Starting young: A citizen journalist What would happen if you sucked all the journalists out of the UK for 24 hours? Would citizen reporters and social media be able to step into the breach, or would confusion reign? This was the question posed by the…
The search for the origins of humanity, meeting one’s maker, and discovering why we are here: Ridley Scott’s latest film Prometheus tackles some big themes. But arguably the most interesting one surrounds the issue of what it is to be human, raised in the form…
“Data journalism is rather like sex at university: lots of people are talking about it but few are doing it, and fewer are doing it well.” So said Neil McIntosh, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal, at Wednesday’s (May 16, 2012) AOP forum on data…
The media covering stories based on pseudoscience or dodgy statistics is one thing, but reporting news of a science innovation which is actually an April Fool is quite another. Yet this is what happened today when I opened up my copy of the Metro and…
Every character counts when it comes to microblogging, and it seems that some languages are much better at saying more with less. That’s according to a recent Economist article I read (‘Twtr’, issue March 31 – April 6), which said that a 78-character tweet in English…
Clothes that burst into synthetic flames, lethal bioengineered wasps and lotions that can heal deep wounds overnight: these are just some of the technological feats that appear in hit film The Hunger Games, currently taking cinemas by storm. But what of the science behind them…
A fascinating discussion took place at the Royal Institution this week, tackling the challenging subject of consciousness: what is it? Why do we have it? How do we lose it? The questions can go on and on, and it all made for a lively, and…
We now have more ways of communicating science, or anything else for that matter, than ever before, with podcasting now one of the most effective tools in a communicator’s bag of tricks. Despite some believing at one stage that podcasting was on the wane, the…
Sexed-up statistics, misleading headlines, and plain inaccurate stories: the pressure to lure those clicks to news sites can result in some pretty bad science journalism. Some time-poor journalists, when confronted with a bulky research paper, cut huge corners and jump to conclusions when told they’ve…
With the Bafta Film Awards only a week away, I thought I’d look at one of the nominees, The Skin I Live In, and how its story about a scientist incorporating animal cells into human skin is far from being just science fiction. Without giving…
What links key inventions such as teflon, synthetic dye, microwave ovens…and the slinky? Answer: they were all invented by accident. This video I stumbled upon recently includes these serendipitous by-products in its showcase of 10 accidental inventions, all set to a rather toe-tapping soundtrack. Other…
Journalists are often told how important it is to ‘have a personal brand‘ in order to get your name out there. But what happens if your name changes? Does the journalist then have to start from scratch, with their former byline disappearing and taking their…