There has been so much written about ScienceOnline 2010 that for me to try to encapsulate in yet another blog post seems pointless. ScienceOnline 2010 was an “unconference” of folks dedicated to communicating science and science issues through the internet. It was held at Sigma Xi headquarters in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
People expect a lot from scientists. Preferably ready-made, unambiguous answers, valid for eternity. But because of science’s critical character and rigorous reality checks of hypotheses, various scientists can give different answers to the same questions. If these questions concern cutting edge research, this is more the rule than the exception. Only after years or even decades of extensive checks, some scientific hypotheses make it into handbook science, that is hardly doubted anymore. But even some handbook science might get overthrown after some time.
A big scandal is going on in Russia. An inventor with no scientific degree and no serious scientific publications may receive a huge part of taxpayers’ money allocated to the national program called “Clean Water”. The total cost of this program would be 15 trillion rubles (500 billion dollars), and the money can be spent to buy water filters created by the inventor, for them to be placed in Russian kindergartens, schools, polyclinics, and other public places.
This article was written by Chao-Ping Hong (Taiwan), a Master student in the science journalism course at Delft University of Technology. Her assignment was to write an opinion article about the influence of citizen journalism on science journalism. I hope her fresh take will inspire you.
Twitter, hyperlinks, comments. Type, click, and send. Without doubt, the [...]
“In this world of ours now, to be an informed participant in the great conversation of mankind is to have an alert awareness and understanding of what’s happening in the world.”
I remember the very first issue of Russian Newsweek back in 2004: it was about the Russian economy being an “oil junky”. For many years, experts have talked about the huge problems that Russia is going to face if it doesn’t build an economy based on something other than these raw materials. But only last year president Dmitry Medvedev started to talk more or less persistently about innovations.
With 5,000 journalists accredited by last week to cover the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, this will be one of the most journalists’ populated global meetings in many years.
Even after 2 days of debates revealing the widely held view that science and religion can co-exist, journalists and scientists were still finding themselves challenged by creationist views on the last day of the “Darwin’s Living Legacy” conference in Alexandria (14-16th November 2009).
“If Adam and Eve were so beautiful, how can they be descended from [...]
Alexandria, Sunday 15 November 2009: An ape gradually changing into modern man is the most common image associated with evolution. ‘The Missing Link’ is probably the most overused phrase when significant fossils are discovered. At best both are inaccurate; at worst they are feeding the public evolutionary myths. This is the view [...]
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