Notes from the biomass

How journalists report scientific progress has been criticized strongly in the scientific community, certainly blogside, and has been the subject of many scientific studies itself. A recent article in PLoS Medicine reviews some efforts for reporting on new treatments and looks into reports published in HealthNewsReports.com. There is a strong “who watches the watchblogs”-reaction in me after looking into the site conducting the reviews, and I haven’t made up my minds about how much of it can practically be done by science coverage in traditional media in the first place. For bloggers in the sciences, the evaluation criteria provide standards that you might not want to follow to the T but certainly review, at least before commenting on news coverage like “the cure for cancer by sequencing animals”.

[via the Short Sharp Science]

Berlin has numerous research institutes, which are spread all over the town and beyond. Many scientists find the connectivity amongst the researchers leaving a little to be desired. Blaming the institutes, their directors or the German research organization might be convenient and fun but of little good; luckily Phil Selenko, who is setting up shop for in-cell NMR (!) at the FMP contacted me via the Nature network a while ago when he arrived, looking for support to start an informal gathering similar to what he had experienced in his PostDoc in Boston.

We’ve had our first get-together with people from the area a month ago and  there is more to come. If you are in the life sciences in Berlin and want to meet people beyond your local crew, check the Berlin group at the Nature network for activities.

[Picture under CC-license from extranoise]

The old blog layout was perfectly OK but there was no way to maintain it any longer. Here is a fresh start that still requires tweaking. May you be happy with your blog design and may your never fish for new Wordpress themes in that big sink hole. Use Kubrick. Aren’t we all using  feed readers?

As a science publication, the journal Nature is held in highest regard; to me it shines even more for its science journalism, which is the focus of a new experiment. Somewhat modest in the light many activities at NPG and probably not entirely novel in publishing, the editors have selected three publications in journals outside the usual scope and the reader gets to select one of the topics to be investigated further. I have never heard of the journals before and one of the articles even seem to be a couple of months old but they all appear to be curious little stories, discovered by people who read more than the press releases. Last week’s story covers the genome of a giant bacterium and is freely accessible from what I can see. Let’s hope that there will always be a market that supports science journalism targeted at scientists rather than just a large crowd that wants to read hear about the latest cure for cancer.