Articles require more input from professionals

I'd like to advocate for The State News hiring some sort of science advisor to work with you on your scientific articles.

Perhaps it is because I am a physics major and am more familiar with the topics discussed in articles about the Cyclotron, but it always seems to me that those articles are the largest festering grounds for inaccuracy - not only in content, but also in language.

For example, in your latest article "Researchers design improved Cyclotron magnet prototype" (SN 5/18), it is stated that, "A cyclotron is a device that spins around faster than half the speed of light."

I would be horrified to go near the Cyclotron building if that were the case, because the equipment would fly apart and kill people.

Luckily, a cyclotron spins nuclear isotopes around faster than half the speed of light - it, itself, does not spin. In addition, it would be nice to explain what an isotope is - elements with different numbers of neutrons - instead of leaving people with the fuzzy analogy "flavors of an element."

I think that given the university's ISP requirement, most people on campus would either remember, or be able to understand.

Furthermore, resorting to using the analogy of the nuclear war and the cockroach to explain why we need an improved magnet is confusing at best.

It would have been possible just to say the scientists can run the cyclotron at higher energies but need stronger components to withstand the higher radiation.

I suggest either running the articles by some science advisor, or a pool of science advisors, or working more closely with the Cyclotron lab communications manager, Geoffrey Koch, to ensure the accuracy of content and language of future articles about the Cyclotron.

Major news outlets and news magazines, including Time magazine, are cutting their science advisors, making for enormously horrible reporting on science from several professional news companies.

I would loathe to see this trend extend to the reporting of The State News.

Michael Saelim

physics and mathematics senior

Published on Monday, May 21, 2007