complicated experiment. The study involved suspending tiny droplets of oil
between two metal electrodes, then measuring how strong the electric field
had to be in order to stop the droplets from falling.
Grady read it several times. Again and again until she finally understood.
But when she did, it was like a flash going off. She got it. It was thrilling.
The thinking behind
the experiment was so clever,
and being able to grasp it
was enthralling. She was hooked.
After school Grady went to work at
Physics Today magazine. Eventually
she worked at
Discover and
Time magazine and finally worked her way up
to health editor at
The New York Times. The goal of her articles was always
the same: to give people even just a little bit of that excitement that she had
felt back in chemistry class decades before. An appreciation for the magic
of scientific discovery.
In her piece that October, Grady described how an engineering professor
used a photographic technique to capture a visible image of a seemingly
invisible phenomenon—a human cough. The schlieren technique had been
used for years by aeronautics and military specialists to study how shock
waves form around high-speed aircraft. But the engineering professor had
harnessed the technique in a new way: to study how airborne infections like
tuberculosis, SARS, and influenza spread.
It made sense that most people thought the article wasn’t particularly
useful. After all, they weren’t scientists studying fluid dynamics. Nor were
they engineers trying to visualize complex phenomena.
And while Grady is one of the best science writers out there, it made
sense that the general population would tend to be more interested in
articles about sports or fashion. Finally, while coughs would certainly be a
nice trigger to remind people of the article, cold and flu season tends to
peak
around February, four months after the article was released.
Even Grady was bemused. As a journalist, she’s delighted when
something she writes goes viral. And like most journalists, or even casual
bloggers, she’d love to understand why some of her pieces get widely
shared while others don’t.
But while she could make some educated guesses, neither she nor anyone
else really knew why one piece of content gets shared more than another.
What made this particular article go viral?
—————
After
years of analysis, I’m happy to report that
my colleagues and I have
some answers. Grady’s 2008 article was part of a multi-year study in which
we analyzed thousands of
New York Times articles to better understand why
certain pieces of online content are widely shared.
A clue comes from the picture that accompanied Grady’s piece. Earlier
that October, she had been scanning an issue of
The New England Journal
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