What Do Science Journalists Do?

Lecture

Speaker(s)

John Bohannon

Former BIDS Visiting Scholar

John Bohannon is a former BIDS Visiting Scholar and science journalist who does data-driven investigations of things like the evolution of scientific fame, the problem of fake peer review, and even fake science journalism. After embedding with military forces in Afghanistan in 2010, he engineered the first voluntary release of civilian casualty data by NATO and the United Nations. His research inspired Stephen Colbert to eat cat food on television, and he is the creator of the "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, an international competition in which scientists explain their research through interpretive dance. At BIDS he is working on tools for “reproducible journalism,” particularly with the IPython Notebook.

Friday, March 4, 2016

BIDS Data Science Lecture Series | March 4, 2016 | 1:10-2:30 p.m. | 190 Doe Library, UC Berkeley

Ever wonder what science journalists do all day? In this talk, I'm going to give you the stories behind the stories I worked on last week: 

  • Many surveys, about one in five, may contain fraudulent data
  • Fight over author pseudonyms could flare again
  • Even on eBay, women get paid less for their labor

Science journalism is how people learn about your research and about you. When we journalists do our job well, the public gets informed efficiently and accurately. When we fall asleep at the wheel, millions of people start believing that vaccines are best avoided, that climate change is a fantasy, or that chocolate causes weight loss. (Wait, that last one was me!)

One of these days you're going to get a call from a science journalist. In this talk, I will offer three easy tips on how to manipulate the journalist into doing the right thing, or at least getting the science less wrong. 

 

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