealthy organisation is not going to make us more well disposed towards them? On the other hand, turning up somewhere under your own steam, asking the questions you need to ask, and walking away leaving your hosts without a clue whether you are going to write a puff piece or a demolition job does give a certain satisfaction. Our first loyalty should be to our readers and we owe it to them to ask the difficult questions. If we accept, or are perceived to be accepting, the generosity of the people we investigate, how can readers trust us?

There are reasons why journalists often sit alongside politicians at the very bottom of those public-figures-I-trust lists. It’s not all about doorstepping and cheque-book journalism, it’s about being seen to be on the gravy train. It’s time we got off that train and paid our own way.

EDITORIAL: Science is a method, not a beat

2009-06-25T02:21:00.000-07:00

I won't bore you with another article supporting Simon Singh's right to say he thinks something is bogus if he wants to. But I would like to comment on an issue that I think underlies Simon's predicament, and that gets to the heart of why I think science journalism is different than most other branches of journalism.

It comes down to this. I don't believe you can properly write about science by just reporting what scientists say and do and write and spend. You have to understand what science is, and what its rules are, and be able to figure out whether any particular discovery or development was arrived at according to those rules. If it wasn't, it is your job either to make that clear, or to withhold publicity from the unworthy research in favour of something better.

In a sense, this means that all science journalists are, or should be, advocates. Not for the scientists or fields they are writing about, certainly not for the scientific establishment, but for the scientific method. For asking the right questions and doing the right experiments. For being cautious when caution is indicated.

By the same token, we should also be critics, constantly asking whether the assumptions underlying a piece of work make sense and the conclusions arrived at logically using sound data. That makes us more not just reporters, but analysts.

It is precisely this knowledge of, and commitment to, the scientific method that makes science journalists special. In the 1990s, I did a masters in journalism and one of my biggest arguments with the philosophy of the course was that we were taught that 'a good reporter can write about anything.' I didn't buy it. A good, smart journalist without a hard deadline, maybe. Maybe. Otherwise you need someone who can start at least halfway up the mountain of the new scientific finding to be understood, not at the bottom. That takes a specialist.

This is why the recent trend to lay off science journalists (reported in the last issue) is such a big deal. It's not about jobs for the boys and girls. It's about science losing advocates at a time when it is already under pressure from pseudoscience (particularly in the UK), religion (particularly in the US) and superstition.

With hindsight, I think that Simon could have been more careful in his use of language in his piece in The Guardian for which he is now being sued. But I think that, at heart, he was simply doing what we all, I hope, try to do every day. He was standing up for science, and objecting to those who wanted scientific credibility without undergoing scientific scrutiny. Error of judgment or not, he should be applauded taking this stand.

Sunny Bains
Editor, TSR

NEWS: Simon Singh to fight libel verdict

2009-06-25T02:11:00.000-07:00

Science writer says he has a duty to appeal the High Court ruling in the British Chiropractic Association's case against him.

Science writer Simon Singh will appeal the High Court verdict that ruled in favour of the British Chiropractic Association (BCA).

At a press conference at the Science Media Centre, Singh announced that he would go to the Court of Appeal and is prepared to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if the appeal is denied.

"In a way I have a duty to do this because if I can't do it I don't think anybody else can," said Singh. "The court of appeals doesn't like to overturn rulings on meaning, but I'm in the incredibly privileged position that I can defend this. I have a bank account that can support me; I have a wife who's very supportive; I have friends and family and scientists around me who support me."

Singh, the author of several best-selling popular science books such as Fermat's Last Theorem and Big Bang, was sued by the BCA in May for an article published in The Guardian last year. In the article, Singh questioned the BCA's support for members who claimed chiropractic could be used to treat a number of childhood conditions. Singh went to the High Court seeking clarification over the wording of the terms in the article, which formed the basis of the BCA's lawsuit. However, High Court judge Mr Justice Eady ruled that Singh's terminology was a libelous statement and not fair comment.

At a heavily attended support meeting in London on 18 May, Singh said he had several reasons for continuing the fight: he might win; he wants his day in court to talk about what The Guardian article actually meant; and, most importantly, this case is about more than the validity of chiropractic - it is, "about the need to be able to write about issues fairly and reasonably without being intimidated," something that matters for all journalists, and ties into the wider issues concerning British libel law.

According to The Guardian, the courts could take two months to decide whether it will hear an appeal. Singh already faces a bill for legal costs in excess of £100,000.

Sense About Science has launched a campaign to keep English libel laws out of scientific debates, inviting interested parties to sign a petition. The petition has already been signed by James Randi, Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais, Sir Martin Rees, Penn and Teller, Stephen Fry, Martin Amis and Steve Jones.

"Everyone agrees that there is something fundamentally wrong with the English libel laws, which have a chilling effect on journalists, whether they write about science or anything else, whether they live in Britain or anywhere else," writes Singh in a statement on the Sense About Science website.

"I am delighted that so many individuals and organisations have come together to launch a campaign with Sense About Science to highlight how the English libel laws clash with the right to discuss science in a frank and fair way. The Keep Libel Laws out of Science Campaign will also raise issues related to my particular libel case, and it will encourage a debate on the reform of the English libel system."

"It is possible that the time is right for major libel reform in England, which will then allow scientists and journalists to write with less fear of being intimidated."

Singh will cover his own legal costs, but encourages anyone pledging financial support to donate to Sense about Science's 'Fighting Fund', set up to sustain what may be a long campaign to reform UK libel laws. To donate to the fund, please visit the website.

Mun-Keat Looi
News Editor, TSR

Also in this issue: David Allen Green (Jack of Kent), solicitor and well-known blogger, gives some advice on how to avoid getting sued.

NEWS: EUSJA fighting to preserve science journalists' reputation

2009-06-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

The European Union of Science Journalists' Associations (EUSJA) is working hard to defend science journalism and extend collaboration in the face of hard times.

You think politicians have a lousy reputation - what about journalists? An extensive survey carried out by the German Institute of Communication Sciences has just released results showing that two thirds of the German public think journalists are lazy and corrupt. And in Russia, science journalists are considered on par with those that write horoscopes!

When news of swingeing cuts in staff jobs amongst science writers started emerging, the European Union of Science Journalists' Associations (EUSJA) swung into action and has started a steady defence and PR exercise on behalf of the profession. At its General Assembly meeting in Trieste in March many of the 26 delegates reported freelance work has become harder, with rates being reduced and many facing problems trying to hang on to their jobs.

Delegates returned to their own countries determined to raise their profile. Already some associations have increased membership, particularly the Czech group, and others are planning membership drives, organising more events and trying to make commissioning editors aware of who they are and what they do.

At the 2009 World Conference of Science Journalists, EUSJA is running a seminar and debate, “Promises, Promises…” that aims to cement the reputation of science journalists as being a true and trusted source of knowledge and not merely interpreters of science. EUSJA president, Hajo Neubert will also travel to Paris to address a meeting of the European Science Foundation, which is examining the range of science coverage across the continent.

Elsewhere at EUSJA, efforts to organise more study trips have paid off. ABSW members are booked in for funded trips to Lindau, Germany, for a meeting of Chemistry laureates and others will be travelling to various research centres of the Helmholtz Foundation in Germany. There are more proposed trips coming up so keep an eye on the ABSW website and blog.

The French are working on a series of meetings on the nanotechnology between experts and the public, and want to enlarge them by inviting foreign science writers to discuss how the topic is considered and covered in different countries. The Finns are forging ahead with their own plans to be the next hosts of the World Conference of Science Journalists. Already much of the money is in place, helped by the Finns’ canny approach to raising funds. Anybody who attends overseas events can’t help noticing just how many Finnish science journalists there are. This is because their association collects, on behalf of all its members, royalties and rights, slices off a percentage and puts the rest back in the general kitty. Everybody is pleased. Writers often receive payments for appearances in publications they had no idea about and the Finnish group is able to fully-fund its members for trips as far away as the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Annual Meeting each year.

EUSJA will have a stand at next year’s European Science Open Forum (ESOF) meeting in Torino, Italy, and has submitted a proposal to have a programme slot. For more information about EUSJA please visit their website.

Barbie Drillsma
Vice President, EUSJA

Please contact Barbie if you have issues to raise at EUSJA meetings.

NEWS: 'Missing Link' found, heads lost

2009-06-25T01:51:00.000-07:00

Ida the fossil made such a splash in the science world it was difficult to separate the scientific reality from the hype.

TSR readers – like everyone else – are unlikely to have missed the recent ground-breaking discovery: Ida ~~a.k.a. Darwinius masillae~~ a.k.a. the 'missing link'. Given the controversial territory of early primate origins, it is unsurprising that Ida sparked scientific debate. But debate within the media?

Few contested that Ida was indeed an important find and an astoundingly complete fossil. It even got Sir David Attenborough excited. And when was the last time a new scientific discovery inspired a Google logo?

Interestingly, the story was a non-story from the start, with the Daily Mail announcing their scoop over a week before the official unveiling in New York. This didn't stop reporters contacting press officers around the world about this 'worst kept secret', with calls for more information and non-disclosure agreements signed left, right and centre. This did little to aid science, but fueled the fire of a media frenzy --and one that some felt undermined the reputation of science journalists.

Both Nature and Science criticised the oversell of the paper and the 'missing link' claims by the researchers and the Public Library of Science press office, though interestingly not Atlantic Productions, the production company behind the History Channel and BBC documentaries on Ida. The blogosphere was less kind. Brian Switek posited that this may be the first in a long line of science hypotheses becoming accepted not through convincing evidence, but by flooding the media with eye-catching press releases. Carl Zimmer and PZ weighed in similarly, while the whole circus provided ample fuel for Ed Yong's satire.

Was the hype necessary? Is Ida really that great? We can now judge for ourselves, with a replica of the 47 million-year-old fossil on display at the Natural History Museum in London. One thing is for sure: the media storm got coverage (and visitors to the Natural History Museum, the American Museum of Natural History and their Oslo equivalent). There may well be more such 'revolutionary finds' to come (with critics no doubt asking, at what price?). Perhaps this is the future of science communication, with TV producers at the back, rubbing their hands.

Claire Gilby
Briefings, ABSW

FEATURE: A practical guide to libel for science writers

2009-06-25T01:41:00.000-07:00

One would think that libel law would not trouble scientists and science writers. After all, modern science deals with facts, or with propositions expressly stated to not to be facts such as theories and hypotheses. Surely just keeping to the facts, or merely setting out ideas that are up for grabs, should not lead to being confronted with an expensive libel claim?

Recent events suggest that the real situation is very different. Notably the libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against the popular science writer Simon Singh which has caused uproar in the scientific community.

The group Sense About Science has now launched a campaign to keep libel laws out of science. Among the illustrious signatories to the group's petition on the subject are Fellows of the Royal Society and the Astronomer Royal. But is it significant that it has also been signed by many working science writers who are simply fed-up with the chilling effect of libel law.

Unfortunately it may take some time for the courts or Parliament to make the much-needed reforms to the law of libel. In the meantime, however, there are a number of steps that science writers can take to protect themselves against possible libel claims. In setting out these steps, it is important to note that the guidance in this article cannot be used as formal legal advice, as each situation needs to be looked at on its merits. That disclaimer apart, there is no reason for a science writer to be an easy target for a threatened libel claim.

What is libel?

In general terms, a libel is a published statement in permanent form by a defendant which will lower the claimant in the eyes of others. Libel differs from slander in that slander is for when the statement is in a transient form. For science writers, the relevant form of defamation is libel.

Libel and reputation

The key to understanding libel is that it is supposedly all about reputation - in the same way trespass is about property. The law exists to protect a reputation from unwarranted intrusions, just as trespass can exist to repel unwanted ramblers from a private estate. The threat to sue for libel is in this way analogous with the upset farmer’s cry of ‘get off my land’.

And, just as presence on a farmer’s field can be legally defended by showing a licence or right-of-way, the writer can defend a libel by justification or fair comment, or (less often) by privilege. But at law the alleged trespasser and alleged defamer both face the legal burden of proving their defences.

Who can bring a libel claim?

Any writer must be clear who can actually sue for libel. A libel claim can in principle be brought at the High Court in London by any living person with a reputation in England and Wales. A claim cannot, however, be brought by an estate of a deceased person. One cannot libel the dead. A libel claim can also, as Simon Singh discovered, be brought by a company as it is a ‘legal person’. However, a claim cannot be brought by a public authority.

A claimant does not even need to be mentioned expressly to be able to bring a claim if it is clear that the libel refers to them. So for example, saying that a particular drug is being promoted dishonestly can still be a libel, even if the promoter is not actually mentioned in the article.

Against this, an idea or body of knowledge cannot be libelled. For a writer to say that chiropractic - or even chiropody - is bogus should not cause any legal concern. However, the level of legal risk increases considerably when natural and legal persons are referred to in the context of such criticism.

Unless there is a good reason to refer either expressly or implicitly to a legal or natural person when being highly critical of either a school of thought or a practice, it is a good idea not to do so.

After all, had Simon Singh (or his sub-editor) referred instead to chiropractic in general promoting bogus treatments, and not referred to the British Chiropractic Association at all, then the latter would have perhaps been rather upset; but it could not have brought a libel case.

What are libellous statements and how can they be avoided?

One should be most careful when describing the motives of a person who can sue. Impugning the motives of a person is the single biggest libel danger. This means that even very hostile pieces are perfectly publishable because the motives of the people involved are not criticised.

To say that a company is promoting ineffective treatments is not necessarily a libel; but to say that it is knowingly or recklessly (or, it seems, even happily) doing so is to convert the allegation into a libel.

Crucially the law treats allegations of motive as factual allegations: it is often said by libel lawyers that a state of a person’s mind is as much a fact as the state of their digestion, even though this may seem nonsense to anyone with any basic science education. And it is an urban myth that just inserting ‘allegedly’ into text makes it libel-proof. Also, don't forget that reporting other people’s libels and slanders can often lead to liability in respect of those reports.

So unless one can defend an allegation of dishonesty or recklessness with solid factual evidence, any such allegation should be avoided, even if it is posited as the view of another person. Here it must also be noted that it is actually difficult to prove conscious dishonesty in the courtroom, as the Serious Fraud Office frequently demonstrates.

The next category of allegations to avoid - unless strictly necessary - goes to the professionalism of a potential claimant.

It will not usually be defamatory to accuse a person of an error of professional judgment. Indeed, lawyers themselves routinely - but always respectfully - suggest their colleagues have erred. Even Law Lords do it in their differing judgments on the very same case.

Potential problems arise where the implication is that the claimant has made a professional mistake so serious that it is negligent or otherwise culpable. This is when the conduct goes beyond what could be an acceptable difference of opinion or approach.

In most situations a simple, common-sense test can be applied by a science writer: will it be likely that a reader will think badly of an identifiable living person or a company? If so, and if giving such an impression really isn’t required, then simply re-word the piece until it is unlikely any reader would have that reaction.

And, insofar as the impression will be of dishonesty, recklessness or lack of professionalism, then make sure you never outpace the supporting evidence.

What to do when critical statements need to be made about potential claimants

When it is necessary to say something that could lead to the threat of a legal claim, then regard has to be made to the standard defences. There are three defences that can be in play for a science writer.

First, a libellous statement of fact can be defended by justification. If one writes that a company’s drug has been withdrawn because of serious safety concerns, or if one writes that a named practitioner has been struck off, then such a serious allegation needs only to be capable of proof.

This is far less easy when the (factual) allegation is that of dishonesty; for short of a confession, a criminal conviction, or similar compelling evidence, defending those allegations will be a struggle.

Second, a libellous expression of opinion can be defended as ‘fair comment’. This generally needs the defendant to show that it was a fair opinion based on the evidence available when the statement was made. However, this defence is not available to a defendant if there is malice or other evidence of ulterior motive.

In practice, strong and strident statements of opinion can be completely defensible. For example, although Ben Goldacre (and The Guardian) faced - and defeated - a lengthy libel action brought by Matthias Rath, the weekly ‘Bad Science’ columns are good models of how to be deeply scathing in making fair comment with little risk of a libel claim.

Third, for serious investigative journalists, there is also the ‘Reynolds defence’. The court will hold as privileged from a libel claim the work of a ‘responsible journalist’ who, for example, only makes serious allegations based on confirmation by multiple sources and after putting the article to the claimant for comment before publication. This is a fairly recent defence and, it must be admitted, has rarely been relied on successfully in practice. Indeed, many consider it to be unrealistic. To anticipate using this defence will usually require very detailed legal advice.

What to do when threatened with a libel action?

As Douglas Adams would say: Don’t Panic.

That said, such threats need to be taken seriously - especially if issued by a lawyer.

The most sensible course is to take legal advice. The least sensible course is to ignore the threat and hope it goes away.

The potential claimant, however, needs to do more that make this threat; indeed, the claimant needs to do more than allege that their reputation is damaged, however badly.

The claimant really needs to state precisely the alleged libel, which passage is in question, and what the alleged defamatory meaning is. Sometimes the potential claimant may actually have a point; and some speedy correction needs to be made.

On the other hand, if it appears that the passage stands up, and is legally defensible, then this can also be communicated firmly and politely to the potential claimant.

It may be that the horrific cost implications of standing by one’s completely defensible piece mean that the rational course of action is to give way and await libel reform. If so, nobody would think the less of you. But a mere threat of libel action need not have this instant chilling effect.

Conclusion

There is a powerful public interest in frank and candid science writing, especially in the fields of public health and public safety. Writing critical pieces referring to those capable of bringing libel actions is certainly risky, but the risks can be managed with sufficient preparation and careful wording. And if a threat ever arises, there are real alternatives to simple alarm.

David Allen Green
Consultant, Preiskel & Co

David Allen Green is a London-based solicitor in the technology, media and communications fields. He also blogs as Jack of Kent.

FEATURE: The future of the ABSW

2009-06-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

Sometime during the World Conference of Science Journalists, the ABSW chair will pass from Ted Nield to myself. Those who are finely attuned to the constitutional details of our association will be aware that chair of the ABSW is neither passed on, nor handed over, but is elected by our membership after the AGM in January. In the absence of nominations at our AGM earlier this year, Ted felt compelled to remain in office - even though this was for an unconstitutional three plus years.

Now, however, Ted feels that it is time to stand down as chair and the committee has agreed. As with previous chairs, he will join the committee to keep an eye on the new chair. I shall stand for election next January in the normal way but I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Ted for his work and commitment to the ABSW. His tenure will be particularly remembered for its vision and leadership with regards to the forthcoming World Conference.

On June 29th we will hold a special meeting for members to debate how the ABSW should operate and what our priorities will be over the next few years. This discussion will not only serve to re-invigorate the association but also to give your un-elected chair a mandate for the future. As of June 15th, more than 45 members are planning to attend our meeting, co-chaired by our President Colin Blakemore at the Dana Centre in South Kensington. An online survey is also heading your way, so we can gather opinions and ideas from everyone.

Let me start by saying that these are difficult times. Over the years we have seen a consistent decline in sponsorship and this has eroded the association’s finances. It is with profound regret that our much-loved administrator, Barbie Drillsma, has been offered redundancy. It is impossible to express sufficient gratitude for Barbie’s commitment to the association over the decades. Thank you Barbie. And thank you for being such a rock, and so utterly professional, about every aspect of these unfortunate changes.

As the saying goes, through crisis comes opportunity. If we are smart, we can keep the association relevant and useful. Barbie’s departure demands that we focus on providing the continuity and networking that she provided for us. There are also a number of organisational challenges that we will need to figure out. I hope members will bear with us while we deal with all the changes, and, inevitably, make mistakes.

One of our priorities is to operate far more efficiently using the website as well as other online tools and services. Mike Nagle is currently redesigning the website, which should allow us to serve our membership better and ultimately allow members to administer their own memberships, pay their dues online, and promote themselves on our website. Mike outlined these changes in a previous edition of the TSR. Increasingly the committee is exploiting online tools to organise meetings, to discuss and draft documents and to communicate with members. This electronic trend is likely to continue.

Our AGM this year made it clear that one of our priorities ought to be the re-establishment of our awards. At our last AGM, there was a lot of discussion about this. To summarise the points made: large-scale sponsorship for big awards has become harder to arrange, indeed impossible since 2006 after the loss of our previous sponsor; we cannot rely on sponsorship for our awards. If we do, we will find that in some years awards cannot be run; members say they don’t care about big cash prizes, or fancy awards ceremonies, they wish their professional association to recognise good work and that is enough in itself.

Given the above, it seems that we need to establish a way to administer some kind of awards at very low cost, even in the absence of sponsorship. So this year, with the support of the committee, we trialled a new electronic tool for administering a Best Newcomer prize. (The winner of this award will be announced during the World Conference in June.) The success of this method means we can now contemplate running a limited number of awards of low cash value in 2010 in the absence of a sponsor and without an event.

We would, however, need to charge a small fee for processing applications and organising the judging. This would be in line with the charges made by other associations such as ours for unsponsored awards. The awards would also need help from members to organise. For example, someone would need to arrange a judging day, and do a bit of administration. Of course, if sponsorship is secured, our awards could be scaled up accordingly. But I believe that it is possible to run basic awards in the absence of sponsorship and that we should try to set ourselves up to do so.

My priorities for the association are to promote a lively and revitalised series of events for members comprising seminars, training, lunches and trips, as well as debates and perhaps an annual lecture or sponsored dinner. I’d also like us to republish So You Want To Be a Science Writer, as well as figure out a way to make progress on re-establishing bursaries. I’m also very keen to use the power of our association to offer more services to members. For example we recently offered members subscription to the headline and caption-writing service Phrasefinder, on the basis of a group subscription. There may be other examples of this kind of thing that we are able to help with by negotiating similar deals, from cut-price software to reduced insurance rates.

I encourage people to offer suggestions for how we might better serve our members. [Note that you can do this via our member survey -Ed] In particular, I’d encourage you to volunteer to help organise the things that you would like to see happen. Bear in mind that we will always be richer in ideas than we are in resources. So much of what happens will be down to your commitment and involvement with us. We are lucky to have a particularly active group of members on the committee at the moment who I am greatly looking forward to working with.

In looking for projects that we might develop, the best ideas will be those that need a small seed of input to generate something of broader and lasting value. Please think creatively about how we should operate, and consider our limited financial but rich intellectual resources. The goal is to regenerate the ABSW - to make it more relevant for members and create an association that is adapted for the future.

Natasha Loder
Incoming Chair, ABSW

FEATURE: Barbie – Life and Soul

2009-06-25T01:21:00.000-07:00

Barbie, in Melody Maker days, on a pilgrimage to Macca

She only came for three months. Now, after 17 years, Barbie Drillsma is leaving as ABSW Administrator. Ted Nield asks her: what next?

I first met Barbie in the mid 1980s when I was writing regularly for New Scientist. Now and then, if something of mine was deemed worthy of the cover, it became the subject of a news release written by the magazine’s media relations person. Barbie didn’t strike me as a typical PRO, and I guess she doesn’t strike many as a typical ‘membership organisation administrator’ either. Nevertheless she has been the life and soul of the ABSW for almost as long as I can remember.

Barbie started the hard way, indentured for three “slave” years on the Liverpool Weekly News, the Widnes Weekly News and the Runcorn Daily News. After gaining her NCTJ she freelanced for the Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Echo and various other regional papers. She got her big break when she was twice runner-up for the Woman Journalist of the Year Award, which opened the way to a string of assignments for glossy magazines, including NOVA.

Equally adept on the PR side, Barbie worked as a public relations officer for Liverpool City Council, and then landed a dream job as North West Correspondent for Melody Maker. As she describes it, Barbie’s life then seems like something out of Life on Mars – mornings covering magistrates’ courts, afternoons drinking with off-duty rossers, and evenings trailing around clubs and hotels after the biggest names in the music business.

They were, as she says, ‘heady days’ – so heady in fact that she sometimes found herself covering the court appearances of the very people she had been at gigs with the evening before. Reviewing appearances of everyone from Bowie to Zeppelin, Barbie’s frank reviews earned her the singular honour of having her picture used as a dartboard on the dressing-room door at the Marquee Club. She claims there is no connection, but at this point Barbie ran away to Katmandu for six months (people did this sort of thing then). Duly finding herself “skint in Iran, having to hitch all the way back”, she decided to start taking things seriously. After that, things begin to take on more familiar form.

Moving to London, Barbie freelanced as a media officer for a number of IPC mags and met Bernard Dixon, then Editor of New Scientist, who persuaded her to take on NS as part of her portfolio. Shortly afterwards Mike Kenward took over. Any story she didn’t understand, she tells me, she would show to a certain bass-playing PhD student she had lately met called Lionel Milgrom. Through Lawrence McGinty, who left New Scientist as News Editor, she also became media relations officer for the newly founded C4 News.

Many ABSW members will be aware of the colourful relationship that Barbie and Mike Kenward still enjoy. She tells me: “I love Mike. Really. Under that brusque exterior there’s a really kind and helpful guy, driven to total distraction by my lack of technical skills. But I am really grateful to him, because he introduced me to the world of science journalism and was very supportive over my maternity leave.”

Her fate, and that of ABSW, became linked when Pearce Wright, then Science Correspondent of The Times, invited her out (“Spot of lunch, dear heart?”) to beg three months’ help “on the admin side”. When Pearce mentioned the dreaded subject of ABSW accounts, Barbie demurred; but his reply was: “You’re a journalist – you do your expenses don’t you?” And so Barbie was hired – though she continued to write freelance in between her two official ABSW days per week (though in reality much more than that, as every ABSW Chair since Wendy Barnaby will attest).

When she joined, the ASBW had just over 200 members. Now it has nearer 600, and Barbie knows many of them personally. Highlights? “I loved it when there was more money around and reporters had time to lunch” she says. “Monthly off-record briefings at the Civil Service Club were a great success. And I adore being involved in the European Union of Science Journalists Associations (EUSJA), and making it spend its money on its members!”

So, what of the future? Barbie is not going very far away. She is still the ASBW’s EUSJA representative (and is in fact Vice President). After that, she will stay on the Executive Committee, to advise all those who will have to turn the handles after she lets them go in August. Barbie plans to perfect her French (daughter Amy lives in Paris now), keep up the freelance writing and maybe take up a part-time degree in History of Art. Or write a bonkbuster.

For the girl reporter who got thrown out of Bowie’s hotel by security for being a groupie, but who kept coming back to get the interview, persistence is a Barbie strong-point. And those heady Liverpool days ought to provide plenty of material…

Ted Nield
Outgoing Chair
ABSW

ABSW: Working party to investigate embargoes

2009-06-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

In response to recent controversies, the ABSW Executive Committee has decided to appoint a small working party to examine the operation and application of embargoes that affect science journalists in the UK.

The objectives of the working party are: to examine the current use of embargoes that affect science journalists in the UK; to identify strengths and weaknesses in their operation and application; and to bring about improvements where necessary and possible, taking into account the best interests of ABSW members, science journalists in general, and the public interest. There will be eight members in the working party (yet to be appointed), including a secretary, and it will be chaired by ITN's Lawrence McGinty.

Practices both in and outside of the UK will be considered, as embargoes operate beyond national borders. The working party will collect evidence, information and views from ABSW members, non-members and non-science journalists, in the UK and abroad. It will also consult with the professions on the other side of the embargo line: the journal publishers and press officers. This is essential as science journalists do not, after all, control the embargo system and any improvements will require the active agreement and participation of those operating it.

The party's final report is due on 1 October 2009, including recommendations for improving the current arrangements for embargoes. This will be made available to ABSW members.

With a wide variety of views about embargoes among ABSW members and other science journalists, it seems unlikely that a consensus will be reached on all aspects of the subject. Nevertheless, the Executive Committee is hopeful that the working party will be able to shed light on the embargoes process and lead to improvements that benefit the parties on both sides of the fence.

Mun-Keat Looi
News Editor
ABSW

ABSW: Member survey now online

2009-06-25T01:01:00.000-07:00

With many changes in process at the ABSW, we in the committee want to gather as much information as possible about what our members actually want. To this end, we've put together a survey, which we invite you to complete by the end of July 2009.

Even if you're quite opinionated, the survey should only take five minutes or so to complete, so please do fill it in as soon as you can.

Natasha Loder and Kat Arney
Incoming Chair and Vice Chair, ABSW

ABSW: Journalism 2.0 workshop

2009-06-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

This year's ABSW events kicked off with a workshop on how next generation web tools are helping today's journalists.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a total technophobe, but for a while I thought that RSS was something you got from too much typing. Hashtags sounded like an embarrassing medical condition. And if I had experience with a search engine then I was pretty sure it had stalled. Permanently.

Thank the gods of technology then for the ABSW’s Journalism 2.0 workshop, led by our very own Mike Nagle.

On a warm May evening, a dozen or so ABSW members met at the the Wellcome Trust building in London armed with just a laptop and a thirst for information. The interesting and practical session covered a number of online tools and websites that I think could benefit most of us, both in a professional capacity and in ~~stalking ex-partners~~ our social lives too.

First, I was disabused of my thoughts about RSS (it is, as I’m sure you all know, a handy way to keep track of the content of many different websites without having to visit each individually).

Next, a discussion about Twitter covered ground familiar to anyone who subscribes to the ABSW-L and quickly divided the room into Twitter evangelists (or 'Twevangelists' - depressingly, this term does appear to exist in cyberspace) and those who had no experience (or no desire to have any experience) of the micro-blogging site. The site consists of users’ messages (or 'Tweets'), which are restricted to 140 characters. Hashtags are essentially keywords that are preceded by the hash symbol, a handy way for users to search content containing particular words or phrases. You can follow the ABSW’s Twitter feed here.

Love it, loathe it, or never heard of it, Twitter is an interesting example of an emerging social networking tool. Whether it’s an exciting way of searching up-to-the-second events and news across the world or an online navel-gazing forum remains undecided (but tweet me @christinagiles and let me know). A plug too for Facebook and LinkedIn - the ABSW has groups on both these social networking sites as well.

Every journalist’s best friend (alright, second after Wikipedia), Google, was discussed. Mike shared some cunning search tips, such as using the command ‘define:’ before a term to find definitions of it on the web. Also, adding ‘filetype:pdf’ after a search term will return results that are pdfs only (change the suffix to restrict your results to other file types). A quick Google has dug up this useful-looking list of Google commands.

We were reminded that Google is not the only search engine in the world (although it may be the only one that has become a verb). Microsoft’s rebranded and updated search engine Bing may also be worth a click.

Other gems covered at the workshop included www.archive.org, which is an astounding site full of old versions of websites - brilliant if you’re pretending it’s still 1995, or if you’re after something that has been taken down from a particular website.

It was a fascinating session, thanks again to Mike Nagle for his efforts.

Chrissie Giles
Regional Groups Coordinator
ABSW

COLUMN: Fabian's World

2009-06-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

By about 1800 BC the chair was common throughout the ancient world, but it wasn’t until about 1755 BC that the table was invented. Quite elaborate calculations had to be done on the floor while sitting on a chair, as this statue outside the British Library so vividly portrays.

Piety and royalty
The two leading scientists of the 21st Century, the Pope and Prince Charles have taken opposite side on the GM debate, the Pontiff in favour and HH against. I can’t make up my mind either way. As a born-again atheist and an arm-chair republican, I don’t support either of them, but disagreeing with both doesn’t really advance the argument.

Life in the nano lane
The science community’s increasing exploration of the nano world is fascinating but confusing for us swag-bellied old sailors who, until 15 or 20 years ago could just about encompass a millimetre as the smallest comprehensible length. Now we have to contend with prefixes such as femto, acto, oxo, and zento that are quite hard to imagine without lots of help, such as “tenth of the diameter of a human hair” or “one gram of butter a joctometre thick could cover a football field and leave enough over for 20 chip butties”.

So I was relieved when attending a conference last month on Nano Hands ie the devices that one might use for plucking carbon nanotubes up from one site, and placing them at another, to see that the speed of closure of the fingers was measured in feet per second. Like coming across an old friend in a crowded jail.

If only we could resuscitate the pole perch or rod as measurements of length, how much livelier these conferences would be.

I was also relieved to see a touch of magic introduced at the All Energy conference, where, at the plenary session, all the energy dignitaries contributed their thoughts. It was all so interesting I never glanced at the clock. Well now and again, just to keep my neck mobile. An electric clock, it was, but connected in a rather spooky way to `My Grandfather’s Clock', which, as you know, acted unexpectedly at various events in the grandfather’s life. The hands of this electric clock were whizzing round at about 15 rev/min zipping through the hours, peripherally faster than the closure of a nano hand (20 ft/s) marking, in its prescient way the time we’re squandering in our race to climate tripping point.

Come back Archimedes
Writing in The Independent recently, Terence Blacker complained about a rising trend to blame everything on fat people, and put together a list of their sins, one of which was that they use more water in the bath (than thin people).

Powerful stuff
An IBM scientist addressing 750 kids about the excitement of engineering last week, told them that a chip for a games console consumed four times as much power as one for a computer. He meant energy, of course. Anyway what do kids know? They'll accept anything. And we'll just run remedial classes at university. If they get that far.

COLUMN: My ABSW

2009-06-25T00:31:00.000-07:00

Toby Murcott changed my life

How an encounter with the ABSW led to a career change, and a happier life for one frustrated scientist.

The year is 2003. I'm working as a post-doc at a west London institution affectionately known as the 'Hammer House of Horrors'. My experiments are misbehaving, and my dreams of becoming a professor seem to be vanishing down the plughole as fast as a contaminated bottle of saline. All my life I've worked towards becoming a scientist, but I'm rapidly falling out of love with the idea of a career in research. But I'm still very much in love with science - so what else can I do?

Fast forward a few months. I'm passing the time by writing satirical articles for Science's online careers magazine and appearing on a small-time radio show called the Naked Scientists. I love doing it - and I'm getting some great fan mail - but surely it's no kind of career? Or is it...

Investigating routes out of the lab, I head along to a meeting of the Association of British Science Writers. Someone tells me it will be good for networking, and there will be free booze. Initially sold on the latter prospect rather than the former, I find myself chatting to real life writers and editors. The glamour! The opportunities! The cheap wine! I come home and write my first new story for BBC Online, and I'm hooked.

Time passes. By day I'm a lab rat, and by night I'm writing my socks off. I eventually find myself in the pub, having been co-opted onto the ABSW committee in what I cynically suspect is an attempt to lower the group's average age. A writer called Toby Murcott (previous chair of the Association) buys me a half of bitter and gives me the best piece of advice I've ever had. “Quit the lab and become a science communicator. You'll never look back. Just do it.”

Six months later I'm working as a Science information Officer at Cancer Research UK, and as a freelance writer and broadcaster in my spare time. It feels like the best job in the world - I get to write and talk about science all day, but I don't have to deal with test tubes.

Fast forward to the present. Since starting at Cancer Research UK five years ago (insert your own 'five year survival' joke here) I've been able to use my skills and passion as a communicator to tell countless people about the charity's work. I've been broadcast on radio and TV around the world - including having to explain how to do a testicular self-examination live on air to a sleazy drive-time DJ.

As part of my role I produce and present the charity's monthly podcast and write for our award-winning science blog, as well as writing and editing science content for our website. I'm also still helping to present the (now hugely successful) Naked Scientists BBC show and finding time for the odd bit of freelance writing.

Along my journey I've been grateful for the encouragement and advice of ABSW members. I'm now vice-chair of the association, and it's an organisation that I believe provides fantastic networking opportunities for new and established science writers. And Toby was right - I've never looked back.

Kat Arney
Vice Chair, ABSW

Got a story about your involvement with the ABSW? Contact us at TSR and let us know...

COLUMN: ABSW-L Buzz

2009-06-25T00:21:00.000-07:00

DIUS, peer-reviewed press releases, psychics and Twitter. All the latest natter on ABSW-L.

The DIUS is no more! Long live the DBIS! Yes, the short-lived DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) has been merged with the BERR (Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) to form the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. No-one is quite sure what the change will mean, or how many more acronyms we may have to remember in the near future. As Jon Turney wrote on ABSW-L, "DIUS, we hardly knew you (I'm still not even sure how to say it)."

Back in the real world, Mike Kenward heard a rumour that Eurekalert is changing its policy, blocking press releases that are not based on peer reviewed research. Could this really be true, he asked, and do you really want someone to weed out material that has not been through the process.

Kat Arney wondered whether such a change would affect the flurry of stories that come from conference abstracts over the summer. "I'm often asked for comments on cancer-related ones, but often all I have to go on is an abstract and a press release, neither of which usually provides a fantastic amount of scientific detail."

"There is outstanding research out there being presented at meetings and fair play to the journalists who snap up those stories," said Celia Kozlowski, "and there is also some utter crap being published in peer-reviewed journals - some of which is touted on Eurekalert."

Justine Davies agreed, "There is an awful lot of good research that doesn't appear in peer-reviewed publications because of pressures on space." She hoped that any discerning journalist would take into account the credibility of the researcher and have enough knowledge of the field to know whether the research deserves an airing. "A decent journo would surely also ask for an opinion of someone else in the field before writing a story?," she wrote.

As Celia put it, "Whatever Eurekalert does, it ultimately comes down to the science writer to sort the gems from the dross."

That reminds me of a press release Mike Kenward received, describing how "More and More Business Owners are turning to Psychics". It was not (unfortunately) as Ed Yong first read it, "Business owners turning to Physics", but marketing for Russel Grant's carefully selected team of Mediums. "Using psychics and mediums for business use is not unusual, in fact they are usually employed to suss out prospective employees, solve mysteries within the workplace or indeed work hand in hand with astrologers and Financial Directors to plot the business moving forward," it declared, to the amusement of Diane Stillwell and others.

Brian Owens received the PR too. "It didn't go into my junk mail folder, so obviously Apple thinks there's something in it. Maybe that's how they knew the iPhone would be such a success?"

Elsewhere on ABSW-L, Pete Wrobel highlighted a fascinating statistic from The Times: "The overall risk of having a crash falls by five per cent for every one mph reduction in speed." They didn't say what happens if you reduce speed by 21mph. This reminded Bernard Dixon of something he heard on a US radio station, "The announcer said there was a 50 per cent chance of rain on Saturday and a 50 per cent chance of rain on Sunday, so rain was certain (100 per cent) over the weekend." That would certainly explain the weather during barbeque season.

Finally, list members were once again atwitter about Twitter. There was much bemusement at the Telegraph's huge fail with Twitterfall, which once again prompted the question: "What the hell is Twitter?". I won't bore you with yet another Twitter discussion (for helpful links, explanations and examples read the threads here and here, but as Ed Yong put it: "Future of journalism or time-wasting narcissism depending on who you ask."

Mun-Keat Looi
News Editor
The Science Reporter

COLUMN: Out and about

2009-06-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

An incomplete and rather random guide to forthcoming events.

We may not quite be experiencing the `barbeque' summer promised by the MET office, but there are a few events to tempt science writers away from the charred sausages and warm white wine over the coming months.

Of course, I expect you're all going to the World Conference of Science Journalists (30th June to 2nd July). I'll be wandering round with a recorder, making podcasts on behalf of the Naked Scientists, so do say hello.

In case you're still around after the conference, the Summer Science Exhibition 2009 is on at the Royal Society from 30th June until 4th July. With more than 20 exhibits from scientists working at the cutting edge, this will be a great source of stories from fluorescent fish to space missions.

Writers with an interest in acoustics should bend their ears towards the inaugural meeting of the Acoustics Public Engagement Network, on Thursday 16th July at UCL on Gower Street. More details are available from Dr Steve Dorney.

Political animals in the ABSW's membership might be interested in the Association of Medical Research Charities' Public Affairs workshop, on 25th June at the British Psychological Society in London. Billed as a "crash course in parliamentary literacy", the workshop is aimed at anyone working in - or interested in - policy and public affairs. And you may even learn how to fiddle your expenses while you're at it. Find out more from the AMRC website.

That's all for now - I wouldn't want to keep you from the sausages. How do they manage to be simultaneously undercooked AND overcooked?

Kat Arney
Vice Chair, ABSW

Please send details of upcoming events to us at TSR and also let us know if you'd like to write it up after attending.

Hall of Shame

2009-06-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

For innovative use of dubious research to promote a company:
Survey Reveals Workaholics now working 2-6 hours a week in bed

For hype above and beyond the call of duty:
The Book of the Universe; an outstanding new book which alters our ideas on fundamental issues

For the most breathtakingly obvious conclusion:
Survey reveals why some people are saying 'No thanks' to Digital Britain
"OxIS 2009 concludes that the Internet is a valuable resource for people to find information, communicate with others, and find entertainment ‘in ways that could well give advantages to them over those who choose not to use the Internet’."

For cut and paste journalism:
From Walkabout Bars: New study reveals the secrets behind the way you hold your drink
From BBC Online: 'Glass hold' reveals personality
Make sure to check out the credit on the BBC Online cartoon, and note that this was published in the Health section. [If a student of mine had handed this in, they would have been done for plagiarism. -Ed]

Please send your candidates for the Hall of Shame to tsr@absw.org.uk. You might suggest categories such as:

Most dubious use of statistics
Most tenuous attempt at balance
Most inappropriate headline

Whatever it is, if it makes you want to laugh/cry/tear your hair out, we'll consider it!

Thanks to Mike Kenward, Natasha Loder and Stuart Arnott for their contributions.

New Members

2009-06-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

Full members

Barbara Axt holds an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London and has published work in New Scientist, SciDev.net and Research Fortnight. She is currently working as a reporter for animal health magazine Animal Pharm.

Anna Lacey is a freelance science journalist who reports and produces for BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service and the Cancer Research UK Podcast. After completing a degree in zoology at Cambridge University, she produced the Naked Scientists radio show and the Nature Podcast. Anna then left to pursue dreams of travel and a freelance career – leading her to report on science, health and environment stories from Tanzania, the Caribbean, Rwanda and Europe. Anna won the ABSW New Voice award in 2007 and wants to continue finding out about the role of science across the globe.

Andrew Extance officially joined the ranks of professional science journalists in 2007 after eight years working in labs making drug candidates and adhesives. Since editing the university music newspaper as an undergraduate chemist, he has increasingly combined his passions for writing and science. This bore fruit in 2004 with a commendation in the Daily Telegraph Young Science Writer awards, and publication of his first freelance feature in Chemistry World. Andy then became a regular contributor to A-level chemistry magazine Chemistry Review, before eventually becoming a reporter for IOP Publishing. There he began reporting for Compound Semiconductor magazine and website, before becoming news editor at the beginning of 2009. He also freelances for adhesives websites SpecialChem4Adhesives and Omnexus4Adhesives, and is keen to work with more publications.

Naomi Antony has a background in geology and completed her MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College in 2007. Since then she has worked as an editorial assistant for SciDev.net, a not-for-profit website that provides news and views about science and technology for the developing world. She helps to run the news desk, searching for potential news stories and editing articles. She also writes some of the site's UK- and US-based stories.

Katherine Nightingale is a science journalist working as assistant news editor at SciDev.net. She has an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College. Katherine tends to write about health and development issues, but edits content on a wide range of topics. She has an interest in nurturing science journalism capacity in the developing world – something that is a challenge sitting at a desk in London. She also freelances for publications including The Lancet, and would like to stretch her creative muscles with book and film reviews.

Henry Scowcroft spent four years at university studying biochemistry before realising that the laboratory life wasn’t for him, and going to work for a science journal instead. From there, he went on to do a masters in science communication and, after a brief flirtation with science journalism, started working in the Science Information team at Cancer Research UK in 2003. In January 2005, he helped launch the charity's News and Resources website, which he helps to run. Henry also manages and contributes to the award-winning Cancer Research UK Science Update blog. His current area of fascination is how the adoption of social media and other developments in the online world can be harnessed by scientists and science communicators.

Associate members

Gary Stevens of the Lincoln School of Journalism was at the BBC World Service for 18 years, working on various programmes including Waveguide (technology), BBC English Guide to Science and Sciencedesk. He is now a senior lecturer at the University of Lincoln, focusing on broadcast journalism, and is programme leader for the MA in Science and Environmental Journalism.

Danielle Reeves has worked as a senior press officer at Imperial College for three years, specialising in publicising the work of the College's Natural Sciences faculty. She writes press releases, articles and web stories about the cutting-edge research currently under way at the College.

Natasha Martineau is Head of Research Communications at Imperial College London. She has previously worked as Science Communications Manager at the Environment Agency, as the director of COPUS at the Royal Society, publicity manager for the BBSRC and project manager at the British Association. She has also been a freelance science communicator.

Lucy Goodchild has a BSc in Genetics and Microbiology, and an MSc in the History of Science. She previously worked in External Relations at the Society for General Microbiology, publicising meetings and research in journals, then worked as assistant editor at Microbiology Today. Currently, Lucy works as a press officer for medicine at Imperial College, and writes as a freelance for science magazines and websites in her spare time. She is currently writing a book about bees.

Laura Gallagher has worked in the Communications Division at Imperial College for five years, first as a press officer then a senior press officer. She covers the College's faculties of Engineering and Medicine.

Sarah Bougourd has an MSc in Science, Culture and Communication from the University of Bath, and now works as Communications Officer at the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. She deals with press enquiries and issues press releases. Sarah also writes scientific and medical copy for the Council's website and publications, with the aim of raising awareness and promoting discussion of the organisation's work.

Student member

Duncan Stewart Smith is based in Glasgow, Scotland. He graduated in astronomy and physics and, after a stint at Glasgow Science Centre, has returned to academic life studying for a masters degree in Science Education and Communication. He has also been selected for the Wellcome Trust Mentoring Scheme for Emerging Talent to attend the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers in 2008. He is primarily interested in informal ways of learning, from café scientifiques and newspaper articles to television documentaries and science centres. The scientific topics that get him most excited are in astronomy and physics, such as gravitational waves and supermassive black holes.

FEATURE: Getting the scoop on embargos

2009-05-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

On 14 January, the journal Science must have been feeling pretty pleased with itself. It was the start of a new year and its top story, embargoed for 16 January, was about the discovery of seasonal variations of methane emissions over certain locations on Mars. Although methane had been discovered before on Mars, the fact that it was coming from specific places on a planet with no active volcanoes seemed to increase the possibility that the source was biological. Science summarised that the research implied “active geological, or possibly even biological, processes”.

The next day brought a surprise. The Sun newspaper was running a front-page story proclaiming: “NASA reveals life on Mars”. Later that day, registrants for Science press releases received an email explaining that the embargo was still standing and that The Sun had merely published a “teaser-type article that only speculated about a forthcoming NASA press briefing, apparently based solely upon a NASA press invitation to that event.” It continued: “The writer of this article is not registered with us, and his report in fact provides little scientific information. It does not reference Science, and it appears to be a purely speculative narrative.”

Behind the scenes, the story was murkier. ABSW freelance member and one-man space-science news agency, Paul Sutherland, was the journalist who got the scoop. He documented his side of the events on his website and within the ABSW’s online newsgroup. He wrote that when the story appeared “there was uproar. The US-based Science journal rang The Sun's newsdesk at 3am demanding the story be removed from the paper's website. They claimed the news was embargoed and were no doubt horrified to learn that it was in the process of being printed on the front of three million newspapers.”

The origins of Paul’s story could be traced to an email freely published by NASA which said there would be a special press conference and advised that it was “to discuss analysis of the Martian atmosphere that raises the possibility of life or geologic activity.” There was no embargo on the release. With a bit of detective work and an interview with Mars expert Colin Pillinger, Paul had his story. Three days after The Sun published its piece, Paul wrote to the ABSW newsgroup confirming that Science had accepted he had no access to, or knowledge of, the paper it was about to publish.

Nevertheless, by 23 January The Sun had been punished. It was struck off the EurekAlert embargo service for six months (read the press gazette story).

EurekAlert is operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) - the association that owns the journal Science. A ban from Eurekalert not only deprives a journalist of access to Science, but also to the many other American journals and universities that use the service.

Paul felt this behaviour was “outrageous” and said at the time, “it is highly damaging to me as a freelance science writer as it implies that I break embargoes.” What added fuel to the flames, said Paul, was that it appeared to be “an act of revenge rather than a deserved punishment”. Ginger Pinholster, the media supremo at the AAAS, told the Press Gazette that, “we have had many complaints from other [news organisations] who were tremendously inconvenienced and placed at a disadvantage."

ABSW chair Ted Nield responded quickly by writing to Ginger, urging her to, “reconsider what many here think looks like a disproportionate act of petty revenge”. The decision was overturned within hours. But a lot of issues remain.

For one thing, we will never know internally whether The Sun used its access to Science to confirm the story before putting it on the front page. When I talked to Ginger, she explained that they had been able to trace that someone from The Sun had accessed the media summaries that week, prior to the publication of its front page. But The Sun insisted that the Science press release was not used in the preparation of the story.

More broadly, within the ABSW this has led to calls for an embargo committee to be formed, something proposed by member Lawrence McGinty and endorsed at the ABSW’s AGM this year. He told the Press Gazette: "I don't want a debate on whether journalists should participate in them - that would be academic because they are here to stay. But I do feel that journalists should have some say in how embargoes work.” Ted added that inconsistencies in embargo policies emphasised their arbitrary nature.

Unfortunately, since all this frenetic activity, the embargo committee has not yet met. Lawrence has sadly had to deal with illness in the family, but he still hopes to be able to produce a working document in the next few months. And we are all looking forward to a lively session at the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists (30 June - 2 July 2009), "Embargoes in science reporting: Friend or Foe?” This will be an ideal opportunity for those responsible for setting embargo policy in public relations and within journals, to engage in an open discussion with the journalists who have to deal with embargoes. We might all learn a lot, and if we could establish some ground rules and good practice, then the outcome is likely to be better for us all.

Natasha Loder
ABSW Committee

Members' Books

2009-05-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

Out now

This book has issues: Adventures in popular Psychology
Christian Jarrett and Joannah Ginsburg
ISBN-13: 9780826479785 ISBN-10: 0826479782
Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
£12.99

Antimatter
Frank Close
Oxford University Press
ISBN 978-0-19-955016-6
£9.99 (Sample available)

He knew he was right: The life of James Lovelock
John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin
Allen Lane
ISBN-10: 1846140161 ISBN-13: 978-1846140167
£18.99

Not Fade Away: The Life and Music of Buddy Holly
John Gribbin
Icon Publishing
ISBN 978-184831034-6
UK £ 12.99

Coming soon

Communicating Science: professional, popular, literary
Nicholas Russell
Cambridge University Press
ISBN-13: 9780521113830

Timeswitch (a novel)
PS Publishing
John Gribbin
ISBN: 978-1906301613
£20.00

DEBATE: Do science journalists now rely too much on press releases to do their jobs?

2009-05-04T04:10:00.000-07:00

FOR: Aisling Irwin, News Editor, SciDev.Net

It's not that the press releases are poor quality. In fact it’s quite the opposite: many of them are fine examples of their type. There they are every morning in the news inbox or at the top of an RSS feed: pages of clickables in the EurekAlert! email; stories from AlphaGalileo; discoveries from numerous Universities of Exemplary Science; successful research sponsored by the We Fund Fantastic Science Foundations, non-governmental organizations, charities, institutes. Hundreds of science communicators have been tapping away and we journalists are kept busy all day just sifting through the fruits of their work.

When I worked on The Daily Telegraph these myriad releases solved most of our problems. Much of our work was to sift through them, pluck the most promising, do a greater or lesser amount of work on them, and toss the finished gem to the news desk before beginning work on the next one.

Press releases help us feed a voracious news desk; they lessen our fears of being trumped by a rival publication – because we know we all feed on the same sources. They fill our days with a sense of industry, but this hides from us our journalistic crime: passivity.

In this press release-laden life of ours this is what happens: we sit in gilded cages feeding on the titbits poked through the bars when our real job should be out digging for worms.

Worms: stories that no-one is paying a communicator to boast about; stories that no-one wants publicised; stories about people who have no voice.

In my job as news editor of SciDev.Net (Science and Development Network) there are many of these science stories and they take a lot of work. There are unsung scientists, in Africa in particular, doing world-changing work. They need to be found, pinned down and interviewed, sometimes against their will.

There are stories, too, about the science that isn’t getting done. No-one writes a press release to say they failed to find a cure for elephantiasis – but it matters. In any country there’s the research that doesn’t get published – the negative findings (the promising drug that turns out not to work); the findings that were too controversial to print. There are the many intellectual disagreements between scientists that don’t find their way into press releases which, ultimately, are written to enhance the reputation of their sponsors.

There are issues that cloak the practice of science, and its repercussions, that don’t get into press releases, but that are a vital part of our work. If we don’t explore them then one of two things happens: either they lie quiet and unwritten about or the generalists pick them up and make a hash of them.

But press releases aren’t preventing us pursuing those stories, are they? Surely we can work with both approaches to stories?

That’s the insidious thing. The bucket of press releases that greets the journalist in the morning has become compulsory whereas the worms are optional – on the “to do” list for when we’ve cleaned out the bucket. The problem is that the bucket is rarely empty. And, if we ever do reach the bottom, we find that being spoon-fed has changed us. We have become indolent. Digging for worms seems like too much hard work.

AGAINST: Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science

No! Press releases remain an indispensable source of information for journalists, but there is no evidence that they rely to heavily on them, despite the increasing pressures on them.

Although things are getting better, many scientists are pretty poor at communicating about their work with people outside of their own disciplines, including the ‘lay public’. But press releases allow communications professionals, such as university press officers, to help scientists produce clear, concise and quotable descriptions of their research.

Journalists use good quality press releases to help them decide whether a new scientific paper or research grant presents an opportunity for a news or feature item. The releases are far easier for journalists to assess than jargon-laden journal papers which are written for other scientists.

But most good journalists use a press release as a starting point for a story. Journalists can pursue their own angles and obtain their own quotes on a story simply by using contact details on the release.

And, as a last resort, a press release may provide a choice quote that cannot be obtained from a scientist who is too inarticulate or inaccessible.

So press releases are an efficient way of helping both scientists and journalists to achieve the ultimate aim of communicating with a wider audience.

That is not to say that there are no examples of bad practice. The quality of press releases, like press officers, can vary a lot. A bad press release might provide an inaccurate summary of a piece of research, especially if it has not been checked with the scientist who carried it out.

And a poor journalist, or a good journalist struggling to meet an impossible deadline, might be fooled by a release that obscures a major flaw or a vested interest. But few science journalists I know fall into this trap.

Most of the objections these days to the use of press releases comes from people who argue that each story a journalist writes should be the product of months of painstaking investigative work that culminates with an exclusive, while a story that is prompted by a press release amounts to reprehensible “churnalism”.

Such notions are based on a romanticised view of the job of a busy science journalist. In the real world, journalists use press releases, like other sources of information, to help them make quick and effective decisions about whether to cover a story.

But there are ways in which the current situation could be improved. The quality of press officers, and the releases they produce, range from the outstanding to the appalling. The art of writing a good press release is a much under-appreciated skill, not least because the role of press officers is under-valued in most places where scientists work.

Journalists could improve the quality of press releases, and make their lives easier, if they were more prepared to highlight the good, the bad and the ugly. Surely the way forward to praise the good and shame the bad and the ugly, not condemn them all?

New Members

2009-05-04T04:02:00.000-07:00

In an impressive display of solidarity, there's a good showing from the British Council in the latest crop of ABSW members.

Associate members

Dr Lloyd Anderson is the British Council's Director of Science Engineering and Environment, based in London. He is responsible for setting corporate policy in this field, in close consultation with key UK stakeholders and partners, helping to translate global policy into strategies at regional and local level. The sector has a global budget of £8 million, with programmes and science network representatives in 70 countries. Lloyd also ensures that British Council teams overseas have the right activities and campaigns to promote British science innovatively and effectively, and networks at senior level within the UK science community and Whitehall to build understanding and support for the Council's science work.

Dr Yasemin Koc studied Analytical and Physical Chemistry at the Institute of Technology in Vienna. She then pursued a PhD in Nanotechnology at Imperial College and subsequently started work as a Business Analyst at JP Morgan in London. She currently works as Advisor for Innovation and Science Communication at the British Council in London. Her role includes providing expert advice in the fields of innovation systems, knowledge transfer and science communication. She works to develop and build relationships with external partners and stakeholders including the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills, UK Trade & Investment, Research Councils UK, the Royal Society, the Royal Institution, the British Science Association, the ABSW and the Natural History Museum as well as science festivals and centres. In addition, she identifies partnerships and bids that can bring income to the British Council.

Dr Claire McNulty began her career as a developmental biologist, completing her PhD at King's College London, then worked as a postdoc in Utrecht. In 2005, after a period working for the scientific publishing company Elsevier, she became an independent Science Consultant. From 2005 to 2008 she worked on several science-related projects for the British Council, including 'Next Generation Science' aimed at school children, and 'Network UK', a support service for international researchers in the UK. In September 2008 she was appointed Science Adviser (Life Sciences and Science Policy) for the British Council. Her role is to develop and support science and research-related projects, and to build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders in the UK and overseas. In addition, she keeps abreast of current UK developments in the life sciences, in order to communicate these developments to British Council colleagues all over the world.

Catherine O'Donovan studied science communication in Canberra, Australia. During the course she travelled around the country presenting science shows and workshops to schoolchildren. After acquiring a taste for science journalism, she took a work placement at ABC's 'Catalyst' TV show, and internships with Cosmos and ReNew magazines. Catherine moved back to the UK in early 2009, and intends to continue freelancing in print media.

COLUMN: Acker's World

2009-05-04T02:35:00.000-07:00

The French call them pissanlit

In a continuing debate in the Freethinker about the balance between Prince Charles’ cupidity and stupidity, Professor Edzard Ernst of Exeter University takes the Prince to task for flogging the Duchy Detox Tincture. Apparently it comprises mainly dandelion and artichoke extracts and doesn’t do nor can do what it says on the bottle, says Ernst. If you want to detox, he says, drink lots of water, take exercise, and get some rest. The detoxing properties of artichokes are non-existent, he says, adding conclusively: “I know everything about artichokes that there is to know.”

Well that’s a claim he might come to regret. Few scientists would say that about anything. As Ogden Nash once said: “Whenever you're right, shut up.”

But on the other hand, Prince Charles might counter this by an equally grandiose statement saying he knows everything about dandelions there is to know, a claim glaringly omitted by Ernst. I would be inclined to believe him. Surely something must have rubbed off after all those years of education, private tutoring, Navel College and travel, and I think it must be dandelions. Our future monarch must be a world expert in that field (sic) by now compared with his expertise on nanoscience or any other science comes to that. In fact, apart from this dandelion-yellow chink in his armour, I think he knows bugger all about science.

Esplorado substitui sabla for benzino in the benzinmotoro

Of course readers of TSR will be able to see at a glance the important implications of my paper (or “esplorado” as we international scientists call “research”) into the use of sand instead of petrol in the petrol engine (or “benzinmotoro”) published in Esperanto in 2002, and totally ignored by the scientific community. Well no; not actually published but written in Esperanto and offered to the world’s most prestigious journals including the Nature, The Motor Ship, Auto and Auto Car, Church Music Quarterly , Exchange and Mart, and the V-belt Journal. Not one of them responded.

I was astonished and embittered by this world’s rejection of a technology that has now become so necessary. Esperanto peers reviewed it and found it faultless.

This bitter episode in my life was revisited recently, when I was doing some research on the jet stream. It seems that the Japanese scientist Ooishi had postulated and proved the existence of the jet stream about sixty years before it was recognized and evaluated in the West. His understanding was so comprehensive that Japan, during World War II, managed to exploit the stream and used it to deliver bombs to the USA by a balloon. It was launched in Japan into the jet stream and carried at high altitudes to the USA without using a drop of benzino, where two bombs were dropped. One actually exploded.

His knowledge of the jet stream was largely ignored. Like me, he had published details of his research in Esperanto, which he thought might have had a wider readership than in Japanese. Had he published in his native tongue we might have learnt about this phenomenon many years ago. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are only 0.3 scientists who speak Esperanto in South London, while Japanese-speaking scientists outnumber this by a factor of 10 000 or more.

This has given me encouragement. Does anyone know how to say benzinmotoro in Japanese?

Fabian Acker

FEATURE: WCSJ 2009

2009-05-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

Stories that matter to a changing world

Someone once said that in journalism you are only as good as your last article. Sit back on your laurels, in the face of financial constraints and fierce competition for column inches or air time, and you may find you no longer have a seat. Ignore the technological changes impacting on journalism and you could find yourself outwitted by a new generation of reporters. If you want to find out where science journalism is going and want to help shape its future, then read on.

Improving Standards

From 29 June – 3 July 2009, more than 600 science journalists will arrive at Westminster Central Hall in the heart of London for a week of workshops, debates, briefings, trips and networking/social events. Programme Director Fiona Fox of the Science Media Centre hopes that debate will be the main focus of the Conference. “Our intention is to hone in on issues that are key to journalism, and in particular science journalism, rather than just become yet another conference on science. We want to see people disagreeing, we want to see difficult questions asked and we want to help journalists shape their future. We want journalists to go away with new contacts, new ideas, new skills and new enthusiasm for their vital job."Pallab Ghosh, President of the World Federation of Science Journalists describes WCSJ2009 as the only international conference organised by science journalists for science journalists. “WCSJ is not so much about news as about improving standards of science journalism. It is about science journalists organising our own international event on issues we think are interesting and important to our profession, such as how we should cover climate change and how we take advantage of the opportunities provided by new media. But most of all it’s for reporters and producers from across the world to get together and develop the culture of critical, hard-hitting journalism.

The programme

The main programme for the conference is now online with session summaries and speakers. More will follow over the coming weeks with details of lunch and breakfast briefings, satellite events, receptions and drop in workshops. Highlights include a plenary session of editors reflecting on the position of science reporting within media outlets. James Harding, the Editor of the Times, and Ian Katz, Deputy Editor of the Guardian, will join other key players in the media to consider the demand and place for science in a changing media landscape. No journalism conference could take place in the 21st Century without some discussion of the overwhelming influence of the internet and social networking.

The WCSJ New Media plenary invites experts such as Krishna Bharat (founder of Google News) and Ben Hammersley (Associate Editor of the new UK edition of Wired magazine) to consider where news reporting might be in 20 years time, all under the watchful eye of the BBC’s Nick Higham in the chair. For those who want a more hands on approach, there are workshops on journalism skills and new media tools. The Knight Science Journalism Fellowships Programme of MIT and Harvard bring their expertise to London, for those who are only taking their first steps into these forms of reporting. Drop in workshops on podcasting and other new techniques are also planned.

“Once upon a time our job was to translate and enthuse about science”, says Pallab. “Now it’s to provide mature, independent analysis of scientific developments that will shape the future destiny of communities across the world.”

To help achieve this, the list of speakers is impressive and includes the heavyweights of environmental policy Sir David King - Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford - and Professor Rajendra Kumar Pachauri - Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They are on board for a plenary session that will set out a route map for reporting in the run up to the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Copenhagen, this December. A Conference widely believed to be our final chance to find global agreement on tackling climate change.

A further plenary at WCSJ2009 brings together a panel of Government Scientific Advisers, including the UK and Ireland Advisers, Professor John Beddington and Professor Patrick Cunningham. Finally Colin Blakemore, Professor of Neuroscience, will chair a plenary on what philanthropy means for the future of science and humanity. This will feature Fred Kavli, Founder and Chairman of the Kavli Foundation and Mike Lazaridis President and CEO of Research in Motion.

Debating face to face not on ABSW-L

What of the issues that have raged on the ABSW discussion list over the past year? Embargoes in science reporting: Friend or foe? Features Richard Horton Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet and Geoff Watts of the BBC. Lack of scrutiny of press releases leading to inaccurate, ‘lazy’ reporting, Nick Davis who coined the phrase ‘churnalism’, in his book Flat Earth News, will be in conversation with Fiona Fox.

Need more freelance work? Meet the Editors, does exactly what it says on the tin with editors telling you how and what to pitch. What is all this Twittering and RSS feeding? New media is covered in both plenary, parallel sessions and workshops. Are the actions of CNN indicative of a wider problem in science reporting? Miles O’Brien formerly of the culled CNN science and environment unit will speak in a session that asks whether science journalism is in crisis? What ever happened to the ABSW awards? They are back in a short and sweet format with awards for life time achievement and best newcomer being made at the WCSJ2009 Gala Reception.

All sounds good but you still have a day job? Although the primary aim of the Conference is to allow journalists to step back from reporting, clearly science coverage can’t come to halt. A fully functional media room will allow you to file from the conference, breakfast and lunch briefings and press conferences will also provide stories on a plate – others you may need to seek out - perhaps egged on by a session entitled ‘Investigative science reporting: does it exist?’

So here’s the small print…

You will have to pay, something I know that journalists are not used to doing. No offence meant, I have never known a journalist not stand you a drink, but generally conferences are free as the organisers want you there to provide coverage for them. We don’t. We want you there to ensure lively, informed debate, fly the flag for UK science reporting, play host to the international science media coming to London and enjoy a few parties.

The full fee structure including day rates is online, but in summary: ABSW full members get the cheapest rate of any category at £225 plus VAT for the entire conference. This includes workshops, trips, receptions, breakfasts, lunches and more – and this is less than the actual cost of your food and drink! For ABSW associate members the rate is £335 plus VAT.

Speakers are still being confirmed and there may be some surprises yet. To keep right up to date visit the WCSJ2009 blog.

See you in Westminster if not before.

Sallie Robins
Co-Director WCSJ 2009
07733 330344

NEWS: ABSW Best Newcomer Award 2009

2009-04-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Members are invited to nominate themselves, or colleagues, for a Best Newcomer prize to be awarded later this year at the World Conference of Science Journalists.

Rules: There are no age restrictions for this award. But those nominated should have published their first piece of journalism within the last three years. Entrants should be currently working in science and technology journalism, either freelance, full-time or part-time. You may nominate colleagues who are not members of the ABSW. The winner will be whomever gets the most nominations by members.

The voting form can be found here.

Small print: Members may make only one nomination in this competition. If any member sends more than one, only the first will be counted. Nominations will only be accepted from ABSW members in good standing. If you are not up-to-date with your membership dues when the nominations window closes, your vote will not be included.

Please note, in the case of a tie for first place, the final winner will be chosen by the ABSW committee using the supporting information sent in with nominations. Only one piece of supporting work (excluding personal website) may be submitted per nomination.

Nominations close at midnight on May 30th, 2009.

The winner will receive £200 and a certificate, both will be awarded at a Gala Reception at this year's World Conference of Science. To find out more about the World Conference/ABSW Gala reception please visit www.wcsj2009.org. Queries about this award should be addressed to cha...@absw.org.uk

ABSW: Website is getting a facelift

2009-04-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

New and exciting changes are afoot for our online presence.

The ABSW website is in the process of being redesigned having looked pretty much the same for a number of years. But it’s not just the look of the site that getting an overhaul though – the content is too. The committee hopes that the process will give the site a new lease of life, encouraging more members to use it whilst also providing them with more useful functions.

Some of the new things we’re planning are:

wiki’s on all things science writing so that our members can share their expertise with each other;
an updated member’s directory;
a dedicated jobs section, and;
a member’s only area.

Other functionality, such as allowing members to edit their profile on the site and even pay membership fees online, are being looked into to see how easy they could be implemented. However, it won’t all come at once so please have patience with us.

We’ll also be incorporating both ABSW blogs (the main blog and The Science Reporter blog) into the site. In fact, we’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about how we can make the ABSW’s web presence more integrated overall so, for example, we can have more signposts to things like the ABSW-L Google Group (which, if you use it at all, I suspect most of you use more like a mailing list rather than a forum).

Given that the current site is written and maintained by Michael Kenward in his spare time, it’s amazing it’s kept as up to date as it is. Of course, we have to be a little careful that we don’t create an all-singing, all-dancing website that is too time-consuming and difficult to maintain. To that end, we’ll be implementing a content management system allowing multiple people with little or no coding knowledge can log in and take responsibility for a certain section of the site.

So when will it be finished I hear you cry? Well, the first iteration should be released onto a now suspecting public within the next month or so. After that, the set up of the site should enable us to make small improvements over time, so that the website remains up-to-date, in terms of both look and content (this is actually the way Amazon handle their site: constant small upgrades rather than a complete redesign).

So, the real answer to the question is the website will NEVER be ready. Which is why your comments and suggestions will always be welcome. You can email me at webm...@absw.org.uk

Mike Nagle

NEWS: Science journalism in crisis?

2009-04-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

There was much discussion of the state of science journalism at this year's AAAS meeting.

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in February this year, journalists gathered at an informal session to discuss the current and upcoming challenges for specialist science reporters, particularly in light of CNN's decision to axe their entire science, technology and environment news staff.

Organized by the National Association of Science Writers (NASW) and the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ), the view of the panel was that some of the bad news in developed world journalism was being offset by good news elsewhere.

WFSJ Board Member Nadia El-Awady spoke of the healthy state of journalism in Africa and the Arab countries, contrasting bad news in the US reported by Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review, and the state of play elsewhere.

But as Pallab Ghosh, Science Correspondent for BBC News and the current President of the WFSJ, pointed out, science journalists are needed now more than ever. Ghosh gave a presentation on how the media's representations of climate change and the associated politics are affecting debate in this area, highlighting the important role real science journalists have to play.

A full report on the event is available at The Columbia Journalism Review.

Sunny Bains

ABSW: Calm sea, prosperous voyage...

2009-04-21T12:48:00.001-07:00

ABSW Chair, Ted Nield, reflects on a difficult few years before the mast.

I like to think that there is nobody on this Earth less eager than I to be a leader of men (and less of women). Yet being Chair of professional organisations is a fate that has befallen me more than once, and in a familiar pattern. It has always happened by accident, usually because I had been sturdy lieutenant to a captain who, for one reason or another, has found it necessary to walk the plank. The organisation has always been on the cusp of change. And after the subsequent years of hard labour, the sunlit uplands open out - just in time for me to hand over to someone else.

I became ABSW Chair when Toby Murcott was forced to stand down through ill-health, and served for almost a year in his place before beginning my elected three years at the following AGM. At that time we had lost our core funding, and had instead been riding the turnover on various activities that would soon fall away. The bursary scheme for science writing students, funded by the Wellcome Trust, fell foul of a policy change. Then, after two years on my watch, Syngenta pulled out as sponsors of the ABSW Awards. It was an early sign that bad economic times lay just around the corner.

As turnover fell, the absence of core funding, and the fact that over the years we have not increased membership dues in line with inflation, threw our financial difficulties into sharp relief. Unless we cut costs we would fold, possibly within a year. At the 2008 AGM, our President, Professor Colin Blakemore, told us that the ABSW had a “whiff of death” about it. He was of course doing his duty, though his olfactory organs were not detecting anything we had not already scented ourselves. If anything, we had perhaps grown used to the stench.

My preoccupation, which had hitherto been to keep The Science Reporter coming out every two months, quickly shifted to paring down costs, and running the briefings in a way that continued to engage our membership while remaining on the right side of the balance sheet. I secured a year’s sponsorship from The Geological Society, introduced modest charges, and made people buy their own booze. We transferred everything online - which at least provided one opportunity to connect more effectively with young members, that crucial group without whom all collectives are doomed.

The struggle has, of course, been worth it. Although fitful, the past three years has seen us establish the ABSW's first regional group (only to see it fold when Laura Fogg was promoted and moved elsewhere by the BBC. We will do it again, and see it last). And under the auspices of the World Federation of Science Journalists, we entered into a twinning arrangement with the Ugandan Science Journalists’ Association.

In 2008, the clouds began to lift as we won the right to host the World Conference of Science Journalists in London. Membership remained buoyant, especially among young science writers, many of whom responded magnificently to my call to take an active part in the Executive Committee (EC), bringing an infusion of new blood that has been a wonderful tonic. To complete my joy, Natasha Loder of The Economist, with whom I served with when I first got involved with the EC, has stepped forward to take over as Chair this summer.

Such handovers are best done gradually, and the process has already begun. Natasha will take the reins formally at the World Conference, allowing me to bow out a little before time (and sparing me the embarrassment of having been Chair for an unconstitutionally long period). She will then stand at the next AGM, together with those of the current EC who wish to stay, and any more who wish to join.

Thanks to the vigorous activity of your now revitalised EC, we shall soon have a long-awaited new website, and a new set of briefings, hosted by our new sponsors the Royal College of Surgeons. Thanks to Natasha and Sunny Bains, we will have a modest set of Awards at the WCSJ this year, keeping the brand alive. And thanks to Sunny, Richard Hollingham, Mun-Keat Looi and others, you are now reading the TSR newsletter that marks the maturing of our long struggle to transfer activities online.

Natasha knows that much needs to be done if we are to capitalise on the revitalising boost of this year's WCSJ, and changes will need to be radical. But I think I leave at a time when the ABSW can be said to be past its crisis and on the road to recovery. For helping that to happen, I thank all those who have served on the EC during my Chairmanship. Without wishing to be invidious I would like to single out for special thanks Martin Ince, Treasurer, and of course Barbie Drillsma, Administrator. We also owe a huge debt (though not literally) to John Gagg, Finance Director of the British Science Association, for his financial guidance. Finally, without Julie Clayton and Pallab Ghosh, the WCSJ would never have come to our capital city. Thank you all.

Ted Nield
Chair, ABSW

ABSW: Society events at the WCSJ

2009-04-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

The committee is currently working on two events for the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) designed specifically for ABSW members (though technically speaking the entire WCSJ is an ABSW event!).

The first event is an ABSW Science Book Sale, which will run in a basement during the conference. Leftover review books have been donated by Nature's Phil Campbell, New Scientist's Jeremy Webb, and The Economist's Fiametta Rocco. Fifty of these books will be given away free to WCSJ participants from developing countries attending the conference on scholarship (they'll also be able to buy science books at a reduced rate). The remainder will be sold off to raise money to help republish the ABSW career guide So You Want To Be a Science Writer?. We need volunteers to support the book sale by helping to collect and deliver the books (anyone with a car in Central London?), and to help man the sales desk during the lunch breaks (an honesty box system will be in place at all other times). Please contact me if you are able to help.

In the second event, Anna Lewcock and I are working on a 'Lunch for Authors and Editors' at 1pm on Wednesday 1st July. They hope to bring together some of the figures in popular science book publishing, be they agents, editors, or buyers. Speakers include popular science writer John Gribbin. The idea is to give a small window into the world of writing and publishing a popular science book, and give everyone the opportunity to ask questions and network. If you have any suggestions for speakers, or wish to be involved in some way, please contact me or Anna Lewcock. The event will be free but lunch is not. Please check closer to the time whether you need to bring lunch with you.

Finally, the ABSW award for Best Newcomer in Science Journalism will be presented to the winner at a gala reception at the WCSJ. Further information, and a form for entry, can be found online.

Natasha Loder
ABSW Committee

NEWS: Creators' Rights Alliance enters new phase

2009-04-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

As writers face possible new copyright legislation and worsening economic conditions, a cross-platform body such as the Creators' Rights Alliance (CRA) can add more weight to their interests than any single-media representative body or union ever could.

The CRA currently brings together fourteen organisations (see footnote) supporting or representing members working as media creators – particularly, in television, radio, the press and publishing. They include writers, journalists, designers, photographers, composers and so on. The CRA campaigns for a better deal for them under the shifting conditions of the digital era. The ABSW affiliated to the CRA in 2001 and has been praised for ‘punching above its weight’ alongside such giants as the National Union of Journalists and the Musicians’ Union.

Over a period of eight years, the CRA has achieved significant influence. Examples are publishing a video and a legal text outlining the problems faced by copyright creators in the UK; organising national events, campaigns, conferences and seminars; making submissions to HM Treasury’s Gowers Review of copyright legislation, the review of the BBC Charter; and much else (more details available online). The CRA’s own website is currently in skeleton form awaiting imminent redesign).

Events in 2008 threatened to put an end to this activity and possibly to the organisation itself. The founding chairman, David Ferguson became seriously ill. After a period of uncertainty, during which work on a new policy statement was disrupted, he resigned at the start of this year. It also emerged that economic troubles in the larger affiliate organisations meant they couldn’t afford to continue to pay a fee related to their size – the largest being the £4000 annual sum put in by the NUJ.

A crisis meeting at the start of April sought to address these problems. The affiliation fee was fixed at a flat rate of £250 p.a. and plans laid to approach the Journalists’ Copyright Fund for fresh core funding. Re-examination of the policy manifesto draft showed that, while still too raw for general publication, it is sufficiently complete for use in lobbying government. The manifesto will be tidied up during the next few weeks and made available online. Vice Chairman Mike Holderness agreed to act as caretaker chair while a search is made for a high-profile figure who can both chair and lobby on the CRA’s behalf (any suggestions are welcome). And the CRA administrator has begun a new recruitment campaign.

Next year marks the 300th anniversary of copyright in the UK and the government is currently reviewing intellectual property legislation. We’re facing a rare opportunity to balance the interests of copyright creators against those of commercial publishers and distributors.

This is urgent. As the economy pinches, disadvantaging creators through bad deals and working conditions will degrade the industries they underpin. A cross-platform alliance such as the CRA can add more weight to our interests than any single-media representative body or union ever could. The aim is nothing short of a win-win boost to the creative economy.

Mike Harrison

Mike Harrison represents the ABSW on the CRA’s national committee.

CRA affiliate organisations are: ABSW, ALCS, AoI, BAPLA, CIoJ, Directors UK, GMG, ISM, MU, NUJ, OWPG, PCAM, Society of Authors, WGGB.

ABSW: Local groups for local people

2009-04-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

New regional groups are springing up around the country, helping to drag the ABSW outside of London.

While London-based events are convenient for those of us living here, the ABSW comprises members from all over the UK, many of whom are far from the capital. One of the main targets of the Executive Committee this year is to make the ABSW as useful as possible for all its members, regardless of geography.

The most active regional group at the moment is the South-West branch, which currently caters for around 15 members based in or around Bristol. They’ve enjoyed several meet-ups already, and have another planned for 21 May at the Bristol Festival of Ideas. Anyone interested in attending this or future events with this groups should contact Hayley Birch).

We have coordinators in place for several other regions, and all we need now is people to get these groups off the ground.

Mike Kenward is gauging interest in lunchtime meetings for members based in or near Brighton. If you’re Oxford-based, Richard Scrase is your point of contact. He’s planning a monthly pub meeting for starters.

Tony Jones has agreed to coordinate a North Wales group. Helen Gavaghan is our Northern England coordinator.

There has been a bit of a muted response from Scotland-based ABSW members on the ABSW-L so far, but James Urquhart is eager to get some activities going north of the border.

Whatever you fancy doing – whether meeting in a local pub over a few pints, visiting a museum, exhibition or event, or even holding an ABSW briefing in your area – get in touch with your regional coordinator and help make it happen! No group in your area? Contact me to get something started.

Chrissie Giles
ABSW’s Regional Groups Coordinator

COLUMN: ABSW-L Buzz

2009-04-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

What you've been missing if you haven't signed up for the list...

The coming of April means April Fools Day and the annual round of stranger than fiction (or is it?) science stories at times. This year it was as hard as ever distinguish the porkies, with New Scientist for one carrying stories on naval fluff, medical implants that feed on human blood and a masturbation treatment for hayfever (a selection of this year's efforts on the ABSW blog). On ABSW-L, members were busy sharing good April Fools past and present, particularly those that had got out of hand. Ted Nield told of a piece he wrote about the Geological Society honouring the then England cricket Captain Nasser Hussein, who studied geology at Durham. All good fun until weeks later a sports reporter rang for a comment from "Dr Avril Foley" of the "University of Limerick".

Not an April Fool was the announcement of two 'robot scientists' capable of conducting experiments, analysing results and drawing conclusions. The announcement had the scientific community buzzing, and ABSW members analysing the coverage . Mike Kenward pointed out that the BBC, and many other news outlets, focused on just one of the two papers featured in Science, that on the UK robot Adam. Was this just UK bias? A pertinent question, given Ben Goldacre's recent tirade against the British press. Ed Yong said he found the Adam story much more interesting "on the grounds that the physics robot only worked out physical laws that we *already knew*, while Adam actually discovered new knowledge". Katrina Pavelin, who wrote the original press release, agreed: "Although we have had what might be called robot scientists before, to our knowledge this is the first to make its own new scientific discoveries". Mike Kenward wondered if this was a positive example to throw at people when they say that science writers just follow the press release. "Had the hacks acted in line with some stereotypes, both projects would have had equal coverage. Instead, the writers looked deeper and found the one that really was worth reporting."

Yet while science journalists improve their efforts, the economic downturn -- and the resulting layoffs -- caused much doom and gloom in the field. Yet in the midst of all this, City University decided to launch a new course in the subject. This led ABSW members to again question the virtues of specialist courses like this. Are journalism skills not universal? Daniel Nelson said specialists have their place: "There's not a single sort of "journalist", any more than there's such a thing as "the media". Bob Ward wrote that the scientific community has its own quirks that require a certain manner, and that such a course makes it easier for scientists to transition to journalism. And Peter Aldhous pointed out that, given Ben Goldacre's criticism (see above), it is worth raising again the idea that science and medical journalism can involve particular challenges with understanding statistics.

On a final, sad, note, tributes poured in for John Maddox, the former editor of Nature who passed away on 12 April 2009, aged 83. Many remarked how much John did to nurture British science journalism. Mike Kenward wrote how one of his "many moves in dragging Nature into the 20th Century was to begin to go directly to the media". "When it comes to science writing, John's biggest impact has been in the people who went through the 'training school' at Nature. It and New Scientist were responsible for a large number of science writers who went on to do great things." Peter Aldhous was amongst those to whom he gave a first job ("I'd like to think that it may have been because I disagreed with him in the interview. I think he liked people who were a bit argumentative"). "If he asked you to draft an editorial... he had a habit of twisting the punchline through 180 degrees," recalled David Dickson, who also highlighted his "absolute faith in scientific rationalism that led him into contested terrains... John embodied an approach to science journalism that many of us who worked with him still aspire to". Henry Gee has assembled a collection of obituaries on his Nature Network page.

Mun-Keat Looi
News Editor, The Science Reporter

COLUMN: Out and about

2009-04-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

An incomplete and rather random guide to forthcoming events

Whether you're after hot stories, interesting scientists, networking opportunities or just free booze, there are plenty of upcoming events to appeal to ABSW members. Of course, the jewel in this glittering crown is the World Conference of Science Journalists from the 30th June to the 2nd July - book your ticket now to ensure your place at this year's booze fest... err, I mean premier event.

Elsewhere, there are other attractions. On the academic side, there's the fourth annual Science and the Public Conference at the University of Brighton on the 13th and 14th May, on the theme of “Science and the public – uncertain pasts, presents and futures”. And the freshly-rebranded British Science Association bring us the 2009 Science Communication Conference, taking place on the 22nd and 23rd June at the Kings Place in London. The theme is “Behaviour and Choice”, and your humble correspondent is hosting a session entitled “Public engagement with science on the web”.

There's also a symposium on "Science, Communication and Policy" in Strathclyde on June 15th-16th, focusing on "the production, communication and use of scientific knowledge, particularly as it relates to matters of public policy and public controversy." Web-based information about the conference is elusive but email Penny Taylor if you're interested.

For members with a mathematical bent, the Maths-Art seminar on the 12th May at the London Knowledge Lab might tickle your trigonometric synapses. “Can Science save art? Moves towards a wider mathematics of art” is hosted by Clive Head and Michael Paraskos, and starts at 6pm. It's free but please reserve a place by email .

The Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics and the Parliamentary Space Committee are hosting a free seminar on “Space: Exploration and exploitation in a modern society”. It’s on the 20th May from 10am in the Attlee suite in Portcullis house, if you’d like your space to be explored or exploited. Email to register.

On 18th and 19th of June the Zoological Society of London is hosting a symposium on “Biodiversity monitoring and conservation: bridging the gaps between global commitment and local action.” See the ZSL website for more information, and details of other interesting meetings and seminars.

From zoo-dwellers to political animals, science policy think tank Newton's Apple are running a”An introduction to science policy” workshop on 13th May at the Royal Astronomical Society in London, from 4-6pm. More info and booking forms available from the Newton's Apple website.

Looking further into the future – and simultaneously into the past – the John Innes Centre in Norwich is putting on a History of Genetics day on the 9th September. Nobel Laureate Professor Sir Paul Nurse will give a lecture in the evening, and I expect the probability of fascinating anecdotes - and free booze - will be high. It's part of a longer symposium honouring “Genetics 100 years on” and more details can be found on the John Innes Centre website.

And here's an advance warning of the European Association of Science Editors conference from 16th-19th September in Italy, focusing on “Integrity in Science Communication”. Register by 30th June for a discount, via the EASE website.

Late additions:
A must for any journalists wanting to jump on the cyber-bus as it zooms past. The next ABSW event will be "Journalism 2.0" - taught by Mike Nagle. It will be a training session where members are invited to bring their laptop so they can be brought up to date with some of new methods of working and collaborating using the internet.

RSS feeds & readers. Twitter. Pimp your Browser. Collaboration with Google Docs and more. In fact, anything you want - just email Mike your questions beforehand (It isn't intended for broader hardware or software problems with laptops). To take full advantage of this session members need to bring a laptop equipped with working wifi. The event will be on the Tuesday 26th of May, at one of Wellcome's meeting rooms on the Euston Road. Please check the ABSW blog for further details of this event, and ways of signing up.

Also there's a lovely-sounding series of curator talks at the Horniman Museum (no tittering at the back...). Take your pick from "Darwin and the Caribbean" on 13th May, "Musical Instruments during the age of Darwin" on 10th June, "Aquatic adaptations" on 15th July and "From Slow worms to Stag beetles – London’s Capital Creatures" on 12th August. Email the museum for enquiries and bookings.

Finally, if you go to any of these events, please consider submitting a short summary for the ABSW blog. Whether you want to comment on the content of the event, or the quality and/or quantity of free booze, that's up to you.

Kat Arney
Vice Chair, ABSW

Please send details of upcoming events to us at TSR and also let us know if you'd like to write it up after attending.

EDITORIAL: Do let’s argue

2009-04-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

The future of The Science Reporter

The first issue of The Science Reporter (TSR) that I remember seeing, back in the mid ‘90s, contained a slanging match between Bill O’Neill, then of The Guardian, and Roger Highfield, then of The Daily Telegraph, about broken embargoes during that year’s BA (now the British Science Association) meeting. Highfield was complaining that O’Neill’s ‘preview’ of the event the week before had made it impossible for anyone else to run stories during the conference because they were seen as old news (all I can remember about O’Neill’s position was that he had no regrets and that he was somewhat dismissive of Highfield’s use of his title: Dr).

If anything convinced me that I had made the right decision in joining the ABSW, it was this exchange.

This is why, when I was asked to take over TSR, my first thought was that every issue should start with a debate of some real issue about the process of writing about science and technology. You’ll see the first of these debates ⎯ on whether we rely too much on press releases ⎯ in this issue. Participate: tell us what you think of the arguments and share your own experience/insights via the comments feature. Also, please contact me. I’d like to know what you think of the idea of debates in general, how well or badly we handled this one in particular, and to get your suggestions for future debates and possible participants. To get you thinking, you can see a first-draft list at the end of this editorial.

We’ve also tried to include in the newsletter all the major features that were in the old printed version: books, events, news, features, new members etc. (heartfelt thanks to all those who helped us put it together). If there’s a section you feel we should have that we don’t, let me know. And of course, if at any point there’s something you think that we should be covering, let us know that too (preferably before the fact rather than after).

Finally, a quick note on form. As you’ll see in Mike Nagle’s news piece, we’re in the middle of a major redesign of the website, which will eventually incorporate all our various methods of communication. The HTML newsletter that got you to this blog is an interim measure that we expect to last 2-3 issues. We may do something similar in future, or something very different. For instance, among other things we’re considering using an automated system to create PDFs because we know that some people like to have something they can print out and read on paper. If you feel strongly about this, now is the time to let us know your opinion.

Let me finish by saying that I hope you enjoy this issue and, if you don’t, I hope you’ll tell me why: either by e-mailing me or by leaving a comment here.

Sunny Bains
Editor, The Science Reporter

Possible debate topics:

Is medical journalism really science journalism?
Do embargoes help produce better science coverage?
Is there more PR influence in science and technology than many other topics?
Can you write well about scientific papers you can't understand?
Do you always have to hype a science and technology story to get it published?
Is it ethical to accept places on press junkets?
Is the technical (rather than popular) press the place to find real journalism?

New Members

2009-04-07T04:16:00.000-07:00

The following new members have joined the ABSW. Compiled by Kat Arney, Vice-chair.

Richard Hurley British Medical Journal
Full member

Richard's background is in the physical sciences, but he is now technical editor for the British Medical Journal and the Student BMJ, and is also involved in the production side of the BMJ.com website. He is news and features subeditor, also writing news, features and reviews, mostly on medical topics, and has also ventured into podcasting.

He commissions journalists to write material for the BMJ, including obituaries, book reviews, personal view articles and features. Richard has been a committee member for the European Association of Science Editors for three years, and contributes to its quarterly journal.

Figen Eker Alphagalileo Foundation
Associate member

Figen has worked as a journalist in Lyon and a science editor in London. Since moving to the UK, she has provided legal support to a finance company, and also worked as a headhunter for a leading UK recruitment firm. She currently works as news service manager for the Alphagalileo Foundation, Europe's research news service.

Kosta Stefanou Alphagalileo Foundation
Associate member

Kosta worked for 16 years for the Bulgarian Service of the BBC World Service. Before that, he was a correspondent for Bulgarian TV and radio in Poland at the time of the transition from communism to the market economy. He also covered the accession of 8 Eastern European countries to the EU in 2004.

Over the years Kosta has interviewed Lech Walesa, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Adam Michnik and even Fidel Castro. He currently works for the Alphagalileo Foundation, Europe's research news service.

Dr Lisa Jane Moore Health Communications
Full member

Lisa is an associate medical writer at a large health communications agency based in East Cheshire. She has a PhD in medical microbiology and a first class honours degree in biology, and has authored a number of scientific papers.

Dr Justine Ina Davies freelance (print)
Full member

Justine is an ex-medical doctor and university lecturer, and has carried out academic research into heart disease. In 2006 she left medicine to take a zoology degree

She recently spent four months working with the BBC advising on the medical science behind two documentaries, script writing and designing fun experiments to demonstrate science. Justine is now setting up as a freelance medical/science writer. To date, she has had a number of features and opinion pieces published in national Scottish newspapers and is writing a book on sleep

Kate Gray Medwire News/Freelance
Full member

Kate has a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and a postgraduate qualification in broadcast journalism from City University. She has freelanced at the BBC radio science unit, Radio 5 live and BBC Radio 2.

Dr Catherine Whitlock Freelance
Full member

Having worked in medical research for many years, Catherine now works freelance as a science writer and communicator. Her areas of interest predominantly cover the fields of biology, health and medicine.

Recent articles have covered the 'Immunology of herbal medicines' (The Times), 'Should the MMR vaccine be compulsory?' (The Biologist) and genetic associations with obesity (The Wellcome Trust). Other projects include working with junior Cafe Scientifique to evaluate its effectiveness as an informal way of engaging young people with science.

Tamera Jones Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Associate member

Tamera is a science writer and press officer for NERC. She writes for the organisation's magazine 'Planet Earth', and its website, 'Planet Earth Online'. The website is updated daily and features news, features, blogs, opinion, podcasts and video from research funded by NERC on climate change, biodiversity loss, volcanoes, earthquakes, rainforests, oceans and poles. The content is written to appeal to a wide non-specialist audience.

She also works in NERC's press office, trying to persuade science and environment correspondents to write about the amazing science the organisation funds.

New Members

2009-03-09T06:47:00.000-07:00

Full

Tracey Logan, science broadcaster and writer, worked for the BBC’s Science Radio Unit where she was best known to World Service listeners as the original voice of Go Digital (the first radio show with live studio pictures). She was also an occasional science news correspondent and presenter / producer of award-winning feature documentaries. Now freelance, Tracey – a former sound engineer – continues to turn cutting-edge science into gripping BBC radio and is taking baby-steps into the scary but exciting world of print.

Will Gater is the staff writer on the BBC’s Sky At Night Magazine. Previously he was the news editor at Astronomy Now. He also writes for the European Southern Observatory and the European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope press office, and blogs regularly about astronomy on his website.

Michael Sharpe has worked as an independent writer and researcher for the last 11 years, after spending ten years in management and technology consultancy. His writing interests include: IT and the knowledge economy; environmental issues in business; science policy; and the management of R&D. He writes for a variety of corporates, research and public sector organisations, and academic and business publishers. Much of his work has a strong policy dimension, presenting information for and about European ICT research programmes.

Dr Michael Banks graduated in physics from Loughborough University in 2004 having spent a year at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, where he subsequently did his PhD in experimental condensed-matter physics. After he finished his degree in 2007, he became news editor of Physics World magazine, published by the Institute of Physics.

Katrina Megget is a freelance science and medical journalist with more than three years’ experience in general news, features, sub-editing and editing for newspaper, magazine and online. A New Zealander now living in London, her work has appeared in Chemistry & Industry, PharmaTimes magazine, in-PharmaTechnologist.com, the New Zealand Herald, NZ Doctor, and leading New Zealand business magazine Unlimited. She also worked for a year and a half on New Zealand’s fourth largest daily newspaper, the Otago Daily Times and was a runner-up in The Daily Telegraph/Bayer Science Writer Award 2008.

Andrew Turley is an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, where he studied chemistry, and Imperial College London, where he took the MSc course in science communication. Since October 2008, he has been a staff writer at Chemistry & Industry, where he writes news, features, etc., and edits the book reviews section. He has also worked in medical communications and event management, which, he says, "means I know all the PowerPoint shortcut keys and can say ‘impactful’ without visibly wincing."

Nina Notman is a science correspondent for Chemistry World, a monthly news magazine published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). She has written on a wide range of chemistry related topics for the smaller RSC news magazines Chemical Science, Chemical Technology and Chemical Biology since 2004. She was editor of Chemical Science for 15 months, before moving to her current role in January 2009. The chemistry-related areas that interest her most are environmental, analytical, materials and anything nano.

Kate Travis is the contributing editor for north Europe for ScienceCareers.org, the online career magazine from the publishers of the journal Science. She's also a freelance editor and writer, specializing in biomedical topics and cancer in particular. She was previously the news editor at the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and associate editor at Science News magazine. She moved to the UK from Washington, DC, in 2007. She lives in Cambridge.

Michael Hanlon is the Science Editor of the Daily Mail, the UK's biggest-selling mid-market national newspaper. He also writes for New Scientist, Standpoint, and other magazines and broadcasts regularly as a pundit for BBC national and regional radio, as well as radio stations across Europe. He also makes the occassionally television appearance. He has written five books, the latest of which—Eternity: Our Next Billion Years—was published by Macmillan in late 2008.

Starring Science

2008-10-14T05:13:00.000-07:00

The VWN-EUSJA trip to Netherlands astronomy centres
Sunday 28 September - Thursday 2 Oct 2008

The Dutch Association of Science Journalists (VWN) hosted this five-day trip, which in retrospect seems to have occupied a month. There were about 30 participants from countries of Western and Eastern Europe; Stuart Clark and I represented Britain. All the foreign visitors were accommodated in a pleasant canalside hotel in Leiden, a city so Dutch that they have multi-storey cycle racks in the city centre. Participants didn't have to pay a euro during the whole trip, apart from the costs of getting to and from Leiden - and our Eastern European colleagues had half of those paid.

We had a gentle introduction to the tour with a reception at the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden, where we were addressed by Ronald Plasterk, the energetic young Minister of Education, Culture and Science, who was a molecular biologist before going into government. Thereafter we were launched on a programme of visiting four or five institutions per day. The itinerary is still on the VWN Website at WetenschapsJournalisten.nl, together with a zip file of photos from the trip. Here I'll just mention some things that stood out for me.

Torrential rain fell throughout the week, but obligingly stopped whenever we got out of a bus and resumed when we got back on. On our visit to the Deltawerken, the dams and movable barriers that keep Zeeland nominally dry land, the rain combined with Old Master cloudscapes to keep us conscious of the constant threat to the country. The whole enormous construction is surveyed twice a year to make sure nothing has moved by so much as a centimetre, and I was personally very glad of the fact all that wet week.

The 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope is being marked this year. In Britain it seems to have been crowded out by a certain particle collider, but the anniversary is naturally big in the Netherlands. Some of our party were tactless enough to mention rival claims from Italy (no, not Galileo) but our hosts were firm: it was Hans Lipperhey (or Lippershey) of Middelburg who deserves the credit. Unless it was his near neighbour Zacharias Jansen who invented it, between counterfeiting coins. We couldn't see Lipperhey's house when we visited Middelburg - the historic centre was smashed by the invaders of 1940, and Lipperhey's house isn't included in the modern reconstruction, but we saw many exquisite old telescopes.

In Leiden we visited the historic observatory. I was personally fascinated to get some of the feel of old-style astronomical observing, which in the course of a night would involve clambering down and up steps and changing posture from prone to upright to stay at the eyepiece of a large instrument as it traversed the sky. Unflagging concentration all night long was needed to prevent the slightest drift and so keep the image sharp on the photographic plate. I sat in a nifty wheeled and swivelling observer's chair, which I was afterwards told had been sat in by Einstein. I've decided to believe that.

Of course, the emphasis of the visits was on current science and technology. In the Hague we visited Airborne Composites, which has a modern high-tech assembly line that Henry Ford wouldn't recognize. Metal isn't bashed and drilled: rather, bits of plastic - sorry, advanced composites - are glued together in quiet surroundings and cooked to make radio-telescope dishes, oil and gas pipelines and much else.

In Delft we saw one of the centres of TNO, a government organization concerned not with trans-Neptunian objects but with applying scientific research. In the area of space it certainly produces photogenic results. We saw, for example, spectacular representations of atmospheric pollution and ozone levels represented on gee-whiz global displays that from the keyboard could be rotated and wound backwards or forwards in time to any desired date. Improved data will be returned from the forthcoming TROPOMI (Tropospheric Ozone-Monitoring Instrument). We also saw the Raman-LIBS (Raman Spectroscopy-Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy) technology that will be used on the ExoMars lander to analyse soil samples drilled from 2 metres beneath the Martian surface.

TNO is also involved in optical and infrared interferometry: they're building PRIMA, part of the star separators being installed at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile. The separators combine light from widely separated telescopes to multiply their resolution, or suppress the light of a star to reveal the reflected light from planets circling it. Similar technology will be used on Darwin, which will consist of several space telescopes, plus a control spacecraft, flying in formation.

Interferometry has long been practised by radio telescopes, of course. At Westerbork, a line of 14 weathered dishes stands along a 2.7-km line, which you can look along from the original control room. Alas, the control room is hardly used because the telescopes are now controlled from the headquarters of JIVE in distant Dwingeloo. JIVE is the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe. And VLBI is Very Long Baseline Interferometry. (What do you call an acronym packed inside another acronym?) JIVE links radio telescopes across Europe and beyond into one big instrument. In the past the astronomers brought the data together by lugging tapes, and then hard drives, to a central point. Now the telescopes are being linked online.

But the beautiful radio dishes of yore are being upstaged by LOFAR (Low-Frequency Array), a network of thousands of strange little New Age pyramids lying around in muddy fields. Each consists of a square wire grid with a small receiver mounted above it at the vertex of a pyramid of four wires. These omnidirectional antennas are scattered around in their thousands on sites all over Europe, each sitting on its own plastic mat and doubtless quietly humming 'Om' in response to cosmic radio waves. Cables lead their signals to Groningen, where the magic of correlation turns them all into a virtual telescope. In fact, into several, for different virtual telescopes pointing in various directions can be created from one stream of data. The low frequencies that the array will be detecting will include emissions of neutral hydrogen that started off soon after the Big Bang at the famous 21-cm wavelength but have been hugely redshifted on their way to us. The array is a brilliant concept, it's staggeringly sophisticated - but will it ever capture the hearts of taxpayers like Sir Bernard Lovell's big dish?

On our last night there was a high point with a private planetarium show in Amsterdam, narrated by Govert Schilling, chairman of the VWN, who'd been our companion through the week. The planetarium show symbolizes the digital revolution in its own way. When we first entered, we saw the old Zeiss projector, crouching like a giant insect as it projected ornate constellation figures that turned across the planetarium sky. And then this 20th-century technology was retired into the depths and two concealed modern projectors took over. Driven by huge databanks of celestial data, they proceeded to take us zooming through the Galaxy - and then far beyond, until the galaxies looked as numerous as the stars had.

As entertainment this excelled even the spontaneous a capella recital produced the following day by several of our male members in an acoustic test bay at ESTEC. This was a high-point ending to the strictly scientific part of the trip. ESTEC is one of the centres of ESA, the European Space Agency, which now has 17 member nations and will have 18 after January.

ESA is pursuing an abundance of projects and we heard about many of them. The space aficionados were thrilled to get close up to the Herschel satellite, which will fly next year. Herschel will look at infrared radiation to study the formation of stars, galaxies and the life cycles of interstellar dust. Also mentioned: Columbus, the ESA space lab, which safely joined the Space Station in February (does as much as the Japanese lab in half the space); GOCE (satellite to map the Earth's gravity); XMM-Newton (venerable X-ray satellite whose life has been extended to 2012); INTEGRAL (International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, mapping the gamma-ray sky and detecting gamma-ray bursts); Mars Express (has been orbiting Mars for nearly five years); Planck (will measure variations of 1 part in a million in the cosmic microwave background ); Gaia (will catalogue a billion stars, leading to a stereoscopic map of the Galaxy) ....

After that, some of us lingered for a glittering presentation of half a dozen prizes in science, history and art by the Heineken Foundation, graced by a genuine Prince of Orange. That was icing on the cake of an excellently organized event. The selection of organizations to visit was excellent, too: everything was of interest to someone and most things were of interest to most people. Crucially for journalists, we were very well dined and wined throughout the week, and by the end, most people I talked to were thinking of concrete article and programme ideas with which to repay our hosts.

Chris Cooper

Reflections on the Finland Millennium Technology Prize 2008

2008-08-04T00:28:00.001-07:00

In June Richard Scrase was one of the two ABSW members who travelled to Helsinki as guests of the Millennium Prize Foundation.

The trip to Finland gave me three opportunities that I would recommend to colleagues. Firstly, learning about four disparate technologies was an excellent intellectual excursion. Secondly, seeing how the Finnish Millennium Prize Foundation conducted themselves and their award gave an insight into Finnish culture. In what other country would the president curtail their role to smiling and shaking hands and not make a speech at an international award ceremony ? Thirdly, there was the delight of spending time with a marvellous array of over twenty science journalists - a group of people who really know how to enjoy themselves!

The Millennium award is intending to establish itself as the technological equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The specific purpose of the prize is to 'pay tribute to life-enhancing technological innovation.' This year the short-list threw up four very different technologies, DNA fingerprinting, drug-delivering biomaterials, the Viterbi algorithm and erbium-doped fibre amplifiers.

The Millennium Prize Foundation has a distinguished international panel to decide between the nominees or Laureates for the first prize. We journalists took the similarly democratic procedure of betting on the outcome. Both procedures came up with the same conclusion - that of Dr.Robert Langer, MIT, for his work on drug-delivering biomaterials.

Part of the pleasure of the Millennium Prize process was that prior to the award ceremony itself all Laureates gave public lectures outlining their work. If you had not fully grasped the scope of the technology beforehand, here was a second chance. Better still, you heard an account that gave some biography and history of science. You can watch Dr. Langers final lecture online.

So should Dr.Langer have won the prize and how can you really compare such disparate technologies? Well the point of the prize is to award technological innovation that significantly improves the quality of human life today and in the future and Langer has certainly done that.

Dr.Langer started life in chemical engineering but moved into medicine at the time that oncology was becoming aware of the role of specific molecules in blood vessel formation (angiogenisis) in tumour growth.

His task was first to isolate substances that inhibit angiogenisis. His key idea was to consider how these substances - proteins that would not survive injection - could be delivered to the tumour. His answer was to create drug-loaded biodegradable microparticles made from polymers that would first contain and then release the drug. By modifying the polymer structure Dr.Langer was able to engineer the release period from a few hours up to several years, while continuing to protect the encapsulated pharmaceutical.

These microparticles are now used in the treatment of heart disease, mental illness and cancer. The biodegradable nature of the polymers led on to their use, and the use of other polymers, as scaffolds for artificial tissue growth. You might remember seeing the picture of an ear on a mouses back? This was one product from Dr.Langers laboratory. Now these materials are being integrated into micro-electronic drug delivery systems that can be remote controlled to release the drugs into the body.

So did Dr.Langer deserve the first prize? The more than a million people who have benefited from treatment probably think so. But if I had been on the awarding committee I think its possible my vote would have gone for the erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA).

I was an exchange student in the US in the 1970's. My Christmas present from my host family was a three minute phone call home - at a cost in todays terms of around $300. Today the cost is a few pence, thanks in part to the EDFA.

Before getting the chance to go to Finland I'd never heard of this device but the erbium-doped fibre amplifier enables information transmission through optical fibres by the laser powered 'noiseless' amplification of light and without it we would have no internet and severely limited telecommunications. Now there is an amplifier inserted every 100km or so into every optical fibre cable.

So has the internet and cheap telecommunication improved the quality of human life? More than improved drug-delivery systems? Hard choices. But not choices considered by the UK media.

Two out of the six laureates were British but the coverage of the prize in the UK was very limited. No mention in the Guardian, Times, FT, or HTES. Nothing in New Scientist even. The only proper story in the UK mainstream media was online in BBC News/technology and an interview with Dr.Langer written for the Engineer by, Bernice Baker - the other ABSW person in Helsinki.

So, despite laying everything on that the media could have wanted - except perhaps telling us who had won a little earlier - the Millennium Prize Foundation has yet to achieve Nobel status for the Technology Prize - in the UK at least. I take responsibility for not contacting all of the above named papers before flying out. The challenge to the next ABSW rep. who enjoys the Finnish Millennium Prize Foundation hospitality (and they were very hospitable!) is to find an approach that does make it into the press.

Richard Scrase

www.scrase.eu

New Members August 2008

2008-08-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

Ted Nield (Chair, ABSW) writes: ABSW welcomes the following new members.

Full

Dr Yasmin Babaie holds a doctorate in biological sciences and is a medical writer.

Kathryn Brooks writes about complementary medicine and is also Director of the Archway Clinic of Herbal Medicine.

Adam Duckett works for IChemE and has been writing for their magazine The Chemical Engineer for almost three years.

Simon Frantz works for Novel Web and is senior editor at www.nobelprize.org. He is responsible for creating new educational content around the history of the Nobel Prizes, as well as creating new interactive content around the annual prize announcements.

Dr Bryan Hatton is a freelance writer based in Cardiff. Specialising in Earth sciences and biology (the subject of his PhD), Dr Hatton is currently a presenter for Techniquest, Cardiff.

Dr Celia Hooper is an American science writer of over 20 years’ experience, who has worked for all but two of those years in the US. Her work has centred on biomedical sciences and policy, and she has lately specialised in research relevant to people with arthritis.

Dr Anastasios Koutsos works as assistant editor for a scientific publishing company and is based in London.

Keith Mansfield uses science in fiction to bring scientific ideas to children and early teens. His Johnny Mackintosh series (Quercus) begins in July 2008 delivers insights into physics, astronomy, computing and genetics. He has worked as a science editor for Oxford University Press and as computing editor for the Pearson group. In addition to print-based work and exhibitions, he also scripts shows for ITV entertainment.

Mike Nagle is a freelance science writer and web editor, specialising in healthcare, drugs, technology and chemistry. He has been short-listed for PTC New Journalist of the Year and is a winner of International Young Chemistry Writer of the Year. He has written for PhramaTimes, DrugResearcher and New Scientist.

Dr Julie Naimareza began work as a medial writer with Wellcome, and is currently working freelance under the name “Global Media” (www.globalmedia.com). Her interest is principally in science and healthcare in the developing world, but she has a keen interest in the use of images in science and healthcare training and writes for Bangladesh’s top English Language newspaper.

Dr Sarah Palmer is a freelance medical/science writer interested in health and education. She focuses mostly on developing learning and training materials for multimedia projects but also writes for print. Before going freelance she spent eight years at the Wellcome Trust.

Angela Saini works for BBC London news as a reporter but regularly freelances for New Scientist and the Nature Network website. Her real passion is science policy, defence and weapons. She holds a masters in engineering from Oxford University.

Ian Salusbury is a chemist who has followed the MSc in Science Communication at UWE. He says: “After 18 years working in academic publishing I have taken the plunge and become a freelance writer. My interests lie mainly in the physical sciences and engineering, but I have also tackled more business-focused topics.”

Dr Simon Singh holds a PhD in particle physics. He joined the BBC and worked as a director and producer on such projects as Tomorrow’s World and Earth Story. He won a BAFTA for his work on a Horizon documentary on Fermat’s :Last Theorem and wrote a book on the same subject that became a no 1 non-fiction bestseller in the UK. He has lately co-authored Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial.

Dr Deborah Jane Wake is a hospital-based medical practitioner specialising in diabetes and endocrine diseases. She writes a regular column for The Scotsman and writes, presents and produces the medical podcast series Dr Pod’s Healthcast (www.drpod.co.uk). She is a member of the Association of Broadcasting Doctors and is a trained on-screen presenter with broadcast and corporate experience.

Ed Yong works for Cancer Research UK and is the writer of the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science (ScienceBlogs.com). He won the Daily Telegraph Young Science Writer Award (2007) and has freelanced for Nature, New Scientist, Nature Network, The Economist and The Daily Telegraph. He says he still finds writing about himself in the third person strange and unsettling.

Associate

Dr Ian Weatherhead is Director of UK and R&D Communications, UCB Celltech. He is editor of UCB R&D Magazine. He has worked in corporate communications and science communications roles for over 15 years with Zeneca, AstraZenca and Syngenta prior to joining UCB Celltech in 2005.

Student

Rupa Jayant Chandarana is studying Biology with Science Communication at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has had experience of radio at BBC Radio Oxford, and is a keen Indian dancer, currently working towards her gold Duke Of Edinburgh Award.

Nira Datta is following the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London. She is also a member of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association. She has previously worked for various media outlets in Toronto, mainly in molecular biology and international health matters. Her interests like mainly in science in the developing world.

Dr Isabel Kaufmann is following the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London. She also works freelance in print journalism.

Rieko Kawabata is following the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London. She is narrator of Science Zoo for NHK World (Japan Broadcasting Corporation).

Kate Oliver holds an MSci in Physics and is the writer of Null Hypothesis and The Cheese Grater.

Tamsin Osborne is following the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London. She has had five stories published on the New Scientist website.

Katrina Pavelin is following the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London, where she is specialising in print journalism and web publishing. She is a writer and section editor for the college magazine I, Science and Felix.

Dr Tim Sands is following the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London.

ABSW visit to Milton Park

2008-07-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

Nina Morgan recently revived an old ABSW tradition and organised a site visit. Despite a low take-up from her fellow members, she is convinced that site visits still deserve a place in our calendar...

Back in the 1990s organising site visits were a regular – and very valuable – activity in the ABSW. I can honestly say that the information and contacts I made on the visits the ABSW organised played a large part in launching my career as a freelance science writer. Over the years, these seemed to have died away, but remembering how useful I found them – I decided to make the effort to organise one myself. My target site was Milton Park, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, which is home to a wide range of science and technology-based companies.

The visit had a chemistry/chemical engineering theme. Finding companies willing to host a visit was the easy part. Two companies, Oxford Catalyst, a catalyst development company (and one of my employers) and Oxford Diffraction, a company that specialises high tech x-ray diffraction equipment, were happy to participate. Both were willing to go all out to accommodate the needs and desires of the visitors. This included offering to pick up people from Didcot station, providing coffee, lunch, and tea, good press packs, and arranging relevant talks and demonstrations that concentrated on the science rather than on just the business angle.

Persuading ABSW members to come was much more difficult. I posted the invitation on the ABSW list, Barbie Drillsma e-mailed it to members, Ted Nield posted it on the ABSW blog, and Carolyn Kelday very actively promoted it among student members. But there were few takers from the ABSW. To bump up numbers I sent out personal invitations to my own contacts in the science writing world. In the end, just 6 people signed up, of which only 4 were ABSW members. On the day, two were unable to attend, but did let me know the day before the visit.

I'd warned both companies in advance about the possibility of low turnout. Both took the view (which I put into their heads and encouraged!) that whether or not articles appear as a direct result of the visit, it's very valuable to make yourself known to science journalists as an information source, in the hope that they may come back to you later. So I think neither company felt that the effort they put in for the visit was wasted.

And for Oxford Catalysts, at least, so it has proved. As a result of the visit, one article has already appeared, another major feature has been commissioned, and a third participant thinks he may be close to selling one. In addition, several other people who weren't able to attend have asked to receive press packs or to be added to the company's press release distribution list.

So on one level, you might say that this visit was a success. The four that did come (1 student and 2 ordinary ABSW members, and one non-member) all seemed to find it of interest, expressed a lot of enthusiasm and asked a lot of questions.

But on another, given the poor response to the invitation and low level of participation, I found it to be a rather discouraging. Nevertheless, I still believe these visits are a good thing. So it's probably worth persisting for a bit. If anyone is thinking of organising one, and wants to know more about what worked and what didn't, don't hesitate to get in touch. I'll be happy to tell all!

Nina Morgan

Ad people with dodgy practices

2008-07-06T06:29:00.000-07:00

It isn't often that we read of dodgy practices related to medical journals. But that seems to be the story behind a recent press release from the Insolvency Service, Medical Recruitment Publisher Closed Down Following Investigation .

The essence of the release is that a medical recruitment journal, called the 'MRJ', "generated income from the sale of advertising space for medical personnel recruitment advertisements". The company behind the thing is Fast Track Media Limited. The Companies Investigation Branch (CIB) of the Insolvency Service looked into the business and "found the company operated by cold-calling employers, who had already placed recruitment advertisements in established third party publications. The investigation found that in many cases the employer believed they were being contacted by the reputable publication, rather than by Fast Track and that the employer did not understand that they were agreeing to a new order being placed."

There is a tendency among journalists to pour scorn on the ad departments that help to keep their salaries rolling in. Much of the derision is snobbery. In this case, though, it does seem that the ad guys were playing fast and loose. Let's just hope that the operation didn't ply its trade on the back of a bunch of writers and editors who are now furiously trying to find gainful employment.

A week at the ABSW

2008-07-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

Student Karen Manser spent a few days helping Barbie Drillsma in the ABSW office. Here, she reflects on the experience…

Science journalism is as we know it a new branch of reporting that conveys information about science to the public. However, the communication of scientific knowledge requires a unique relationship between the world of science and news media. This link is accomplished through the rather constructive ABSW.

As an aspiring science journalist myself understanding how this link is made possible is a prerequisite. Thus, undertaking work experience at the Wellcome Wolfson building for only a couple of days helping out with general administration duties it became easy to appreciate the vast amount of hard work contributing to linking science journalists with the news media. Also, how the ABSW helps those who aspire to become skilful science communicators. As a student with the ambition to become a science writer acknowledgement of the ABSW is preordained.

The principle of the ABSW as we all recognise is to arrange social events, briefings and seminars with science journalists. One particular event organised by the student committee member Carolyn Kelday embarked to guide and encourage aspiring science journalists. Science journalists from the Guardian and BBC were brought together with aspiring students to give pointers and answer questions the students raised. This was a success and many students went home full of information to help them make the right steps towards becoming science journalists themselves. This is just one successful event organised by the ABSW.

During the work experience at the ABSW undertaking particular tasks widened my comprehension of the widespread involvement the ABSW has. In helping to update the ABSW database a wide variety of members had to be contacted - ranging from aspiring journalists to professional print and broadcast journalists, scriptwriters, authors and producers, as well as retired life members. With these connections the ABSW provides a wealth of excellent opportunities to explore the science journalism profession.

The work the ABSW achieves in connecting students with journalist practising in the profession is vital as the amount of scientific news continues to grow rapidly with science playing a central role in society. The public rely heavily on science for their health, new discoveries, treatment for disease to inform us of true facts of which they can trust to help them lead better lives. The ABSW continues the improving of standards of science journalism in the UK.

Karen has already written for the London Student Paper...

Feel the love of science

Published 11th February 2008, The London Student Newspaper, Europe’s largest student newspaper.

By Karen Manser

So Valentine’s Day is with us again. We may experience feelings of euphoria, rhapsody, comfort, or even rejection from that special someone. But how are we first attracted to someone? Why do we fall in love? While the science of love is still quite new, researchers have been busy searching for answers.

American anthropologist Helen Fisher has suggested that love develops in three stages, from first sight to matrimony.

It takes between 90 seconds and 4 minutes of meeting a man or woman, to decide whether they are a suitable partner- a subconscious decision on whether they have ‘good genes’. This first stage, lust, is driven by the hormones testosterone and oestrogen. It’s at this stage the sexual part of love is ‘switched’ on.

Next comes the lovesick stage. Symptoms include loss of appetite, reduced need for sleep as you stay awake day-dreaming. This may all seem counter productive to attracting your love, but your biochemistry is to blame. Scientists have found that a group of neurotransmitters known at monoamines come into play as you constantly pine for your new love. The important key players in this stage are hormones dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin. These are also activated cocaine, make us sweat and raise our heart beat, and can send someone temporarily insane.

So what is the nature achieving by making us falling in love? It not only stops us looking for another partner be it temporary or permanent but ultimately love is needed between two individuals to enable us to reproduce and bear children to keep the human race thriving. Unlike chimpanzees, Children need to stay with their parents for much longer than seven years.
This is where the final stage of love, attachment, kicks in. This is the bond that keeps long-term couples together. And involve hormones oxytocin and vasopressin.

Oxytocin is commonly associated with a mother-child bond, as it helps to stimulate breast milk and is released during child birth. But it is also released by men and women during love making. And so, the theory goes, the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes. Hence, having sex too soon when you meet someone can cause someone to foolishly fall in love for the wrong person!

So what can science tell us about infidelity? Molecular biologists have been able to alter the hormones of meadow voles, so that they stay faithful to one female. Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia discovered the biological difference between a faithful male vole and those that like the company of more than one female. According to the scientists, fewer receptors for the vasopressin hormone are present in the more promiscuous voles. The receptors of the faithful male are plentiful, increasing bonding during sexual intercourse. The difference caused by a single gene. This can be altered by introducing a virus to produce a mutant gene.

Also, recently scientists have been also to switch on genes to make fruit flies gay. But is this ethical? Can we, or should we, apply this to humans? For thousands of years, people have searched for love potions to capture the heart of their most desired and scientists are now making this dream a possibility.

Behind The Twitching Curtain - ABSW Briefing on How To Write A Popular Science Book.

2008-03-25T13:15:00.001-07:00

By Edward Wawrzynczak

The first of a new series of ABSW Briefings kicked off in style at The Geological Society in London on March 13th with a capacity audience keen to learn How To Write A Popular Science Book.

L to r: Gabrielle Walker, Peter Tallack and Richard Hollingham. Picture: Ted Nield

How strange is the world of popular science book publishing. Celebrity scientists get massive advances and publicity, although publishers cannot guarantee to sell enough books to cover their costs, while the rest of us struggle to get published and can only hope to make a bean or two along the way.

Publishers plan their marketing years ahead yet, if a topic is hot, they commission ‘crash’ books with deadlines so short they threaten to reduce their writers to jabbering jellies. At the same time, editors cannot agree what makes popular science books successful and seem to have little idea who actually reads them.

Is it any wonder that budding authors find the prospect of writing the right sort of book and finding a publisher so daunting? To help steer a path through the confusion, the briefing’s panel of experts shared their experiences, offered sound guidance, and answered questions from the floor.

Peter Tallack, author, editor, one-time publisher, literary agent and proprietor of The Science Factory, considered what commissioning editors look for in a popular science book. He stressed how important it is to write a really meaty proposal that stands out and makes an immediate impact. He outlined all the essential points that a proposal needs to address and highlighted the key pitfalls to avoid.

BBC presenter and writer Richard Hollingham (How to Clone the Perfect Blonde, and Blood and Guts in the pipeline) described his experience of writing popular science and the satisfaction involved in covering a subject in depth. He pointed out the key role of narrative, the need to plot out stories and link characters between chapters, and the importance of allocating the time needed to bring everything together.

Finally, Gabrielle Walker, freelance broadcaster and author (Snowball Earth, An Ocean of Air, The Hot Topic, and a new book about Antarctica on the way) discussed writing different types of narrative, offered her perspective on what makes a proposal successful, and amplified the vital role played by the agent. She also made pertinent comments about what the writer can do for the reader.

People are keen to know about the world. They want to venture behind the ‘twitching curtain’ to grasp what interesting and amazing things lie beyond. The writer who understands science and tells good stories can open a window to this hidden world, an exciting world the reader would otherwise be to unable to see into. If you believe it’s worth doing, make sure you convey that sense of excitement.

Edward Wawrzynczak is a freelance science writer based in Surrey.

Editor sought for specialist science rag

2008-03-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

The "free media job site," Source That Job, breaks the news that New Scientist is looking for a new editor.

The ad says that "The successful candidate will have a degree in science, a good track record in journalism, management experience, a deep understanding of science and the charisma to inspire others."

The vacancy comes hot on the heels of the news that Reed, which owns the magazine, wants to get shot of it, along with a raft of other stuff that people actually read for pleasure.

Science Writers' Awards Cancelled

2008-03-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

It is with great regret that the ABSW must announce that, having failed to secure sufficient sponsorship for the 41st (2007) Science Writers' Awards, the Awards have had to be cancelled this year. They were, until last year, sponsored by Syngenta.

However, hopes remain high that the Awards will be successfully re-launched in 2009, when the World Conference of Science Journalism comes to London. The Awards for 2008, which will be presented in 2009, will also apply to materials created in 2007 - so that writers who remain particularly proud of a piece of work that they did last year will still be able to submit it for consideration.

Ted Nield, Chair of the ABSW and of the Judging Panel for the Awards, said: "Running these awards costs a large amount of money. Our last hope of obtaining sufficient sponsorship was snuffed out yesterday morning, and in view of the level of interest in the subject we are losing no time in telling people the sad news. We apologise if members have felt frustrated at the apparent lack of communication until now, but negotiations have been sensitive.

"These Awards, which we have been running uninterrupted since 1967, are the "Oscars" of science writing, and have served as a model for similar schemes all over the world. However, despite gargantuan efforts by Claire Jowett, Barbie Drillsma and the ABSW Committee to find new patrons for them, we have hit a brick wall. As the ABSW does not have the reserves to run the scheme without a sponsor, we have no choice but to cancel, despite several pledges of smaller amounts of funding, for which we are very grateful. We thank our supporters for their understanding.

"However, with the advent of the World Conference of Science Journalism in London next year, we have received strong indications that there is significant interest in sponsoring the Awards in 2009. In fact, a number have already indicated that they would be interested. So watch out for news of a re-vitalised, re-launched Awards scheme towards the end of 2008.

"And if you have just written the best piece of your career and are gutted that there won't be an awards scheme in which to enter it – fear not. The Awards presented in 2009 will extend their reach to two years (2007 and 2008) instead of the usual one."

CRA enters new phase

2008-03-14T01:34:00.000-07:00

Mike Harrison, the ABSW's eyes and ears at the Creators' Rights Alliance (CRA) detects a wind of change a-blowing...

It’s hard to get an ABSW member to contemplate anything that smacks of political action. You are, on the whole, a dedicated lot with your minds fixed firmly on the task of bringing science to the nation. That makes it all the more praiseworthy that, a few years ago, members took the courageous decision to affiliate to the Creators’ Rights Alliance (CRA), adding the ABSW’s few hundred voices to the tens of thousands brought by the giants of the creative industries.

This has already given the ABSW a share in the evidence sent up to the government’s Gowers Enquiry into the future of copyright, and a voice in the national debate about the future of the BBC’s funding.

But now the CRA is about to enter a new phase of existence. This spring will see the publication of a policy manifesto which will urge the government, the public and publishers to recognise the unique contribution that creative workers make to the United Kingdom economy and to put right some of the marketplace inequities they have to face.

The fact that the CRA can contemplate preparing such a document marks significant progress in its thinking. Its early days were marked by a strong sense of division between the various creative sectors. How could you reconcile, say, the working practices of a composer of music for television drama, with those of a photographer, a science writer, a newspaper journalist, a book author or an illustrator, to name but a few of the affiliates’ interests?

As the organisation matured it became clear that not only were there common themes in the worries brought to the table by this disparate membership but that there was a universal concern for the unforeseen consequences of digitisation of published material.

The new policy manifesto, which is now in the final stages of drafting, will pull together these common concerns and set them in a proposal which will try to define a new balance between the interests of the creators, publishers and users of copyright material. Later in the year it will be launched and a campaign to gain recognition for its recommendations will begin.

It would be wrong to pre-empt the final document by leaking the draft – at the time of writing, there is still much wrangling over detail to be done. But there is general agreement within the CRA that some matters are crucial to the future of the UK’s creative economy, especially where freelances are concerned.

For example, there is a strong feeling that ‘creativity’ gets far too little recognition as the spring from which publishing and media activities flow, and that there is a need to cosset the talent that drives this section of the economy. For example, reducing the creative brain drain – the loss of experienced writers and other creators to less creative pursuits – means encouraging creators to hang in there and develop their skills. They should not have to battle for a credit or to defend the integrity of their work. Nor should they be pressured to waive these moral rights or to submit to abuse by ‘rights-grab’ – the demand for all publication rights to be handed over for a single fee regardless of the potential for future profit.

Unless a beneficial deal has been struck for a complete handover – perhaps through the benefits of a staff post – then, having made a work, a creator should be able to control its exploitation. The common practice by which publishers hold on to exploitation rights without making use of them benefits no-one. This is one manifestation of the asymmetry which dogs creators’ working lives. They are small, under-represented micro-businesses, largely prohibited from any collective bargaining by dictat of the Office of Fair Trading; their clients are mainly powerful companies. It is small wonder that many creative workers slip quietly away from their chosen profession long before their imaginative talents are spent.

The CRA’s ultimate objective is to influence the re-shaping of the laws controlling copyright and author’s rights, but little will be achieved without some public awareness of its concerns. Government ministers are notoriously blind to issues with no public profile. For that reason, the public launch of the manifesto later this year will include publicity-seeking stunts alongside the more dignified presentations to Westminster and Whitehall. It’s hoped that these will serve the dual purpose of raising public support for professional creators, while reminding more casual creators that the digital age allows anyone to participate. It is in Jane and Joe Public’s own best interests to understand and respect the cash value of their and others’ creative works.

It’s going to be an uphill struggle but the CRA has never been better placed to speak with a powerful, united voice – that of the 90,000-plus creators brought into its fold by the affiliate organisations. And that includes you lot, so wear your affiliation with pride.

Mike Harrison represents the ABSW on the CRA’s national committee.

For details of Mike's forthcoming training sessions in the ABSW 2008-09 Briefings series*, Copy rights and responsibilities and Angling & wrangling visit the ABSW Blog.

*sponsored by the Geological Society of London

CRA affiliate organisations

Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) Association of Illustrators (AOI) British Academy of Composers & Songwriters (BAC&S) British Association of Picture Libraries & Agencies (BAPLA) Chartered Institute of Journalists (CIOJ) Directors Guild of Great Britain (DGGB) Garden Media Guild (GMG) Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM) Musicians Union (MU) National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Outdoor Writers & Photographers Guild (OWPG) Society for Producers & Composers of Applied Music (PCAM) Society of Authors (SOA) Writers Guild of Great Britain (WGGB).

© Mike Harrison 2008

Discussing Popular Science - Report of a one-day conference at Imperial College

2008-03-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

By Edward Wawrzyncak

What is popular science? A simple enough question, one might think, but there is no handy definition that offers an adequate answer. This was richly demonstrated by a one-day conference ‘Discussing Popular Science’ held at Imperial College under the auspices of the Science Communication group on 22nd February 2008. The meeting, which was organised by Alice Bell and co-chaired by Jon Turney, attracted a diverse mix of participants willing to join in energetic but good-natured debate. The eager audience was treated to some excellent talks enlivened by specimens of rare and beautiful books.

As an experienced populariser, Professor Robin Wilson (Gresham College), author of Four Colours Suffice (2002), shared his experience of bringing mathematics to the public. He offered some valuable tips about writing a popular science book. Try to define your audience: why should they be interested, how much do they know, and what do you need to tell them? If you have to get technical, make sure the narrative still flows; you can always use footnotes, add an appendix, or urge your readers to skip the complicated bits. And strive to get your facts right; omissions are inevitable but inaccuracy is inexcusable.

Oliver Hochadel (Vienna) outlined why the search for mankind’s origins is attractive as a topic of popularisation: it involves tales of adventure, exotic peoples and far-flung places, and not a lab coat in sight. Books penned by fossil hunters, such as Richard Leakey’s Origins (1977) and Donald Johanson’s Lucy (1981), do more than simply convey scientific information to the public. They help to legitimise the public profile of palaeoanthropology, allow the protagonists to write their place into history, extend the field of academic battle, and offer a place to speculate about the big questions. The author’s point of view clearly dictates what scientific facts are put before the public, and biases how the reader is meant to understand them.

Judging the veracity of the facts in a popular science book is not easy. Dr. Jon Adams (London School of Economics) explored the boundary between fact and fiction. Fictional devices help to convey facts: they organise content, add interest, and enliven prose. Novels fictionalising science can therefore both entertain and educate and, even when they oversimplify, they can convey important messages. The problem comes when these messages are corrupted. The recent novels of Michael Crichton, such as Next (2006), are a case in point. Such books mix genuine scientific data and convincing fictitious data in a way that makes it hard for the layperson to distinguish one from the other. The jury is still out on the potential threat posed by this intentional blurring of fact and fiction.

Three speakers presented historical case studies of popularisation. Melanie Keene (Cambridge University) described the children’s book The Fossil Spirit (1854) by John Mill, which presents the geological history of the world imaginatively through the fantastic tales of an Indian fakir remembering his many and varied incarnations. Dr Amirouche Moktefi (Strasbourg) analysed The Game of Logic (1887), a book and game devised by the mathematician Charles Dodgson (and published under his better-known pen name of Lewis Carroll), which proved too tedious to be popular and too simplified to be taken seriously. Dr Katy Price (Anglia Ruskin University) discussed the serialisation of Bertrand Russell’s ABC of Relativity (1925) in ‘The New Leader’, the newspaper of the independent Labour Party, and the meaning of relativistic concepts in the context of the labour movement.

Two talks focused on popularisation using pictures. Alice Bell (Imperial College) examined the ways in which scientific concepts can be usefully relayed by cartoons, which are visually engaging, have a readily discerned narrative structure, and are good at conveying causation. Katherine Gillieson (University of Reading) demonstrated the striking illustrations contained within a series of children’s books published by Max Parrish in the 1950s and 1960s, which used Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education), a systematic approach to the pictorial depiction of information that influenced the style of the graphics used in newspapers and magazines today.

What can one conclude? Science popularisation has a long history during the course of which a variety of approaches have been tried to make science intelligible. Judging by the presentations at this conference, scientific exposition in written form is clearly complemented by the creative use of stories, characterisation, metaphor, humour and illustration. Unfortunately, what works is not necessarily successful, and what succeeds is not always correct. Nonetheless, the conference did underline that ingenious popularisers have plenty of scope to work inventively with the various tools that help to convey the meaning of science to a lay audience.

EDWARD WAWRZYNCZAK is a freelance science writer based in Surrey

The Royal Society Prizes for Science Books - judging underway

2008-03-11T07:04:00.000-07:00

With the judging process for the Royal Society Prizes for science books now underway, the search has begun for the best science books published in 2007. The Prizes were originally established in 1988 with the aim of encouraging the writing, publishing and reading of good and accessible popular science books.

A total of over 150 books for both the Junior and General Prize have been submitted from around the world and will be judged by two separate panels. The junior winner will be decided by groups of children from over 100 schools, libraries, science centres and youth groups who are part of an innovative judging panel.

This year the prize is managed by the Royal Society and funded by the Beecroft Trust. The awards ceremony will take place at the Royal Society on Monday 16 June 2008.

Further information about the Prizes is available at http://royalsociety.org/sciencebooks

Scott Kier - Project Manager, Royal Society Prizes for Science Books

New Members, March 2008

2008-03-08T01:07:00.000-08:00

The ABSW welcomes the following new recruits to Full, Associate and Student member status.

Ted Nield, Chair

Full

Simon Frantz, currently senior editor at the Nobel Foundation website, Nobelprize.org, Simon was formerly Web Editor at The Scientist, news editor at Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. He now creates new educational content based on the prize’s historical archive, as well as new interactive content around the annual prize announcements. He is based in London.

Laura Hood is a journalist at Research Fortnight, moving from editorial to news team in August last year. She covers research policy in the UK and Europe.

Anna Lewcock took a bachelor’s degree in science communication and policy at UCL and has since co-authored a book on the history of chlorine. She works as a freelance editor for the Environment Agency and has had work experience at the BA Festival press office, The Times and the Science Media Centre.

Daniel Nelson has covered development issues on Africa for 40 years and has worked on an edited newspapers, magazines, news agencies and websites all over the world. He is currently acting commissioning editor at SciDevNet, on maternity leave cover. He is also editor of oneworlduk.

Angela Saini works for BBC London news as a reporter but regularly freelances for New Scientist and Nature Network website. Her “real passion”, she writes, “is science policy, defence and weapons”.

Associate

Laura Rodriguez is news service manager for Alphagalileo, the internet press centre for European Research.

Student

Ian Bruce Adamson is a mathematician currently reading for an MSc. He has written c. 1000 brain teasing puzzles for UK and international journals.

Rupa Jayant Chandarana is studying Biology with science communication at Royal Holloway, University of London. She already has experience in radio, having worked at BBC Radio Oxford.

Fearchar I MacIllFhinnein studies natural science with the Open University and helps the BBC out with its Gaelic service explanations of scientific issues.

Rachel Mundy is studying on the Royal Holloway science communication masters degree and has written for several student newspapers.

John Reilly is about to complete an MSc with the Open University and is a physicist. He is embarking upon a career in science writing which he wishes to integrate with future research.

Sara Ameena Rafice is completing a PHD in chemistry and writes for Leicester University’s newspaper The Ripple. She intends to move into science journalism.

Books by Members

2008-03-04T07:14:00.000-08:00

Compiled by Sallie Robins, publicist

It's ONLY Rocket Science: An Introduction in Plain English

Lucy Rogers
Springer-Verlag New York Inc Feb 2008
Series: Astronomers' Universe
Paperback 208 pages
ISBN: 978-0-387-75377-5
£19
Contact: information@itsonlyrocketscience.com
http://www.itsonlyrocketscience.com/

The book deals with all aspects of spaceflight, from how to leave the Earth (including the design of the rocket, mission planning, navigation and communication), to life in space and the effects of weightlessness.

Flower Hunters

Mary and John Gribbin
Oxford University Press March 2008
Illustrated Hardback 320 pages
ISBN: 978-0-19-280718-2
£16.99
Contact: kate.farquhar-thomson@oup.com or 01865 353423

From the Douglas-fir and the monkey puzzle tree to orchids and azaleas, the thousands of plants we know and love today were found by intrepid botanists who scoured the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Risking all, these explorers collected seeds and exotic plants to send back to Europe. This is their story . . .

Galaxies: A very short introduction

John Gribbin
Oxford University Press March 2008
Series: Very Short Introductions
Paperback 144 pages
ISBN: 978-0-19-923434-9
£6.99
Contact: kate.farquhar-thomson@oup.com or 01865 353423

In this Very Short Introduction, Gribbin describes the extraordinary things that astronomers are learning about galaxies, and explains how this can shed light on the origins and structure of the Universe.

If you have a book coming out - let Sallie know for it to appear in TSR

An interesting conflict

2008-01-29T04:08:00.000-08:00

Here’s a cautionary tale that concerns the definition of a conflict of interest and, to some extent, the definition of a freelance journalist. I’d be interested to hear what others make of it.

First, some background. As a freelancer, I have written for publications including Nature, New Scientist, The Economist, The Guardian and The Lancet. I’ve also done sporadic writing jobs for other organisations.

For example, I once wrote a report for Oxfam on the humanitarian implications of genetically modified crops, and intermittently over the years I have written stories for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Bulletin, about the work of the scientists the HHMI funds. In case anyone is not familiar with the HHMI, it is a non-profit medical research institute and one of the largest private funding organisations for biomedical research in the USA.

A few months ago, having completed a job for the HHMI Bulletin, it occurred to me that the work of one of those scientists could form the core of a feature for a mainstream science news publication. Having been asked by one of Nature’s biology features editors to come up with ideas for them, I took my pitch there. The chief news and features editor, Oliver Morton, said he would raise it at the next features meeting. Another editor, Brendan Maher, then contacted me: he thought it was a great idea but he’d like to know more. We spoke on the phone, and in the course of that conversation I mentioned how I had come across the story. He instantly told me there was a problem because, having written for the Bulletin, I had a conflict of interest.

I was amazed. I hadn’t mentioned the Bulletin until then because it had not crossed my mind that it would present a problem. Brendan told me I had been “on the payroll” of the mouthpiece of a private funding source. I explained that I was not on anyone’s payroll; there was nothing rolling about it. I was a freelancer, and my relationship with the Bulletin (as with Nature) ended each time I received the fee for a piece of work I had done for them. This seems to me the definition of being freelance, and one of the few perks of the job: we don’t owe allegiance to any single publication.

The argument went back and forth, with Brendan suggesting at one point that he would overlook the conflict of interest issue if I could convince him of the importance to Nature of publishing the story, and at another that a way around it might be if I agreed to have included in my byline the statement that I had worked for the Bulletin, but had in no way been influenced by it in writing the piece. Considering it a matter of principle, I refused to do either. I took the matter to Oliver, who told me that the problem was less whether there actually was a conflict of interest, and more if readers perceived there to be one. His duty was to protect the journal’s credibility.

I can’t argue with perception, only with reality, and I agree that that is his duty. However, I think that while being scrupulous about not commissioning stories from journalists whose objectivity is potentially compromised, editors should also be fair.

Oliver gave the following examples, implying they were relevant to my case. He wrote in an email, “So, for example, I would not have written journalistically about the Rockefeller Foundation while I was also writing for them, nor about EPSRC [Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council]…for whom I did some freelance a decade or so ago.”

Curiously, he too seems to have assumed that I had an ongoing relationship with the Bulletin, without asking if I was currently writing for them or had plans to do so again in future. Since neither was the case, his first example was irrelevant. The second was just scary.

I can’t be the only freelancer to be alarmed by the length of (unpaid) gardening leave he expects of us—and that just for writing for the “mouthpiece” of a non-profit organisation whose stated goal is to further basic research, and which never prevented me from writing critically about the recipients of its largesse.

What constitutes a conflict of interest? Out of curiosity I put this question to the National Union of Journalists, and was referred to its code of conduct. The code is extremely general on this point, but the bottom line is that it’s not just about financial or other personal gain, and each case is different.

Three NUJ officers were generous with their advice. They all said, in effect, that they agreed with me. However, the editor was entitled to his decision and they could hardly criticise him for being too fastidious. They also told me to shut up if I ever wanted to work for him again. I had pretty much the same response from the science editor of a major UK newspaper.

Of course, I would like to write for Nature again, though my opinion of the journal has gone down, infinitesimally, since I realise how it must be narrowing its field in terms of the pitches it considers. For a while I fully intended to shut up. In the end, though, I changed my mind.

Given that not many freelancers I know could survive if every publication practised Nature’s current policy, and given that I believe science news coverage in the UK would be poorer without us, I thought it would be worthwhile airing an issue that is central to the way we work and earn our living. My case is closed, but as I said at the outset, I’d be interested to know what others think about it, and whether they’ve had similar experiences. In the meantime, as I merrily burn my bridges around me, I issue the following warning to freelancers: think very carefully about who you accept commissions from, and if you want to write for Nature, think at least 10 years into the future.

Laura Spinney
Freelance writer based in Paris and London
Buy my latest novel, The Quick, at:http://tinyurl.com/2u3lxg

New members

2008-01-28T00:24:00.000-08:00

Your Chairman, Ted Nield, would like introduce you to some new (and some returning) ABSW members.

Full

Thomas Rupert Adams is a freelance TV producer and director, and has worked in television for 15 years on science and technology-based shows.

Amanda Jane Albon is a freelance science writer in print with a PhD in psychology. As well as a textbook published with the McGraw-Hill (OUP) she writes and edits A-level course materials and for The Psychologist on subjects "from abnormality to zimbardo".

Tim Beanland has gone freelance after doing time s a scientific/medical writer at the Wellcome Trust. He trained as a medical writer and editor with Butterworths and Blackwells. He has a particular interest in health and medical issues and the developing world and holds in PhD in biochemistry.

Matthew Chalmers has re-joined the ABSW. He works as a freelance physics journalist and trainer specialising in high-energy physics.

Sharmila Chauhan has a PhD in Clinical Pharmacology and works freelance in print, TV and radio, concentrating on health and science.

Mark Frary is a print and Web freelance, covering technology, science and travel. He writes for The Times, Times Online among others. He tells us he has co-authored three books – The Origin of the Universe for Dummies, You Call this the Future, and Codebreaker. After UCL he worked at CERN and the Mullard Space Science Lab.

Colin Matthew Leverett works at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory where since 2006 he has edited their in-house science journal. Originally a physicist he "soon gave up doing science for writing about it" and is now studying part-time for the Imperial MSc in Science Communication.

Alun David Lewis, now returning to ABSW membership, is a lecturer and broadcaster who now lectures in Science Communication to undergraduates and postgraduates in the UK (Royal Holloway, University of London, where he is in charge of an undergraduate 3-year course in Science Communication) and overseas.

William Gosling or Professor Gosling, to give him his full moniker, has written 15 books and has written freelance for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

Alex Mansfield works at the BBC Science Radio Unit.

Richard Sadler formerly environment correspondent for The Yorkshire Post and northern environment correspondent for the BBC, now works freelance and is a regular contributor to The Daily Express, The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and the Eastern Daily Press.

Maryke Steffens is a freelance journalist now working at Médecins Sans Frontières part time as medical writer and editor.

Adrian Keith Sudbury works for Trinity Mirror and is Senior Reporter with the Huddersfield Examiner. He has a BSc in physiology.

John Travis is European Science Editor of Science, Cambridge. He has worked as a science writer for over 10 years for Science and Science News and for over four years as a Science editor. He has recently relocated to Cambridge from Washington DC and hopes to learn enough about cricket to play Nature in their mighty annual tournament.

Associate

Kristine Kelly works for Edelman PR Agency and formerly worked as a science writer and press officer for Rockefeller University. She has a doctorate and lives in New York.

Natasha Martineau joined as Science Communication Manager for the Environment Agency, but has now moved to the press office at Imperial College London. ABSW members may also remember Natasha at the Royal Society, in COPUS days.

Student

Eleanor Barrie is studying the Sci-Comm masters at Imperial College where she has also written for Spiked Online and The Daily Telegraph. She read Biology at Oxford where she volunteered to tell the public about the exhibits. She is writing a dissertation on the ethical assumptions underlying media coverage of climate change.

Hannah Devlin graduated with an MSci in Physics from Imperial College in 2003 and is now at Oxford University working on neuroimaging. She freelances for The Times and the THES, which of course we must now call the "THE".

Jessica Griggs works for the BA and National Museum of Scotland and has worked as a researcher on Material World (BBC Radio 4). She is in her final year studying Physics at Edinburgh University, and despite experience as a BA Press Assistant, describes herself as "all the more determined to carve out a career in journalism".

Carolyn Kelday is studying Biology with Science Communication at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Robert Stuart Pritchard studied biochemistry at Kent University where he wrote for their magazine Student Science News.

Shibboleth

2007-10-30T04:20:00.001-07:00

Ted Nield ventures up “Doris’s crack” and finds out about what sets the scientific sensibility apart...

You’ve got to hand it to Doris Salcedo, of the now world-famous Tate Modern crack. It's not just art with an edge – it’s art with two edges. And if art these days is supposed to be dangerous, then this piece certainly is. Several members of the public – people who had presumably gone there expressly to see the thing – have already fallen into it.

What’s Shibboleth about? It’s all in the title, the word deriving from the practice of the people of Gilead, east of the River Jordan, who according to the Old Testament used that word to root out their sworn enemies Ephraimites (one of the 12 tribes of Israel) as they tried to cross the Jordan. Ephraimites, unable to say “sh”, gave themselves away immediately. Doris’s crack is all about racism, and all intolerance that engenders division.

So much for the art bit.

The widening crack starts as a hairline fracture under a dustbin near the entrance. It then gradually becomes a stiletto-snapper, forks like lightning, vanishes under walls, and finally widens into a chasm large enough to swallow any unsupervised child with no sense of personal danger, revealing what seems to be fence-wire embedded in its walls – recalling the great symbolic boundaries of our time – the Berlin Wall, Guantanamo Bay, the compound in Ardman Animation’s Chicken Run, and so forth. Shibboleth stretches the 167 metre length of the Hall and, at its most Grand Canyon-like, is about 30 centimetres wide and a metre deep.

What strikes me about this piece is how people’s reactions to it have divided the artists from the public. While the artist witters on about her profound meaning, most of the visitors are more interested in how it was done. On this, Doris herself and the Tate, have remained silent – fearing no doubt that mundane concern with technique (something conceptual artists usually scorn, for obvious reasons) will crowd out questions about “meaning” and the artist's intentions. Compared to these supposed profundities, concern about how the trick was pulled is merely technical - leading only to proximal rather than ultimate causes. Philosophically such reasons hardly seem grand enough. Nevertheless, this work has stimulated the question “how” like few others.

This must be encouraging because “how” is the scientist’s question. Geologists and engineers spend a lot of time staring up cracks because they tell them a lot. Is this metal casting about to break? Is this building about to drop on my head? Is this continent about to rift from its neighbour? Answers to all these interesting and useful questions can all be found in the humble crack. Scientists ask the question “how” because it leads them to understanding something about the way Nature works. How do mountains rise? How do faults move? How can a crack appear in the floor, widen at the speed your toenails grow, and become the Atlantic Ocean? Science can’t tell you why any of this happens, but it can tell you how. And this is useful knowledge – we cannot say why the HIV virus exists, and it is pointless asking. But we can find out how.

So for my money, the question “how” is exactly the one we should be encouraging the public to ask. The search for ultimate causes leads us only into the barren wastes of a philosophical Gilead - the supernatural – exactly what divides more people in the world from their neighbours than anything else. If we could but unite behind the question “how”, the reign of the shibboleth is over.

(Incidentally, spies at Tate Modern have revealed that the plastic moulds for the crack's sides were flown in to the UK from the artist's home. Visitors were then prevented from viewing the Turbine Hall by sheets of paper covering the windows that overlook it as an excavator dug a long, deep trench. The sculpted plastic moulds of the final crack's visible walls were then lowered into the trench, and liquid concrete that matched the floor skim perfectly was poured in. The visible moulded walls of the wider parts of the work, where the chicken-wire can be seen, were then painted to increase their verisimilitude. TN)

The latest issue is now available

2007-10-23T04:02:00.000-07:00

You can now retrieve a PDF file of the latest issue of The Science Reporter. The file is at the end of this link.

When the Earth moves

2007-10-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

Ted Nield* has identified a present science journalists can give geologists in UN International Year of Planet Earth 2008. Stop saying “on the Richter Scale”.

Ever since the first landslide victory, journalistic language has been full of geological metaphor. Landslides, triggered close to the epicentres of political earthquakes and their aftershocks, or eruptions of popular sentiment, may tell of seismic shifts as tectonic plates of fixed belief move along fault lines in the bedrock of voter support, sending tsunamis that may even raze the high ground of our moral topography and bring overdue extinction to the dinosaurs stalking the political landscape. But geology itself is also frequently in the news, particularly when Mother Earth moves to prove yet again what an unsuitable parent she is.

The first of the problems affecting earthquake copy is usually how to describe severity. You should always write it thus: “An earthquake of Magnitude 7 has struck the island of Sumatra”. Do not on any account write: “An earthquake measuring 7 on the Richter Scale…”.

Earthquakes are no longer measured on the Richter Scale, defined in 1935 by the Californian nudist and geophysicist Charles F Richter (1900-1985) and his more frequently clothed colleague Beno Gutenberg (1889-1960). Although Richter first developed the idea of using a logarithmic scale (which he reputed to have described as "the work of the devil"), his was designed to measure quakes in southern California; and like many things from around there, it possessed certain magic characteristics.

Because of its limitations (especially a tendency to become saturated at high magnitudes, so that very large events could not be distinguished) a more uniformly applicable scale known as “Moment Magnitude”, Mw, was developed in 1979. This is the measure used today and whose numbers are nearly always verbosely and redundantly misreported as “on the Richter Scale”.

Each point on the Magnitude scale betokens an earthquake releasing about 30 times more energy than one on the previous point. For this reason, the higher the fewer. Earthquakes are happening all the time, but Magnitude 8 earthquakes occur about once every 10 years - Magnitude 9s about once a century. They don’t get very much bigger than 9 simply because the strength of rock is finite - such huge amounts of energy cannot be stored up without being released.

Sometimes, in stories about ancient earthquakes - like the one that may have brought down the Walls of Jericho - you may hear the term “Earthquake Intensity”. Intensity is measured on the Modified Mercalli Scale, whose categories go from I to VIII (or higher). These should not be confused with Moment Magnitude, which uses arabic numerals. Whereas Magnitude measures the energy released by an earthquake and is calculated from seismograph measurements, “intensity” measures the shaking produced at a certain location. Intensity measurements are more subjective, and are determined from effects on people, structures, and the environment – hence their use in analysing historical reports.

One of the thing affecting intensity is depth. The point inside the Earth where an earthquake occurs is known as its “focus”. If the focus is 150km deep, surface effects will be less noticeable than if the same amount of energy were released at only 2km. Think of a vibrator next to your skin, as opposed to under the mattress.

A line drawn from the centre of the Earth through the focus intersects the surface at the “epicentre”. This often misunderstood word is the point on the ground directly above the focus. Because this is where seismic waves have the shortest distance to travel to surface, it is often (though not always) where an earthquake’s intensity is greatest, and where it is first felt.

Earthquake magnitudes are often revised as measurements from more distant seismographs are added in to the equation. So, when you find later reports coming across your desk conflict, do not correct against previous copy. Finally, “earthquake” and “quake” are permissible alternatives. American writers often use the word “temblor” for variety. It is from Spanish, but largely unknown among English speakers on Eurasian Plate, and should be avoided here.

Finally, “earthquake” and “quake” are permissible alternatives. “Tremor” can mean any seismic disturbance, but has no particular scientific meaning that distinguishes it from “earthquake” or words nobody outside America uses, like “seism” or “temblor”. It is best reserved for minor quakes, especially weaker aftershocks in the context of “dying away”.

Useful sources

You can receive daily earthquake notifications from the United States Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center, which sends out emails when an earthquake anywhere in the world tops Mw 5.5 – or any “felt” earthquake within US borders.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/neic/

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/ens/ to subscribe to alerts.

In the UK, the British Geological Survey is the point of first call for earthquake information and comment, especially about earthquakes in the UK.

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/science/seis.html

Dr Ted Nield NUJ FGS is the Editor of Geoscientist, the monthly colour magazine of the Geological Society of London. He is Chair of the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW). His book Supercontinent – 10 billion years in the life of our planet is published by Granta in October.

New members 2007 June

2007-09-20T03:24:00.000-07:00

Full

Stephanie Tania Burchell holds an astrophysics degree from Harvard and is a former NASA press and media liaison officer. She now writes for the National Space Centre in Leicester.

Jasmine Farsarakis studied natural sciences at the University of East Anglia and is a freelance writer and editor specialising in medicine, health and biological sciences. She is currently Associate Editor of Nature Clinical Practice Rheumatology

Philippa Pigache is a freelance feature writer with 30 years' experience, having written for women's magazines, the Sunday Times, Daily Mail and The Guardian – as well as ITN and BBC. She has also published four acclaimed consumer health books.

James Taylor works for Medwire News and studied the MSc in Science Communication at Imperial and spent three years as an advertising copywriter. Currently writing news, he wants to branch out into feature writing in the fields of pharmaceuticals and genetics.

Richard van Noorden is Science Correspondent at Chemistry World. He has also written for Nature, Bluesci and RSC News and lists stand-up comedy among his many interests.

Patrick Walter has a biochemistry degree and has a year's experience wirting for Chemistry & Industry writing on science topics across a wide spectrum.

Associate

Tammy Boyce is the coordinator of the Science Communication MA at the Cardiff University School of Journalism.

Student

Emily Baldwin is the editor of Prime Space, a quarterly publication of the Society for Popular Astronomy and contributes to Popular Astronomy magazine and Geoscientist. She is currently finishing a PhD in planetary science at UCL.

Joanna Katharine Hicks Carpenter holds a doctorate in chemistry and has worked as a civil servant, and editorial assistant, and a TEFL teacher. She is now studying the MSc at Imperial and is wondering how to earn a living at the end of it.

Ruth Knowles is an Imperial College London graduate, currently studying the MSc in Science Communication part-time at the University of the West of England. She is hoping to launch a career as a science writer.

Leandro Librio is a physicist and nanotechnologist now studying for the Birkbeck Diploma in Science Communication.

Victoria West is a freelance science writer and broadcaster specialising in environment and conservation.

Is this the real climate swindle?

2007-09-11T04:50:00.000-07:00

A chilly response to a programme on global warming prompts Bob Ward to throw his remote control at the TV

Is "The Great Global Warming Swindle" an outstanding example of investigative journalism that uncovered the truth about climate change science, or a pernicious piece of propaganda that systematically misrepresents the evidence about global warming?

Let me declare my hand at the outset: I believe that the latter is true. But while no doubt some ABSW members might think that “you would say that, wouldn’t you,” I have to admit some surprise at the way in which the programme has been promoted, or excused, by some journalists in the past couple of months as if it they believed the former.

Lying at the heart of some of the support for the programme (and the ABSW’s chair even called for the programme to be nominated for an award), I suggest, are misguided concerns about the freedom of speech and the right to report, which actually trivialise an important principle.

The first thing to note of course is that the programme was broadcast on Channel Four on 8 March (and later repeated on More 4) and as such is subject to Ofcom’s ‘Broadcasting Code’, the production of which was required by the Communications Act 2003.

Ofcom has received more than 200 complaints about the programme, alleging breaches of many parts of the Code. Some of these complaints are, I believe, unjustified. Certainly the programme gave great prominence to the views held by a minority of researchers, but it would be unhealthy to insist that the media only cover mainstream views. However, the programme also included demonstrable misrepresentations of the scientific evidence (such as false statements and obsolete observations) about climate change and the interpretations made of it by some researchers. Should such misrepresentations be allowed to preserve the freedom of the media?

The Broadcasting Code says not. The Code has 10 sections, and Section 5 deals with ‘Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions’. Rule 5.7, under the sub-heading of ‘The preservation of due impartiality’ applies to television programme services, teletext services, national radio and national digital sound programme services, and states: “Views and facts must not be misrepresented. Views must also be presented with due weight over appropriate timeframes.”

Does this provision within the Code place an undue restriction on journalists’ freedom to report? I think not. ‘The Legislative Background to the Code’ explains that it has been “drafted in light of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights”. In particular, the Code “encompasses the audience’s right to receive creative material, information and ideas without interference but subject to restrictions proscribed by law and necessary in a democratic society”.

The importance of the media accurately representing the facts was emphasised by the philosopher Onora O’Neill in her lecture on ‘Rethinking freedom of the press’ to the Royal Irish Academy in 2003. She pointed out that “Democracy requires not merely that the media be free to express views, but that they actually and accurately inform citizens”. Baroness O’Neill went on to conclude: “Inadequate reporting, commentary and programming may marginalize important issues or voices, may circulate inaccurate or manipulated ‘information’, and may suppress or distort material that is relevant to its own assessment. It damages democracy by making it hard, even impossible, for citizens to judge for themselves.”

It seems clear to me that the ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ systematically breaches the Broadcasting Code in order to promote its central premise that solar activity, rather than greenhouse gas emissions, has been driving the recent rise global average temperature. In doing so, it damages rather than enhances democratic debate about climate change.

The distribution of the DVD of the programme, while not subject to the terms of the Broadcasting Code, would similarly be bad news for public debate about this issue. For this reason, I and 36 scientists wrote to Martin Durkin, the producer of ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, to ask him to remove the many major misrepresentations in his programme before distributing it on DVD. Our request appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

Mr Durkin has recently taken to describing himself as a science journalist. I believe this brings the profession of science journalism into disrepute, as does the support that some ABSW members have given to his programme. In particular, claiming that Durkin has an absolute right to mislead the public with his programme, under the freedom of speech, trivializes and diminishes an important principle that should be properly used to protect courageous (and accurate) investigative science journalism that is truly worthy of recognition through the ABSW awards.

Bob Ward is Director of Global Science Networks at Risk Management Solutions and formerly Senior Manager for Policy Communication at the Royal Society. The views expressed here are his own.

Fabian's world

2007-08-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Daylight saving exacerbates global warming

Don’t you wish you were the editor of the Arkansas and Democrat Gazette You could really make your mark in that paper. Consider the editorial it ran at the end of March.

“You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. In fact I understand it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person because as you know, daylight saving times started a month early this year. You’d think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have had on our climate. Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat.”

Man beats dinosaurs in race for vegeburger

The reason why dinosaurs died out is becoming clear now, following the implications offered by the new Creation Museum in Kentucky. It appears that both they and Man and Woman were created on the same day (Saturday), and the dinosaurs were vegetarian, otherwise they would have eaten Adam and Eve. So the race was on for the flora.

These animals weighed hundreds of tons or tonnes, whichever is the larger, and there was fierce competition for fruit and vegetables especially after Eve had eaten all the apples, and flora had only started growing five days previously. This was no problem for Man who could eat hamburgers. McDonald's was created on the eighth day, so Man and Woman had to make do with doughnuts for just one day. But McDonald's didn’t come up with vegeburgers until about 2002, by which time it was too late for the dinosaurs; despite a copious intake of chips and salad, there just wasn’t enough bulk to keep the poor creatures going.

That is the lesson of creationism; vegetarianism leads to extinction. Eat five portions of meat a day.

How do they know that?

Many years ago I was at a press conference held by Mrs Thatcher when she was Minister of Education and one brave journo (not me) said to her: “Some people would call you stubborn, Mrs Thatcher.”

She replied; “Name one.”

I covered my head in my briefcase with embarrassment for nearly two years afterwards, but it taught me that fatuous observations have their limits. So what about this headline from the BBC website “Camels' milk could hit UK shelves”? Not particularly fatuous although it conjures up some bizarre images, particularly if it were frozen. No, the real fatuity is in the caption to a camel’s mugshot. It says; “Camel’s milk is thought of as nectar in many Arab countries.”

How do they know that?

Can you imagine a reporter (maybe the same one who spoke to Mrs T if he’s not dead by now) trotting round Saudi Arabia or Egypt asking camel herders what they thought of camels' milk. Suppose one of them were patient enough to reply to this daft question. Can you imagine him smacking his lips and saying “It’s just as good as nectar”? Coca Cola more like.

Bring on the horses

I’ve always been a man for the unit of horsepower; it’s so much more evocative than the metric equivalent. No disrespect to Mr Watt, but I don’t even know what he looks like, so I can’t form any image of him pulling a cart or pushing a train. But everyone knows what a horse looks like. Even the French, with their icy cold logic towards metric units have (or had) a cheval vapeur, and what could be more evocative than that?

These thoughts were prompted when I went to a recital recently at the Royal Albert Hall where the recently refurbished organ was the main instrument. I wondered about the volume of air that must be forced through those large pipes at high velocity and how quickly the air valves would need to be operated. Open a valve too quickly when it’s under pressure it and it starts a minor earth tremor. But slow isn’t an option for an organ. And even if you do open it quickly you still might have wait five or six seconds for the final chord while compressors labour away trying to get up enough vapeur to excite the pipes. The conductor meanwhile standing frozen with his baton raised waiting for a signal from the organist. So somehow they’ve solved this problem at the Albert Hall.

One usually unreliable source told me that the compressors were driven by a 500 hp motor. Being the gullible chap that I am, I believed him. It seemed quite plausible, and I spent a bit of the time during the concert working out how, in the event of an extended power cut, one could organize five hundred horses to work the bellows.

Trying hard to look as if I were absorbed by the music, I was imagining how all the listeners in the stalls would have to be replaced by horses and their drivers, and how much hay they would have to consume before a concert. We could accommodate the hay and water and perhaps and on-duty farrier in the physics department of Imperial College, which is conveniently close, and stable the horses in the college car park.

Or maybe we could draft in people serving community orders to man or women the bellows. How about Paris Hilton? She’s in a pious mood at the moment.

Nobel laureates meet young researchers

2007-08-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Caroline Richmond reports from Germany's 'Riviera' on a meeting across the generations, and hears of an orbital laundry line

Every year, usually in early July, a dozen or more Nobel Laureates meet 500–600 young researchers at Lindau, an island and famed beauty spot on Lake Constance in south Germany. The south shore of the lake, Germany’s Riviera, is famous for its good weather, though this year it bucketed with rain.

I was lucky enough to be one of the 60 journalists at this year's Meetings of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, the 57th such gathering. This year's event was mainly on biomedicine. In 2008 there will be two meetings, on economics and on physics.

The Lindau meetings started in 1951. German scientists were trying to rectify their isolation from the rest of the world, which had started with Hitler in 1933 and persisted with post-war conditions. The meetings take place in English, with simultaneous translation into German.

About a quarter of the young scientists at the meeting were German. With participants from 63 countries and regions, it was the most truly international meeting I have been to, and probably the only one that was completely non-commercial. It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life.

The nature of the meeting means that you won't pick up any red-hot stories, though I did gather a few anecdotes (see later). It was a wonderful way to refresh myself in science, and, as an obituary writer, a unique opportunity to see in action scientists whose obits I might one day write.

The meeting’s format seems to be constant. It starts at 4 pm on Sunday, with opening addresses from various big cheeses and Countess Bernardotte who, with her late husband, has done much for these meetings. She is very committed and very nice, with a taste in sprauncy hats. The talks were interspersed with chamber music by young prodigies from various nations. There was also a panel discussion on the state of science and the world, with Sir Martin Rees and three laureates.

From Monday to Thursday, the programme consisted of, in the morning, either five lectures from laureates, or three lectures and a panel discussion. All the talks were good; the two stars of the meeting were Craig Mello (Medicine or Physiology 2006) and Sir Tim Hunt (2001). Mello had some good gags: “Here I am at the White House with Dick Cheney, believed to be 90% of the brains of this administration. Ever since the current occupancy of the White House, Americans have become more open to the idea that humans and monkeys are related.”

In the afternoons there were discussion groups for the young researchers only – each of about six laureates set up a stall and the researchers could join who they wanted. I would have liked to have gone to these as an observer, but the press were banned.

In the evenings there was one press reception, which I missed as someone forgot to put a notice in my press pack, one not-very-grand dinner sponsored by the local chamber of commerce, and a classical music concert. The week needed some light relief. Indeed, it needed the Ig Nobel road show, which tours Britain each March. I took part in the show this year, which is why I’m in favour of it.

On the Friday, all participants are invited to the island of Mainau, two hours' away at the other end of Lake Constance. A boat is provided and it is said to be a wonderful journey when not shrouded in rain and mist. The island is famous for its gardens, and we strolled though them to Countess Bernadotte’s castle at the top for the closing ceremony. This left most people a couple of hours to have lunch before taking the charter boat back to Lindau. But I had to miss lunch, as I had to get to Friedrichshafen airport by a complicated combination of boat, bus and train, to get my Ryanair flight back to Stansted.

Oh, and the anecdotes. Well, Henrik Larsen, a Danish hack, is fifty-ish and looks fairly distinguished – indeed, very distinguished by journalistic standards. He arrived at Munich airport, where he saw a man carrying a placard saying “Nobel Lindau”. He went over to him, asking whether they had provided a bus to the conference. (By now you will have spotted how this story is going to end.) “No”, said the man, “I have a car for you. Come this way please.” “Aren’t there any others?” asked Henrik. "No," said the man, as he showed him into a limo. Well, of course, when they were halfway down the motorway the driver’s cellphone rang. Professor Günter Blobel of Rockefeller University wanted to know where his car was. And the best thing was, the driver couldn’t do a U-turn on the motorway to pick up Blobel, so he took Henrik to his hotel first.

The second story came from Simon Wiseman, now an Israeli, who was living in Windsor in 1957 when the first Sputnik was launched. Simon, a skilled photographer, photographed the satellite’s track from his garden. He then rang the editor of the Windsor and Eton Express to ask if he would like to publish it. “You bet” said the editor; I’ll put it on the front page”. So Simon delivered up the photographic plate.

Well, every photographic technician knows that a straight line on a negative is a scratch, to be carefully removed by retouching. Simon’s garden contained a washing line, which was duly, and proudly, featured on the front page as the cutting edge of space exploration.

For more on the Lindau meetings: http://www.lindau-nobel.de/

The bogeyman of science, nuclear power

2007-08-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

As the fourteenth (or is it twentieth?) declaration of a comeback for nuclear power hits the newspapers once again, Paul Guinnessy asks what stories should science journalists consider covering on the industry?

On a recent visit to the UK, I had lunch with some friends who work in the arms control community and who had a unique problem. One of their oldest members, a physics professor who had recently died had left a suitcase in their northern office, which they believed contained radioactive material. It had been in the basement for about 30 to 40 years. One brave soul put on a protection suit and opened the case while waving a Geiger counter around. Inside was a small piece of folded aluminium foil, which, when opened, contained a small piece of metal that caused the readings on the Geiger counter to go off the scale. A hasty conference shouted through the door led to the decision to reseal the foil, and the suitcase. Only paperwork that was deemed too sensitive to be read, was to be put next to the case while they figured out what to do, and whether the building needed to be evacuated during the suitcase’s removal.

Their response is a classic example of why science journalists are needed to help the public not to be scared to death about radioactivity. Radioactive materials usually consist of alpha, beta, and gamma ray emitters. Alpha emitters are very intense, extremely dangerous if ingested, but have a very short range. A sheet of paper can block an alpha emitter. Beta radiation has a longer range, but can be stopped by aluminium foil, while gamma radiation is more penetrating.

The fact that the radiation emitter in the suitcase was wrapped in aluminium foil suggests that it would be safe to pick up, as it was probably a beta/alpha emitter. Handheld Geiger counters are notoriously useless in telling you what radiation you are being whacked with, so seeing one go off the charts can sometimes cause unnecessary panic. In this case, the most important point that they forgot is that physics professors aren’t crazy enough to leave radioactive materials in the basement, unless they believe the materials are adequately shielded.

This then leads to the issue of the new interest in nuclear power. The planned resurgence of the nuclear industry in the UK is an interesting case where environmental, science, business, and political journalists will all be writing on various aspects of the unfolding story. Although the UK government appears committed to nuclear power, and the commercial sector claims to be willing to invest in it, unless the public is convinced that new power plants will be safer, cheaper and more efficient than their predecessors, it is unlikely that someone is going to build them. Over the next few months there will be a campaign to influence journalistic opinion one way or another. Both sides of the issue, the anti-nuke brigade and the pro-nuclear lobby, are going to be throwing statistics at journalists left right and centre.

How should science journalists approach this issue? What type of stories could they write about the industry?

Both sides of the nuclear debate have valid points (as The Guardian helpfully pointed out a few weeks ago), and there will be the temptation to just write a 'he says, she says' sort of article. But there is also an opportunity to do some interesting digging beneath the surface.

As many of you know, the domestic nuclear industry no longer exists, having dwindled as few or no reactors were ordered. Instead, the European company Areva, and three Japanese companies, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi, are the leading reactor builders. What expertise the UK has is is similar to its US counterparts, squeezing the maximum performance out of old reactors, by running them at higher temperatures and upgrading parts of the system to limit refuelling and reactor downtime. A look at this process, what did they do to improver reliability, is running an old reactor safer than building a new plant, might make a nice piece.

There is also the concern about whether nuclear plants will release radioactive plumes into the atmosphere, so a comparison with coal-fired power plants, which release radioactive plumes all the time, might lead to some surprising conclusions.

Other questions to ask are: Where will the UK buy its uranium fuel and uranium ore from? How do you create uranium fuel and what procedures are in place to minimize waste, both at the point of creation for the fuel, and after its been used. How long will a nuclear power plant have to be off-limits before you would walk safely inside a reactor? Are the standards for nuclear waste storage, particularly on the length of time the waste has to be contained, based on science? Or on an arbitrary number pulled out of a civil servant's hat? What are the scientific implications for the UK if Europe pulls ahead in nuclear power, and leaves the UK behind? Is there enough scientific and technical staff in the UK to build, service, or run new nuclear power plants? As the US no longer has the expertise to repair its own reactors and subcontracts the work to the Franco-German company Areva.

And for your business colleagues, who is paying the bills, investors, utilities, or the government? Who is buying up all the potential sites for the reactors, and was there heavy trading in the shares of those companies just before the government announced the new reactor building consultation process? There are lots of potentially useful stories waiting to be written about the nuclear industry. I hope this gives you some ideas towards writing some of them.

The ABSW and its African twin

2007-07-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

The twinning arrangement between the ABSW and its Ugandan equivalent is beginning to take shape, says Lionel Milgrom

I was asked to represent the ABSW as twinning monitor with the Ugandan Science Journalists’ Association (USJA) at the 5th WFSJ Conference held in Melbourne this year. I met William Odinga Balikuddembe, my Ugandan counterpart, several timea and, quite simply, we got on famously.Although he is only 28, I found William bright, intelligent, insightful, and totally switched onto the problems of living and working in Uganda and the region: a very wise head on such young shoulders.

During one of these meetings, I conducted a more formal interview. This report outlines my findings and offers some suggestions for how this twinning arrangement might continue into the future.

The USJA is still a young “organisation of friends” with no formal constitution. It has 27 members, including scientists as well as science journalists. Meetings and events consist largely of training sessions in science reporting and provision of a forum for scientists and journalists to meet and exchange ideas. Members fund this activity out of the own pockets.

The USJA will at some stage go for NGO status so it can apply for government grants in Uganda. Under Ugandan law that means having a member of the Internal Security Agency sitting on the governing board (commissar?). Although this law is in place in Uganda, it has yet to be properly implemented, according to William. Still, it does raise some interesting questions about the existence or otherwise of a free press, and possible limitations on the freedom of speech/action of USJA members.

Scientific activity in Uganda is quite broad according to William. It revolves around the environment, resource-management, health, and IT.

The four main state universities are Makarere (the biggest) and Kyambogo in Kampala, then Mbarara science university in the western part of the country, and Gulu University of Agriculture in the north. There are other private universities in Uganda. Science stories typically might be about:

Sustainability of fish stocks in Lake Victoria: Uganda has the lion’s share of this vast inland fresh-water lake, but poaching by fishermen from neighbouring countries increasingly pose problems.
Effects of falling water levels: Lake Victoria is also the source of the river Nile, so falling water levels (from excessive use or draught) impacts directly on water usage in the countries downstream (e.g., Sudan and Egypt). Thus Uganda and its environment might be seen as a microcosm of the global effects of local environmental problems. “We either live together or die together: it’s that simple”, says William; a fairly obvious but nevertheless compelling sentiment especially when expressed by someone better placed to comment on certain of life’s realities than most of us experience here.
Retroviral AIDS drugs: These certainly are extending the life-span of those suffering with the disease, but in so doing leads to its further spread; as does US (Neocon/religious-Right-influenced) funding policies that currently encourage the Uganda population to forgo condoms in favour of sexual abstinence.
AIDS research: In Uganda, as in other African countries, this includes active programmes looking into the development of cheaper approaches based on herbal medicine, to controlling the disease.

What can the USJA offer the ABSW? Like most similar organisations in the region, the USJA is cash-poor and likely to remain so until such time as it is recognised as an NGO, with possible attendant Internal Security intervention, by the Ugandan Government. Nevertheless, the USJA offers valuable knowledge and experience of living and working in Africa, with on-the-spot insights into AIDS and environmental problems.

What could the ABSW provide the USJA? Essentially, experience and professionalism, especially now that the WFSJ has published Barbie’s new blockbuster "How to Run a Science Journalists’ Association". (The book rightly earning rave reviews at the Melbourne conference.) Advice on the USJA’s draft constitution might be provided by both the ABSW and the USJA. The ABSW might also like to consider the acquisition/provision of bursaries for visiting USJA science journalists, for example, for workshops and conferences over here, especially the 2008 BA festival, and the 2009 6th WFSJ Conference to be held in London; and perhaps help with internships for USJA members.

It was also suggested that when the USJA sets up a proper website, then we could ensure it is linked to the ABSW and EUSJA web-sites. A piece on William for The Science Reporter would not go amiss. We could also regularly send the USJA our Science Reporter and minutes of ABSW Board meetings to the USJA (and vice versa). Perhaps a regular column from a USJA member might be included in The Science Reporter?

Any other ideas, or offers to help with those already on the table, to me please.

Lionel Milgrom

Ugandan Representative: William Odinga Balikuddembe; acting chair of the nascent USJA, usjamedia@hotmail.com.

Watch this space

2007-04-24T05:52:00.000-07:00

It is where we will keep folks up on The Science Reporter.

http://absw.org.uk/tsr/reporter.htm