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Media Coverage of This Article

Posted by PLOS_ONE_Group on 12 Sep 2012 at 21:58 GMT

The following article represents some of the media coverage that has occurred for this paper:

Publication: Examiner.com
Title: “Pussy fanciers and bird lovers fight like political parties - Birmingham Top News | Examiner.com”
http://www.examiner.com/a...

Publication: North Carolina State University
Title: “NC State News :: NC State News and Information | Survey Shows Why Claws Come Out Over Feral Cat Management”
http://news.ncsu.edu/rele...

Publication: Phys.org
Title: “Survey shows why claws come out over feral cat management”
http://phys.org/news/2012...

If you see any additional coverage of this paper in the press or blogosphere, please reply to this thread and add the link to the article.

Competing interests declared: PLOS ONE Staff

RE: Media Coverage of This Article

WalterLamb replied to PLOS_ONE_Group on 14 Sep 2012 at 23:43 GMT

Dear POLS ONE Staff:

If you are interested in additional examples of media coverage, Just type something like:

cats birds "identity politics" nils peterson

into Google and you will see that this paper has received widespread media attention. For reasons stated in my comment, I don't view that as a positive thing. Before researching this issue, I never gave much thought to the scientific process. I have been disillusioned to put it mildly. The temptation to turn loosely conceived student projects into published papers and the focus on media coverage and impact factor are among the things that lead to widespread dissemination of information that is often marginally useful or even misleading to the public. The much lauded self-correcting nature of science is at a disadvantage when papers with interesting headlines are picked up by a multitude of outlets hungry for content. Once a narrative gets propagated across today's instant media landscape, it is almost impossible to correct misperceptions after the fact.

Good intentions aside, this article clearly gives the impression of cat advocates as science deniers and implies that the primary goal of collaboration is to help them come to grips with scientific reality. It is an inaccurate picture of the situation that is itself the inadvertent result of identity politics.

Walter lamb

No competing interests declared.

RE: RE: Media Coverage of This Article

AquaPlantMan replied to WalterLamb on 27 Sep 2012 at 23:14 GMT

I see that you have great concern for these "student projects" and their credibility to the science. Funny how the MAJORITY of all publications across nearly all disciplines are a product of these "student projects"...... That's a rather large group of individuals from which you are trying to deny credibility Walt. So are you saying only the work of established bench scientists is worth publishing?..... There would be scores of editors without work, thousands of pages left blank, and no route for these "miniscule" students to establish themselves if "student prohects" arent worth publishing. Let's not forget that graduate students, much like those who composed this work, are the backbone of science.

No competing interests declared.

RE: RE: Media Coverage of This Article

WalterLamb replied to WalterLamb on 30 Sep 2012 at 20:11 GMT

APM - Thanks for the comment. I agree with your criticism and wish I'd worded this better. In fact, Dr. Felicia Nutter, of the Stoskopf and Nutter paper, which I obviously respect a great deal, had been a student of Dr. Stoskopf when they collaborated on that paper.

The point that I was trying to make is that media outlets gravitate toward interesting headlines. The don't typically further vet the science itself, nor do they care where it was published, or by whom. I think that researchers too often confuse media coverage or citations from other researchers as validation of the quality of their work. The focus on media attention just struck me the wrong way, just as it does when a news show seems more focused on ratings than journalistic quality.

Nonetheless, I should have focused on what I see as the limitations of this particular paper, which I will do in subsequent comments, rather than making general assertions about student research in general. I hope you will read some of those comments and continue to provide feedback.

Walter

No competing interests declared.

RE: Media Coverage of This Article

Nils replied to PLOS_ONE_Group on 15 Sep 2012 at 01:09 GMT

RE: RE: Media Coverage of This Article

PLOS_ONE_Group replied to Nils on 21 Sep 2012 at 22:52 GMT

The following article represents some of the media coverage that has occurred for this paper:

Publication: Improbable Research
Title: “Improbable Research - Blog Archive”
http://www.improbable.com...

Publication: News Observer
Title: “NCSU study: Partisan claws come out, but compromise possible - Education - NewsObserver.com”
http://www.newsobserver.c...

If you see any additional coverage of this paper in the press or blogosphere, please reply to this thread and add the link to the article.

Competing interests declared: PLOS ONE Staff

RE: RE: RE: Media Coverage of This Article

PLOS_ONE_Group replied to PLOS_ONE_Group on 25 Jan 2013 at 23:10 GMT

The following article represents some of the media coverage that has occurred for this paper:

Publication: Science Line
Title: “Serial killer or scapegoat? » Scienceline”
http://scienceline.org/20...

If you see any additional coverage of this paper in the press or blogosphere, please reply to this thread and add the link to the article.

Competing interests declared: PLOS ONE Staff