- If you haven’t already seen it, here’s UC Berkeley’s viral-hit, The Nano Song. It went big about a month ago and is still brilliant. Explanation of how it came about, and a link to an Mp3 download here. Nanotechnology explained through song. With puppets.
- More recently, this week New York Times Deputy Science Editor, Barbara Strauch, has been answering reader questions. Kudos to her for answering quite so many. There are good questions on the difficulties of reporting health and science — from hype to the difficulties accessing paid-for-only journal papers. There are also a few oddballs out for a rant, one guy sounding like he’s got a few screws loose and wondering why other ‘professional’ scientists won’t listen to him. She also does a decent job answering some general science questions that seem to have gotten lodged in there. It’s interesting to read how she works and how she got into the whole thing, especially since she’s an English Lit grad!
- Following the Lego post a few weeks ago, there’s more. IC SciCom student Jacob Aarons found another on mRNA to protein translation and wrote a (slightly sceptical) post about it on his Just a Theory blog.
- Science journalism is under the spotlight, with an editorial and feature article in Nature on the future for science journalists given the rise of the science blogger. It’s a long time coming with sad news of ongoing cuts to science sections in the US and Germany. Tough times indeed.
- Ben Goldacre’s been having a go at science journalists (again), although I think he means health journalists this time. No excuses, it was poor work on this particular case.
- Elsewhere in the Guardian, the Techology section had a great feature article on garage-based science; DIY scientists doing genetic experiements in their spare time.
- And finally, for something completely different, Richard Wiseman set up a ‘Science of Ghosts’ blog a few weeks ago, which has been phenomenally popular. The idea is to send in your spooky pictures and Richard will post them, allowing readers to vote on whether it is real, faked or has a scientific explanation. Brilliant stuff.
Tags: Ben Goldacre, Genetics, ghosts, Guardian, journalism, lego, nanotechnology, Nature, opinion, Science communication