Student science writers from around the world have created a set of 52 stories from the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017, spanning most of the meeting’s sessions and creating a valuable reference archive for journalists in the U.S. and abroad. The reports, along with bios of the authors, are online at the WCSJ2017 Student... Read More
By Amelia Jaycen SAN FRANCISCO—Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel Prize–winning astrophysicist and cosmologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has spent a lot of his time ascertaining how quickly the universe is expanding. But he is also concerned with some down-to-earth issues, like the state of human interactions. As he watched public discussions unfold in the last... Read More
By Carolyn M. Wilke SAN FRANCISCO—Is fact-checking the future of journalism? That question, at once disturbing for our society and promising for the increased role science journalists might play in combating fake news, drove a panel discussion among four experts on 30 October at the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017. The panelists, all experienced... Read More
SAN FRANCISCO—Science podcasts are more popular than ever. Producing them takes time, technical savvy, and a deep passion to engage listeners with material that is both informative and fun. How does one start a science podcast and build a dedicated audience? Those topics drew an enthusiastic crowd on 27 October at the World Conference of... Read More
By Liz Kimbrough SAN FRANCISCO—When South African student journalist Sibusiso Biyela sat down to write about the launch of the MeerKAT telescope in both English and Zulu, he thought it would be simple. The English version rolled out smoothly. But when he began to translate into Zulu, his native language, he found he would have... Read More
By Leah Rosenbaum SAN FRANCISCO—Every day, it seems, reporters cover a new stem cell treatment. But how are journalists supposed to distinguish the real stem cell treatments from the fake? While there have been bona fide advances in the past two decades, stem cells also have become associated with shoddy clinics and treatments that may... Read More
By Andjela Djuraskovic SAN FRANCISCO—Robots, takeovers by artificial intelligence, and high-tech jobs of the future: Those were the expected topics from a panel of Silicon Valley speakers at a session called “The Future of Work.” But to the surprise of the audience, the experts wanted to talk politics. The panel convened on 26 October at... Read More
By Sebastián Rodríguez SAN FRANCISCO—Science can bring us together in unexpected ways. Charles Darwin, for instance, figured out that we are all related to a common ancestor; James Watson and Francis Crick discovered that all organisms share the same genetic language, DNA. Today, a particle accelerator is playing the same role for scientists in the... Read More
Text and photos by Jesús Antonio Pascual Álvarez POINT REYES STATION, California—On a bright October day, the Point Reyes National Seashore seems clean and unspoiled. But it is steadily invaded by trash from the San Francisco Bay Area and Asia, said integrative biologist David Ackerly of the University of California, Berkeley, during a field trip... Read More
By Jillian Clemente SAN FRANCISCO—Behind every scientific discovery is a scientist with a story. Getting to the root of how and why researchers do what they do brings light to the human side of science—and there is an art to telling those stories. Four panelists, each accomplished science profilers, discussed tactics and tips for getting... Read More
By Alex Fox BERKELEY, California—Too often, the most pressing environmental issues faced by humankind fade away when the news cycle ends. Without breaking news to inject them back into coverage, these stories can dwindle even as their impacts intensify. But there are reliable ways for journalists to forge compelling stories at any time from ongoing... Read More
Thank you for attending WCSJ2017! We’re excited to have welcomed 1,364 registered attendees—from more than 70 countries—to San Francisco for WCSJ2017.
