Awards: NASW Science in Society Award

NASW’s Science in Society Journalism Awards honor and encourage outstanding investigative reporting about the sciences and their impact on society. Below is Showcase’s collection of NASW award winners.

A Field at a Crossroads: Genetics and Racial Mythmaking

Ashley Smart •
PUBLISHED BY: Undark ON December 12, 2022
NASW Science in Society Award AAAS Kavli Award

Ashley Smart, senior editor at Undark, associate director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, and CASW’s treasurer, won a 2023 NASW Science and Society award and a 2023 AAAS Kavli Award for this story. His “tour de force,” […]

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Meet the ‘Rented White Coats’ Who Defend Toxic Chemicals

David Heath •
PUBLISHED BY: The Center for Public Integrity ON February 8, 2016
NASW Science in Society Award

The series “Science for Sale,” which offers a rare glimpse into a world where corporate interests dictate their own science, won NASW’s Science in Society Award in 2017. Although the series includes a number of stories, the one re-published below […]

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When the Dust Settles

Eva Hershaw •
PUBLISHED BY: Texas Monthly ON September 1, 2016
NASW Science in Society Award

After Texas Tech researchers discovered that windstorms may be spreading antibiotic-resistant bacteria from local feedlots, public health experts stood up and took notice. So did the Texas Cattle Feeders Association.

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Storygram: Amy Maxmen’s “How the Fight Against Ebola Tested a Culture’s Traditions”

Amy Maxmen • • October 3, 2017
PUBLISHED BY: National Geographic ON January 30, 2015
NASW Science in Society Award

A great quarrel followed the death of a pregnant Guinean woman in June …

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The Real Scandal: Science Denialism at Susan G. Komen for the Cure®

Christie Aschwanden •
PUBLISHED BY: The Last Word On Nothing ON February 8, 2012
NASW Science in Society Award

Is breast cancer threatening your life? This Susan G. Komen for the Cure® ad leaves no doubt about who’s to blame —you are. …

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Leaving the Sea: Staten Islanders Experiment with Managed Retreat

Elizabeth Rush •
PUBLISHED BY: Urban Omnibus ON February 11, 2015
NASW Science in Society Award

In Oakwood Beach, Staten Island, an often-overlooked cranny of the city’s “forgotten borough,” the unthinkable is happening — seaside homes of longtime New Yorkers, sold to the State, are being razed to return the neighborhood to wetlands. …

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Uprising: The Environmental Scandal That’s Happening Right Beneath Your Feet

Phil McKenna •
PUBLISHED BY: Matter ON November 6, 2013
NASW Science in Society Award AAAS Kavli Award

By the time Bob Ackley crossed the Harlem River into Manhattan he’d been up for nearly four hours. It was still dark, not yet seven on a Sunday morning: the best time of the week to go sniffing for gas. …

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Why Nothing Works

Erik Vance •
PUBLISHED BY: Discover Magazine ON July 7, 2014
NASW Science in Society Award

Once dismissed as a curiosity, the placebo effect is now recognized as the key to the brain’s “inner pharmacy.” If only doctors knew how to open the medicine cabinet. …

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Storygram: Cally Carswell’s “The Tree Coroners”

Cally Carswell • • June 30, 2016
PUBLISHED BY: High Country News ON December 16, 2013
NASW Science in Society Award

There are few better places than Frijoles Mesa to study the mortality of trees. This tongue of land lies partly within the grounds of Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains. To the west rises Cerro Grande, a mountain riddled with the charred skeletons of fir and pine trees. …

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