Today is our 178th birthday at Scientific American @sciam. We're the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S. Our first issue covered advances in daguerrotypes, rail cars, and the telegraph. Here's a thread of some of the stories we're proud of from just the past week "Rapid-onset gender dysphoria" is not a thing. The evidence for it came from biased sampling, and one of the only peer-reviewed papers has been retracted. But anti-trans people are using it to restrict health & human rights. This is important. scientificamerican.com/article/eviden…

Just like we need to call racism racism and a lie a lie, we need to call fascism fascism. Florida's autocratic Gov. DeSantis's latest fascistic move is to suspend an elected state prosecutor (gift link; thread) wapo.st/3OvNR44 Fascists attack education. Here's a scholar of education under Italian fascism explaining the methods Mussolini used and its echoes in DeSantis scientificamerican.com/article/fascis…

The science is clear: gender-affirming care is good for trans kids.
(This article is from several months ago, but the harassment and nonsense laws that harm trans kids just keep coming) scientificamerican.com/article/what-t… from @sciam also this is a subtweet of the crap reporting in that one newspaper

The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest day in American history, with 23,000 casualties, including at least 3,650 dead. Some of them were wounded or killed trying to cross Burnside Bridge. Antietam Creek is lovely today; you can canoe it (thread) Up the hill from Burnside Bridge is a memorial to William McKinley. It may be the best war memorial ever ...

We published a fascinating story the other day about how wastewater is a significant source of nitrogen pollution because people eat so much protein. This is a thread about harassment (1/x) I tweeted about the article a few days ago. When I fired up Twitter this morning, I had 100+ messages from people who claimed:
I want to require everyone to eat bugs
I want everybody to starve
Planned food shortages are coming and I'm part of the conspiracy

There's a weird purgatory between finding out you were exposed to COVID and finding out whether you are actually infected. I'm reading up after spending some time with someone right before they tested positive, and found these articles helpful (thread) First, Omicron is WILDLY infectious. It is almost certainly the fastest-spreading virus in all of human history. scientificamerican.com/article/omicro…

Headlines are the most important three to 12 words in any story. Here's where they come from, in case anybody's interested, and some observations about recent trends and misunderstandings (thread) The writer or videographer or graphic artist (the person whose name, or byline, is at the top of the piece) usually doesn't write the headline. The editor (whose name is probably not on the piece) usually writes the headline.

Looking forward to the @AAASmeetings plenary on problems in science communication, with @hholdenthorp @JaneLubchenco @AstroKatie @DrJoSimps & Kathleen Hall Jamieson aaas.confex.com/aaas/2022/meet… There's been a shift in science in past 25 years toward more engagement & communication & solutions -- @JaneLubchenco

This year's @AAASmeetings has had some great sessions on misinformation, and I'm looking forward to this one starting at 11 ET aaas.confex.com/aaas/2022/meet… Research by @lkfazio shows that repeating false claims makes people more likely to believe them, even if the false claims contradict knowledge people had before they saw the misinformation

Great talk at @AAASmeetings by @katestarbird about participatory disinformation and how quickly Trump-fan grievances on social media amplify conspiracy theories aaas.confex.com/aaas/2022/meet… "some of us are trying to understand how to put a wrench in this system and stop the madness"

Substack seems to be attracting a certain set of writers who are arrogant, self-righteous, offended by social justice efforts, and/or just looking for a fight. This thread is about one small part of this pattern: editing, and what contempt for editing says about someone (1/x) Substack is a platform that lets writers publish what they want, unedited. I get the attraction. It can be painful to hear from an editor that, say, your introduction takes too long to get to the point or your metaphor doesn’t track or your logic has holes in it (2/x)

One of the many invisible good deeds people deserve more credit for is not kicking down, especially on Twitter, even when it’s tempting. I recently got kicked at by someone with 11x more followers than me, let’s call him Yatt Mglasias. <thread> I tweeted out a lovely story by some desert ecologists about how movies often present deserts as wastelands, but they’re actually really interesting and rich. The story was pegged to Dune, and my tweet (I realized belatedly) could be read to mean that I didn't understand Dune.

One of the biggest barriers to progress is the fact that most of the people who have succeeded in a given field and have the power to change things think the system works ~just~ ~fine~ the way it is. 1/x You help run a medical school and you had to spend years of your training sleep deprived? Well, so should new trainees. 2/x

This is the coronavirus researcher who identified SARS-CoV-2 and determined that it caused COVID. There is no reason to believe she created it or released it, or that it escaped from her lab. scientificamerican.com/article/how-ch… via @sciam On CNN, former CDC director Robert Redfield shared the conspiracy theory that the virus came from the Wuhan lab. Epidemiologists and virologists are doing heroic and urgent work on social media debunking everything he said. Thanks so much to them.

Banning Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from Instagram should slow the spread of his dangerous lies and disinformation. Some publications politely call him an "anti-vaccine activist" but he's a conspiracy fantasist who knowingly incites threats against scientists 1/ nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/… Here @sethmnookin shows some of RFK Jr.'s long history of disinformation & how he distorts quotes and research about vaccines 2/ scientificamerican.com/article/how-ro…

Join this webinar (happening now) from @NASEM_DBASSE on reporting on COVID. From @vishplus: "Journalism has been a saving grace" during the pandemic. His surveys show people who read traditional media are well informed about vaccines & eager to get them nationalacademies.org/event/02-05-20… The @BostonGlobe has been gathering data on racial disparities of the pandemic and identifying problems and inequities in vaccine distribution -- drawing attention more than anyone else, @vishplus says

"Anchoring bias" is a huge problem with the coronavirus pandemic -- people tend to remember the first things they learn about a new subject & have a hard time updating that with new info (thread) scientificamerican.com/article/nine-i… via @sciam The virus doesn't kill only people in China or in Italy or on cruise ships or in nursing homes. It can kill absolutely anybody. It's not just those other people's problem. It's everybody's problem.

I’ve been a judge for a lot of writing awards. The deliberations are always strictly confidential, and I can’t say anything about specific contests, but I can tell you a bit about how the process works from a judge’s perspective, and what you can do to be more competitive. But first, if you’ve ever won a contest: Congratulations! Your work was brilliant, the judges were brilliant, and awards are a fair and accurate recognition of the best writing in your field.

I'm an editor, so a lot of what I do is cut or change words. These are some of the mistakes and misuses I see all the time & how to fix them. This thread is not to shame or subtweet anybody -- I learned many of these mistakes by making them myself. Please add your own favorites! "Enormity" means something really bad, not something really big.

We had an important discussion at #wcsj2019 about how to protect your sources, your data, and yourself. Here’s a thread of highlights from the session with lots of digital security advice & links. wcsj2019.eu/Sessions/Data-… Thanks to @deborahblum for organizing the session and to Julien Martin, @weskandar & @danapriest for generous and useful advice and to @theWCSJ and @Wcsj2019Eu for a fantastic conference.

I put a pond in my back yard about 10 years ago, and it has given the best return on investment in units of pure joy of anything I've ever done. Have you ever considered a water feature? Here's my experience in case it's helpful. A thread. So there are a lot of expenses up front: a plastic liner to keep the water from draining out of the pit, a pump, a filter, lots of tubing, paving stones, plants, pots to keep the plants in, fish, beneficial bacteria water treatments, etc.