The February 2011 Issue of Technology Review Shows Most Everyone Else How to Write Good Lay Medical Science — the Human Genome, Cancer, and the Revolution in Genomic Mechanics

© 2011 Peter Free

 

11 January 2011

 

 

Very little lay science writing is adequate — but occasionally some is heads-up excellent and found in unexpected places

 

MIT’s Technology Review is not a magazine I usually go to for biological or medical overviews.  This month, however, the editors showed competing publications how to do lay biology/medicine properly, publishing three high quality, thoughtful articles about the human genome and its implications for medical genetics.

 

ScienceNews (which one can generally count on to be somewhere between atrocious and inadequate) and ScienceDaily (which tries really hard, but a little too frequently misses overall context and nuanced point) should take note.

 

 

Citations

 

Jon Cohen, The Human Genome, a Decade Later, Technology Review 114(1): 40-44 (February 2011)

 

Emily Singer, Cancer’s Genome, Technology Review 114(1): 46-50 (February 2011)

 

Stephen S. Hall, The Genome’s Dark Matter, Technology Review 114(1): 53-56 (February 2011)

 

 

“Who are these guys?”

 

Jon Cohen is an author and science journalist.  Emily Singer is Technology Review’s biomedicine editor.  And Stephen S. Hall is a science author.

 

Each is to be complimented on first-rate work.

 

I was impressed because genetics has changed dramatically over the last five years.  Each writer not only “got” that, but understood why the changes have taken us in directions that left us wondering how biological reality got to be so complicated.

 

It is not too much to say that genetics is undergoing a profound revolution in understanding.

 

 

Do you want to learn why medical nirvana is not just over the horizon?

 

Anyone who wants to understand the difficulties opposing medical progress can do themselves a favor by picking up the February issue of Technology Review.

 

(I am not associated with, or to, the magazine in any way.)

 

 

Editors matter

 

Editorial policy and editors matter a lot in the lay science field.  Science is complicated, and it’s easy to let sloppy work through without understanding that it is, indeed, inadequate.

 

I cited the above articles because they are accurate, concise, and give lay readers an outstanding overview of where we are today in human/medical genetics.  The combination is really difficult to do.

 

 

Why mention all this?

 

Americans are not particularly science-minded, a fact that shows up repeatedly in comparisons with societies that are beginning to outstrip us economically.

 

So, I think people who contribute accurate, common language science knowledge — in the context of a scientifically-minded ethos — are even more important to our culture than to others.