Author: Christie

FiveThirtyEight’s Top 103 Commenters

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I recently wrote a story for FiveThirtyEight about why people leave comments on the Internet. I surveyed a bunch of commenters (as well as some people who don’t comment) and the results yielded some interesting insights, which I discussed in the story. (You can hear a dramatic reading of some of the comments left on my FiveThirtyEight stories here.) I also wrote about how journalists think about comments at my blog, Last Word On Nothing, and the post includes data about how journalists think of and respond to comments. For these stories, I spoke with a few of our most prolific commenters at FiveThirtyEight.

Enough people asked about the list of top commenters (my story only listed the top ten) that I thought I’d go ahead an share the top 100 list, which is actually a top 103 list, since there were some ties. The list, created by my colleague Dhrumil Mehta, is based on comments made on FiveThirtyEight articles between March 10, 2014, and Nov. 17, 2016.

RANK NAME  Number of comments
1 Warren Dew 552
2 Norman Shatkin 360
3 James Deedler 308
4 Fel Martins 269
5 Joseph Michael 252
6 Glenn Doty 247
7 Django Zeaman 234
8 Harold DePalma 230
9 Nealy Willy 217
10 Davey Williams 214
11 Janet Stockey Swanborn 198
12 Robert Lash 196
13 Dan Frushour 193
14 Joe Schmitz 183
15 Aaron Baker 181
16 Bill Wild 175
17 James C. Higgs 163
18 Jack Springer 161
19 Samuel Xavier McPherson 161
20 Joshua Long 160
21 Frank Lee 159
22 Andrew Lang 157
23 Judy Konos 153
24 Morgan Alexander Mikhail 152
25 Robert Jensen 151
26 Brian Silver 150
27 Robert Davidson 148
28 Steve Olson 146
29 Williame Harrisone 145
30 Simon DelMonte 145
31 Rob Ross 141
32 Mike Stanley 139
33 Alan Snipes 137
34 Andrew Jones 137
35 Luís Henrique Donadio 131
36 Keith Bloomquist 128
37 Rutger Colin Kips 128
38 Don Incardona 127
39 Steve High 123
40 Richard Cowgill 121
41 Tim Thielke 119
42 Jason Turner 117
43 Don Wilber 116
44 Shi Gu 113
45 Steve Evets 108
46 Daniel Warren Curtis 107
47 Steve Veasey 106
48 Robert Grutza 105
49 Brandon Butcher 104
50 Matt Silver 103
51 Shawna Walls 102
52 Jeff Seifert 100
53 Jeremy Bailin 98
54 David Reid 97
55 Stellar Generali 97
56 Kevin McRaney 96
57 Tyler Cooper 95
58 Charlie Pluckhahn 95
59 George Craig 95
60 Jeb Makula 93
61 Robert Rio 92
62 Martin D. Kilgore 92
63 Adam White 92
64 Tim Blankenhorn 90
65 Sigmund Menbrodssen 90
66 Will Bishop 89
67 Mark Lantis 89
68 Brian Tucker-Hill 88
69 Peter Wolf 88
70 Pat Ziegler 87
71 Johann Holzel 86
72 Biff Guiznot 83
73 Antoine Guéroult 83
74 Grant Saw 82
75 Dave Barnes 82
76 Michael Brotzman 81
77 Tom Davis 81
78 Kar Nels 80
79 Barb Campbell 80
80 Dan Schroeder 80
81 Mark Charles Salomon 78
82 Julius Fazekas 78
83 Tatiana Romanova 78
84 Garrett Weinzierl 78
85 Brian Hess 77
86 Rupert Barker 76
87 Ed Gruberman 75
88 Jeff Maslan 75
89 Ben Slowen 75
90 Alex Whitworth 75
91 Steve Gibson 74
92 Robert Weller 74
93 Edward Chik 74
94 Dan Bruce 74
95 Jon Worley 72
96 Manny Longfellow 72
97 Daniel Song 71
98 Sayeeshwar Sathyanarayanan 70
99 Abiatha Swelter 70
100 Beverly Ray 69
101 Mark Jorges 69
102 Aaron Allermann 69
103 Ken Kornfeld 69

 

Neanderthals Don’t Deserve Their Bad Rep

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Maybe it’s their famously protruding brow ridge or perhaps it’s the now-discredited notion that they were primitive scavengers too dumb to use language or symbolism, but somehow Neanderthals picked up a reputation as brutish, dim and mannerless cretins.

Yet the latest research on the history and habits of Neanderthals suggests that such portrayals of them are entirely undeserved. It turns out that Neanderthals were capable hunters who used tools and probably had some semblance of culture, and the DNA record shows that if you trace your ancestry to Europe or Asia, chances are very good that you have some Neanderthal DNA in your own genome.

Read more of my latest features at the Washington Post. Also, be sure to check out the cool graphics.

Dueling Claims About Flu Drugs

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The CDC is telling doctors to prescribe more antiviral flu medications, because, “If you get them early, they could keep you out of the hospital and might even save your life.” But the FDA explicitly prohibits the drugs’ makers from making claims that these drugs can reduce hospitalizations or deaths, and scientists who’ve reviewed the evidence on these flu drugs say they’ve only been shown to reduce the duration of symptoms. Who’s right? Read more in my latest FiveThirtyEight story here, then listen to an audio discussion about the story.

WHYY interview: Every Time You Fly, You Trash The Planet — And There’s No Easy Fix

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Earlier this month, I wrote a FiveThirtyEight story about aviation’s climate problem, Every Time You Fly, You Trash The Planet — And There’s No Easy Fix. (A companion story, Some Airlines Pollute Much More Than Others, examined a new study that measured the relative efficiencies of U.S. carriers.)

This week, WHYY’s science show, the Pulse, interviewed me about the story, in a segment titled, There’s Nothing Green About Flying. You can listen here.

The Case Against Early Cancer Detection

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In November, I joined Nate Silver’s data journalism site, FiveThirtyEight, as the lead writer for science. My first feature for FiveThirtyEight was on a familiar topic, cancer screening. Specifically, I made the case against early detection of cancer. I realize it might seem crazy, but once you take a close look at the data, it doesn’t seem so irrational.

In a similar vein, this week, in JAMA Internal Medicine, I explain why I’ve opted out of mammography. The JAMA piece is a more detailed version of a story I first told in a Washington Post column. Click here to read the full text version and get through the paywall.

About Christie

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ChristieSquareChristie Aschwanden is the lead writer for science at FiveThirtyEight and a health columnist for The Washington Post. She’s also a frequent contributor to The New York Times, a contributing editor for Runner’s World and a contributing writer for Bicycling. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including Discover, Slate, Proto, Consumer Reports, New Scientist, More, Men’s Journal, NPR.org, Smithsonian and O, the Oprah Magazine. She’s the recipient of a 2014/2015 Santa Fe Institute Journalism Fellowship In Complexity Science and was a 2013/2014 Carter Center Fellow. She blogs about science at Last Word On Nothing and she’s the former managing editor of The Open Notebook. Her Last Word On Nothing post about science denialism at Susan G. Komen for the Cure won the National Association of Science Writers’ 2013 Science in Society Award for Commentary/Opinion, and she was a National Magazine Award finalist in 2011. Find her on Twitter @CragCrest.

Continue reading “About Christie” →

Stalking my dinner

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Photo Oct 25, 8 03 19 (1)A few years ago, I decided to take up hunting. This was kind of a big deal, because I’d spent the first decade-plus of my adult life as vegetarian. I became a big game hunter for the same reason I raise chickens — to know where my food comes from and ensure that it’s raised and harvested humanely. I figure if I’m not willing to kill it myself, I have no business eating it.

I spent last weekend elk hunting. It was an amazing, wonderful, addictive experience that I wrote about at Last Word On Nothing. Read the full story here.

I don’t love my treadmill desk.

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In my latest Washington Post AnyBody column, I write about how I expected to love my treadmill desk like my writing buddy Paolo Bacigalupi and fellow blogger Craig Childs love theirs. But I just don’t. In my Post column, I explain my suspicion that treadmill desks are the wrong solution to an important problem, and at Last Word On Nothing, I devise some theories about why I don’t like the treadmill and recount how James Levine (father of the treadmill desk) gave me permission to give mine a new home.

 

The problem with “reunion porn.”

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Heart-warming broadcast homecomings have become the public face of post-deployment family reunions, but the intense happiness of these moments can mask the challenges that lie ahead as military families navigate life after their loved ones return from war. “We call it reunion porn,” says Amy Bushatz, managing editor of Military.com’s SpouseBuzz blog and the wife of an infantry soldier. “The feeling among the people I work with and my readers is that it’s not a fair representation.” The happy welcomes tell only the “mushy reunion half of the story,” she says. “What happens when he gets home? Not just that night, but three weeks from then?”

Read the rest at the Washington Post.

 

Talking About CrossFit

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Yesterday, I was a guest on Ohio Public Radio’s All Side with Ann Fisher, talking about CrossFit and my New York Times review of J.C. Herz’s new book about CrossFit, Learning to Breathe Fire. The 20 minute interview begins 15 minutes into the show. View the archive or listen here:  http://streaming.osu.edu/wosu/allsides/090314b.mp3

 

Harassment in Science, Replicated

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In June, I helped organize Solutions Summit 2014: Women in Science Writing, a conference on harassment and gender bias held at MIT. Afterwards, one of my editors at The New York Times invited me to write an essay about these issues. My piece discusses our conference, the survey that we did beforehand, a similar survey that several prominent scientists conducted before ours and my personal experience with these issues. Real solutions, I conclude, will require a culture change.

“Whether harassment or discrimination takes place at a field site in Costa Rica or in a conference room, the problem will not be solved with new rules archived on unread websites. The responsibility for pushing back should not rest solely with the victims. Solutions require a change of culture that can happen only from within.”

Read the essay here, and find a link to the Science Times weekly podcast, where I discuss the essay with my editor, David Corcoran.

 

In Which I Review CrossFit’s Gideon Bible

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Today in the New York Times, I review J.C. Herz’s new book, Learning to Breathe Fire, a celebration of a controversial workout called CrossFit. As I write in the review, “What makes CrossFit appealing to members and confusing to outsiders is that it’s more than a workout — it’s a cultural identity.” Herz’s book makes it clear that the push until it hurts culture that critics consider dangerous is exactly what makes this workout so appealing to its adherents. Read the review here.

 

Mental Health: Recovery is Possible

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In my latest Washington Post column, I answer questions about how to find help for mental health problems such as: Where can you find a mental health professional? What’s the difference between a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a social worker? The piece also explains what to look for in a provider and outlines the factors that best predict successful treatment. Read it here.

 

 

Platelet-rich plasma and the power of belief-based medicine

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I recently wrote a Washington Post column about platelet-rich plasma, a treatment highly touted for sports injuries but without much clear evidence. As I later wrote at Last Word On Nothing, PRP provides a case study in why it’s so important to track outcomes in medicine. If you don’t measure your outcomes, you have no way to really know how you’re doing. Humans are notoriously bad at self-evaluating. A 2006 study published in JAMA found that, “physicians have a limited ability to accurately self-assess,” and a 2012 study found that doctors overestimate the value of the care they provide. And if you have an incentive (money?) to keep doing something, results be damned, then if you’re not careful, an ineffective practice can become fixed as the standard of care. Once that happens, it’s very, very difficult to walk it back.

 

 

Giving suicide attempt survivors a voice

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While researching military suicides, I came across a new movement to give a voice to suicide attempt survivors. I was shocked to learn the extent to which they’d been isolated and shut out of the conversation about suicide prevention. I wrote two stories, for NPR and Dame Magazine about the remarkable people who are standing up to give suicide attempt survivors a voice and the rights they deserve.

Read the stories here:

NPR: Suicide Attempt Survivors Seek A Voice In Helping Others At Risk

Dame Magazine: People Who Attempt Suicide Are Not Criminals

It’s Time to Revamp Our Goals for Cancer Screening

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Since the 1980s, “Early detection is your best protection” has been a mantra of the cancer-awareness community, spurring an insistence on frequent screenings to catch ever-smaller abnormalities. But this approach to cancer screening loses sight of the real goal — saving lives. And it turns out that finding more and more smaller and smaller abnormalities churns out more cancer patients, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into lives saved.

Read the rest of my opinion piece at Popular Science.

 

 

 

Report from the Solutions Summit

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Back in early 2013, an email discussion among friends turned into a realization. We were having the same tired discussions about gender bias, over and over. The details might vary slightly, but it was the same story, again and again, and nothing was changing. It was time to go public and start looking for solutions.

That conversation conversation led to a panel at Science Writers 2013 meeting, which in turn led to a work summit to come up with solutions. The first Women in Science Writing: Solutions Summit took place at MIT on June 13-15. Read my full report of the summit, including data and survey results, over at Last Word On Nothing.

 

 

 

Kids who aspire to pro sports need more play, less practice

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Expensive sports camps and intensive practices and team competitions for young kids are becoming more and more common. Efforts to corral children into highly focused sports programs often arise from good intentions, yet research suggests that kids who specialize in a single sport when they’re young risk injury and burnout but don’t improve their odds of attaining an elite sports career. In most cases, giving kids more time for unstructured play and a chance to sample a wide array of athletic pursuits provides a better recipe for success.

Read more of my latest Washington Post, column: Too much practice and specialization can hurt instead of help child athletes.

This column has a sidebar: Is 10,000 hours magic or not?

 

Does CrossFit push people too hard?

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It seems as though nearly everyone who has heard of CrossFit has an opinion about it — even people who have never tried it. Aficionados claim that this brand of high-intensity workouts is a fast and fun way to get fit. Critics say that it’s a fast track to injury.

Read more of my latest Washington Post column here. 

 

The Value of College Sports

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CUnatChampsAs I’ve followed the NCAA basketball tournament (join me and some folks from Radiolab tonight, as we live tweet the final game), I’ve been thinking about the value of collegiate sports. My first experience with sports in college came as an NCAA division I cross-country runner. I lettered in cross-country at the University of Colorado my freshman year, but a freak knee injury cut short my collegiate running career. Though I had no experience in the sport, I started training with my school’s Nordic ski team, and I also bought a bike and joined the cycling team.

Cross-country and skiing were both division I, NCAA sports, but cycling was governed by its own body, outside of the NCAA system, and was overseen by club sports, rather than CU’s varsity athletic program. The difference was immediately noticeable. As a varsity NCAA athlete, I received special treatment — advance, preferential registration for classes, private tutoring if I needed it, and excused time from class to attend practice and meets, not to mention free tickets to all sporting events. This special treatment fostered a sense of privilege. We were part of the student body, but we were treated as if we were somehow above it.

My teammates and I were good students, and we were there to get a degree, we didn’t expect to make a profession out of sport. Nevertheless, as varsity athletes, we understood that performance was expected of us. Our sport was no hobby — we were there to win.

Things were different on the cycling team. My teammates and I were no less devoted to our sport, and our coaches were every bit as enthusiastic as those in the division I sports. But we didn’t have the same sense of entitlement or expectation. We were pursuing the thing we loved and didn’t assume that our classmates would share our reverence for our sport. The school wasn’t pressuring us for results; it was us who created the expectations.

We were national champions my senior year, and we didn’t need the school’s adoration to enjoy the thrill of victory. We were pursuing the sport for its own sake and had won because we’d worked hard and our luck had aligned, as it must to win a championship. Our victory wasn’t the result of financial incentives that allowed us to recruit a winning team from afar. Instead, we’d pulled together a championship team through happenstance and training. Sure, we had plenty of talent (one of my teammates would go on to become a Tour de France stage winner and infamous doper), but the riders on our team had come to CU for school, not to prep for pro sports. The opportunity to race bikes in Boulder was an attractive reason to attend this particular school, not the sole reason for being there.

Read the rest at Last Word On Nothing.

 

How losing my smart phone made me smarter

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A few weekends ago, I hiked a deep canyon with a couple of friends. As has become my habit, I toted my smart phone along. I set it to mute so that I’d remain undisturbed by pings and rings, and I pulled it out of my pack only to take a few photos.

After the hike, my friend drove us back to our carpool spot, and after changing out of my hiking shoes, I reached for my phone to call my husband. Except it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the front pocket of my pack, or anywhere else I looked.

Panic. Was it in my friend’s car? Or had I dropped it somewhere in the canyon? I reached to call the friend, who was now five minutes down the road in the other direction, but — oh right. I’d have to call her when I got home. Wait, did I know her number? No, I did not. It’s programmed into my phone. I probably added it to my contacts via email, never once dialing it.

A sense of doom set in, as I thought about all the other information I’d offloaded from my brain to that shiny glass rectangle. But the despair was quickly followed by a sense of release. I was suddenly free from obligation. I couldn’t check messages. No one could reach me. I was untethered.

It was Saturday afternoon, and I decided not to think about the phone for the next 24 hours. It sounds simple, but I kept reaching for the phone out of instinct. Standing in line at the grocery store on my way home, I was shocked to realize how long it had been since I’d waited somewhere without occupying myself with messages and other reading material on my phone.

Read the rest at Last Word On Nothing.

Understanding suicide, which is surprisingly common in spring

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Washington Post, April 7, 2014

Excerpt:

Spring, with its longer days, blooming flowers and rising temperatures might seem like a time of peak happiness, but some studies indicate that suicides are more common in the spring and summer months than in December. Researchers don’t know why they’re higher in these seasons, but they say that friends and loved ones should not be lulled into thinking a brighter season necessarily means a brighter mood for someone who is struggling with mental health issues. Intervention is important no matter the month.

Read the rest at The Washington Post: Understanding suicide, which is surprisingly common in spring.