Chris Mooney had a nice piece this week on Science Progress about the decline in science specialist journalists at major mainstream media publications. I think Chris nails the problem squarely, but I’d like to elaborate on the implication, because it applies much more broadly. Here’s Chris’s key point: Science journalism, at its best, should also …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Science Journalism Edition’ »
Hoping Malcolm will like this one better. It’s New Mexico’s unemployment rate over the last 10 years, as compared to the national rate. (Red line NM, blue line national. Data courtesy of St. Louis Fed.) The data speak for themselves (the data speaks for itself?), but since this is a blog, I have to say …
This is one of those signs that, just as people with financial skin in the energy game didn’t believe last summer’s $140-plus oil prices, neither do they believe that $40-ish will be the going price for very long. From Bloomberg last week: Rental rates for deepwater drilling rigs continue to surge as a worldwide shortage …
Saul Hansell explains the underlying economic reality that comes with the Internet’s unbundling of the previously bundled product that my various employers over the years have been tricking you into buying: [T]he bad news for anyone who actually likes reading about where they live is that no one seems to be able to develop an …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: The Economics of Local News’ »
My daughter, Nora, notes by way of metaphor the story line in the sixth season of Buffy when Buffy realizes she can’t support herself saving people from vampires. “Her younger sister and one of her friends suggest that she start charging people for saving them,” Nora said. Me: I’m guessing that didn’t work out well? …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: The Superhero Metaphor’ »
The search for a solar-climate link continues. James Annan reports: [T]he field basically consists of little more than people data-mining for correlations that usually fail to hold when tested on out of sample data, and for which there is no real evidence or even plausible modelling to support the hypothesis that there may be a …
On being careful to distinguish what you know from what you don’t: Carl Caves (no one calls him “Carlton”) is the smartest person I know. My wife laughs when I say that, pointing out that I often describe someone as “the smartest person I know.” She is right. As the Journal’s science writer, I have …
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