People seemed interested in the food price information in my last post, so here’s a few more figures from that same Statistics Canada data, put in a chart. I really wish I had a better tool for visualizing data on the web than Excel — that will have to go on a to-do list. Anyone have any suggestions?
Click through to see the chart… Continue reading →
Some people also grow food to give to those in need.
This generally happens in December. It always makes me think of a day in November. In 2004, to be precise.
I was working as CBC Radio’s reporter in Nelson, and our assignment desk was expecting the annual report on child poverty in our province. So, I was asked to go talk to a family, with children, who were struggling.
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This is a follow up post after my talk to science students at UBC yesterday. The instructor asked for an example of using my science background to make sense of something complex. My answer on the spot wasn’t great, but a better one came to me as the session ended (isn’t that always the way?). So I thought I’d post it here.
I have to stress, a scientific background is not necessary — anyone can ask the same kinds of questions. But, for me, the muscles I exercised in science help. I imagine it would be similar for someone with a background in economics or the law, who can skip a couple of steps en route to finding interesting information in those fields.
Still from an animated graphic showing 'exposed' fuel rods. (CBC)
I remember waking up to a news that the nuclear fuel rods were “exposed” and in danger of melting down. I was tasked that day with explaining to our audience, an ocean away, what that meant.
Step one: what does “exposed” mean? Many of the early reports were not explaining that bit, leaving the audience to wonder whether the nuclear fuel was exposed to the outside world—meaning the reactor was totally compromised. So what was happening?
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A behind-the-scenes look at the talk I'll take to class
Here’s a sneak peek at the Prezi I made for the talk.
It’s not that rare to be a reporter with a background in science; we have a few in our local newsroom. But it’s still uncommon enough that when people I encounter on the job learn I studied biology, they’re surprised.
Many ask whether it was my plan all along to learn about science, then report on it. (Not at all —I really thought I was going to be a biologist).
And, I often hear, “Oh that must really help you on scientific stories.” (Absolutely! But not in the way you might think.)
The fact is, the facts I learned don’t help me much. Even if I remembered every nephron and neuron I scribbled down in a final exam, my information is more than a decade out of date.
What’s important about what I learned is it gives me the faith that even complex things can be understood, and it’s my job to make sense of them, and use that information to critically evaluate what people tell me.
A three-spined stickleback. Image from Dolph Schluter's lab, where I once measured fish tails.
Being unafraid of numbers and spreadsheets is good too. I learned Excel spending many hours volunteering in a lab measuring millimetres of stickleback tails. Now on the job, I use a spreadsheet at least once a week to sort data and make calculations.
The focus of my talk is evaluating sources of information. Scientists and journalists work in very different ways — it’s always fun to shock first-year students with the kind of deadlines I operate under — but we both have to think critically about the evidence a claim is based on.
I’ll be encouraging the students to ask: “How do you know that?” Should be fun.
Ready to go on air in Sparwood, B.C. (Dan Rodenbush)
Look at the title: “Is TV News Journalism Salvageable?” It presumes a thing broken, that may or may not be rescued from the alley before the garbage truck comes.
But, I went, because I find it a luxury to step back from the daily panic of doing, and talk about doing better. Maybe there would be talk instead of sanding and refinishing, or a fresh coat of paint.
Kai Nagata was headlining, with a critique of TV news, and why he quit his job when he felt more like part of the problem than the solution. Continue reading →
At long last, here are my radio stories from the 2nd International Marine Conservation Congress. I was lucky enough to cover the conference for CBC Radio’s On The Coast and All Points West.
Basking sharks have huge mouths, the better to filter plankton with. (Chris Gotschalk/DFO)
But I didn’t have a context for why overfishing sharks would be any different than other types of overfishing. I also wasn’t sure whether this was something that affected sharks off Canada’s Pacific coast, or if it was only a problem other places.
It turns out, yes, overfishing sharks is different, and yes, the fin trade around the world affects endangered sharks here. I connect the dots with the help of patient scientists, to tell a tale about endangered basking sharks. That piece also aired across Canada on CBC Radio.
So, killer whales form a pod, fish school, and sharks are said to travel in shivers*. But what do you call 1000+ marine conservation types gathered at once? A “congress,” apparently.
The second International Marine Conservation Congress starts in Victoria today. Scientists, policy makers, resource managers, and NGOs are here to share science on our changing oceans, and ideas on how to save them. It’s only been held once before, 2 years ago in Washington, D.C. What I find so interesting is the goal is not just moving the conversation forward by publishing papers in the scientific literature — but also by crafting recommendations that let science inform public policy.
I’m here to report for CBC Radio — you’ll hear me talking to Stephen Quinn, host of On the Coast, and Grant Lawrence, guest-hosting All Points West. I’ll be on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at about 5:40 or so in the Vancouver area and 4:50-ish in the rest of B.C.
It’s not easy to decide what to cover. The program is huge, covering invasive species, overfishing, aquaculture, planning, and many more issues. I’ll be looking for stories that mean something to a B.C. audience.
One piece will be on climate change and ocean acidification — there is a lot on it at this conference, and a topic I find really interesting. We know the pH of the ocean is changing as it absorbs excess CO2 we’re dumping into the atmosphere. It seems to already be causing problems for the shellfish industry in some coastal areas. But it’s not clear just how the complex systems of the sea will respond to these changes — or how this threat stacks up against others.
Still deciding on other topics. I’m excited—and a little bit daunted—to dive in.
* update: This may or may not be an internet myth based on a band name. I was just chatting with a journalist publishing a book on sharks, and she’d never heard it. Nevertheless, a lovely word.
Another kind of feed, from the animal kingdom (Photo by tomsowerby on flickr)
But here’s a path I wonder about sometimes, that Darren just reminded me of by mentioning “churnalism” — a derogatory term for practice of rewriting press releases and calling it news.
To be clear, I’m not saying I hope this is where we’re heading, I’m musing out loud about something I find partly ominous. I also see it as a possibility if certain existing traits of the current news environment thrive and outcompete others.
What if mainstream media organizations gave up on covering anything that came written well in a press release? As in, if there’s enough in the release that “churnalism” could be practiced, it just isn’t.
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The main purpose of this post is to put up a neat graph from my Masters thesis project seven years ago, mostly because I want to refer to it elsewhere. Please read on for the backstory, or if you are interested in political rhetoric about science (or to see a pic of Jean Chretien gnawing on beef).
Who was being quoted on the health risk of BSE in Canadian beef in Canada's national newspapers, May 21-Aug. 13, 2003. Coverage continued for months but scientists stopped getting quoted. The y-axis is the proportion (%) of sources in each category quoted in each time period. (Johnson, 2004)
My thesis was on risk communication, using mad cow disease as a case study. I looked at a the language and sources used in news articles to discuss the safety of Canadian beef after Canada’s first mad cow was found in May 2003.
I remember that day vividly. It was my first summer at CBC, and I was interning at Quirks & Quarks in Toronto. Continue reading →
A researcher implants an acoustic tag into a migrating Fraser River sockeye (Jennifer M. Burt/Science)
Q: When is the lead author of a paper published in Science not allowed to comment on the subject?
A: When she works for Canada’s federal government. In this case, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO).
It is not a new phenomenon that Canada’s federal scientists are prevented from talking about their taxpayer-funded work. Margaret Munro, the science reporter for Postmedia News, wrote a news story last year that pushed this practice into the public eye, prompting coverage by other media outlets (including the CBC), and an opinion piece in the journal Nature calling for change. From Munro’s story:
The documents say the “new” rules went into force in March and reveal how they apply to not only to contentious issues including the oilsands, but benign subjects such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago.
But, even if it’s not new, I still think its worth noting when it happens.
In this case, the scientist was the first author of study on Fraser River sockeye that provides a new piece to the puzzle of their declining numbers. (CBC story.) Researchers took tissue samples from migrating sockeye salmon, and tagged the fish to see which ones survived to spawn. They found a pattern. Continue reading →