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Good Worldwide Launches Leaps.org to Rebuild Public Trust in Science and Journalism

Good Worldwide Launches Leaps.org to Rebuild Public Trust in Science and Journalism

MARCH 15, 2021 -- LeapsMag, the award-winning online magazine created to encourage public discussion about scientific innovation, re-emerges today as Leaps.org, a non- profit media initiative within the Good Worldwide ecosystem, dedicated to rebuilding public trust in science as a force for good and fostering dialogue about the ethical implications of new breakthroughs. Leaps.org's news and commentary cover a wide range of topics including health and medicine, biotechnology, agriculture, research and development, space exploration, and environmental concerns. Notable contributors and interviewees include neuroscientist Sam Harris, geneticist George Church, Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel, author Steven Pinker, virologist Angela Rasmussen, and many others.

Science and the media that report on it are facing unprecedented mistrust and suspicion, yet at the same time the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a growing public appetite for accessible information about scientific developments. President Biden has tasked his Surgeon General nominee Vivek Murthy with improving public trust in science as one of his key goals. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported in January that roughly 3 in 10 U.S. health care workers express hesitancy about getting a COVID-19 vaccine. A September 2020 Pew Research Center study found that "majorities across 18 of the 20 publics say that limited public understanding is a problem for coverage of scientific research."

And Edelman Worldwide released global survey results showing that trust in scientists and journalists is down compared with last year, and trust in all information sources is at record lows: "In a world of misinformation and media echo chambers," Edelman stated, "how can we rebuild the trust needed to enable the acceptance of science and innovation to create a brighter future for humanity?"

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Kira Peikoff

Kira Peikoff was the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org from 2017 to 2021. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young sons. Follow her on Twitter @KiraPeikoff.

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Friday Five: The Therapeutic Value of Bonding with Fellow Sports Fans

In this week's Friday Five, attending sports events is linked to greater life satisfaction, AI can identify specific brain tumors in under 90 seconds, LSD - minus hallucinations - raises hopes for mental health, new research on the benefits of cold showers, and inspiring awe in your kids leads to behavior change.

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The Friday Five covers five stories in research that you may have missed this week. There are plenty of controversies and troubling ethical issues in science – and we get into many of them in our online magazine – but this news roundup focuses on new scientific theories and progress to give you a therapeutic dose of inspiration headed into the weekend.

This episode includes an interview with Dr. Helen Keyes, Head of the School of Psychology and Sports Science at Anglia Ruskin University.

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Matt Fuchs

Matt Fuchs is the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org and Making Sense of Science. He is also a contributing reporter to the Washington Post and has written for the New York Times, Time Magazine, WIRED and the Washington Post Magazine, among other outlets. Follow him @fuchswriter.

Scientists and dark sky advocates team up to flip the switch on light pollution

Residents of Fountain Hills, a small town near Phoenix, Arizona, fought against the night sky pollution to restore their Milky Way skies.

Rebecca Bloom Chapman

As a graduate student in observational astronomy at the University of Arizona during the 1970s, Diane Turnshek remembers the starry skies above the Kitt Peak National Observatory on the Tucson outskirts. Back then, she could observe faint objects like nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters on most nights.

When Turnshek moved to Pittsburgh in 1981, she found it almost impossible to see a clear night sky because the city’s countless lights created a bright dome of light called skyglow. Over the next two decades, Turnshek almost forgot what a dark sky looked like. She witnessed pristine dark skies in their full glory again during a visit to the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah in early 2000s.

“I was shocked at how beautiful the dark skies were in the West. That is when I realized that most parts of the world have lost access to starry skies because of light pollution,” says Turnshek, an astronomer and lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2015, she became a dark sky advocate.

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Anuradha Varanasi
Anuradha Varanasi is a freelance science journalist based in Mumbai, India. She has an MA in Science Journalism from Columbia University in the City of New York. Her stories on environmental health, biomedical research, and climate change have been published in Forbes, UnDark, Popular Science, and Inverse. You can follow her on Twitter @AnuradhaVaranas