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Showing posts from April, 2007

Communicating science

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I’m at the 5th World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne at the moment.  Its fascinating being here. Normally when you’re at a science conference, there’s a plethora of your colleagues and just a few journalists.  Here, its completely the other way round.  I’m now the odd one out!  Despite this slight unease, the one thing we all have in common is communicating science to the public. Home to the 5th World Conference of Science Journalists We’ve had some fascinating sessions.   A group of us had a panel discussion on the discovery of the hobbit ( Homo floresiensis ) and how the media reported it.   The last half hour was thrown open to the floor and we had quite a chat on why the politics got so much coverage at time (sometimes more than the actual science!).   There was an intriguing point raised that when a newspaper article is printed, that’s pretty much it, but when a television documentary is made, it can be broadcast several times (even if it is wrong).   I’m