The recent wildfires in southern
California have highlighted the issue of
fire suppression – preventing and extinguishing wildfires versus allowing
wildfires to burn their natural course.
Michael A. Kamrin, Delores J. Katz and Martha L. Walter
Posted: April 23, 1996
This exerpt from the FACS book, "Reporting on Risk," offers a plain, clear description of how scientists assess risk, what questions you should ask them, and some tips for explaining it all to your audience.
When a chemical tank car jumps the rails or some odd ooze bubbles up in a pond somewhere, we need to understand the risk it presents to the neighborhood-we need to report the results of the science of risk assessment.
As in other parts of the country, land use planning in California is heavily affected by the way local governments finance their operations. Both revenue and costs are determined in large part by the way their land is used. Hence, local governments often make land use decisions based at least in part on fiscal considerations associated with new development. This has come to be known as "the fiscalization of land use."
Some simple, basic principles and definitions to cope with a science that keeps cropping up in stories about health, safety and the environment.Edited excerpts from the FACS publication, "Epidemiology for Journalists," copyright 1994 by the Foundation for American Communications (FACS)
By Daniel Wartenberg
Posted to FACSnet April 23, 1996
Epidemiology is the study of patterns of disease, who has disease, how much disease they have and why they have it. The object is to find out who gets sick and why, and in turn help us avoid exposure to whatever makes us sick.
By Daniel Wartenberg, FACSnet Scholar
Doug Ramsey and John Warner, FACSnet Editors
Doris Ober, FACSnet Technical Editor
Posted April 23, 1996; revised Jan. 24, 2000
When interviewing a researcher or reporting on a specific epidemiological study, you can ask the following series of questions to guide your evaluation of the study: