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. Humans

    Yet another study links insecticide to bee losses

    Since 2006, honeybee populations across North America have been hammered by catastrophic losses. Although this pandemic has a name — colony collapse disorder, or CCD — its cause has remained open to speculation. New experiments now strengthen the case for pesticide poisoning as a likely contributor.

  2. Humans

    Weighing the costs of conferencing

    A provocative editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association questions the value of attending scientific conferences. It’s a theme that reemerges every few years. And in times of tight budgets, the idea seems worth revisiting.

  3. Humans

    Growth-promoting antibiotics: On the way out?

    Sixty-two years later — to the day — after Science News ran its first story on the growth-promoting effects of antibiotics, a federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration to resume efforts to outlaw such nonmedical use of antibiotics.

  4. Earth

    Nanopollutants change blood vessel reactivity

    Tiny particles alter normal vessel functions, animal studies show.

  5. Plumbing the Archives

    A meditation on 90 years of Science News.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Excess salt may stiffen heart vessels

    As sodium in diet increases, a coronary risk factor independent of blood pressure escalates, according to a study in middle-aged U.S. men.

  7. Life

    Pollutants long gone, but disease carries on

    Even without new exposures, various chemicals can impact DNA and cause illness across at least three subsequent generations, rat study finds.

  8. Climate

    Carbon dioxide breaking down marine ecosystems

    Scientists capitalize on 'natural’ experiment to chronicle how ecosystems will change as oceans continue to acidify.

  9. Humans

    Despite lean times, Obama wants R&D hikes

    The proposed federal budget would stall nonmandated spending overall, but science and tech would climb.

  10. Earth

    BPA fosters diabetes-promoting changes

    Exposures typical of the general public are enough to alter insulin secretion.

  11. Humans

    Faulty comparisons

    Is anyone else disturbed by the following description: Scientists are reporting development of a new form of buckypaper, which eliminates a major drawback of these sheets of carbon nanotubes — 50,000 times thinner than a human hair, 10 times lighter than steel, but up to 250 times stronger . . .

  12. Humans

    Predatory pythons shift Everglades ecology

    As invasive snakes expand territory, some mammal populations drop by more than 90 percent within a decade.