Abbas Mehrabian, guest contributor On November 9, 2020, when Pfizer and BioNTech announced their COVID-19 vaccine had a 90 per cent efficacy rate without publishing a peer-reviewed study to support their claim, many media outlets covered it as glorious news. Fox News’s headline “Pfizer vaccine proves 90% effective in latest trials” took the companies’ […]
science journalism
A Q&A with The Atlantic’s Ed Yong
Erin Zimmerman, Science in Society co-editor Following his recent keynote address at the Canadian Society of Microbiology conference in Waterloo, Ontario, my Science Borealis colleague, Robert Gooding Townsend and I chatted with Ed Yong, author of the New York Times bestseller, I Contain Multitudes, about getting started in science communication, using humour in your writing, […]
Turning science into stories: The craft of Ed Yong
Robert Gooding-Townsend, Science in Society co-editor Last October, at the height of the American presidential election, the internet was talking about nothing else. Well, almost. Amongst all the takes on Sanders and Clinton and Trump and Rubio and the future of America, one story rose to the top of The Atlantic’s website and stayed there. […]
Science journalism: the key to strong science literacy
Pascal Lapointe, Policy & Politics co-editor Last month, Québecers learned that money talks when it comes to manipulating science information, whether you pay a public relations firm a high enough price, or if you buy advertising. At the same time, however, we’re cutting funding to science journalism. Perhaps these two should be reversed? TransCanada […]
Call to Canadian Science Bloggers: Fill the Media Gap
by Kimberly Moynahan Science in Society subject editor As many of you already know, the Council of Canadian Academies released an assessment last week entitled, “Science Culture: Where Canada Stands.” The report is the result of an in-depth, independent assessment to investigate the state of Canada’s science culture. It was initiated in 2012 at the […]