Science and writing

A quick glance at the category archive listing in the far right column of this page makes one thing abundantly clear. I've written a lot about science communication, more than about any other topic¹ That's because I think it's our responsibility as scientists to make our work accessible to the public and to share it with them.. For reasons Philip Kitcher explains well in the concluding chapter of Science, Truth, and Democracy, that obligation derives from our obligations as citizens of a democracy to contribute to its orderly functioning, and part of that orderly functioning depends on citizens being well informed.

I mention this because I just ran across a project that I'm going to have to learn more about,

NeuWrite is a collaborative working group for scientists, writers, and those in between: graduate, post-doctoral and faculty researchers, fiction and non-fiction writers, as well Journalism and MFA students at Columbia. The group serves as a writing and science resource for members pursuing their own projects, and as a forum for collaborative work. (source)

In particular, one of the projects linked to from neuwrite is the NeuroJournalism Mill, a "site dedicated to sifting the wheat from the chaff of popular media reporting on news about the brain". It looks like a very worthwhile project. If there are readers of this blog interested in trying something similar on environmental reporting, drop me a line. I'd like to "talk" with you about whether an EnviroJournalism Mill would also be worthwhile.