Science related stories and commentary
This time a year ago, the media was going big on one particular story – SWINE FLU! News stories today report intensive care units across New Zealand and Australia were on the verge of turning away seriously ill patients during the pandemic, due to a twelve-fold increase in the number of flu patients being put […]
MoreI’m not sure which letter is crazier, the first letter published in the Southland Times on April 23, or the reply published in today’s paper. What animal did that old bone come from? Was it the Murrells’ old nag? So many questions. One thing is for sure, there’s definitely a fair bit of fuzzy science […]
MoreThis is a long one, but a good one as crazy science letters go. Almost made me choke on my xtra trim milk! From Healthy Options magazine.
MoreAardvark’s Bruce Simpson and tech reporter Juha Saarinen have this morning raised some pretty valid concerns about a story the New Zealand Herald is carrying about a New Zealand-made fuel combustion technology known as “Fuel Star”. The story, which has no byline and comes with a “supplied” photo, begins with the optimistic intro: Fuelstar Fuel […]
MoreWhen I was reporting for the Herald on convoluted and long-running stories like the dismantling of Telecom’s monopoly on the phone and internet market, I felt obliged to cover each major phase of the story through to completion. It seems the same isn’t true of the New Zealand media in general when it comes to […]
MoreThis one, from today’s Taranaki Daily News, isn’t so much about science as animal welfare and isn’t so much crazy as it is eccentric. But I thought it was fantastic and needed to be shared with Sciblogs readers…
MoreConsider these two headlines published in the last couple of days: New Zealand Herald: Major research finds link between multi-vitamin pills and breast cancer BusinessWeek: Supplements might reduce breast cancer risk Both are top search results on Google News, but don’t they seem to contradict each other? Let us look a little more closely at […]
MoreNot surprisingly, newspapers around the world have given extensive coverage to the volcanic ash clouds over Europe as airports remain closed, travellers stranded. Here are a couple of infographics from the region, that try to make sense of the story. They are variations on the same theme. Which does a better job? The top one […]
MoreNew Scientist’s rather timely cover story this week looks at the eruption of supervolcano Toba, 74,000 years ago and the impact and scale of ash fall-out from it. As New Scientist explains: Toba is a supervolcano on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It has blown its top many times but this eruption, 74,000 years ago, […]
MoreApart from the excellent kids programme Lets Get Inventing, there hasn’t been a family-orientated science TV show commissioned in New Zealand for years. So it is great news that TVNZ has commissioned a show for the TVNZ7 channel available on Freeview and on Sky as well. I’ve spoken to several companies that have pitched ideas […]
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PETER GRIFFIN 
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