Tag Archives: health journalism

The HMPV cascade

Posted on January 10, 2025 by

I sense the public panic over the HMPV outbreak in China is finally dying down. I don’t know which TV news channel picked up on it first and blew it out of proportion but it created the sort of time … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Scicomm | Tagged COVID-19 pandemic, health journalism, HMPV outbreak, human metapneumovirus, Indian Council of Medical Research, Pandiarajan, Sinophobia, The Hindu, Vaayai Moodi Paesavum | Comments Off

Clarity and soundness

Posted on June 27, 2020 by

I feel a lot of non-science editors just switch off when they read science stuff. A friend told me this earlier today, during yet another conversation about how many of the editorial issues that assail science and health journalism have … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged clarity of thought, coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, editing, editorial decisions, health journalism, newsroom, science communication, science journalism, sound argument | Comments Off

Journalistic entropy

Posted on June 14, 2020 by

Say you need to store a square image 1,000 pixels wide to a side with the smallest filesize (setting aside compression techniques). The image begins with the colour #009900 on the left side and, as you move towards the right, … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Scicomm | Tagged conspiracy theories, coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, entropy, fact-checking, false balance, health journalism, image compression, Indian Council of Medical Research, information theory, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Priyanka Pulla, pseudoscience, science journalism, thermodynamics, Washington Post | Comments Off

The virus and the government

Posted on June 1, 2020 by

In December 2014, public health researchers and activists gathered at a public forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to discuss how our perception of diseases and their causative pathogens influences our ideas of what we can and can’t do to fight them. … Continue reading →

Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm | Tagged COVID-19, epidemiology, Evelynn Hammonds, free press, health journalism, right wing media, science communication, virology | Comments Off

There is more than one thunder

Posted on April 15, 2020 by

Sunny Kung, a resident in internal medicine at a teaching hospital in the US, has authored a piece in STAT News about her experience dealing with people with COVID-19, and with other people who deal with people with COVID-19. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Life notes | Tagged coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, health journalism, infodemic, intensive care unit, journalists, new coronavirus, novel coronavirus, science journalism, Sisyphus, socio-medical crisis, STAT News, uncertainty | Comments Off