I’m an “investigative journalism” skeptic. And I’m right until the promoters of investigative journalism prove me wrong. Let’s start with the latter. Associating “investigative” with “journalism” is almost equivalent to slapping “artistic” on “films.” It’s tautological. Good films are necessarily artistic as much as good journalistic pieces are naturally investigative. Therefore, those who insist on [...]
President Obama was characteristically adroit with language when he declared on March 9th that he would “restore science to its rightful place.” The decision was to undo some of the restrictions on federal funding to stem cell research imposed by Obama’s predecessor in 2001. To that, half a dozen editorials responded with praise — as did, [...]
In a way, you can blame it on Thomas Kuhn. It was he who introduced too beautiful and brilliant a term in the early 1960s: paradigm shift. A term that writers of all sorts, particularly about business and information technology, have had no shame abusing since. Myself included. [I can’t help thinking that if the editors [...]
According to my blue-and-orange, dutifully annotated business card, I’m a “freelance science journalist.” And judging by the the number of business cards I’ve “lost” over this past year alone, I’ve made this claim about 200 times. My understanding was that nobody really bothered much about what is written on business cards (I myself look blankly [...]
