People are appropriately very critical of some of the bad science journalism that we see everywhere. But there are also some high quality voices out there--there are professional science journalists who are trying very hard to produce good pieces, for the right reasons. There are some scientists who are bridging over to the journalism side to write about the science and reach outside of their previously-limited academic arenas.
The Science Matters group mission is described on the profile page in this manner:
A forum for pointing out and responding to the non-science and anti-science material that appears daily in the media. From simple mistakes and ancient astronaut foolishness, to deliberate obfuscation and assault on scientists, science is under attack and Science Matters is fighting back.
I totally support this. But I think there's also another thing we can do.
I think this group should reward good science journalism. If we want more of that--we need to support it. We need to deliver page views of this material. We need to back up the authors in the comments section. We need to spread the word about the items.
I'm open to ways to do this here, but one proposal I'll make is to collect good articles and maybe do a diary once a week on them? Is that often enough?
I personally can't do one all the time as I travel for work with some frequency. But it seems like this team might be able to do wrangle this as a regular feature if there was some interest. Maybe we could create a standing diary in the queue that people could come in and add their pieces to? We could set it up to launch on Wednesday noon ET or something?
What do you think?
I'll start by bringing a couple of articles I've seen just today to give you a sense of what I mean.
To fix food safety, bring back the poison squad (hat tip to @deborahblum My Slate piece today: Bring Back the Poison Squad (and protect food safety) http://www.slate.com/... )
Note: the way I added the hat tip enables people to go to that tweet, from whence it could be re-tweeted....
Another journalist that has been doing great work is Trine Tsourderos. If you followed the anti-vax stories she covered via Orac's blog you might be familiar with her efforts. She was attacked for her work, as you can see here: The anti-vaccine movement strikes back against Trine Tsouderos and The Chicago Tribune This is exactly why we have to support good science journalism, and why I'd like to see this organized in some manner. Today she has an article worth reading:
Supplements lack science, safety proof, hat tip to @sethmnookin Chicago Tribune's Trine Tsourderos: Supplements lack science, safety proof. http://ht.ly/...
A related item, but not a story per se:
@noahWG Interested in science journalism? No? Well, want to sit by me? OK! Then consider the news internship at @NatureMedicine http://bit.ly/...
Please let me know what you think about this.