Category Archives: Spun

Looking at the flip side of spin

“Climategate” a spinmeister’s delight

Spun: December 2, 2009
It’s like a stage full of whirling dervishes: spin left, spin right, faster, faster. What has become known as “ClimateGate” (the name itself is, of course, a piece of spin) continues to hog media time. Less than a week after email from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was hacked/pilfered/stolen (pick your [...]
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Technology on the way to extinction…?

Spun: November 17, 2009
This is the time of year when media people like to play “Top Ten List” for just about anything. The process of forming these lists brings irascible people together to champion their own favorites and argue (ever so politely…or not) with their colleagues. Some of the lists produced are also illuminating to those who read [...]
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The horse races of science

Spun: November 11, 2009
Is it any wonder that the media love to dramatize science news with the horse-race metaphor? Not when they get fed (from the horse’s mouth) like these quotes from a single breathless University of Innsbruck release: “…thus narrowly winning an international competition between many first-rate scientific groups.” “…have won a tightly contested race between scientists…” [...]
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Worthy bookmark: Cell size and scale

Spun: November 1, 2009
If you’ve ever had trouble visualizing a nanometer, much less a picometer, here’s a “sliding scale” (interactive) demonstration of the differences in size and scale between various biological entities such as seeds and beans on one end and mitochondria, genes, and atoms on the other end. Developed by the University of Utah Genetic Science Learning [...]
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Science and the Pundit’s Dilemma

Spun: October 19, 2009
Mark Liberman coins a new term – Pundit’s Dilemma – to characterise the temptation to sensationalize the news (and everything else). Here’s the money quote (thanks, Andrew Sullivan’s blog): Overall, the promotion of interesting stories in preference to accurate ones is always in the immediate economic self-interest of the promoter. It’s interesting stories, not accurate [...]
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