Watching the hot topic presentations over the past three classes and delivering my own, I came away with a clearer understanding of what qualities characterize a reliable popular science writer. Some writers were further removed from the science journals they were referencing than others. It was an established theme throughout the presentations that simplifying scientific jargon, excluding certain confusing data illustrations, and making the news more palatable to a wider audience is possible without bending the truth. One approach that was common among popular science writers was taking the brief “abstract” section of a scientific journal and expanding on it. This can be done by pairing technical points relevant to the scientific finding with something comparable and familiar. For example, in my NYT article the author compared the disabling of a cell to the turning off of a light switch. Another approach taken by science writers is interviewing the professionals in the field with greater expertise and credibility, quoting them directly in the article. That is an element that was lacking according to some of the students who presented. Too often an author’s personal agenda to sensationalize or get a point across made the actual scientific findings of a secondary importance. This was more common with less reputable publications such as Vox with Daniel’s presentation. Something of interest that I notices while doing my own research is that part of a scientific journal could be written in such a way as to favor a particular company. Synlogic did this with the reputable Nature journal and that was reflected in the popular article. Even though the scientific journal had a disclaimer near the end pointing out this fact, it can still be misleading for audiences that trust the original source. I wish the popular articles had used visual aids more often from the research and broken them down in a way that the general population can comprehend. It would be more interesting to have an accurate mental image of the bacteria or microbes being talked about.