Re: Project PM Science Improvement Project
Subject: Re: Project PM Science Improvement Project
From: "barri2009" <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 8/31/10, 13:56
To: "Mano Singham" <mano.singham@case.edu>,"Clark Robinson" <robinsonchicago@gmail.com>
CC: "Robert Luhn" <luhn@ncse.com>,"Todd Essig" <tessig@me.com>
Reply-To:
barriticus@gmail.com

Hi, all-

To address the points that have arisen, i'd say that I'm confident that we'll be able to filter participating scientists to ensure that they are capable and willing to respond in a reasonable period of time to inquiries by our freelancers. Secondly, in response to robert's particular concerns about deadlines in general, I should specify that my intention is to focus on those freelancers who work by querying or submitting, which is to say that they need not even contact the editor before writing the story or at least consulting with one of our scientists before writing a final draft. For instance, I often write a piece and then only afterwards submit it, and often when I query editors they simply tell me to send it whenever, and many other writers work in such a way at least part of the time. To the extent that the writers we assist work in that fashion, and especially to the extent that they are doing features rather than breaking news, even a moderate delay by a scientist shouldn't be a problem.

If anyone has any other concerns, please let us all know; otherwise, I'm going to compose a general schematic for how this might work specifically and then send it along in the coming days after consulting with former washpo editorial board member Gina Acosta, who will be advising us from an editorial point of view. Then we can alter as you or her see fit and afterwards I'll announce and request participants in my next Skeptical Inquirer column as well as other mediums. Thanks again to everyone for contributing your time and expertise thus far.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

From: Mano Singham <mano.singham@case.edu>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:26:11 -0400
To: Clark Robinson<robinsonchicago@gmail.com>
Cc: Robert Luhn<luhn@ncse.com>; Barrett Brown<barriticus@gmail.com>; Todd Essig<tessig@me.com>
Subject: Re: Project PM Science Improvement Project

Speaking on behalf of all scientists worldwide (!), I agree with Robert in general that scientists are not usually used to writing to tight deadlines but they can respond quickly under certain circumstances, such as when it comes to grant deadlines.  The issue is whether they think an issue is important enough to drop everything else and focus on this one item. It is not that hard to get them to give a quick opinion on whether there is truth to some claim, and even be quoted on it, but adding their name to an article will usually result in some hesitation as they make sure that everything in the piece meets their approval.

As for the point about graduate students raised by Clark, their level of expertise after a year or two can vary hugely depending on the discipline and their graduate program and supervisor. Int he US in the sciences, the first year is usually taken up with somewhat general course work and students develop detailed expertise only around the third year. In the UK, students start research almost immediately and thus develop in-depth knowledge in their fields more quickly. 

Scientists find the situation in law, where students actually review and edit law journal articles, to be pretty bizarre, since graduate students are not thought to have as yet the depth and breadth and perspective to make important judgments about the quality of other scientists' work.

Mano


Mano Singham, Director
University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE)
Allen Building 101, LC 7025
Case Western Reserve
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106
Phone    : 216-368-1224
Fax         : 216-368-0197
Email     : mano.singham@case.edu






On Aug 13, 2010, at 9:20 AM, Clark Robinson wrote:

Being neither a scientist nor a professional writer, I have been laying low in this discussion, but it occurs to me that you may want to broaden the group on the scientist side of the matchup to include some students in the sciences. By the time someone has a year or more of graduate study in a science specialty I would expect they might know enough to be useful to a freelancer wanting guidance on a science or technical issue.

This is Mano's area, so I won't go on about it.

In my profession (law), much of the best analysis and writing is done by students and interns.


On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Robert Luhn <luhn@ncse.com> wrote:
Hmmm. Having been one of those freelancers...we do indeed have deadlines! But perhaps the stickier issue, timewise, if the scientist. Would he/she be fast enough, clear enough, to identify and fix the problems with the copy. Scientists/academics live in an entirely different timescale. Deadlines? Well, they're not used to the kind of deadlines journos are. And scientists (much as I love 'em), can go down endless rabbit holes, chasing/verifying an arcane bit of information. Keeping them on track...that's a job. (Something that Cory Dean at NYT details thoroughly in her recent book about science writing.)

r


On 8/12/2010 8:33 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Howdy-

Robert raises two important issues here, but I think both are easily gotten around. 

"I guess one issue that comes to mind--this is me putting on my journalist cap of 30 years--would said  journalists (and their impatient managing editors) have enough time to really do some kind of collaboration?"

This won't be a problem  to the extent that we focus on providing this setup to journalists who are working on a freelance basis and without deadlines. Even aside from that, those on deadline could simply run their piece by a scientist to ensure that there are no glaring errors or false impressions and could presumably rework the piece rather quickly.

"And would said managing editor consider intimate input like this, from an outside (non journalistic) source...a problem? A conflict of interest perhaps? I mean, at NCSE, I dish out science to the media. But I naturally have an agenda. So...while I can see (in some circumstances) a journalist pairing up with a (presumably) independent professor to tackle a subject...I doubt said journalist would come to my organization. Although certainly, I could steer said journalist to someone who was 1) not affiliated with NCSE, but 2) had the scientific cred to help said journalist. So...."

I hadn't thought about that, but I don't think it will be a problem as long as the scientists have no particular affiliation with advocacy groups such as the NCSE (and even if they did, I don't think it would be a problem as long as the articles in question are merely about scientific developments or some such thing, rather than anything with a clear socio-political orientation such as topics relating to intelligent design).

Let me know if that makes sense.

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Robert Luhn <luhn@ncse.com> wrote:
The ProfNet model is the closest I can think of in this realm. (This is before it was bought by...um..PRNewswire?) If I was writing an article on antimatter and cosmology, I could query the ProfNet network, and get a half dozen physicists to reply. They'd definitely offer me technical counsel, help me sift my priorities, and on some (rare) occasions, actually look at a hunk of my article, to make sure I'd gotten the technical points right.

True be told, at NCSE, I've provided the same service to journalists writing about evolution.

I guess one issue that comes to mind--this is me putting on my journalist cap of 30 years--would said  journalists (and their impatient managing editors) have enough time to really do some kind of collaboration? And would said managing editor consider intimate input like this, from an outside (non journalistic) source...a problem? A conflict of interest perhaps? I mean, at NCSE, I dish out science to the media. But I naturally have an agenda. So...while I can see (in some circumstances) a journalist pairing up with a (presumably) independent professor to tackle a subject...I doubt said journalist would come to my organization. Although certainly, I could steer said journalist to someone who was 1) not affiliated with NCSE, but 2) had the scientific cred to help said journalist. So....

r

On 7/31/2010 1:46 PM, Mano Singham wrote:
Addressing Barrett's question:


Would
the pairing of freelancers with scientists described above be a viable
foundation for our efforts to improve science journalism? If so, do you
have any suggestions regarding the specific aspects of how this would
best be pursued? If not, do you have another foundation you would like
to propose?


This would be new model. I have been trying to think of any examples of this kind of pairing in the past and have failed to come up with anything.

I think it is an interesting idea. While some scientists can write fairly well and usually know what they are talking about, they lack certain important skills that a professional freelance writer has. One is that scientists are used to writing for peers in a fairly specialized format and find it hard to tailor their writing to the needs of a particular popular audience or a publication. They also lack the ability to find a good hook or an arresting opening paragraph and are unaware of the wide array of publications that might be receptive to their work. These are things that the freelance writers would be skilled at.

I think it is worth a shot. As I said, this would be new and that alone makes it interesting.

Mano






Mano Singham, Director
University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE)
Allen Building 101, LC 7025
Case Western Reserve
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106
Phone    : 216-368-1224
Fax         : 216-368-0197
Email     : mano.singham@case.edu






On Jul 30, 2010, at 3:36 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:

Gentlemen-

Thanks
to each of you for expressing interest in Project PM’s Science
Journalism Improvement Project, which I’d like to open for discussion
today in hopes that we can agree on an actionable plan by September
1st, after which I’ll announce our intentions in my monthly column for
Skeptical Inquirer, as well as in other venues.

First,
I’ll introduce our initial participants.

Todd
Essing, Ph.D, is a training and supervising analyst at the William
Alanson White Institute as well as a columnist for Psychology Today and
True/Slant. In 1992, he founded a pre-web online network for mental
health professionals, which itself gave rise to an annual symposium as
well as the first online continuing education course.

Robert
Luhn is director of communications for the National Center for Science
Education. Formerly he served as an executive editor at CNET Networks
and has worked with other new media outlets as well.

Mano
Singham is director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching
and Education at Case Western Reserve, as well as an adjunct professor
of physics and the author of several books on evolution, the philosophy
of science, and related subjects. He is also a fellow of the American
Physical Society and an active blogger.

Clark
Robinson is a retired lawyer who has been instrumental in helping me to
bring Project PM from conception to our current development status, in
organizing participants, and in helping to design the various
frameworks under which we hope to eventually operate. Formerly, he
worked for the U.S. Social Security Administration.

In
addition, we may bring on a few other participants at some point in the
very near future, although I’d like to keep this group reasonably small
as our discussion will be necessarily informal and somewhat haphazard
until such time as we implement some improved methodology or format
above and beyond an e-mail discussion.

To
start off, I will again note that the purpose of this group is to
devise an effective strategy by which to improve the state of science
journalism in the U.S. and elsewhere, and will also remind you all that
my original and basic approach to this involved pairing freelance
writers with members of the scientific community and having them
produce articles which would presumably be better than the sort one
generally sees in that genre, and then to assist in the sale and
publication of those articles by, say, providing a database of contact
info for editors at various publications and otherwise facilitating the
process in whatever way we can.

I
discussed this briefly with each of you, although thus far I have only
spoken about the details with Robert Luhn, who has raised several
specific issues (and with your permission, Robert, I’d like to reprint
what you wrote to me on the topic, unless you’d like to summarize those
points yourself; please let me know).To start out, then, I would like
to pose the following question to each of you:

Would
the pairing of freelancers with scientists described above be a viable
foundation for our efforts to improve science journalism? If so, do you
have any suggestions regarding the specific aspects of how this would
best be pursued? If not, do you have another foundation you would like
to propose?

Please
hit “reply all” so that each participant can view your answer. Again,
my thanks to everyone for participating, and please get in touch if you
have any questions.

--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302


-- 
Robert Luhn
Director of Communications
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x314
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
luhn@ncse.com
http://www.ncse.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/evolution.ncse
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NatCen4ScienceEd
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ncse



--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302

-- 
Robert Luhn
Director of Communications
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x314
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
luhn@ncse.com
http://www.ncse.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/evolution.ncse
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/NatCen4ScienceEd
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ncse