Karen Young Kreeger | Jan 9, 2000 | 6 min read
Some scientists would call writing the most excruciating part of their jobs. Others would say it's an act of joy, or at least it doesn't cause great pain. For a small cadre, writing for audiences outside of their peers--the communications that generally don't count toward promotion and tenure--is also a second career. To be sure, writing for the popular press is nothing new in science. Veteran scientist-authors such as Carl Sagan were profiled in The Visible Scientists,1 a book that was p