Maryn McKenna

Journalist and Author

Former New York Times Editor, Wife Publicly Tag-Team Criticism of Cancer Patient. Ugh.

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image; Rebecca Barray (CC), Flickr

Back in 2011, I was researching a story about the under-appreciated toll of foodborne illness. Through social media, I met Lisa Bonchek Adams, a mom of three in Connecticut who had suffered an extended, bad bout with antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter. She was a great interview — thoughtful, funny, frank — and she had an extraordinary story: She was a survivor of breast cancer and aggressive treatment for it — double mastectomy, preventative removal of her ovaries and chemotherapy — but, she said candidly, foodborne illness had made her sicker than her cancer treatment ever did.

After confirming her story via physicians and factcheckers, I used it as the opening of a long investigative piece that was published in June 2012. After that, we stayed in touch on Facebook and Twitter, and I watched as her already substantial following expanded, responding to that same forthright voice that I had found so compelling. Within a few months, though, her fortunes changed — and subsequently, so did her online circle. In October 2012, Adams learned that her cancer had returned and metastasized elsewhere in her body. It was judged Stage IV, incurable. She wrote:

I am at the beginning of what treatments are available for me.

Don’t you count me out yet. Far from it.

Just because this disease can’t be cured doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of life left in me; there is still so much for me to do.

In the 2 years since, I’ve watched in admiration as Adams has spoken directly and realistically about her treatments, family relationships, symptoms, hopes and fears. She is uniquely not a treat-at-all-costs cancer warrior, not a Pinktober booster, not a believer in miracle cures. Carefully and patiently, even when in pain (she has been in the hospital since Christmas for pain management), she commiserates with other patients and their families, urges people via her #mondaypleads hashtag to get regular checkups, and starts every day on Twitter with this mantra: “Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it. If you can’t find it, create it. Some days this may be hard to do. Persevere.”

So you’ll understand why I, and numerous other bloggers and tweeters, object to two first-person essays about Adams, published over the past few days by a New York Times editor and his wife, and consider them gratuitous, mean-spirited attacks. (A sample of reaction: Xeni Jardin, on Twitter (Storified); Megan Garber, The Atlantic; Greg Mitchell, The Nation; Cecily Kellogg, Babble; Adam Weinstein on Gawker.)

[Read more…]

Science online and Science Online: A (Possible) Way Forward

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image: Doctorow (CC), Flickr

I mean this post to address the convulsions in the science-writing community that arose this past week in the wake of the problems faced by writer Danielle N. Lee, PhD regarding her Scientific American blog. That situation was resolved to good effect and quickly; if you’d like to catch up on that, the posts are here and here.

(Constant Readers, bear with me. I’ll get back to scary diseases and food policy next week.)

As most in that professional community know, but other readers and members of my other networks may not, Lee’s experience inadvertently triggered a cascade of revelations in which Bora Zivkovic, the blogs editor at SciAm and a very powerful and outspoken gatekeeper in science writing, was accused of sexual harassment by an aspiring writer. (Not Lee.) Over several days, additional accusations with and without names attached tumbled around the blogosphere and Twitterverse until, on Friday, one of his bloggers — the third woman to come forward by name — published a searing account of her experience which included quotes from sexually explicit emails he had written. Within hours, he resigned from his SciAm post. (The best wrap-up is Laura Helmuth’s at Slate.)

As a SciAm columnist and contributing editor, I am grateful that Zivkovic has been separated from the magazine and institution. But I think it is important to emphasize how wide the impact of his bad behavior has been. So I want to address the continuing ripples in the community, especially surrounding the forthcoming beloved and very hot-ticket conference, Science Online, which he helped create.

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Follow-up: On Clarity, Dignity, Apologies and Moving Forward

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image: Snigl3t (CC), Flickr

This is a follow-up to my post over the weekend on the #StandingwithDNLee situation that enveloped Danielle N. Lee, Ph.D., her blog at Scientific American, SciAm’s partner organizations, and — by extension — the many thousands of people who expressed support for her. While the situation is sure to have a long tail, some significant things happened Sunday and Monday, so I want to update and note those to close the loop. (If this story is new to you, have a look at my last post.)

In chronological order:

  • Scientific American posted an explanation (though not, publicly, an apology), alleging that legal concerns caused Dr. Lee’s post  — exploring her reaction to verbal abuse by an editor at an organization which SciAm listed as a partner — to be taken down within an hour of its being published.
  • Biology-Online.org, whose blog editor verbally abused Dr. Lee in the process of asking her to work for free, announced that that editor had been fired, and unreservedly apologized to Dr. Lee.
  • Dr. Lee’s post at Scientific American was restored with an editor’s note.

If that’s what you needed to catch up, that’s the news in a nutshell. Out of many, many blog reactions (some curated here by Liz Ditz; 13,600 indexed by Google), I recommend these posts by Kate Clancy, Dr. Isis, Janet Stemwedel, Melanie Tannenbaum and Daniel Lende. If on the other hand you think all this coverage was more than the situation warranted, you might prefer Scott Huler’s post.

That’s the quick round-up. More details and some final thoughts to follow. [Read more…]

On Science, Communication, Respect, and Coming Back from Mistakes

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image: Marc Falardeau, (CC), Flickr

A couple of unpleasant and deeply dismaying things have happened in the science blogosphere in the past 36 hours or so. I’m posting on it, along with a growing number of other science bloggers, in order to stand in solidarity with a fellow blogger and to ensure her voice is not silenced. (If you’d like to catch up to the full story, try the Twitter hashtag #standingwithdnlee, or read this search string here. It will take a while.)

Disclosure up front: This situation involves the blog network of the magazine Scientific American, where I am a columnist and contributing editor (which is magazine jargon indicating, more or less, that they pay me a set amount of money for a certain number of columns per year). I respect the Scientific American name and feel as privileged to be associated it as I do to be here at Wired — but in this case I think the magazine has made a mistake, and I hope they reverse course.

That said, here’s what’s going on.

(This post has been updated — read to the end — and a follow-up appears here.)

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Writing Narratives About Science: Advice From People Who Do it Well

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Flickr: Zen, CC

Starting to catch up after, yup, another set of trips — but with really interesting stuff to talk about very shortly. To start: I spent part of this past week at the biannual World Conference of Science Journalists, which was in Helsinki this time. (Yes, way up north. Yes, midnight sun, almost — disorienting and gorgeous). While I was there I joined the excellent journalists Ed Yong Of Not Exactly Rocket Science, Helen Pearson of Nature, and Alok Jha of the Guardian and the BBC to talk about the craft of writing long narrative features about science. Among ourselves we talked about wanting to avoid being “lost in the Features Dark Place” — which is to say, being overwhelmed by your material to the point where you don’t know where to start.

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The Risks You Don't Think of: A Plea to Pack a 'Go Bag'

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Photo: OnlyAnEgg, CC/Flickr

What if you had 15 minutes’ notice to leave your home, and you didn’t know when you’d be coming back — or what shape your home would be when you did?

Could you find your key documents, medications, ID, devices, cables? Sturdy shoes, suitable clothing, stuff to comfort your kids and control your pets? Mementos, valuables, things you couldn’t live without? While trying to stay calm, keep your family calm, and figure out what’s going on?

I ponder this, sometimes, as an academic exercise: when I’m watching horrific tornado footage, or wondering how far inland a tropical storm is going to come. I’ve lived on a hurricane coast (Texas) and in a tornado alley (Minnesota), and I thought regularly about preparedness while I lived there. But now I live mostly in Atlanta, and sometimes in inland Maine, and my rare thoughts about preparedness extend mostly to keeping documents in a fireproof safe and making sure the flashlights scattered around the house have good batteries.

Last night I learned how shortsighted that was. TL;DR: All’s well, my house didn’t burn down, and I got a useful reminder about how you can be taken by surprise.

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On Writing: Culture Looks Down On These Novels, But You Should Read Them Anyway

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Excerpted from a “science scribe” live sketch of our Science Online session. c. Perrin Ireland (@experrinment)

Dropping out of scary diseases and scary food for a moment, and into the (more) personal: This past weekend I spoke at Science Online, a fantastic conference in the Triangle area of North Carolina that brings together the different tribes of science communication — journalists, bloggers, scientists, public information officers, museum curators, videographers and audio artists, on and on — for an adrenaline- and coffee-fueled weekend of brainstorming.

SciO, as it’s called, has been going for seven years; I’ve attended for three, speaking each time on some aspect of writing technique. I love going, even though journalists are a minor tribe within the conference’s loose federation, because attending forces me to think not only about why I write, but about how. The process of writing is something I engage with every day, of course, but I’m not often called on to articulate it outside my own head. Prepping presentations for the heterogenous attendees reminds me to examine attitudes and also techniques that I tend to take for granted.

This year, my Wired colleague and friend David Dobbs, from Neuron Culture over there in the right rail, did a storytelling-technique session that turned out to be really well-received, so I thought I’d reproduce it here for wider sharing. We started from this realization: When we learn to write, we’re told to study the greats. But under our noses — sold in airports and drug stores, argued over in blogs and book clubs — there exists a vast and separate world of published writing to which people are passionately attached. That’s genre fiction — mysteries, thrillers, westerns, romances, fantasy and sci-fi — and it keeps its audiences hungering for more via specific techniques that writers can analyze and learn from.

Our session wasn’t recorded (I should really remember to do that when I speak) but you can find the excerpts we discussed on this wiki page. And here’s a recap, via Storify: “What science writing can learn from crap novels.” We say that, of course, with love. [Read more…]

Science Writing And Denialism: Accuracy, Clarity, Courage

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So if it seemed quiet in the blogosphere this week, it may be because most of science-writing’s all-stars (plus me) were in the same room at the University of Wisconsin, talking about subjects that make many people uncomfortable: vaccination, climate change, evolution. The occasion was a conference, “Science Writing in the Age of Denial,” and the point was to get accomplished people talking about hard questions of verification, communication and belief. [Read more…]

Brief Promo: Superbug is at The Open Notebook

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I’m flattered to say that I’m the latest guest at the excellent site The Open Notebook, where veteran science writers Jeanne Erdmann and Siri Carpenter run deep-dive interviews with writers, bloggers and journalists about what underlies their stories.

We talk about how I got on the scary-disease beat, what journals I read, how I organize my materials — and what the emotional costs of this work are.

As bonuses, we’ve got a copy of my original pitch for The Enemy Within, my April 2011 Scientific American story on multi-drug resistance in Gram-negative bacteria; screenshots of some of the programs I use to keep track of my stuff; and — by far my favorite — a Soundslides of pictures I’ve taken in the field, overlaid with audio of me giving tips and telling stories. (It’s the first time Open Notebook has done multimedia, and we’re pretty excited about it.)

The Open Notebook is a fantastic resource; great science writers including my WiSci blog-sibling David Dobbs, Carl Zimmer, Robin Marantz Henig and Steve Silberman have all unpacked their stories there. I hope you’ll take a look.

Diseases and borders: Potatoes and St. Patrick's Day

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Beannachtai lá le Pádraig, constant readers — or, for you English-speaking lot, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

In Irish, the way to say “Once upon a time” is O fadó fadó — “Long, long ago…” So, for St. Patrick’s Day, an Irish story:

Long, long ago — or, by the calendar, in 1824 — the territory know as Peru broke Spain’s last hold on the New World. The nascent Republic needed trade relationships, and quickly: It had borrowed heavily from banks in Europe to finance its 3-year war of independence. But after 300 years of colonization, all it had to offer, bluntly, was crap.

No, really, crap. Bat and seabird crap, otherwise known as guano. In the centuries before the establishment of the chemical industry, guano was a precious commodity, a potent natural fertilizer packed with nitrate and phosphates. There were enormous deposits of guano on the Andean coast and offshore islands; they provided the currency that Peru’s new government leveraged into a web of trade relationships with England, the United States, and France. Guano quickly became Peru’s leading export and the basis of its entire economy. In 1841, the government nationalized the guano deposits, selling the stuff to its European and American partners in hundreds of shiploads — tens of thousands of tons — per year. [Read more…]

Brief promo: SUPERBUG on BoingBoing and JoanneLovesScience

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As I told you a few weeks ago, my book SUPERBUG (Free Press 2010) is out in paperback. Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing.com has very kindly put up an interview and podcast about it. And Joanne Manaster, AKA @ScienceGoddess, has done one of her excellent and charming book review videos, calling it “not for the faint of heart or someone incessantly worried about their health.” (Heh.) I’m grateful to both.

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How not to publicize science: A sad and cautionary tale. (Bring popcorn.)

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There’s an ingrained perception that journalists and public-affairs or public-information officers (PIOs for short) loathe each other, with reporters always pushing for more and PIOs always wanting to limit access. In my experience, it’s a mostly false impression: Smart and experienced reporters understand that PIOs can be useful translators for the institutions they represent, and are often the most direct or only way of reaching scientists and bureaucrats for interviews.

The relationship is never perfect: The two sides’ interests are not perfectly aligned, a reporter may be sloppy, a PIO may be a control freak. But in my unnervingly long experience as a journalist, my dealings with PIOs have been far more positive than negative. There are plenty of stories in my archives that only happened because a PIO took the initiative to point out an interesting piece of research I had missed, and plenty of times when a PIO assigned to me spent hours with me on the scene of a story — sometimes overnight, sometimes for days at a time.

But every once in a while, it goes so badly wrong. And for the past 48 hours or so, the science-writing blogosphere has been agog over a vast and expanding trainwreck of wrong.

It started like this. Ed Yong, proprietor of the Discover blog Not Exactly Rocket Science, related on his Posterous on Sunday that he had had an odd exchange with a PIO. Ed, in his telling, wanted to speak to the author of an embargoed journal article rather than relying on a press release, and the PIO, after supplying the article, refused to help any further. In fact, after lecturing Ed about the PIO’s former experience as a journalist, the PIO shut down the conversation, telling him: “I think you have all you need for a blog.”

To understand the full impact of that, you have to know a bit about Ed. First, he’s British, with the politeness that (usually) implies. Second, he is incredibly hardworking, publishing posts that usually run at least 1,000 words, and usually at night, after his day job ends. And, third and not least, he’s extremely smart, very skilled, unusually humble, and extremely generous to fellow bloggers in his own blog and on Twitter.

(Not to mention that last year he was awarded the Keck Futures Initiative Communication Award of the National Academies, which carries not only enormous prestige, but also a $20,000 check. So it’s not only fellow bloggers who think well of him.)

In his Posterous, Ed discreetly did not name the PIO or institution, in part to avoid breaking an embargo on the article itself. But at the blog Embargo Watch — which inquires into the barriers that embargoing the release of research put in the way of good journalism — co-founder Ivan Oransky, MD (in his day job, executive editor of Reuters Health) decided to look a little further. He put up a post Monday morning that explained why this episode was the latest in a series of bad decisions regarding embargoes that demonstrate how little good they accomplish: The press release that Ed had received, though embargoed, was describing a paper in the Lancet that had been released two days earlier. (Note, Ivan and I are friends and both serve on the board of the Association of Health Care Journalists, which on Monday formally objected to a new embargo policy at the FDA.) He also named the institution, the University of Manchester, and the PIO, Aeron Haworth.

And at that point, the wheels came off.

The discussion in the comments — which at this point is up to 145 166 and still climbing — began civilly enough, but took fire when Haworth replied to Ivan’s original post:

I have spent the past three days supplying information to journalists across the world about this story. It is only Mr Yong that appears to have taken issue. If he wasn’t so patronising towards PIOs then perhaps he would have received more cooperation.

This was bizarrely defensive, and also inaccurate, given that the original exchange with Ed shows him being respectful until taunted (and after that, still more civil than I would have been).

Now, one way to guarantee the attention of journalists is to attack one of us, especially unfairly. Senior science writers — Carl Zimmer, David Dobbs, Bora Zivkovic and John Fleck among others — commented. So did NYU professor and new-media god Jay Rosen; leading PIOs and communication consultants such as Ruth Seeley, Denise Graveline, and William Raillant-Clark; and a number of scientists (including some from the University of Manchester, one pleading “We’re not all that bad.”).

So far — posting under his real name and the name of his institution (British science writer and physician Ben Goldacre says he confirmed Haworth’s identity in an email exchange) — Haworth has called Ed Yong a “jumped-up arrogant journalist wannabe,” called a fellow PIO “a doormat,” threatened a PR consultant with a defamation suit, mocked the editor of a major science blog network, and joked, “At least none of you lot will ignore my next press release!”

The flame-out has — so far — been picked up by MediaBistro, the Gawker-network site i09.com, and Nature.com, which notes that Haworth is scheduled to conduct a “Top tips if you come face-to-face with a journalist” workshop on March 11.

Meanwhile, still at Embargo Watch — where the comments continue, though it’s late at night now in the UK — people have begun begging Haworth to stand down on behalf of his institution’s relationships with science journalists, standing in the new-media world, and identity, and his own reputation as well. Natural historian Chris Clarke of California pleaded, late this afternoon:

Aeron, I have been both a PIO and a journalist, and I’m also a bit long in the tooth, and I am telling you as one caring human being to another: for god’s sake, man, stop digging. You failed to recognize one of the UK’s top science writers, condescended to him, and are now compounding your error – for the entire world to view – by becoming more and more defensive. I’m not certain what sort of contract you have with your current employer: if it doesn’t run right up until you plan to retire, I would stop now, offer Ed an cordial apology for your initial mistake, and let the entire world move on. Otherwise, the name “Aeron Haworth” will become Google-synonymous with “doesn’t keep up with who’s writing in his field” and “needlessly unconstructive and insulting.”

Any comment, Manchester?

Update: David Harris, who was one of the commenters at Embargo Watch and operates (among other sites) the very smart The Enlightened PIO, collected the parallel Twitter convo over this trainwreck in a Storify. When you look at it, pause to consider: How many followers do all those commenters have? That’s how far this story spread.

Update 2: About 12 hours after I posted above, Ed Yong said (in the comments below and in this tweet) that Haworth has apologized to him privately. PIOs, PR consultants, is that sufficient?

Update 3: About 5 hours after the private apology, Haworth posted a public one, on Embargo Watch. Excerpt:

This morning, I apologised to Ed Yong, which he graciously accepted. I have been somewhat mortified by the comments above but, I guess, this is to be expected when you post knee-jerk, overly defensive comments on a blog site after a few glasses of wine. Never a good idea!

I work hard to promote science to the public and, you may have seen today, another story in the papers about the north-south health divide, which I have been dealing with for the past few days.

I’m a fairly private person, so this episode has upset me quite a lot. My own silly fault.

Anyway, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my day job. Thanks for all your comments. I’ve taken them on board.

Flickr/AlexEProimos/CC

Brief promo: SUPERBUG is out in paperback!

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A brief pause for self-promotion:

My 2010 book SUPERBUG: The Fatal Menace of MRSA (Free Press/Simon & Schuster) has been released in paperback!

SUPERBUG tells, for the first time, the full 50-year history of the emergence of drug-resistant staph, MRSA, in overlapping epidemics in hospitals and health care, schools and families, and farm animals and agriculture. It’s based on 200 interviews with researchers, public health experts and MRSA victims and their families, and on about 1,100 journal articles dating back to the 1930s.

I’m open to doing a giveaway or a contest for free copies. If you have ideas for one, please leave them in the comments!

Meanwhile, here’s a sample of the praise for the hardback, published last March:

“Lays bare, often all too graphically, the ravages of a disease with the potential to do grievous international harm.” – Booklist

“A gripping account of one of the most devastating infectious agents on the planet… A meticulously researched, frightening report on a deadly pathogen.” – Kirkus

“Scalpel-sharp investigative skills … A scary and important book.” – Teresa Weaver, Atlanta Magazine

“Where will the next major epidemic come from? According to Superbug, that epidemic is already here. It grew out of our hospitals, our prisons and our high-school locker rooms. We fed it with our demand for antibiotic ointments, prescriptions we didn’t need and factory-farmed cows packed together and pumped full of their own antibiotics. We spread it with unwashed hands. The story of MRSA is more prosaic than tales of tracking Ebola through the African jungle, but that’s exactly what makes it terrifying, and fascinating.” – Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing.com

“During her years as a reporter covering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Maryn McKenna grew accustomed to being called ‘Scary Disease Girl,’ the bearer of titillating tales of exotic ailments unlikely to affect most people. McKenna’s new book, Superbug, is less deliciously frightening and more just plain scary.” – Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, Chicago Tribune

“”If you want the short version, Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA is a must read… McKenna makes it clear that this epidemic arose and persists because of human error.” – Mike The Mad Biologist, ScienceBlogs

“A readable, well-referenced, detailed and enjoyable book… Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA is painstakingly researched and credit should go to Maryn McKenna for presenting some of the issues surrounding the emergence of community-associated MRSA in a way that is readily accessible to the general public.” – Jonathan Otter, Lancet Infectious Diseases

“Superbug provides a vivid and gripping account of the spread of MRSA and should be required reading at the US Food and Drug Administration.” – Yee Huang, Center for Progressive Reform

“Through powerful storytelling, Maryn McKenna has given voice to people who have suffered at the hands of a fast-changing health threat. Superbug reminds us all that, in an age of global epidemics, our vigilance must be global, too.” – Helene D. Gayle, M.D., president and CEO of CARE

“Maryn McKenna’s compelling history proves that antibiotic resistance is a global concern. The story of drug-resistant staph actually begins in the United Kingdom in the 1940s, with the introduction of penicillin. It continues  to this day, as staphylococcus continue to develop resistance to new antibiotics as soon as they are introduced, not only in the United States but everywhere where antibiotics are used – and misused – in today’s globalized world.” – David L. Heymann, M.D., Chair, the Health Protection Agency of the United Kingdom

“As compelling as a detective novel, Superbug tells the stories of the victims of MRSA to explain how this pathogen evolved into so serious a threat to human health and medical practice. The book reveals the inextricable links between human and animal health and the disastrous consequences for human health of using antibiotics to promote the growth of farm animals. McKenna has written a devastating critique of current systems of animal agriculture, health care, and drug development, as well as the politics of research. The solution to MRSA, she says, is a vaccine. But where is the political will to pay for it?” – Marion Nestle, Professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, and author of Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety

“Like a modern-day Rachel Carson, Maryn McKenna sounds a powerful alarm about the insurgency of a deadly infection lurking in our schools, our gyms and even our food.  Antibiotics are losing their life-saving powers because of our injudicious use that has helped spawn these increasingly invincible pathogens.  By connecting the dots, Superbug may give us the early warning we need to prevent an uncontrollable epidemic.” – Shelley A. Hearne, Dr. PH, Managing Director, Pew Health Group, The Pew Charitable Trusts

“Maryn McKenna tracks the harrowing biography of MRSA with all the skills of a first-rate investigative journalist. Superbug reads like a thriller and is presented in a nuanced and eloquent prose that is as infectious as the microbe it details.” – Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D., George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, The University of Michigan; author of When Germs Travel

“Superbug is essential for anyone going to the hospital or working in healthcare. Too often even top doctors dismiss the threat, saying ‘the germs are everywhere.’ Patients and medical professionals should read this book and take its lessons seriously.”
– Betsy McCaughey, Ph.D., Founder, Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths

Dangerous makeup: Eyebrow tattoo infections

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Girly confession: I love makeup. I cannot get through an airport in Asia without hitting the cosmetics kiosks. I spent a half-day in Paris last summer tracking down a cult eyeshadow shade. I once lured every woman in my newsroom into testing long-wearing lipsticks against caffeine, pizza and a workout in the building’s gym.

But for all my obsession, I’ve never been interested in permanent makeup. Partly that’s because I love the process — the brushes, the textures, the ritual — as much as the results. Probably also I feared poor technique: I know how hard it is to draw a perfect cat’s-eye, but if I make a mistake, I can wipe it off and try again. And I imagined there were infection risks, though the few papers in the medical literature focus on mistakes and dissatisfaction more than they do on bad bugs.

Turns out that last was a reasonable fear. A new paper in Clinical Infectious Diseases describes a cluster of infections in Switzerland among women who had their eyebrows improved with tattooing: 12 developed infections with Mycobacterium haemophilum, 10 required surgery, and 9 required excision not only of an eyebrow but also all or part of a parotid gland — the big salivary gland in front of the ear through which a major facial nerve travels.

The women came into the infectious-disease practice of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne over 8 months, starting in April 2009. They all had the same symptoms: From two to seven weeks after getting their tattoos, they developed rashes and pustules at the site where they had been inked, followed by pain and swelling in the parotid nearest the infected eyebrow. (Weirdly, the paper says each woman had only one eyebrow infection, as though they were not tattooed on both sides of the face at the same time.) The glands in eight of the 12 abscessed, and 7 developed a fistula, meaning the infected gland started draining through their skin. (That looks like this.)

M. haemophilum is a tough bug; like its distant relative M. tuberculosis, it requires a multi-drug cocktail that can last for weeks. The women took antibiotics for two months without much success before the doctors decided surgery was necessary, and at least three months afterward. Seven of them had to stop or switch drugs during their treatment, for side effects that ranged from white blood cell suppression to elevations in liver enzymes to rashes and nausea.

When the physicians looked for what connected the women, they discovered that they had gotten their tattoos in different studios, but all from the same artist, who freelanced around the area. When they tracked her down, they found that she was following all the correct infection-prevention procedures, though she no longer had the equipment she had used when the women’s infections developed. When they tested her inks, though, they found DNA from M. haemophilum in some of them. Because that bacterium tends to live in water, they hypothesized she had diluted her inks with tap water that was locally contaminated.

The tattoo artist told them that, during the time the 12 women developed infections, she had done permanent makeup on about 400 women. She hhad no way, though, of tracking those clients down.

I think I’ll stick to Lancome.

Cite: Giulieri S, Morisod B, Edney T et al. Outbreak of Mycobacterium haemophilum Infections after Permanent Makeup of the Eyebrows. Clin Infect Dis. (2011) 52 (4): 488-491. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciq191

Flickr/Jeff_Werner/CC

ScienceOnline 2011: Do old ethics apply to new media?

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It’s been so long since ScienceOnline 2011 (started a week ago, ended Sunday) that I am almost embarrassed to post on it. (It was a long drive. I came back to monster deadlines. I’m moving. OK, enough sniveling.)

But as I mentioned last week, I was involved at the conference in a discussion about how — and whether — to bring the standards of journalism to blogging, in a session that veteran journalist Paul Raeburn kindly asked me to join. As a long-time journalist myself, I think this is an important question, so I’m tossing my thoughts and our materials up here to see if anyone reacts.

Here’s the program description of our session:

The web in many cases has undermined the wall that traditionally separated reporters from advertisers in 20th century offline journalism. One example is placing pop-up ads in blogs without the bloggers’ permission. With new models of web advertising and funding appearing daily, it seems, can we keep reporters independent? And what does it mean to be independent when a website is supported by a foundation, or a single advertiser or patron? Bloggers share responsibility for the credibility of their sites with their employers, advertisers, or other supporters. How do we make sure that the new financing models do not destroy our credibility?

Background: There’s an active ongoing debate over whether blogging is journalism and whether bloggers are journalists; both those links go to posts by Bora Zivkovic (editor of Scientific American’s blog network and co-founder of Science Online with Anton Zuiker).

So: Constant readers will remember that I spent most of my career to date within the mainstream media as a newspaper reporter, exiting 4 years ago to blog and write for magazines. Legacy journalism did many things badly, but one thing I’ve always felt it did well was to establish a shared ethical understanding. Whether or not your organization’s code was actually written down — most were by sometime in the 1990s, and many are collected here by the American Society of News Editors — everyone in newspapers, from their earliest days on the night cops beat, understood what the shared principles were.

If you asked a reporter about their ethics, you might have gotten something offhand like “Don’t have sex with someone you are writing about,” or “Don’t take money from an organization on your beat,” or “Always be sure the person you are interviewing understands you are a journalist and not just someone chatting them up while on line in the bank.” But laying flippancy aside, those rules would all have aspired to the same result, of attempting to ensure that what appeared under the institution’s banner was as fair and complete as possible given time and production constraints, and that the people producing it had no undeclared biases or hidden allegiances.

Well: Here we are on the web, in a world where journalism is done by legacy media organizations who’ve made the online transition (e.g. the New York Times), new journalism organizations who operate only online (e.g. Pro Publica), and solo practitioners who come at writing from an array of backgrounds and experiences that they may or may not have declared. As the Pew State of the News Media report put it in 2009:

Power is shifting to the individual journalist and away, by degrees, from journalistic institutions… Through search, e-mail, blogs, social media and more, consumers are gravitating to the work of individual writers and voices, and away somewhat from institutional brand.

When I worked for an institutional brand, it conferred several things upon me: a regular paycheck, access to tech support people who were not me, and coverage by an ethics code that someone else had written and that I only had to agree to. Replacing the paycheck and the tech support were straightforward tasks, though difficult. Replacing the ethics code took more thought. Did I need to state my own best practices up front?

I decided I did. On the index page of Superbug’s original incarnation at Blogger, I ran the text block in the screenshot at right. It followed me to Scienceblogs, and then back again to Blogger after I left Scienceblogs in the wake of Pepsigate. In fact, having put up that declaration played a large part in why I left; having put my marker on the table, I had to live up to it.

(Alert readers may have noticed that I have no such block here at Wired. It’s ready and waiting for as soon as we get customizable back pages, which are promised soon; until that happens there is nowhere in the page template to put it.)

So, this is my own answer to the question of how to maintain journalism standards on the web, which is for someone operating independently, as I do now, to find (or write ) and declare one’s own ethical code. For me, it hasn’t been necessary to write one, because there are existing ones with which I entirely agree: the code of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the additional statement of principles of the Association of Health Care Journalists, where I am a board member. I subscribe to both because, while SPJ’s code is excellent overall (its subheds, each with much text under them, are Seek truth and report it; Minimize harm; Act independently; and Be accountable), the AHCJ’s code speaks specifically to what I do as a science/medical writer. Among its provisions:

  • Understand the process of medical research in order to report accurately… It is misleading to report bold or conclusive statements about efficacy in Phase I trials since the primary goal of Phase I trials is to evaluate safety, not efficacy.
  • Be cautious in reporting results of preliminary studies, in vitro or animal studies. Give accurate portrayals of the status of investigational drugs, devices and procedures, including significant caveats and explanations of hurdles, unknowns and potential problems.
  • Preserve journalistic independence by avoiding the use of video news releases or the use of quotes from printed news releases. Label and credit the source whenever a portion of a video or printed news release is used.
  • Refuse gifts, favors, and special treatment. Refuse meals from drug companies and device manufacturers and refuse to accept unsolicited product samples sent in the mail.
  • Weigh the potential benefits involved in accepting fees, honoraria, free travel, paid expenses from organizers of conferences or events against the desire to preserve our credibility with the audience and the need to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

These codes speak to my work as a solo practitioner. What about the actions of a publisher or blog platform? There are existing principles that cover their actions as well, which could be declared and/or linked to. In the case of Pepsigate, for instance (which, for those who weren’t reading last summer, involved Seed Media, publisher of Scienceblogs, running a corporate-written advertorial blog without labeling it as such), the American Society of Magazine Editors has standards for advertorial in print, and also a codicil that addresses advertorial and other promotional content on the web. Another option is the more than a decade old HON Code, developed by the Health on the Net Foundation, which asserts that any health-information site carrying its badge ascribes to certain ethical principles.

During our session (which was streamed and taped; I’ll embed the video when it gets posted), Paul read a statement from Mary Knudson, who had planned to moderate but was unable to attend. The full post, which guested on Deb Blum’s blog last October, describes Mary’s experience starting a blog for US News & World Report and discovering her text had been adorned with hover ads that she had not been consulted about. Unable to square the implicit endorsements with her own desires for transparency and autonomy, she turned the blogging contract down.

Mary’s experience suggests the next ethical battleground. New media pioneer and chronicler Scott Rosenberg, who was kind enough to come be part of our engaged audience, pointed out that the principles I’ve linked/excerpted above barely apply to the kind of web writing being produced by firms such as Demand Media in response to (or anticipation of) Google search results. (Here’s a 2009 Wired story on Demand.)

The reactions we’ve had so far, that I know of:

In a really great (and not because he praises us) post, Dave Mosher, staff reporter at Wired Science, backs Paul’s-Mary’s-my comments, points out how cumbersome handling disclosures and transparency can nevertheless be, and proposes a tech solution (I’m in.):

There’s got to be a way we can quickly and cleanly allow readers to see writers’ baggage without marring a design or taxing the flow of writing. Editors are impatient, writers don’t have extra time and designers sure as hell don’t want to add yet another unstable widget to a teetering mountain of code…
Let’s create an easy-to-use, icon-based platform that clearly communicates disclosures and the context of content. Imagine the magical association of  Twitter and Facebook buttons with a set of expected behaviors, merged with the pervasiveness and diversity of traffic signs. Now hover over those icons and read statements about disclosures.

On the other hand, Bora, and also Christina Pikas, point out that not everyone who blogs wants to function as a journalist. I acknowledge that. (And I think there was a tweetstream about it during our session, but we were short a back-channel  moderator so I don’t know who was speaking.) Once we get the video, I hope to transcribe Ed Yong’s comment in our SciO session, which said (reconstructing freely from memory) that whether or not people intend to act as journalists in their blogging, they may nevertheless be construed as such by their readers.

This has turned out to be my longest post yet. Any comments, anyone who has stuck with me thus far?

Flickr/Laineys Repertoire/CC

ScienceOnline 2011 — and you can watch too

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Along with a majority of my Wired Science colleagues, I’ll be in North Carolina this weekend attending and speaking at Science Online 2011, a crazy-intense weekend that some smart person called the Bonnaroo of science blogging. SciO11 draws “scientists, students, educators, physicians, journalists, librarians, bloggers, programmers and others interested in the way the World Wide Web is changing the way science is communicated, taught and done,” in the words of the organizers — and registration this year sold out in 45 minutes. I’m privileged to be going.

Out of the packed program, here’s what I’ll be panelizing about (SciO is an unconference, so being a panelist means being a discussion leader for an engaged audience, not an academic-style PresenterGod):

Blogs as a book-writing tool, along with Sheril Kirschenbaum, author of The Science of Kissing; Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus; and Brian Switek, aka Laelaps here at WiSci, and author of Written in Stone.

How to explain science in blog posts, along with nine awesome bloggers from journalism and academia.

And, as a last-minute substitution, How can we maintain high journalism standards on the web?, with veteran journalism Paul Raeburn, currently with the Knight Science Journalism Tracker.

You can follow the chatter from SciO11 at the Twitter hashtag #scio11 or via livestream here thanks to a generous grant from the National Association of Science Writers, of which I’m proud to be a member. If you have questions or thoughts, I’d love to hear them below.

Cartoon courtesy xkcd.com

Great reads: Written in Stone

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My WiSci blogging colleague, Brian Switek, AKA Laelaps, has written a book, Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature (Bellevue Literary Press), that’s out this week. It’s his first book, and it’s very good. (To sample some of the swelling chorus of praise, visit Speakeasy Science or The Intersection or Skulls in the Stars or Not Exactly Rocket Science or Observations of a Nerd. Everyone loves it.)

Laelaps and I seem to be connected on multiple axes: We both have new books (here’s mine), we both are science bloggers here at the new Wired network, and we were both also bloggers at Scienceblogs until earlier this year. (Also, we were both on a panel at ScienceWriters 2010 this past weekend.) So because everyone else is already kvelling about the excellence of the book, I asked Brian instead to talk about why he wrote it, and about how he sees blogging intersecting with science writing.

Superbug: Written in Stone came about after your proposal to teach a class of fifth graders about whale evolution was turned down as being too controversial. If common misperceptions about evolution were better understood — or if some of today’s spectacular discoveries were better reported — would creationism be put to rest?

Laelaps: There is no single reason why the best of evolutionary science is not being communicated to the public; evolution remains a persistent public controversy for a variety of reasons ranging from how science is communicated to the background of those receiving the messages. But our fragmented media landscape makes it very difficult to develop an understanding of evolution. Many news stories are one-shot pieces about new discoveries that provide little context as to how the new findings fit in with what has been found before. That was part of my motivation behind composing Written in Stone; I wanted to tie together the disparate threads of recent discoveries and place them in a historical context.

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Every once in a while: Some stuff about me

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Drowning in work here, folks, which is a pity because there’s lots of news to talk about. Back soon. Meanwhile: I try not to do this very often, because most of what we have to talk about is so much more interesting than me — but my week at UGA, which is capped by an appearance at the Decatur Book Festival, has generated some ink. So here’s some amusements for your morning coffee:

  • A very kind Q&A with me, done by excellent pal Barth Anderson, operator of the feisty food-policy site Fair Food Fight
  • Another Q&A by my former colleague Phil Kloer, for the great arts blog Arts Critic ATL
  • And a video about one of my speeches at UGa, done by student TV station WNEG-TV. (The last line of the report? I didn’t say that. But otherwise, well done.)

On the road this week, and a reading rec

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Constant readers, I’m teaching this week at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and New Media Institute, so blogging will be light. If you’re in the Athens or Atlanta area, please come say hello, I’ll also be speaking publicly:

  • Tuesday: 4 p.m., Room 175 of the University of Georgia’s Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, Athens.
  • Wednesday: 6 p.m., the Vaccine Dinner Club of Emory University (Whitehead Health Science Center Administration Building), Atlanta.
  • Thursday: 4:15 p.m., Athens-Clarke County Library, Baxter Street, Athens.

Here’s a press release that UGa kindly put out about the events.

Meanwhile, some reading: When we’re talking about MRSA control, we often talk, somewhat lightly, about isolating people within a hospital or nursing home in order to control MRSA’s spread. For instance, isolation is the key technique on which “search and destroy” hinges.

In today’s New York Times, Dr. Abigail Zuger writes a thoughtful column on the historic roots and present-day challenges of putting patients into isolation. It’s very much worth reading, particularly for understanding why tending to patients in isolation is such a time-burden for health care staff. Also, her description of how C. diff spreads will make you want to wash your hands immediately.

More soon.