The latest blizzard socked us pretty hard here in New England. If the streets and runways are clear enough tomorrow, I will be attending a conference called ScienceOnline in North Carolina for the next few days. One of the sessions I'm supposed to moderate is called "Death to Obfuscation." Ed Yong
and I concocted it as a workshop in which we would share our thoughts on good science writing. I'm going to lay out some of my thoughts here in advance, partly to clarify what I'm going to say--Ed and I are a bit nervous that what we thought would be a pretty basic session has exploded into a 60+-person crush, infiltrated by seasoned journalists. And if, on Friday, I'm still stranded here, the whole undertaking won't have been a complete waste... Good science writing is some of the most interesting stuff on Earth to read. Bad science writing is ...
