Category: featured

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.

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 Courage to Live It: A Master Class on the Business of Freelancing

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NiwotRidge_flowers

Dates: August 24-27, 2014

Place: The Mountain Research Station, west of Boulder Colorado.

Deadlines and fees

Online Application 

You know how to write and you’ve already done some freelancing, but you want to up your game — and your income. Or maybe you’re itching to quit your staff job and set off on your own to earn a living writing independently. Be your own boss. Work your own schedule. Pursue the stories you care about. If these are your passions, then Courage Camp is for you. As protagonist Owen Meaney says in the John Irving novel that bears his name, “If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” Continue reading “The Courage to Live It: A Master Class on the Business of Freelancing” →

I’m just saying no to mammography: Why the numbers are in my favor

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Washington Post, October 7, 2013

Excerpt:

What my doctor neglected to tell me is that a mammogram was, in my case, more likely to hurt than help me. Few doctors take the time to mention the risks of mammography — especially, the danger of overdiagnosis —that a mammogram might lead a patient to get needled, sliced, zapped with radiation and possibly treated with tamoxifen, a drug that increases risk of uterine cancer, for a breast lesion that wasn’t life-threatening in the first place.

Most people believe that breast cancer is inevitably a progressive disease that will kill you if you don’t remove it in time. According to this idea, which I call the relentless progression model, every big cancer is harmful, every small one is less so and every cancer is curable if only you catch it in time. It’s an appealing, intuitive idea — except that a growing body of research suggests that it’s wrong.

Read the rest at The Washington Post: I’m just saying no to mammography: Why the numbers are in my favor

The Molester and Me

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The Molester and Me
My high school coach was like a dad to me, until he abused my teammate and violated us all.
Slate, June 7, 2013

Excerpt:

For a moment, I felt paralyzed. This can’t be true, my body said, even as my mind could not deny that it was. My initial grief gave way to rage. I’d trusted Coach, and he’d betrayed me, betrayed all of us. He didn’t care about me at all.

Read the rest at Slate: The Molester and Me

Runner’s World: Flight of the bumblebee

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Flight of the Bumble Bee
Why would anyone run all night through some of the West’s most rugged mountains just to help some other guy finish a completely ridiculous race? Christie Aschwanden went to the Wasatch Front 100-mile ultramarathon to find out.
Runner’s World, May 2009

Athletes, Stop Taking Supplements

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Athletes, Stop Taking Supplements
They’re expensive, they don’t improve performance, and they might make you test positive for dope.
Slate, July 26, 2012

Excerpt:

Hardy is among a growing number of athletes who have traced a positive doping test back to a tainted supplement. Swimmer Kicker Vencill and cyclists Flavia Oliveira andScott Moninger (an acquaintance of mine), also tested positive after taking supplements, and 400-meter gold medalist LaShawn Merritt linked his positive dope test to a product called Extenz that he picked up at 7-Eleven. The problem is so prevalent that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has developed an educational campaign for athletes, called Supplements 411.

Supplements are risky thanks in part to a piece of legislation passed in 1994 called the Dietary Supplements and Health Education Act. The DSHEA essentially deregulated dietary supplements, including vitamins, herbs, protein shake mixes, nutritional supplements, and other powders and pills that millions of people of all levels of athletic ability might take to improve their health. Most people assume that if a product is available on store shelves, it must be OK. But supplements are not required to be evaluated or proven safe or effective before they’re sold. New rules finalized in 2007 gave the FDA power to regulate the manufacturing and packaging of supplements, but the agency’s ability to police supplement companies remains limited by DSHEA. Its chief author and most powerful advocate is Sen. Orrin Hatch, whose home state of Utah is home to much of the U.S. supplement industry. Hatch, who attributes his good health to the supplements he takes each day, fought a recent amendment to increase the FDA’s ability to regulate the industry.

Read the rest at Slate: Athletes, Stop Taking Supplements

How I Found Contentment in My Own Backyard

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201206-omag-way-home-600x411Could You Find Contentment in Your Own Backyard?
Christie Aschwanden spent her youth traipsing around the globe—until she discovered what it meant to find contentment in her own home.
O, the Oprah Magazine; May, 2012

Excerpt:

The walk is not negotiable. No matter how full the day’s agenda, we go—my husband, my cow dog, and I, down our rural western Colorado road, past the neighbor’s property to the dead end, up the old dirt track grown over with sagebrush and piñon saplings, to the top of the hill where the path ends under a red sandstone cliff. I’ve watched sunset after sunset from this private perch, and each is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

I have never wanted for spectacular sunsets. As an air force brat, a competitive ski racer, and then a journalist, I’ve watched the sun go down on five continents. I’ve lived in three countries and more than a dozen cities; trekked up and down the Alps, through Central American rainforests, and along Mediterranean coasts, seeking novelty and adventure. But a kind of loneliness lurked in my perpetual motion. I could fit in anywhere, yet I belonged nowhere.

Read the rest here: Could You Find Contentment in Your Own Backyard?

Interview: Brian Vastag

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Brian Vastag is a science reporter at The Washington Post, where he covers general science, the environment, climate change, and space. Vastag covered the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown for the Post, penning six front-page stories during the height of the crisis and more than a dozen stories overall on the disaster and its political fallout.

Before landing at the Post in January 2011, Vastag spent nearly six years freelancing for some 40 publications, including U.S. News & World Report, New Scientist, Health, Nature, Science, Scientific American, Science News and National Geographic News. From 2000 to 2004, Vastag served as Washington news editor for the Journal of the American Medical Association, operating as a one-man bureau while covering biomedical research and policy from Capitol Hill to the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. Vastag has made live radio appearances on BBC World Service, WNYC, and Public Radio International’s The World, with television appearances on MSNBC and CNN.

Vastag is a member of the panel, Covering Scientific Controversies, that will take place Saturday, October 15th, from 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm at the Wettaw Auditorium at the University of Northern Arizona. The panel is part of the annual National Association of Science Writers meeting.

I interviewed Vastag prior to the NASW panel. In our interview, we discussed his Fukushima reporting as well as an investigative piece about offshore stem cell treatments that he wrote for the Post in 2008, Injections of Hope: Doctors promote offshore stem cell treatments, but some patients cry foul.

Click the following link to listen to the interview. (Or right click the link to download the .mp3 so you can listen on your audio device.)

BrianVastagPt1.output

–Christie Aschwanden

Interview: Gary Taubes

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Gary Taubes  is the author of Nobel Dreams (1987), Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion (1993), Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007), and Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It (2010). He studied applied physics at Harvard and aerospace engineering at Stanford (MS, 1978). After receiving a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in 1981, Taubes joined Discover magazine as a staff reporter in 1982. Since then he has written numerous articles for Discover, Science and other magazines. Originally focusing on physics issues, his interests have more recently turned to medicine and nutrition.

Taubes’ books have all dealt with scientific controversies. Nobel Dreams takes a critical look at the politics and experimental techniques behind the Nobel Prize-winning work of physicist Carlo Rubbia. Bad Science is a chronicle of the short-lived media frenzy surrounding the Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion experiments of 1989.

Taubes is a member of the panel, Covering Scientific Controversies, that will take place Saturday, October 15th, from 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm at the Wettaw Auditorium at the University of Northern Arizona. The panel is part of the annual National Association of Science Writers meeting.

I spoke with Taubes about his controversial New York Times Magazine story, Is Sugar Toxic?

Click the following link to listen to the interview. (Or right click the link to download the .mp3 so you can listen on your audio device.)

TaubesOnBias

Science Feuds Interview: Jennifer Kahn

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Jennifer Kahn has been a contributing editor at Wired magazine since 2003, and a feature writer for The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, Mother Jones, and the New York Times, among others. Her work has been selected for the Best American Science Writing series four times in the past seven years. A graduate of Princeton University and UC Berkeley, she has degrees in astrophysics and journalism. Since 2008, she has taught in the Magazine Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

Kahn is a member of my NASW panel, Covering Scientific Controversies, that will take place Saturday, October 15th, from 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm at the Wettaw Auditorium at the University of Northern Arizona. The panel is part of the annual National Association of Science Writers meeting.

I spoke with Kahn about her  New Yorker piece, “A Cloud of Smoke,” about a policeman whose death four years after 9/11 was not what it seemed.

Click the following link to listen to the interview. (Or right click the link to download the .mp3 so you can listen on your audio device.)

ChristieAschwandenInterviewsJennifer Kahn