The Why Files Named ‘Best of the Web’

The Why Files, a science-behind-the-news web site produced by the National Institute of Science Education (NISE) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is listed among the top 100 sites on the World Wide Web by PC Magazine in its Feb 18 edition.

The Why Files, a bi-weekly magazine that explores the science, math and technology that lurk behind the headlines of the day, was launched just over one year ago. Its mission is to reveal issues of science in current events, and to serve as a research platform for how people are using the World Wide Web to learn about science.

In its brief life, The Why Files has garnered more than a score of web citations and awards and received favorable reviews in more than 50 print and electronic publications including The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post Online, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, U.S. News and World Report, the San Jose Mercury News, HotWired, Magellan and CNN.

In the PC Magazine listing, the Best of the Web by the editors of PC Magazine, The Why Files is lumped with such major web presences as National Geographic, the Library of Congress, The New York Times, USA Today, NASA, Scientific American and the Museum of Modern Art.

“The Why Files has become a powerful innovation in a new medium, and its popular success is certainly greater than our initial hopes,” said Andrew Porter, a UW–Madison professor of educational psychology and co-director of NISE, a center devoted to the study of issues in science and math education.

Supported by the National Science Foundation and produced by a small staff consisting of a science writer David Tenenbaum, graphic artist Yael Gen, and webmaster Darrell Schulte, The Why Files posts a new feature package every two weeks and takes an engaging and sometimes irreverent look at everything from the potential for life on Mars to mad cow disease.

Each story contains five to 15 pages of text, drawings, photographs, quizzes, and contests. The site capitalizes on the features of the new medium of the World Wide Web by providing hot links to definitions for scientific jargon, bibliographic references and other relevant sites.

The site also offers a weekly Cool Science Image feature and gallery with pictures of everything from a Hubble Space Telescope view of the planet Neptune to photomicrographs of blood cells. Another feature is a readers’ forum where people can ask questions and discuss issues of science as they affect society.

An important but low-profile function of the site is its role as a testbed for understanding how people use the new medium of the World Wide Web to learn about science. Research on the site and how it is used by readers is being conducted by Sharon Dunwoody, a UW–Madison professor of journalism and an internationally recognized authority on science writing, and William Eveland a UW–Madison research associate.

“One of the great challenges of research on hypermedia like these is to learn who uses them and what people do with them,” Dunwoody said. “It’s much harder than looking at traditional media like newspapers, but since these new media may come to dominate information transmission, it is important to figure them out.”