On NPR’s All Things Considered, Prof. Thomas Levenson speaks about his book on the 50-year search for a non-existent planet, an example, he explains, of how science really works. “It takes a great leap of the imagination to get from what you really know you know to the wacky thing that turns out to be more true.”
Matthew Price of The Boston Globe reviews “The Hunt for Vulcan” by Prof. Thomas Levenson, which chronicles the history of the search for the non-existent planet Vulcan. “The key question, as Levenson puts it, is ‘what happens when a prediction fails to find its match in nature?’” writes Price.
Prof. Thomas Levenson speaks with Boston Globe reporter Amy Sutherland ahead of the publication of his new book, “The Hunt for Vulcan” about the books he likes to read and what makes for good science writing. “Science writing should convey information, but in a literary form,” Levenson explains.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Prof. Thomas Levenson writes about the dispute over the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii. “The dispute has been framed as the latest skirmish in the long-running campaign pitting science against religion. That’s a mistake,” Levenson writes.
Tom Zeller reports for Forbes on the Climate Feedback project developed by post-doctoral researcher Emmanuel W. Vincent that allows users to select and critique portions of articles on climate change. “If a newspaper claims that something is based on science,” Vincent said, “we want to examine whether they are making their case on solid scientific ground.”
Rona Kobell writes for The Boston Globe writes about her experience at MIT’s annual Food Boot Camp. Attendees “learn about all aspects of food science, from our increasing resistance to antibiotics to why it’s so hard to remove dangerous bacteria from spinach.”
Writing for The New Yorker, Professor Seth Mnookin examines the struggles facing a young couple whose firstborn child was the only known patient with a specific genetic disorder. Mnookin explores how the parents were able to spur research into their son’s disorder by locating other patients with the disease.
Professor Seth Mnookin speaks with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan during the final segment of this episode of Boston Public Radio about his new article in The New Yorker on parents struggling to help their children with conditions new to science.