Over at the Nieman Journalism Lab, Matthew Battles latches onto John Rennie’s column about the future of science journalism, then talks to Ed Yong and AHCJ’s own treasurer, Ivan Oransky, M.D., about embargoes, timelines and cutting through the noise.
Battles focuses on the effort to pursue context in a profession that is so often at the mercy of academic journals. After all, as he writes in his introduction, “The events that science journalists publish about most frequently are themselves acts of publishing: the appearance of research papers in peer-reviewed journals.” The rest of his piece will serve as a handy primer for anyone looking to understand why that particular state of affairs is so pervasive and persistent.
For AHCJ members who want to know more about responsibly covering studies and how to recognize and report the problems, limitations and backstory of a study, as well as publication biases in medical journals, be sure to see “Covering Medical Research.”
