All ducks are equal but some are more equal than others

I made the worst decision of my life the other day and think the guilt will linger for at least another decade. You know those little parks you can go to which are liberally scattered with ducks? Ducks on all the ponds, ducks mingling with the sheep and random alpacas, ducks pestering visitors for food in the picnic areas?...

Why I will always hate aphids

  A 500-word news article on a research paper and two days to write it. You'd think it would be simple. Yeah, right. One week into my first foray into the world of science journalism and I feel like my soul has been severely paper-cut with my own poorly phrased copy. To be fair, the majority of the responsibility for...

Where do science writers get their ideas?

I’m a week into a month-long placement in a science journalism office made up of real journalists and me – a research scientist who is rapidly learning a new respect for those who write about science in a professional capacity. In the past, I know I’ve Googled ‘where do science journalists get their ideas’ and ‘how to write about...

British Science Association media fellowship

For the next month, I am taking a teeny break from science to pretend to be a journalist at Nature News. It's a scheme aimed at teaching working scientists about how the media works by dragging them out of the lab, bleary eyed with the residual smell of growth media lingering upon their person, into the wonderful world of 10am...