Category: Journalism

World Conference of Science Journalists: Helsinki Recap

Well, it finally happened. After nearly a year of planning, conversations, blog posts, and twitter exchanges the #sci4hels – Rose Eveleth, Kathleen Raven, Lena Groeger and myself organized by Bora Zivkovic gave our presentation to the World Conference of Science Journalists. WCSJ2013 was held in Helsinki, Finland June 24-27 and included more than 800 journalists from 77 different countries.

For me, the highlight of the conference was certainly the opportunity to meet, listen to, and learn from so many different journalists with such different interests and areas of concern.

Sunset over Helsinki, photo by me
Sunset over Helsinki, photo by me

I kicked off the conference with a workshop from the European School of Oncology, in which there were very few Americans but several reporters from African countries. It was interesting to hear about the most prominent issues for them regarding cancer coverage, particularly access to information and the shift from covering infectious disease to covering a disease that is not transmissible.

Once the full conference program kicked off, it was a blur of ideas and activity moving from session to session and bouncing between ideas. I livetweeted every session I attended, which for me is a great way to synthesize information and take notes but it did leave me buzzing at times like all of the information I absorbed was rattling around in my brain. Most of my tweets were under the hashtag #wcsj2013 but there were also session specific hashtags and of course we tweeted with #sci4hels.

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Wake Up Sweetheart, You’re A Feminist (Book Review: The Good Girls Revolt)

I hope you read that title with the sarcasm with which it was meant, and that you never try to call me sweetheart. It won’t go well. It’s been a while since I did a book review here at Science Decoded (mostly because I don’t have the time to read that I used to) but I just finished Lynn Povich’s The Good Girls Revolt and it spurred me to want to write this post which has been kicking around in my brain for months now. The Good Girls Revolt is the story of the first all female class action lawsuit filed by the women who worked for Newsweek.

Even just two years ago, if you had asked me if I was a feminist I would have told you no. Back then the idea that women needed to form a movement to be treated equal seemed extreme. Equality isn’t hard, it’s a pretty simple concept really. So who wants to be all extreme and label themselves and fight for…what…what are we fighting for? I didn’t know. I had plenty of opportunities, I interacted with professional women a lot. It didn’t feel necessary. Besides, I like shaving my legs (though you should read this post about choosing not to). I have a closet full of dresses and high heels. You’re unlikely to catch me outside the house without makeup. I was vice president of my sorority for crying out loud. Feminist? Psh. But you know what feminism isn’t about? Those things. Any of it.

GoodGirlsRevoltComing from a relatively well-off, educated background where I was always expected to go to college and then work, I never thought of myself as a feminist. My Dad’s attitude toward my career as a science writer has always simply been, go get ’em. I have surrounded myself in life by people, men and women, who value my intelligence and drive to succeed. Growing up I never felt like I was being compared to my brother or any other guy. I never felt like I was less or that less was expected of me. Feminists were an other, and if anything made me feel intimidated. The judgement of other women is scary, sometimes it feels scarier than the idea of walking into a room full of men to tell them what’s what. But, spending a little time in the world, talking to people, and reading things like Povich’s book or Dr. Isis’ Feminist Awakening has a wonderfully eye opening effect.

I think most women in the workplace have a so-and-so said this absolutely jack ass comment to me about xyz story, at least I do, and I’ve heard many stories in a similar vein. The types of things that make people look at you like you’ve got six heads because surely someone didn’t actually SAY that. You might not even have realized it, because at the time I didn’t really see it as sexism. I knew I was upset that good ideas were being shot down. The thought that anyone would take the way I look and my gender and use that to gauge my ability as a writer before actually reading anything I wrote was so completely absurd to me, that I didn’t even realize at first that it was happening.

In hindsight, this made me blame myself – maybe it really isn’t that good an idea, maybe I’m not working hard enough, maybe if I’m here later and put in more hours, maybe if I prove myself…no. I want to grab unpaid intern Erin and shake her and say don’t you dare write that crappy story that you know is bullshit while the paid male intern gets the better story. Walk out. Leave. You’re better than that. I’ve heard it said before that my generation is lazy and entitled. Well in my not so humble opinion, myself and my friends and other young people like us more often assume deeply personal responsibility for failure. If I don’t get that story it’s because I did something wrong. Me. I’m not good enough. How could it ever be that there is a system ingrained in society that is going to hold us back? This is 2013. It can’t possibly be true that we’re still dealing with this.

Povich’s book chronicles events from the 60’s and 70’s, we can’t still be having this same problem? No, no we’re not. The problem back then was flagrant, out in the open, so egregious that it couldn’t be ignored. That is still happening, oh, does it happen. But there is also a subtle sexism – a mild slight, a passing comment, a raise that’s just a little less, a promotion that takes a little longer to get. These are the things that are harder to pinpoint, harder to blame on sexism, but are ultimately what made me wake up to the fact that I’m a feminist. Part of Povich’s book focuses on today, on three women from my generation working for Newsweek: Jessica Bennet, Jesse Ellison and Sarah Ball and the story they wrote in 2010 “Are We There Yet?” questioning if the battle of the sexes is really over. Their experiences resonated with me a lot.

Since I entered college and started writing and trying to get my work published, I’ve been lucky in that the sexism I’ve faced has been mild. Sad state of affairs that it makes me feel lucky, but it does. Right now where I work my superiors are all women – my boss, her boss, her boss’ boss, her boss’ boss’ boss…but my awesome situation isn’t common (and believe me, I don’t take it for granted.) But that doesn’t mean that sexism isn’t still here, and that other people aren’t dealing with much worse on a regular basis. I’m a feminist for myself because yes, I want a fair shake, I want to be recognized for the value of my work and not whether or not my hair looks shiny that day. But, adding my voice to the other feminist voices out there is about more than just me. I’ve got it pretty good. I’m not trying to argue that I don’t. But I can support the women out there who are dealing with overt sexism, who are being attacked. I can try to be an ally. That to me is the real value of feminism, of standing together.

It’s my opinion that a lot of the yelling that happens on the internet (if you could only hear how loudly I am typing!!) happens because we’ve gotten so wrapped up in judging the world based on our personal perspective that we can’t see the things that happen outside ourselves. I’ve never encountered sexism therefore sexism doesn’t exist. We have GOT to shake off this way of invalidating the experiences of others. Once you start listening, I think you’ll find like I did that the need for feminism is impossible to ignore. Participating in #sci4hels, and working with Rose, Lena, and Kathleen (follow us in Helsinki next week!) is another thing that has driven home for me the need for women to support each other. We’ve already used our platform to have a conversation about being female science writers, and I hope that discussion is one that will continue in the future.

Feminism, for me, is a way to recognize that we’ve come a long way but we still have a long way to go. We still need to get out there, and support each other, and continue having these conversations because equality might be a simple concept, but that doesn’t make it any less evasive. I’ve had these conversations a lot lately, and have been asked, “do you think people don’t take you seriously because…you know…you’re good looking?” Typically, I answer something along the lines of making smart decisions is optional, and if anyone doesn’t take me seriously for any reason that’s their mistake to make. I don’t think it’s a bad answer, but until that answer is a resounding “no” we’re just not done yet.

So, if you’ve been in the journalism business for less than 20 years, The Good Girls Revolt is a must-read. Hell, if you’ve been in the business for more than 20 years, it’s still a good read. Recommended.

#Sci4hels Question Time #5 – What is the obligation of a science journalist when it comes to education?

I’m manning the sci4hels ship this week for question time. For question #5, we’ve decided to talk about whether science journalists have an extra obligation to educate compared to journalists who focus on other areas. We’ll be entertaining this topic on twitter at the hashtag #sci4hels on Thursday 5/9 at 1pm EST. I hope you’ll be able to join us, so, you know, I don’t end up talking to myself.
via Wikimedia Commons
via Wikimedia Commons

This question has me particularly excited, because for me it ties back to the larger questions of “why am I doing what I’m doing?” and even more importantly “what do I want to be doing?” Since I turned 25 two months ago I’ve been joking a lot about having a quarter-life crisis, but several things have gone on in my life recently that spurred me to take stock of just about everything, including my career.

I often grapple with questions about whether I can consider what I do journalism, whether I’m okay with not doing journalism, if what I even want is to be a journalist, and where those boundaries are – but those are questions for another discussion (and in fact are being tackled in some capacity by another panel at WCSJ13.) Still, it relates to whether or not education is or should be a part of science journalism.
If I do want to help educate the public about science, and if that is an important part of what I want to accomplish in my career does that mean I should be a science journalist? Why not be a teacher? (Oh, so many reasons.) I could work at a museum and educate the public. I could be a public information officer and help educate. I could be an outreach officer for any number of scientific organizations. If you want to educate, why do it through journalism?
There are a lot of questions related to this including: are there other aspects of being a journalist, specifically a science journalist that compliment being an educator? Does being an educator play a role in science journalism that it doesn’t for business or political writers? Writing scientific explainers is definitely journalism – but is it just one kind of journalism or is it something that pervades all science journalism? One of my favorite take-aways from Scio13 came out of the session on explanatory journalism where Carl Zimmer made the comment (which I’m paraphrasing) that good science journalism should never read like you are dropping a textbook on someone. I think that ties in well with this topic, because if you want to be an educator and you want to do it through journalism – well then how do you do that effectively?
While you could approach this question in a lot of different ways, I would really like to hear from people about whether being an educator was part of what made you want to become a science journalist, and what role you think education plays in your work. Bora has tackled this question before in the blog post/on Twitter with Is Education What Journalists Do? Again, I’ll be posting this question to Twitter on Thursday 5/9 at 1pm EST at the #sci4hels hashtag – I hope you’ll join in.Update 5/9: 
So what happened? Here’s the storify recap – it was apparently both useful and not useful, but a lot of people had a lot to say, so thank you for participating everyone!

[View the story “#sci4hels Question Time #5 – Education and Sci Journos” on Storify]

Reporting on Science Misconduct

I usually prefer to read the BBC for science news (and all other news for that matter) because I find their reporting, especially only US Politics, to be fairly balanced in the grand scheme of journalism. But,  as a NJ/NY native, I can’t help but check out the New York Times everyday. That is where I found this article on a case of alleged misconduct at Harvard that is still under investigation, but may have a trickle-down affect to various fields that the PI worked in, and students that he worked with.

I always found it very interesting that when we ran stories at BioTechniques about cases of scientific misconduct, they caused a huge jump in hits to the website. People love gossip, and they especially love hearing drama about their colleagues. I guess its an old journalism standard that juicy stories usually win big, even in a field that can be dry (when not done right!) like science writing. Stories about misconduct feel a little cheap to me, almost like they belong in the Star magazine of the biological research community. But, then again misconduct is a huge issue that does need to be reported on.

Integrity in any field is important, but for researchers, the “publish or perish” adage adds to the pressure to get results no matter what the cost. Conducting research requires a lot of overhead, in addition to the time and energy of students, post docs, and technicians. When a PI choses to alter their data to get more favorable results it does have a huge affect on the other members of their lab, and can tarnish their careers even if they were unaware of the misconduct. Hopefully that case at Harvard won’t derail too many promising careers.