Janet Raloff

Janet Raloff

Editor, Digital, Science News Explores

Editor Janet Raloff has been a part of the Science News Media Group since 1977. While a staff writer at Science News, she covered the environment, toxicology, energy, science policy, agriculture and nutrition. She was among the first to give national visibility to such issues as electromagnetic pulse weaponry and hormone-mimicking pollutants, and was the first anywhere to report on the widespread tainting of streams and groundwater sources with pharmaceuticals. A founding board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, her writing has won awards from groups including the National Association of Science Writers. In July 2007, while still writing for Science News, Janet took over Science News Explores (then known as Science News for Kids) as a part-time responsibility. Over the next six years, she expanded the magazine's depth, breadth and publication cycle. Since 2013, she also oversaw an expansion of its staffing from three part-timers to a full-time staff of four and a freelance staff of some 35 other writers and editors. Before joining Science News, Janet was managing editor of Energy Research Reports (outside Boston), a staff writer at Chemistry (an American Chemical Society magazine) and a writer/editor for Chicago's Adler Planetarium. Initially an astronomy major, she earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (with an elective major in physics).

All Stories by Janet Raloff

  1. Animals

    Climate adaptation may be a family affair

    Newborn coral reef fish can cope with changed water conditions if their parents have already adjusted.

  2. Humans

    Ozone: Heart of the matter

    As reported this week, breathing elevated ozone levels can mess with the cardiovascular system, potentially putting vulnerable populations — such as the elderly and persons with diabetes or heart disease — at heightened risk of heart attack, stroke and sudden death from arrhythmias. Is this really new? Turns out it is.

  3. Earth

    Ozone hikes cardiovascular risk

    The pollutant triggers inflammation and other changes that can heighten the risk of heart attack and stroke.

  4. Humans

    De-papering environmental summits

    One token — but highly visible — gesture toward sustainability at the UN's 2012 Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio was a request for all attendees to shrink their paper footprints. Apparently, most complied.

  5. Humans

    What’s in your wallet? Another ‘estrogen’

    A chemical cousin of bisphenol A, a hormone mimic, has turned up on banknotes from around the world in addition to tainting 14 other types of papery products. Owing to the near ubiquity of BPS in paper, human exposure is likely also “ubiquitous,” conclude the study's authors. Oh, and a second new study shows that BPS behaves like an estrogen.

  6. Science & Society

    Measuring how well kids do science

    On June 19, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released the first national report card gauging the performance in hand-on and research-oriented interactive computer tasks by U.S. children. And the overall grades: Well, they show lots of room for improvement.

  7. Animals

    Mr. Hornaday’s War

    How a Peculiar Victorian Zookeeper Waged a Lonely Crusade for Wildlife That Changed the World by Stefan Bechtel.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Diet sodas may confuse brain’s ‘calorie counter’

    Among regular consumers of sugar-free soft drinks, networks that equate sweet flavors with energy intake may grow numb to the real stuff.

  9. Tech

    Court ‘shares’ researchers’ e-mails, intellectual property

    “A situation has arisen involving scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) that should concern all those who value the principles of academic freedom and responsibility,” warns top WHOI officials. They were responding to a court order requiring that two WHOI scientists turn over 3,500 emails and other documents to BP. Included in the information was intellectual property that outsiders could exploit.

  10. Earth

    Arctic’s wintry blanket can be warming

    Forested snowscapes keep northern soils relatively toasty, diminishing how much climate-warming carbon they can sequester from the atmosphere.

  11. Humans

    Depolarizing climate science

    A study out this week attempts to probe why attitudes on climate risks by some segments of the public don’t track the science all that well. Along the way, it basically debunks one simplistic assumption: that climate skeptics, for want of a better term, just don’t understand the data — or perhaps even science. “I think this is sort of a weird, exceptional situation,” says decision scientist Dan Kahan of the Yale Law School, who led the new study. “Most science issues aren’t like this.” But a view is emerging, some scientists argue, that people tend to be unusually judgmental of facts or interpretations in science fields that threaten the status quo — or the prevailing attitudes of their cultural group, however that might be defined. And climate science is a poster child for these fields.

  12. Humans

    Climate skepticism not rooted in science illiteracy

    Cultural values are more important than science knowledge in shaping a person’s views on global warming.