A Tactical Guide to Science Journalism

Book excerpt: "The veteran journalist Tim Radford, who headed up the science desk at the UK's Guardian newspaper for more than two decades, was once interviewed by a government committee charged with investigating the fragile relationship between "science and society." In a lengthy report submitted to the House of Lords in February, 2000, the committee noted that the public's faith in both science and government had been shaken over the preceding years - in part by an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, colloquially known as "mad cow disease." This and the swift rise of biotechnology, the burgeoning internet age, and other fast-moving manifestations of human ingenuity, it was determined, were creating an air of anxiety and mistrust"--